Category Archives: The Youker Files

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Former Red Sox infielder Kevin Youkilis played in the major leagues from 2004-2013 before spending last year in Japan. He announced his retirement last fall and subsequently took a job with Theo Epstein’s Chicago Cubs as a special assistant.

I’ve been waiting for this moment for years, you guys.

Scientists finally did it. I’m sure we’re all aware of the fact that back when Terry Francona was my coach with the Red Sox, he made some incredibly insensitive remarks about my penis length. He didn’t exactly term it that way, but we all know what he meant. He said I wasn’t a Greek god of anything because he’d apparently stole a few glances of my hog while I was in the locker room. Just ignorant.

So yeah yeah yeah, he was obviously kidding around. But that kind of colorful quote is the thing media types run with. I’ve never lived it down.

Until now.

I’ll admit, when I first glanced at the story my heart sank. See, the first article I read off the Internet earlier this week was from some British newspaper in England and numbers like 13 and 11 jumped off the computer screen at me. The pit of my stomach burned with a flurry of feelings I can’t even describe.

I guess my new boss Theo Epstein caught wind that I was moping around the Chicago Cubs’ spring training complex in Mesa (Arizona). All of a sudden I got a little sticky note inside my locker saying he wanted to see me. Now, I’ve seen the movie Major League about 40,000 times so this slip hanging in my locker scared the hell out of me.

I’m glad I didn’t barge into his office and tear the sticky into a thousand little pieces like I planned at first. Theo sat me down and explained something to me in layman’s terms – chiefly, the whole metric system.

Let me just say first off I don’t get Europe – why do they have to reinvent the wheel and fix things that ain’t broken? They can’t just use inches?

But I’m getting off track here.

Theo’s math lesson was a lot confusing and I stopped paying attention after a while, but not before doing a little math with Boy Wonder and figuring something out – Terry shortchanged me and it was time to formally seek his apology.

Now, mind you, I haven’t been a special assistant for the Cubs for very long. Less than a month, counting weekends and some personal time. I’m not really sure I’ve accrued a hell of a lot of vaca.

But Terry Francona’s Indians do their spring training stuff in Goodyear, Arizona – only about 45 minutes west of the Cubs’ facility. So I thought the best course of action would be to steal off for a few hours (it wouldn’t take long – I’d bring a fully printed, professionally bound copy of the penis study and wave it mockingly in Tito’s face). And to be stealth about it, I’d take a rental car and leave my car safely parked at the Cubs’ stadium, hence saving the trouble of having to take a day off yet also maintaining the appearance I was putting in my due time at the office so to speak. For all the Cubs knew, I was teaching my patented upper-hand bat grip slide to a youngster working on his swing timing.

So anyway I got lucky on Wednesday – the Indians were playing the Reds. As a Cincy kid from way back in the day, I figured this was probably a sign that this was my time to strike.

The ride was a breeze – rented a Jeep so that in case things didn’t go well with Terry I could do a little off-roading in the desert somewhere and blow off some of the inevitable steam.

Anyway, I encountered a couple of things of note in the parking lot once I got to Goodyear. The first was some inconsiderate goonball who had taken up two spaces in the garage with a compact car. I wasn’t about to let that go so I ripped a page from the large binder I had with the penis study in it. I figured the thing was so long-winded I could spare a page. I wrote out a long, detailed note to the guy about what a jerk he was to take up a space – what if somebody missed the ballgame looking for a spot because this guy decided he needed two? Et cetera et cetera.

I thought with that minor hurdle out of the way, I’d be able to walk into the Indians locker room and find Tito, show him the evidence about my normal-size member, and drive on back to the Cubs grinning ear to ear for getting the last laugh a decade later.

Unfortunately, I was accosted by several rabid fans in the parking lot. ‘You’re Kevin freaking Youkilis! Hey Kevin, sign me something!’ All these people were just swarming me. I could barely breathe.

The little kids all had hats and gloves and baseballs they wanted signed – lots of Reds fans from Ohio who remember me from my Cincy days. Really flattering and they were all begging me to come out of retirement and whatnot. Told ’em I’d think about it. Can’t say no to kids, you know?

The problem was I couldn’t leave some of the cute ladies who were also fighting for my attention, asking for my autograph. Only none of these girls had anything for me to sign – they didn’t have balls or pennants or my 2004 Red Sox rookie card or any of the typical stuff I expect my true fans to carry on their person. They were real pushy and none of them had a Sharpie either so I couldn’t just sign their breasts or buttocks and be on my way. (Some women like it when I just sign Yoooouk right across the cleavage.)

