Reflections on a horrible season

Philosophical question: How can you win 100 games and still consider it a horrible season?

Answer: The 2018 Yankees.

I'm sorry, folks. I can't write today. Nothing there. I can't make sense. I can't hurl my feces with the usual intensity. I can't take this anymore. I should have known this season would die the way it lived... with the tying runner on second, and everybody swinging for a home run. All season, we knew what happens when homer-dependent teams face good pitching; the pitching always wins. When in history has that not been the case? So everything played out, just as it always did, and we were left holding the bag on 100 wins and a Wild Card. 

We remain the New York Yankees, Champions in 2009.

The Redsocks were an actual team, as opposed to our nine independent sluggers, swinging away, regardless of the situation. They were the plane, we were the egg-shaped thing with three wings and no propeller. The season started with Gammonites projecting Brian Cashman for the Hall of Fame, and it went downhill from there.

Listen: We saw that Aaron Judge is the real deal, and that Giancarlo Stanton is not. (I will never forget his horrendous lunges at pitches out of the strike zone last night in the ninth. Kimbrow was clearly struggling to throw strikes, so Stanton did him a favor. If I ever see him in an elevator, I'll go at him like those women did on Jeff Flake. If he's eating in a restaurant, I'll chase him out, like he's Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You've heard of Antifa? I'm starting Antigia. Stanton should never be allowed to appear in public without being physically and vocally confronted.) 

We watched our favorite old-time Yankees - Gardy and CC - play like clowns. Gardy overran that liner into left and botched the play. He's supposed to be a gold glover. Yes, it was a well hit ball, but a champion makes that play. As for CC, what was he even doing out there, as the third inning continued to unfold. Turns out that Robby had his A-game going; in an alternative universe, he might have pitched us out of that jam, rather than let us fall down by three. The game was lost in the third inning, and Aaron Boone looks like a post-season idiot. I'm tired of looking at the guy as he spits sunflower seeds onto the dugout floor. I hope they fire him.

Wait a minute. God, why am I doing this? Why am I going there? We were damn near shut out last night, and our best hitter - Miguel Andujar - never touched a bat. On every close play, we came up a micrometer short. And that's our millennium, folks: Boston owns us. They can celebrate another playoff victory, and we're supposed to celebrate that Food Stamps Hal Steinbrenner just saved 15 percent on car insurance - or luxury taxes. You know what I would celebrate? A detailed Justice Department probe into the tax breaks given the Yankees by the state and city of New York. 

Soon, blogs like this are supposed to pivot, to turn to next year, to speculate on who we'll buy, and to rummage through the detritus of 2018 and find meaning for the future. Fuck that. The glass is not half full. It's cracked and leaking.  We're nine years into the most fruitless Yankee decade in history, and we can't read an account that doesn't hail the front office as geniuses on the cusp of a dynasty. 

Last night, we saw an entire season play out in front of us, then swirl down the drain. We're supposed to get excited about 2019, about the free agents we'll sign? Watch Boston match us, player for player, pitcher for pitcher. They are the Yankees, and we are their whipping mule. Yeah, it was a horrible season. And you know what? I'm glad it's over.