And then the bullpen caved in...

There is a certain glow to a dead team. It's like a creaky cellar door in the haunted house. It beckons you to investigate. Everybody in the theater is yelling, "NO! DON'T GO DOWN THERE!" but you do, anyway. Why not? It's only midnight, you're alone, there's a psychopath loose, and your flashlight keeps failing... so, of course! You go down to see what's there.

Last night, that's how I felt watching the Yankees. My wife was yelling at me: "Why? Why are you doing this? Do you any self-respect?" Of course, she was right. Still, I needed to go. I needed to see for myself. What if someone was still alive down there?

Well, there's nobody's alive down there. It's a cellar full of carcasses, most of which are signed through 2017. Our best hope is that, come July, somebody goes in with a gas can and Bic lighter. We're not just the worst team in NYC. We're the worst team between Atlanta and Nova Scotia. (I'm betting we'd lose to the Syracuse Chiefs in a seven-game series.) And still, I watched...

And it was so perfect, so clean, so primal. 

We led early on, as we always do.

We let a struggling pitcher off the hook, as we always do.

We let them back in the game, as we always do.

We suddenly stopped hitting, as we always do.

And finally... we found a new way to lose, as we always do.

Joe Girardi - our "Lucifer in the flesh" - says it's only a matter of time before this team hits. And he's right. One of these days, they'll score 21 runs. Everybody will pad their numbers, so they can't be singled out on the Jumbotron. But when it matters, everybody disappears. This is a ghost team, and who cares which door we open? They all lead to the cellar, and it's really dark down there.