These chicks were so ill-prepared, but I’ve been turning over a new leaf and mellowing out big time now that I’m retired and married to Tom Brady’s sister. I’m a simple man and don’t want any trouble. So being the people person I am, I ripped some pages from my penis study binder that I had printed for Terry and signed Kevin Youkilis a dozen times and sent them off on their way.

Well, I’m sure you can tell where this is all going, tragically, by now. By the time I made my way to the clubhouse and asked for Terry, I realized basically all of the pages that proved my point about society’s misconceptions about the male hog were gone. The entire meat of the report – missing. Scattered about on car windshields and folded into purses of fickle female fans.

Ugh.

When Tito finally walked out of the clubhouse, he saw me holding the binder and began pointing and laughing hysterically. It was awful. I was in the height of my shame.

I dropped the binder and went after him the same way I did Rick Porcello a few years back. I didn’t care. I was steamed. I was going full bore right at him and was gonna tackle him when out of nowhere my former teammate Mike Aviles cut me off and chipped me off my route. Apparently, he didn’t care much for me during the time we were both in Boston in 2011 and we exchanged some mutual feelings of dislike. I’m glad the other guys there pulled me out of there and restrained me before I completely punked him.

After that, an executive from the Cleveland organization asked me not so politely to leave. What a long lonely walk back to the Jeep. The entire drive back to Mesa, all I could see was that image of Terry Francona pointing and laughing at me. Just a horrible feeling. So bad I forgot to even stop in the desert – I was too depressed for off-roading. Wasn’t up for sighting cacti – I’d dealt with enough pricks for one day. (Specifically, I’d bumped into a cactus grabbing a soda at a gas station and it left some pock-like marks.

So yeah, that’s about it. It’s unfortunate I had to pull a Schilling and take to the Internet. But awareness is important and I’m glad I didn’t back down to his bullying. I guess this beef with Terry Francona talking about my weenie is just going to continue onward into the abyss. So it goes.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to my new role as a special assistant with the Cubs. It’s gonna be like old times – Chicago even signed Manny Ramirez to some sort of a mentor role. I think they probably see the two of us as a good cop (me), bad cop (Manny) kind of dynamic.

Earlier today, former Red Sox corner infielder and friend of the site, Kevin Youkilis, penned a nice note to his fans and readers at Fenway Pastoral.

(Youker Files diary archives can be found here.)

They did it, you guys. I’m really happy for all my old teammates up in Boston for winning the 2013 World Series last week. I’m sure there are some people out there who think I cheer against the Red Sox now since I got traded to Chicago in 2012 and then played for the Yankees this year. After all, I was one of basically a handful of that really awesome core of dudes who brought glory back to the city back in 2004 and then again in 2007. We were the original grinders. Then it all came to an end pretty quick and bitterly.

But, no. Now that those stupid buttheads in the Yankees’ front office have officially declined to extend me a qualifying offer, I think I can safely come out and say that I still bleed red blood. Type B. Boston B, that is. Brian Cashman can eat my doodoo.

I’ll let you guys in on a little secret, too: As a Yankee, I might not have been able to outwardly show my solidarity by growing a beard along with some of my old buddies in Beantown like Papi and Dustin. I mean, the Yanks have some pretty tough facial hair standards. But I want you guys to know that I still grew some pretty awesome Napoli-like tufts down somewhere that the Yankees couldn’t, you know, regulate. I’m talking about nether regions right now. OK?

Yeah, what I’m probably not saying clearly is that I grew my pubic hair really long.

Anyway, I’m happy there wasn’t another round in the playoffs. My wife Tom Brady’s sister Julie was getting pretty annoyed. I was a big, hot, hairy mess watching these games. And emotionally speaking, I was a wreck too. I was throwing all kinds of stuff around our living room, just getting really intense and into the moment.

Here are my most vivid memories from the 2013 postseason run:

Smashing a serving plate into like a million pieces after Joe West screwed the Red Sox during ALCS Game 1. Anibel Sanchez was getting everything called in the first game of the ALCS, huh? I mean, I don’t care about pitch charts and FX stuff. West had it in for the Red Sox. He owes them a bunch of make-up calls next year. You just know that if I were playing in that game, I would have gotten screwed too. Some umps resent that I have such a keen eye. I would have been making my bitter beer face all over the diamond. Some of these guys just have no regard for the rules of the game. If I don’t swing at a certain pitch, it’s because it’s out of the strike zone. I don’t even need you there trying to tell me differently, dude.

