I have seen the future, and it stinks

Now that was one for the ages, huh?

Thanks to their last minute, fairly hopeless rally, the Yanks managed 10 hits—and still 12 strikeouts.  They also managed two errors, another passed ball (you-know-who), and generally played the infield as if they were in some bizarre Alexandre Dumas novel:  The Men in the Iron Gloves. 

Stanton managed to miss breaking the team's single-season strikeout record, and a late single did get his average back up to .260.  But he also grounded into a career-high 17th DP, left five guys on base, and overall has an OPS nearly 200 points below what he managed last year.

At 28, as Yogi might say, he is declining even before he is in his declining years.

In general, the game was a masterpiece of sloppy disinterest, played before an alleged 11,325 fans who for all the noise they made could have been playing pick-up jai alai games around the concession stands.

Even better, though, was the preview we got of what baseball is likely to become under the Tampa Bay Plan of minimizing ballplayers.

I should have seen this coming, of course, because which individuals are most likely to take over any sport when they are given half a chance?

Why, it's the coaches—or managers—of course, and we got a world-class display of their egotism tonight.

The most egregious offender was Kevin Cash of the Rays, who always seem to have some irritating individual at the helm, determined to show us what a genius he is.  (Unsurprisingly, the very first of these was our own Larry Rothschild.)

Tonight, in a meaningless game for his team, The Great Cash managed to trot out no fewer than eight pitchers, three of whom worked less than an inning.  Nonetheless, he almost dropped this one, first when his "opener" blew up in his face and then in the 9th, when he suddenly stopped his peripatetic trips to the mound and decided to leave his "closer" out there to give up five hits, a walk, and four runs.

Our Ma Boone was little better, announcing Greg Bird—then pulling him back (something that must have done wonders for Bird's already vanishing confidence), throwing in his own top relievers as if he were in a do-or-die playoff game, then winding up with Tyler Wade pinch-hitting with the potential tying and winning runs on base in the 9th.

The point is, we can expect many more of these senseless feats of managerial derring-do once the starting pitcher has been fully eliminated, along with all situational hitting in the new, Powerball game of the future.

These guys will posture and preen, endlessly running pitchers in and out of games until they are reduced to a crawl.

Triumphant, they will wave sheets of statistics at us to prove how brilliant they are.  Defeated, they will tell us that hey, how were they to know that Pitcher-Bot No. 4 would not have good control of his curve tonight?

Yes, there's a great day a-comin' can't ya see, can't ya see?  Uh, can't ya stay awake?