Fifteen games left, and all the Yankees need is a little luck

"I'd rather be lucky than good." 

- Yogi Berra - 

Ten and five. That could do it - depending on where we place our battleships. Ten and five. It's not outlandish. We've done it before. Simply win twice as many as we lose, sandwich a couple four game winning streaks... get a little lucky.

Hey juju gods, Fates, demons, faeries, Yaheh, Satan, juggalos... whatever you call yourselves up there at the eternal Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes ... Can we get a little lucky?

Yesterday, we were a little lucky. The Doctor Jekyl Pineda showed up, instead of the Mr. Hyde Pineda. Also, the Mets got a glimpse of why their "MVP candidate," Humanis Centepedes, has bounced from team to team like a van load of Russian strippers. He is now 0 for his last 17, and - we've seen this show on Broadway before: It's called Welcome to the Five and Dime, Alfonso Soriano. A guy comes to NYC, gets hot, so the team signs him to a long-term deal (Hello, Chase Headlice?) and then the team learns why he was traded, to begin with. But unlike Girardi, who thinks tweaking his batting order would traumatize someone's tender ego - the Mets are planning to drop Cespedes from the two-spot. Still... if we can just stretch his hitless streak by four - drop a little Vernon Wells mid-August swoon fairy dust on him -  and maybe receive a gift roller here or there... if we can beat the Mets today, put down this NYC insurrection...

Just get lucky.

Of course, if we lose today, it's like three losses back in June. If we lose, who cares if Toronto stumbles in Boston? We'll be kicking ourselves. If we lose, it's like one of those old crappy West Coast road trips of the mid-2000s, when nothing went right and we came home with a Raul Mondesi or Wally Whitehurst to show for our sins.

We don't need a hitting barrage, a 21-run salute. Today, just get lucky.

Yesterday, we got lucky in Boston. The Redsocks - instead laying down against a Yankee opponent, as they did last year - beat Toronto, by the hair of their chinny-chin-chins. We play the Redsocks four more times. The dwarf, Pedtroia is back. They'll try like hell to beat us. We'll be lucky to take three out of four. But all we need is some luck.

I'm now appealing to the juju god who is answer phones in the Emergency Juju God Hot-Line: Can we just have a little luck? Not a thunderbolt. We don't need what you gave the Dallas Cowboys last Sunday night.  Just a little luck?

And of course - you don't need me to tell you - we might a voodoo doll full of stickpins in Toronto this week. The odds of us sweeping the Blue Jays at home are what the odds of Trump winning the GOP were three months ago - ridiculous, but hey, you still have to play the games. If we take 2 out of 3, we're still 2 down with 12 left.

We cannot win the Division without being lucky.

But there is one last factor, and maybe it's luck, and maybe it's something else. But when teams get an infusion of talent from the trade deadline - as the Mets and Blue Jays did - and when the players change uniforms, there is a tendency to get red hot - or super lucky - to go on big, almost celebratory winning streaks. But then things settle back to normal. Cespedes goes into a slump. Tulo gets hurt. It's the Soriano show. What goes up must come down.

We cannot win the AL East without being lucky.

Hello? Are you up there? Do you hear me? Don't send lawyers, guns and money. Just a wind-blown popup, here or there.