Losing my voice from screaming at the TV for Shane Victorino to charge the mound after guys kept hitting him. Shane Victorino got hit by, what, like 10 pitches over the course of three rounds? At some point, someone should have told Shane you gotta run at the pitcher to reinforce your place in the food chain. Hitters don’t get any respect from umps these days. Pitchers are just teeing off on guys and the batters are always being discouraged by the commish’s office from running at these dangerous, irresponsible headhunters with bats and fists raised. I always assumed The Flyin’ Hawaiian nickname was an homage to the WWE or at least had something to do with Victorino being a good wrestler. So I was surprised he never just took off for a good old-fashioned brawl after one of those fastballs to the ribs. I gotta say, if I were on base when Victorino got nailed, I would have made a beeline for the pitcher and delivered a Brian Urlacher bone-cruncher to make sure his team knew I wasn’t messing around. Every little thing BAM! Is gonna be alright POW!

Flipping my coffee table over in sheer joy when Ortiz hit that grand slam. Oh my god, what a comeback and what a classic moment from Papi. I probably would have worked the count full to mess with the pitcher a little more, but that bullet that David hit into the Sox pen was just exhilarating to watch on TV. Maybe TOO exhilarating: My wife Tom Brady’s sister Julie had just poured herself a glass of burgundy from a pretty expensive bottle. The whole thing wound up on our white sheepskin rug when I got carried away in my sheer glee and launched the living room table up in the air. It did like a full 360-degree flip and dented the flooring. I left D.O. a message Saturday when he was at the parade asking if he’d maybe help pay for the damage. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a check within the next few days. He knows my address.

Receiving a letter from the lawyers representing Fox Sports after having several choice-worded phone calls with producers. Fox’s refusal to show the pitch tracker box like TBS did during the ALCS finally had my blood boiling by the time the World Series began. Craig Breslow’s throwing error in Game 2 had me in a pretty weird place, and in the aftermath of that, I just lost my usual cool, calm, collected self in a sea of expletives that involved a few phone calls that I guess people took literally. I mean, idle threats delivered over a phone? Who takes those seriously.

Screaming like a little schoolgirl when David Ross was called out at the plate during Game 5. OK, fine. So the play didn’t cost the Red Sox the game in the end, but Ross clearly slid under, around and then over Yadier Molina’s mitt. Seemed like a black-and-white call to me. Should have been reviewed. Ross seems like a nice enough guy, but I think what might have been better is if he got up after the play and got up in the ump’s face and asked very politely for him to reconsider. I mean, just because the ball beats the runner by a couple of steps, the ump should assume the catcher will still bungle it. Catchers are oafish klutzes and us baserunner types are graceful enough to know how to get around their mitts using smoke and mirrors and voodoo and stuff.

Anyway, I’m just gonna say congratulations again to all the fans of Boston. Seems like you guys had a pretty awesome season. Now that I’m a free agent, you never know maybe I’ll wind up back in Boston. Probably a long shot, but you never know. I’m going to shop around and see what’s what.

Thanks to Boston’s success this year, I think a lot of front offices are realizing now you need some hard asses who work counts at the plate and who aren’t afraid of growing fistfuls and fistfuls of facial hair. I’ve already started growing my beard out and you guys know better than anyone from back in the day when I had my goatee, I know how to do it right. I also know how to win so I’m pretty sure there’s going to be a bit more interest in my services this year compared to last. Especially when I have an full-fledged afro growing out of my chin by December.

I don’t know, I’m just super-pumped about this offseason. This is going to be the winter of the hairy 30-something free agent who has a chock full of the intangibles. Damnit, I can’t wait.

Written exclusively for Fenway Pastoral by former Boston Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis.

Well guys, I guess this is it.

(Photo from USA Today)

I was kind of expecting I’d be here for another decade or so pounding doubles all over Fenway and taking over at DH for Ortiz. But apparently word got down to the dugout during Sunday’s game that I’d been traded to the Chicago White Sox.

It was weird being in the lineup knowing that you might not technically be a member of the team by the time the game you’re in is over. Now I know what it felt like to be Manny Ramirez every day during the month of July from 2004 until 2008.

