Brackman punk'd

Last year's first round draft pick Andrew Brackman isn't getting any breaks because he's recovering from Tommy John surgery. Some Yankee veterans are hitting him hard when it comes to pranks.

He walked to his locker yesterday morning to find that all of his sliders, his baseball underwear, had been slit down the middle.

Brackman's Yankees cap suffered a similar fate. Brackman tossed it in the garbage and then saw the worst of the damage. Six pairs of workout shoes, including brand new spikes, had their shoelaces cut by a Pinstriped Jack the Ripper. The laces were sliced tongue to toe right down the middle, so Brackman, who signed a $4.5 million deal, spent a good part of the day re-lacing his shoes.

"Man, they got me good," he said.

Brackman, who is 6-foot-10 and a former North Carolina State basketball star, has been getting hit for a while. Seems his vehicle sometimes disappears in the players' parking lot. The prank war escalated because Brackman fired back on a veteran player.

"If you get hit by a veteran and fire back," one Yankee insider noted, "they come at you 10 times harder."

It could be worse - at least he isn't Kyle Kendrick.

Apparently Brian Bruney and LaTroy Hawkins are the big pranksters on the team. Bruney did a great job pranking the entire team last season by walking a batter every time he came into the game.