Know What You Want and Work For It

This, it seems to me, is the key to life—and, more importantly, baseball.

In the last 15 years or so, it has rarely been the Yankees' approach to anything.

Unlike some here, I didn't necessarily mind the Yankees throwing what was in many ways a spring training lineup out there last night.  Sure, the continuing presence of Neil Walker is absurd, but I'm not against giving Sevvy and CC more rest.

But then, don't do what Coops Cashman is about to do next, which is trade perfectly good young players and prospects for some tomato can.

To paraphrase Lincoln, all thoughts are anxiously directed to this impending trade.  All dread it, all seek to avert it (except a bunch of bored sportswriters).  And the trade will come.

The trade will come because Cashman will fall, once again, for the press box argument that it is necessary to give the Yankees a real shot at the World Series.

But if that is the case—if we really believe that this is our year, maybe our only year, so much so that we have to sacrifice a significant part of the future to seize hold of it—then why in the name of Jehoshaphat are we lining up our rotation and putting out lineups like we are against the Mets?

If this is REALLY a balls-to-the-wall, pedal-to-the-metal, breakneck dash down the steps to the subway platform (only to be told the next train will arrive in 22 minutes), then why are we playing the first games of the last half like it's March in Tampa?

It's this sort of confusion of purpose that will always kill you, in any endeavor, baseball or otherwise.

Frankly, this team to me seems now to lack a great deal in the way of desire, and like most of us here I think it's ludicrous to continue with a hitting approach that demonstrates night after night how inadequate it is.

The Yanks right now are only 5.5 games ahead of Seattle and 7.5 games ahead of Oakland, and I could easily see both young, hungry teams blow past us like we were standing still.  How a team like ours, where the average regular is only 27, the average pitcher less than 29, is NOT young and hungry escapes me, but there it is.

Having a Seattle-Oakland play-in game is just the sort of event that the soulless corporate entity known as MLB deserves.  It's also what this Yankees team and management deserves.

It would not bother me.  I would much rather see September devoted to sorting out what the future holds, and re-emphasizing such traditional baseball activities as drawing up rational lineups, hitting to the opposite field, and showing up everyday.

But instead, here will come Happ or Hapless, another good-looking kid, or three, tossed to the winds, and our on-again, off-again, Neil Walker-led, tiptoe to the Play-In.  O!  Joy!