Murray Chass says we should have traded the moon for Santana

Hall of Famer Murray Chass -- the 70something, Antiques Road Show (1960 Pitt grad) NYT notepad scratcher -- says Hank's Yanks will regret not swapping The Melk, The Phil, The Ian and the entire cast of Urinetown for the right to pay war-in-Iraq-style money to Johan Santana.

“If there’s one element of the team that could undermine Girardi’s chances of winning, it’s the pitching, and that is where the decision not to pursue a Santana trade could create regrets.”

Later.

Maybe Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy and Joba Chamberlain will become the reincarnation of Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds and Eddie Lopat. But maybe they will be more reminiscent of Andy Hawkins, Dave LaPoint and Tim Leary, vintage 1990...

The point is, Hughes, Kennedy and Chamberlain don’t come with guarantees. Santana does.

Frankly, the only guarantee is that if Santana outdoes the Wii Three, every writer in captivity will bellow "Told ya!" so profusely that the spew of hardened egg-salad sandwich bits lodged in their molars will set off Homeland Security alarms along the Holland Tunnel.

We always liked Chass, in an Uncle Bub/Gandolf/Floyd the Barber sort of way. His left nut knows more about baseball than Joel Sherman's left lobe. But in this case, the ChassMaster is flat-out, Condi-Rummy, check-it-on-the-Scopes-site wrong. Here's why:

You don’t break a coke addiction by blowing your kids' milk money on an 8-ball, thinking that once it's up your nostrils, you'll blow your nose and quit. Nope. What happens is, your kids hate you, your friends leave you, and you keep snorting until your brain turns into gray jelly.

We’ve been addicted to big-fix deals that induce us to trade seed corn for one snort of yesterday's Cy Young. We gotta quit. We can't say, "ONE MORE TIME."

Murry the Chass may know baseball. Obviously, he hasn’t used enough hard drugs to know life. (Jury not in yet on Joel Sherman.)