The Location From Which We Shall All View The Next World Series Championship In NYC.

Inspired by the pen of El Duque:

We have Stanton for the next 27 years ( or close ).

By my calculation, in just five more seasons, he will have struck out 1,602  times in his Yankee uniform.  He will have two hits in important at-bats, but no RBIs in any playoff game.

Jacoby Ellsbury's contract will have expired by the time Stanton's does.

People may argue that the players we gave up to get him have been adequately replaced.  Maybe so.  But you are discounting the negative impact of the liability you now have acquired.  And his price tag secures him here, for an endless period of disappointment.

Don't let go of that feeling you have when the tying or winning runs are on base, with two out, and Stanton is coming up to bat.  And you are certain he is going to strike out on three pitches in the dirt.

And you are proven correct.

We have Boone until Cashman or Hal are slashed by a stingray.

Our cherry-cheeked, smiley, polite manager comes at a reasonable price for " I am not cheap" Hal Steinbrenner.

And so we have to live with a " yes" man instead of a baseball man.  The advantage that other teams get with crafty moves, are not available to us.

Boone didn't give our best hitter in 7 decades an at bat in the biggest game, and at the most critical moment of the season.  And don't tell me this decision came from the top.  He is the fucking manager and he manages the players in the dugout.

His list of stupidity goes well beyond the distance covered on the I-10, from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific coast.

The Curse of Neal Walker will linger forever.

All season long, this .219 hitter threatened the career of Miguel Andujar.

  Initially, Andujar was slated for Scranton or for Kansas City, because Cashman was so fortunate to persuade Walker to wear the pinstripes.  But Miguel hit too well and too often for the Yankees to send him down, or trade him.

But the Walker curse carried over to the final, humiliating loss to Boston in Yankee stadium, where our only clutch hitter was kept on the bench.  And Walker played the entire game.

And Boston partied on our home field.  And mocked us.  And mocked Walker.  And Boone.  And Cashman.  And Hal ( " I'm not cheap!"  And they breathed a sigh of relief when Andujar stayed on the bench.  They jumped for joy.

And if Walker is here next season, so shall the curse endure.

The Bird Factor.

The Yankees, from the top down, get an idea in their heads and it never changes.  Regardless of the facts staring them in the face.  They still have Bird penciled in as the starting first baseman, next season.

This illogic also applies to Gary Sanchez, the best catcher who can't catch or hit.  He will start forever, even if he hits under .200 and has 55 passed balls and 35 errors.

And they will re-sign CC so he can reach some new strikeout threshold, while pitching 4 innings per game.

The truth is;  the Yankees are not that good identifying and developing player talent.

We once were considered to have deep, high prospect talent in our minor league system. Greg Bird and Gary Sanchez were, a few seasons back, at the head of the list.  Sheffield was on that list.

That farm system is now considered mediocre. It has always been an achilles heel for Cashman.

He was bailed out, once, by the Cubs and Indians.  No more.  He is on his own.  And we have zilch coming up.

Montgomery, German, and the guy I call Lasagne.

The Yankees have no pitching.  You think these guys will emerge as Aces?  How did our top pitching prospect ( Sheffield ) do with his cup of coffee?  Even in meaningless games, he showed nothing.  If he weren't a lefty, he would be bagging groceries in Mexico Beach, Florida.

German flashed in meaningless games against terrible competition, and went dim.  Lasagne was hammered in September.  Montgomery looks like a 9-9 guy, when at his sharpest.  If the surgery worked.

The braintrust, and the keepers of the Steinbrenner fortune, will not figure out how to do anything better than to order up a wagon full of AJ Happs and Loretta Lynns in the offseason.  Or, they will give up our best young talent for a big name, who has nothing left.

The Yankees are stupid and helpless when it comes to acquiring or developing top pitchers.

Severino collapsed.  Collapsed.  He was awful and hurt the team. That is our current ACE.

And Larry Rothchild helps us how, exactly?

The Home run Menace.

The Yankees are not a baseball team.  They are a traveling " home run derby" circus.  They can't hit situationally, they can't bunt, they don't get clutch hits, they can't run, and their defense is below average.  They swing for the fences, and satisfy themselves that having 12 guys on the team with 10 or more HRs means something.

And then they go home in early October and start making shoe commercials.

The team has been constructed in a similar fashion to the NY Football Giants.  It is missing the key elements necessary to win against quality competition.  No offensive line :: no pitching.

The Nothing Strategy.

Last season, the yankees came within a short straw of getting to the World Series.  They allowed their youth to mingle with the veterans, and created an energy and enthusiasm for the game.

But this focus was founded out of necessity, rather than reason.  The minute Brian Cashman got back behind the cash mini-gun, he blasted away to acquire a rasher of cheap veterans, who were hanging on to the edges of the game.

 Neal Walker was the death nell of this season, and was the iconic acquisition of doom.

We traded all of our outfielders to the point we had to start an aging, lifetime mediocre minor leaguer in right field, as injuries derailed the team.  Who would ever think injuries would occur in a 162 game season?  Is contingency planning a thought in the Yankee braintrust room?

In the last game, we started a catcher who can't catch or hit.  We started a former MVP who had never once been in a playoff game, and whose entire season gave evidence of an inability to produce when it mattered.  We started Neal Walker instead of the best rookie we have had since Joe DiMaggio.  And the list goes on.

But it shows this;  the manager hasn't a clue on how to win a big game, at a big moment.

It Can't Happen Here.

Many of us on this blog have been Yankee fans for 6 and 7 decades.  We have, mostly, known great success.  Now we are in a barren desert spanning nine years of failure.  Next season will mark a decade without a Yankee championship.

We tend to think that the Yankees are always going to win.  We tend to think democracy in America cannot devolve into autocracy in America.  We always think there will be adequate rain and fresh water. And that the dollar will always be the international currency of trade. We think no one will again push the nuclear button.  We believe our coastal cities won't ever be under water.

It is possible that the yankees will not win again in any of our lifetimes.