So what if Pineda pitched well? If we don't score any runs, we won't win any games.
So what if Solarte is still batting .500? If we don't score any runs we won't beat anyone.
I have some complaints:
1. Soriano needs a rest. Perhaps from baseball. Not only has he not gotten a hit, he is having lousy at bats. It was clear, early, that the only way we were going to score is if we out-lasted RA Dickey and got into their bullpen. So what does Soriano do? Swings at the first pitch for an out.
2. Beltran is doing to us what he did to the Mets. He is awful. And dependably so. He kills rallies hitting into double plays. He fails to move runners over by striking out. He is a threat, only to our success.
3. David Phellps. Hmmmm. His ERA is now in double figures, I think.
4. And why take out Nuno after one batter? He can get anyone out. If we make him a lefty-only specialist, we are wasting a resource.
5. And did anyone notice that McCann looked horrible at the plate today ? I mean in his DH role, of course.
6. The captain isn't exactly lighting things up, either. Did the Blue Jays have their ceremony and gift binge for him yet?
7. I knew Tex would be headed for the DL. (Hammies on old guys don't heal quickly, and he was barely moving when he injured that tendon or muscle, whatever it is.) But why in the name of Juniper Berries and olives do they bring up Austin Romine to fill his roster spot?
I am pissed. This may not be a 500 team.
There are no silver linings.
Posts
5 comments:
Alphonso: you've turned me toward the glass-half-empty side of things in a hurry because Saturday's game made me notice some stuff I couldn't abide.
(First game all year I've seen on TV so I admit I've missed much already...I caught John calling himself weird after writing "Sorvino" in his scorecard on radio; not like I've been trying to skip out on the work. Just have been forced to monitor the goings-on on radio...which I prefer much, given the option of Yes/No re: EVER hearing or seeing Flash's involvement with triathlons. Someone needs to invent a word for miniscule shards of a shit, because that's precisely what I give about Flash's off-Yes doings.)
The first thing I noticed was that every time the slo-mo showed Dickey's pitches, the things were anything but floating. Maybe I missed some good ones somehow but the ones I saw had WAY more spin than I've ever heard was acceptable. I've always heard that knuckleballs which didn't knuckle got hit a mile by professional hitters; maybe I need to find a dictionary which allows "knuckle" as a verb (maybe they all do; in the throes of my new negativity I didn't check). Dickey threw a bunch of pitches which resembled what college teammates of mine referred to as "pus" long ago. And yet...
Secondly: near the end Soriano came and the count went 0-1. My dad, whom I was watching the game with and who has an amazing way of making sense of situations sometimes, announced, "A strikeout has begun." He was right.
Alphonso is also right; there's nothing to be gained by waking up beaming over the box scores and next-game pitching matchups this season. Nothing with which to gather and support hope. Hope strains your hammy and not in a nice way.
See you on the dark side.
Only the KC Royals and the Yanks have failed to hit a homerun.
Sori is one of only two MLB players not recording a hit.
If you grew up watching Mantle's end of days, Horace Clarke, the Folly Floater, and the wasted pitching talents of Mel Stottlemyre, this isn't all that bad. There is a silver lining, which is watching a flawed team play for it's respectability. It's a different kind of fandom, one not predicated on winning the enchilada but on just enjoying those individual performances of greatness, faded glory of aging stars, and promising younger layers as they get their big league bearings. Winning is great, sure, but it's not baseball, in a sense. This is a sport where excellent batters make an out 7 out of ten times, where a 162 game schedule grinds on and on, taking its toll on the great majority of teams and breaking players through bad luck and one or two physically damaging moments.
Baseball is more about failure than success, and always has been. A limping, failing team is the norm. We're fed the Kool Aid of Yankee tradition and making the playoffs every year, but it's unsustainable. There will be multiple years of mediocrity sandwiched in between, and those are the years where we sharpen our abilities to assess the front office bumblings as well as the relative value of players in relation to the year's best.
As a Zen Yogi might say, winning has its joys but so does losing and massive imperfection. If you have only learned to be a fan during times of plenty, you are only half a fan. Which in the case of Sally Rand would be a good thing, but she didn't play baseball. Tell them Groucho sent you. Look for the flakes of gold in the dirt. Or just hope we have a couple of flakes to keep the deadly seriousness of being the Yankees from destroying us.
Look for the flakes of gold in the dirt.
I did look, but all I saw were the miniscule shards of a shit Mike so eloquently described. Oh, also some pus.
John M is excellent. Why in the world did that other anonymous bust his chops?
btw Alphonso still sucks and his routine is boring.
Post a Comment