Now I know that John has a heart, because it's broken

It was cruel yesterday, waterboard-level cruel, listening to John call the ninth. It was like listening to Hal, the computer, lose his mind; you half-expected him to sing a showtne. The Master was so sure that the Yankees would mount a comeback that it seemed as though he forgot the Prime Knowlege about predicting baseball games. But he could feel it. Everyone could.

So goes this wretched season: Everybody is so sure the Yankees will mount a comeback. Fourth place i? No problem. We were here last year. Look what happened: We made the first round of the playoffs!

Yesterday, the Yankees were overmatched by that Cuban kid, Chapman, who throws 100 miles per hour. I remember when we were expected to sign him. In fact, everybody in baseball said he was ticketed to the Yankees, because that's what we did - sign the best talent whenever we could. That way, we balanced out the late draft picks we receive every year.

But we didn't sign Chapman. As we didn't sign Yu Darvish or Humanis Centepedes, or any of the stud international agents who were gathering all the ink. (I do understand that we have signed our share of prospects; we're just not going after the celebrated ones.)

George made up for his mistakes by spending hard on the players who made headlines. He always captured the back page. His sons don't like bidding wars, and maybe that's smart business.

And who knows, maybe we'll get to the first round of the playoffs, too.