Meanwhile, what in the world is going on in the Bronx?

Contributing Writer

I’ll never forget my initial reaction to the news that Aaron “Bleeping” Boone tore an ACL while playing in a pickup basketball game late in January 2004.

I laughed like crazy.

No, I wasn’t celebrating the fact that Boone was injured, even if his home run to end the 2003 ALCS was still stinging. I was celebrating the rare misfortune of the Yankees.

I wasn’t laughing less than three weeks later when the Yankees pulled off the trade the Red Sox couldn’t and landed Alex Rodriguez, who was widely regarded as the best player in baseball at the time.

Yes, when the A-Rod trade news hit SportsCenter on Feb. 16, I learned that you can never laugh at George Steinbrenner’s Yankees. Steinbrenner would do anything to win.

The Yankees boss, though, never would have targeted A-Rod had Boone stayed off the basketball court. 

He had to go into the season with a Yankee hero at third base.

Once we saw that A-Rod was going to move to third base to play for the Yankees, everyone assumed the trade would mean the Steinbrenners’ limousine long ballers, as Stephen King called them, would walk to the World Series.

Of course, we started to think the Red Sox would get the last laugh in that transaction when Jason Varitek said, as legend has it, “we don’t throw at .260 hitters” and hit A-Rod in the face. We knew it for sure when a desperate when A-Rod was busted for slapping the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s glove on his way down the baseline in Game 6 of the 2003 ALCS.

I won’t even mention the steroid allegations and suspension because that would just seem like we’re rubbing it in, and we’d never want to do that.

At the time, though, the A-Rod trade to the Yankees really stung. It also stung at the time when the Yankees beat Theo Epstein to José Contreras, another transaction fight in which the Red Sox won by losing.

With that in mind, I don’t want to laugh at the Yankees’ lack of activity this offseason. But it is really hard to hold it in.

The only thing more enjoyable than seeing the Dave Dombrowski sign a bona fide ace and build a potentially dominant bullpen this offseason is to see the Yankees, who were a broken team in 2015, sit on their hands and do nothing.

Absolutely nothing.

George Steinbrenner must be spinning uncontrollably in his grave as Brian Cashman pretends that he’s the general manager of the Pirates.

If Steinbrenner was still alive, you can bet the Yankees would not only have signed David Price, they would have signed Zack Greinke, Johnny Cueto, Jason Heyward and Chris Davis, too.

Whatever happened to the days when the Yankees bought every top-tiered free agent, like they did prior to their 2009 World Series title?

Now, the Yankees appear to be more worried about saving money than they are about winning. They haven’t even kicked the tires on a big-named free agent.

Also, some are speculating that the Yankees might trade dominant closer Andrew Miller or gritty, speedy outfielder Brett Gardner for a starting pitcher, even though guys like Price, Greinke and Cueto were sitting around waiting for the Yankees to call.

Wow. These aren’t your father’s Bronx Bombers.

This time, it might be safe to go ahead a laugh at them.