Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Going into the season, it appeared that this Yankees team just didn't have enough starting pitching to beat out Boston.  When the injury bug struck early, taking out for the year a player considered a key cog in the lineup, it looked like it was all over.

But playing with heart and pride, the team seemed to defy gravity, pulling into first place early and steadily widening its lead.  In a key early showdown with Boston, the Yanks put up a wild, unlikely win, defying all the odds, and stretched that lead to 8 1/2 games.

Then—the pitching just gave out.

It was clobbered in a series against a hated arch-rival, losing three, gut-wrenching games in a row.  Sure, the Yanks were still in first place by 7 1/2—sure, they still had a record of 50-29—but everybody knew they could not go on like this.

Total collapse was imminent.

Nah, I'm just messin' with you.

The team I'm talking about was the 2004 Yankees, and even though they shared many other similarities with THIS Yankees team—such as an incompetent field manager—they fought through, rigged up enough of a starting staff (thank you, once again, Original Famous El Duque) to finish the season nearly as well as they had started (51-32).

As we all know, that team came within a game of the World Series, and likely would have won it all, had not Joe Torre suffered a petite mal stroke during the ALCS that rendered him unable to speak, move, or in any way even call for a steal when the Sox had a guy out there throwing knuckleballs to a catcher who couldn't land one with a fishing net.

I bring this up because on this day in 2004, the Yanks gave up on Jose Contreras, "the Bronze Enigma Giant," dealing him for Esteban Loaiza.  This was necessary because Coops Cashman had let 700 wins walk off the team in the off-season without getting a blessed thing in return, and now his big Cuban signing was in a death spiral.

Contreras went on to stink up the rest of the season—before having the one and only outstanding second-half of the season with the 2005 White Sox, leading them to their one and only World Series title since 1917, when they were managed by a guy named Pants Rowland.

Loaiza also stunk, though he nearly stole an ALCS, extra-inning win for us.  After the season, Coops released him...and of course he had a pretty good season with Washington, going 12-10, 3.77.

I mention all this just to point out that, even before HAL replaced the Mad King, our Cooperstown-bound GM understood absolutely nothing about how to assess pitching, and was incapable of understanding its importance.

What's more, he has learned nothing even from his own past.

Sorry, (Somewhat Less Original, Less Famous, But All The Dearer To Us) Duque, but I just can't give the hollow-eyed little runt a pass, even today.  If he holds fire, and does nothing stupid in the next two hours—that is the best we can expect from him.