The bad cloud hovering over the 2012 Yankees won’t blow away

Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s just that loss to Toronto last night. For my money, it was the worst loss of the year. Worst loss since the 2011 playoffs. Worst loss I can remember. A crushing, brutal, unbelievably awful and sincerely smelly loss. A defeat. For nine innings, it was a sure win. Then, the worst loss since the Crusades. They say cowards die a thousand deaths. Well, then I’m a coward. This loss was a thousand deaths.

    But this whole frickin season has been haunted. It began with Michael Pineda’s injury, just when I was starting to forgive Cashman for the trade. Suddenly, the season was doomed, and the Jesus Montero trade was a horror show. I had spent five years tracking Montero’s progress. When nobody was hitting, when life turned ugly, imagining Montero smacking 40 HRs kept me from eating my computer mouse Jesus was going to save us. When we betrayed him, the cloud appeared. Last time somebody betrayed Jesus, it lasted 2,000 years.

    Then came all those stranded baserunners. The old line in baseball goes, “Lead-off walks score.” Not with the Yankees. Nope. In fact, we could load the bases and come up empty. We could load the bases with nobody out and come up empty. No. We could load the bases with nobody out and our three-four-and-five batters stepping to the plate. . .  and come up empty. We kept expecting it to end. It hasn’t ended. We have veteran hitters, wily hitters, power hitters, great hitters — and they leave the runners on second and third. Folks, this is not random occurrence. This is the cosmos telling us something.

    Oh, but the homeruns! We have plenty of them! We have an abundance - especially when they’re not needed. We hit homeruns in clusters, on days when everybody contributes. I’d like to see the statistic for number of games in which the Yankees have hit at least three homeruns. Because those are the games when you could have traded one for a base hit. (Did I mention that we hit three last night? All with the bases empty.)

    Now this. . .  Teixeira out for two weeks. That’s half our remaining games. We have watched a 10 game lead shrink to three, and unless we start winning, we will soon be fighting for the wild card. Boston punted. From now on, Redsock fans can have fun and dream about next year. They play us at the end of the season. My god, can you imagine how horrible this could get?