It was classy of Bobby Valentine to take me out after I stung that triple to right in the seventh. But I gotta be honest, I was planning a straight steal of home on the next pitch and if I was safe, I was going to throw my helmet really high in the air and run around Fenway smacking five with everyone like Carl Yazstremski as everyone was losing their mind in Youk-phoria. But I guess this was alright as a backup plan. We had a pretty big lead at that point so stealing home might not have gone over well in the Braves dugout.

Nine years as a member of the Boston Red Sox organization. I can’t say it was perfect, but the important thing is that I’ve made a lot of great memories here. (I’m ignoring the time Terry Francona implied to the media that I have a small penis…).

It’s always bittersweet when you walk away from something great. I remember when we wrapped up filming of Milk Money in 1994, I was pretty broken up about not knowing when I’d see Melanie Griffith again. I guess in some ways that’s how I feel about guys like Beckett and Ortiz and Salty and Petey — they’re like adult versions of what Melanie Griffith meant to me in my youth. I hope that makes sense and doesn’t sound weird or creepy or anything.

(I never really liked Ed Harris. So I guess Bobby Valentine can be Ed Harris minus the obvious acting talent.)

Sorry for all the rambling, but I’m still at a loss for words about leaving a town where I’ve seen my life flash before my eyes so many times. All the fans out there lived through it all with me. Every missile fired at my neck by some forgotten, head-hunting middle reliever. Every broken bat tomahawking down the third-base line at my skull. Every ill-advised headfirst slide into first base. Every bench-clearing dust-up where I screamed myself hoarse at some overzealous hardass on the other team who thought he was being a good teammate but was really just in over his head.

I’m going to call my brother-in-law Tom Brady later today to make sure he’s doing OK. Local athletes in the city kind of have an unspoken kinship, especially the bigger stars like me and Tom Brady. So I want to make sure TB12 knows we’ll still have that connection even if I’m in Chicago since he’s my brother-in-law and all that.

To all my fans, I know a lot of guys pay local papers like Boston Globe for those full-page ads expressing their thanks for all the support, but I don’t know if I really need to do that. It seems kind of self-serving. If, or when, I come back here during the playoffs and hit a couple towering walk-off dongs over the Green Monster, I’m probably going to be pretty fired up about it, so the whole thing would kind of look phony at that point, right?

So yeah, I’m off to the Midwest, near where it all began for me back in the day. Being a Cincy native, I always thought Chicagoans were a bunch of flashy holier-than-thou snobs, but I’m sure at heart they mean well. I just hope they don’t expect me to change who I am. I’m still going to let out loud strings of expletives every time I foul a ball off my big toe.

I’ve had a lot of kids tell me they learned most of George Carlin’s seven major curse words from me telling off bad umpires. I can’t help but well up a little bit knowing I’ve touched so many lives during my time here.

Somebody once said something pretty deep to me. I hope I get this right – it was, “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because you never tore every muscle in your shoulder irreparably while repeatedly hammering your batting helmet on the dugout water cooler after being called out on strikes.”

I don’t think I can say it any better or more simply than that. Adieu, Boston.

Written exclusively for Fenway Pastoral by Boston Red Sox third baseman Kevin Youkilis.

While battling a bad back on the disabled list, Kevin Youkilis experienced an unconventional breakthrough that may save his career. (Photo from NESN.com).

As many of you probably already know, my spine has been a bit…embattled lately. The Red Sox put me on the disabled list last week and I’ve been enjoying watching Will Middlebrooks take his first round of major league at-bats. I bruised the poor kid up pretty good after he hit that grand slam on Sunday for his first major league home run. Just a ton of congratulatory punches and noogies and stuff.

But I gotta be honest. Not being out on the field battling with the guys is tough. I was just starting to feel like my swing was coming around and I could definitely feel one of those two-homer, nine-ribbie games coming any day when all of a sudden my lower back started barking at me.

My new wife, Tom Brady’s sister Julie, could tell I was in a bit of a funk. So she suggested I try to loosen my back up by going to this early-morning yoga class with her. I got pretty mad at her for assuming I was one of those effeminate, metrosexual meditation-type dudes and we had our first shouting match since getting hitched last month. Once it was over though, I realized the best way to smooth things over was to just agree to take the stupid class with her and smile my way through the stupid thing – I figured I’d take some of the pent-up aggression out on my pecs and do some incline bench presses in the weight room once it was over.

I’ve always despised the people who walk down the street with those rolled up yoga mats. It’s like, ‘C’mon, you really want everybody to know you’re going to meditate and all that, huh?’. Plus, they’re way too little to properly pad my body from the hard floor. I’m a big guy. So I borrowed one of those tri-folding floor mats from the Red Sox clubhouse. It’s about 20 square feet or so and I had to pull the back seat of my Range Rover down, but it wound up fitting just fine.

