In left field, a gaggle of groundskeepers were using leaf blowers to push ankle-deep ponds of water in the direction of foul territory. They moved like nervous ducks. It was 45 degrees, there might have been 300 people in the stands, torrents of water were spraying up from the grass, and the home team Yankees - currently known more for injuries than anything else - still intended to play the game. WTF?
How badly does the owner hate having to pay his employees for coming into work on a lost night?
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| Yankee Stadium groundskeepers entering from left field bullpen. |
This franchise - a "fully functioning Death Star" in its own delusions - was practically begging the juju gods to send another wave of tweaked gonads - this on a night when Miguel Andujar returned to the Injury List, perhaps for the season. I shudder to imagine what they were thinking. (Maybe Michael Kay could explore it in a future Centerstage?)
For starters, this is May, not late September; they have the entire season to schedule a makeup.
Secondly, this is Baltimore, not some West Coast team that won't return in 2019.
Finally, this was going to be Aaron Hicks' first appearance of the year, and they were going to sent him out to patrol a nearly frozen marshland? Play under such conditions, and you have no right to blame the fates for your hamstrings. You make your own luck. Play in a quagmire, and you can't complain when the muck takes you down.
You can say I'm out of line here, that this was just a near-miss, and my concerns are much ado about nothing. Okay, fine. The Yankees called the game - no blood, not foul - and they'll play two on Wednesday - charging admission for each. (R.I.P. the freebie.) But for nearly two hours last night, one question ruled: WTF are they thinking?
That game should have been called by 5 p.m., the players getting a night off. I can only think of one institution that gained by stringing everything out: the YES Network. It needed programming. If the game actually had been played, starting around 9 p.m., it would have supplied the TV feed. How much sway do the TV people hold? The question of the night.
TV has ruled the game since there's been TV. It's just got worse and worse over time. That's a big reason why games last three hours, minimum.
ReplyDeleteBut you know that. These days we don't even get to see Mantle saying he wants his Maypo during the extended commercial breaks, either.
By the way, the closer you shave, the more you need Noxema.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, Wednesday's doubleheader is single admission for two games.
ReplyDeleteTwo games for one price? Did somebody kidnap Hal? This is cereal! Super cereal!
ReplyDeleteAmen, Duque! The fan torture has got to stop. "Show up and sit in the rain for 2 or even 3 hours, or you can risk throwing your money away!"
ReplyDeleteAnd you're completely right about the injury risks. The promising career of Dustin Fowler—currently hitting .257 for Oakland's Triple-A team—may have been deep-sixed because the equivalent dimwits in Chicago had to play on another awful night (And Girardi decided that he had to protect...Ellsbury? Gardner? by sticking him in CF.)
I suspect this is more MLB group think than just Hal, but still, it stinks.
Oh and: "Icely light, precisely right, the crisp refresher, that's my Ballantine beer..."
ReplyDeleteHonestly I think they just really didn't want to have to reschedule it because the only other options are a doubleheader in the middle of a 17-game stretch, or some weird travel on what would have been an off-day.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I was thinking the same thing looking at that slippery field. We would not have gotten out of that one with our current team intact.
ReplyDeleteTriple-header? Today's game seems very likely to be rained out, short of an enormous break in the weather.
Could Coops Cashman be behind it? Maybe he's realised that the cheap fill-ins and replacement-level veterans consistently outplay and outperform his lumbering strikeout sluggers and neurotic power armers. Maybe he's trying to get as many players injured as possible, so he can fill the gaps with hungry young players and look like a genius when they overperform?
ReplyDeleteKaiser, I like it.
ReplyDeleteOn the FAN, some had suggested that the advanced ticket sales were probably low and combined with all the players on the IL, that it was best to just cancel the game tonight.
ReplyDeleteYanks get Kendrys Morales, for cash, maybe a player to be named later.
ReplyDeleteInane. Their full time DH, Stanton, is about to come back anyway. They couldn't spend a few at-bats on McBroom? As usual, Cashman has some success rooting through the trash heaps and gets carried away.
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