Raise your hand if you knew this was coming....

On the air during Saturday's 6-0 Yankee loss in Baltimore, YES announcer Michael Kay compared Joe Girardi's ashen-faced, post loss countenance to that of former Yankee manager Billy Martin, who was known as a gritty competitor, a sometime elevator/barroom, clubhouse brawler, and a basbeall near-genius.

Kay's comparison was limited to the gut-wrenching way the two managers take losses (or took, if you like, since Martin has been dead for nearly twenty years), but for those who remember well the fiery Martin and the turbulence that accompanied his brilliance, the reminder of the Martin years was a fun one.

And now, Yankee fans have a whole new reminder of what those years were like. Enter, Hank Steinbrenner. After Hank's verbal volley in the New York Times story posted on the paper's website on Sunday evening, Yankee fans will be waiting to see and hear Girardi's response. We all recal the jousting that took place between Billy Martin and Hank's dad, the original Boss, George Steinbrenner.

The hire-fire-rehire-and-repeat tango they danced together was legendary, and for good reason: no other owner-manager tandem in American sports history had the color, contrast, and headline-grabbing ability of their dynamic duo. With the passing of Martin in 1989, and with the fading of George Steinbrenner into the background of Yankee affairs, fans thought the fun and frolic of the 1970s and '80s was gone forever.

Could we have been wrong? We'll see.

George Steinbrenner, until last season, rarely meddled with Joe Torre in print. Their correspondence remained largely private, as much out of Torre's refusal to dance in the media as out of George's losing the energy to hook-and-jab with reporters. But Girardi doesn't have the lengthy baseball pedigree that Torre had when he took the Yankee job. And Hank is not the mellowed -- even ill, perhaps -- senior citizen that his father has aged into. This new manager-owner dynamic in the Bronx has a lot of questionmarks, mostly because it's just twenty games into its first season together. But now, with Joba Chamberlain's uncertain role with the team, and with the failure of the other young pitchers to carry their weight so far, the first crisis of the Hank-and-Joe Show has been brought to light.

It's up to Girardi now to decide how to respond. The timing is unfortunate for Joe G.: An off-day in Chicago will give the media no game to cover, and after the obligatory "How's A-Rod?" questions, the media frenzy will start in full-force. Girardi has to be shaking his head; just when the Yankees get a much-needed day of rest, here comes Hank, banging on the door, demanding answers.

Welcome to the Bronx, Joe, retro-style. It's the '70s and the '80s, all over again.