We got to the gym around 6 a.m. and I figured there wouldn’t be too many people in a class that early. But the room was chock-full and I was pretty happy I had brought my tri-fold mat. It gave me a little extra space and, after backing off some women who tried to overlay their roll-up mats on top of mine with a couple dirty looks, I was in the clear with enough room to maneuver without getting elbowed somewhere unsavory.

So anyway the class was a cinch at first. We were doing all these lame stretching and contortion techniques with our bodies. The instructor had a bunch of fancy names for them and I kind of freelanced a little bit since some of them were kind of ridiculous. Per team doctor’s orders, I’m not supposed to bend my knees past certain angles, twist myself into funny positions or sit on the ground like a dainty Lotus flower (OK, fine, that last rule is my own…). Also, some of the things they expected us to do were just plain crazy. I could tell just by the name of the Fetus and One-Legged King Pigeon positions that they weren’t anything I wanted to be a part of.

Overall, though, I thought things were moving along pretty well. I played along for some of the nuttier positions even though I felt a bit vulnerable–like some sort of wild female animal presenting herself to a male suitor in the jungle. (I mean, c’mon, laying on my stomach and grabbing my ankles from behind is a “bow posture”?)

I was seriously crushing the Crescent Moon position (picture me gloving a bad hop at third that almost bounces like three feet over my head, all the while I’m on one knee and bent slightly backward).

But, of course, bad luck just had to strike at that very moment.

I’d be lying if I told you I had any control over what happened next. The instructor kept telling us to listen to ourselves breathing. In. Out. In. Out. I could feel oxygen rushing through my veins and it felt like I could practically see carbon dioxide pouring out of me as I exhaled. It was a cleansing, Zen experience and all that stuff. It was like I had stepped out of my third-baseman’s physique and was sitting in a box seat, observing the shell of my inner soul reach a scraggly peak of utter consciousness by hitting a 500-foot home run off Roy Halladay.

I felt liberated and at complete ease with my baseball career. I couldn’t have imagined anything more soul-enhancing except maybe hitting a grand slam in the World Series to walkoff with the MVP trophy and pig-piling on home plate with all my teammates like a hoard of little kids and then dousing each other in gallons of champagne.

So yeah. It was feeling like a real poignant moment in my life.

And then…..well, I farted.

Try to be mature about it, you guys. I wish the rest of my yoga class could have been at least. Instead, all the women around me, including my lovely new wife, turned around and glared at me like I was some sort of inhuman piece of garbage. I know it didn’t exactly seep out gracefully, but there was no reason for people to get all emotional about the whole thing. I’ve never felt so low or embarrassed, especially once they started pointing and laughing.

It was like striking out with the bases loaded in the ninth inning of the World Series on one of those just big, violent cuts that aims for the fences but ends up buried in the catcher’s mitt. I mean, I went from having images of hitting a baseball over everything on Landsdowne Street to swinging and missing at strike three and hearing one big Bronx cheer.

I guess that’s what farting in the middle of yoga class feels like. In just five short years, I’ve gone from being voted third in the 2008 AL MVP voting to getting snickered at by a bunch of trailmix-eating yoga chicks. I felt so disgraced that I pretended I was out of water and walked out of the room. I hid out in the far back corner of the weight room on one of the leg-press machines for a while but I was too distraught to put up more than a few hundred pounds.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about the whole thing and I know I shouldn’t be ashamed. I reached a level of consciousness and bodily harmony that those girls just don’t understand. My mind feels so clear and my body has a brand new spring in it.

Hopefully, this little story clears up any lingering doubts of my ability. I’m not just telling you guys this because it’s a contract year and Middlebrooks is mashing the ball all over the field. When I get back out there, I’m going to murder major league pitching with my swing. I’m just mentally ready to outclass my opponents. And while my defensive first-step may be slower than in my prime, I can anticipate where the batter is going to hit the ball just using my new understanding of the universe. So maybe the whole experience wasn’t a waste time, you know?

Farting that day in yoga class seemed to just release all those negative toxins that weren’t doing my body any good. It may have been why my back was feeling so sore and inflexible in the first place.

So thank you to my lovely wife, Tom Brady’s sister. All you fans out there can forget about any third-base controversy. I’ve seen the light and you’ll see it too: I’ll be back on the field tattooing baseballs real soon.