Duke Castiglione's Yankee Spring Training Blog

Wednesday, Feb. 17 -- My day started at 4:30 am. i left my NYC apartment and headed to Newark Liberty Int. for a flight a 7 am to Tampa to begin our Spring Training.  We landed at 10:10 and from there i picked up my rental car. Having done this now for 11 years I knew to head right towards the Yanks Minor League complex---hoping we may catch Derek Jeter and some of the other Yankee stars working out.

Bingo! At 11 am we were the only video camera/tv station to record Jeter working out with new teammates Marcus Thames, Curtis Granderson and Nick Johnson. Matter of fact Jeter even had some fun with us---our unsuspecting cameraman was down near the fence recording him playing catch and Jeter over threw his teammates scaring our photog as the ball rattled off the fence separating the photog and the field.

I took a few pictures with my cell phone while the cameraman did his work and at 11:39 am we bolted to George M Steinbrenner Field (Formerly Legends Field) for Joe Girardi's first official press conference of 2010. As expected the press conference was packed! Girardi was first asked about whether or not his team may be complacent after winning it all last year. His answer as expected---NO! He talked about expectations here in NY and how when he was a Yankee player on teams that won the World Series how motivated everyone was to win another the final spring

Couple of other highlights from the Girardi press conference. He will officially change his number from 27 to 28 as the Yanks chase their 28th World championship...  He expects the Granderson/Brett Gardner situation in centerfield to work itself out. He expects Javier Vazquez to be much better in New York the second time around. Joba and Hughes will battle for the number five starter. He expects Granderson or Nick Johnson to bat second in the order. He is not worried that he, Jeter and Mariano are all in the final years of their contracts. He also expects around to be even more of a leader this year

After Girardi spoke we saw Andy Pettitte working out on the Big League field---you can watch all the video at 5 p-m, 6 p-m, 10 p-m and 11 p-m on My 9 and again on Good Day NY Thursday Feb 18th