Autumn in New York

"Autumn in New York
Is often mingled with pain..."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NO2Ij1eO-GQ

Sing it, Billie.

Don't you love this time of year?  And a rare postseason day game!  It's like yesterday once more, as the Carpenters so astutely put it.  The sharp, crisp air giving everything an extra intensity.  It really was a shame when they started playing October night baseball, back in 1971.

So many memories...the playoff in Fenway, in 1978, "the closest thing to death," as Muhammad Ali  put it (about his third fight with Frazier—but still, the sentiment is transferrable!).

I still remember rushing back from work to watch Game 2 of the special ALDS, in the strike-shortened, 1981 season. The Yanks were clinging to a 1-0 lead in Milwaukee, trying to go up 2-0 in games against their nemesis of the time, Mike Caldwell.  I remember watching Reggie and Dave Winfield kneeling together in the on-deck circle before the start of the eighth inning, "conferring."

Then—Winfield hits a booming triple, Reggie follows with a long, long home run.  Rich Gossage closes it out, relieving Ron Davis, who had relieved our rookie sensation, Dave Righetti.

A staff full of young fireballers, new free-agent superstars shipped in fresh every year to shine on the marquee...We had found the magic formula!

It would go on and on, just like in the days of the dynasties.  We'd lead the life we choose, we'd fight and never lose, those were the days, oh yes those were the days.

Well, to paraphrase Roy Hobbes, our baseball life didn't work out like we'd planned.  Too bad.  It's still fun.

We're going to lose today, and we're going to lose this series, and even if we were to win this series we'd have absolutely no chance to beat Washington in the World Series.

The reasons we will lose we have discussed at length here, and we are right, and all the Gammonites and the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, no-negativism-comrade blogs are wrong.

Those reasons are bred in the bone of what Cashman is, and what the sad-eyed Steinbrenner heirs are, and even what sport and get-it-now capitalism have come to in America, and blah-blah-blah.

Nothing we can do about there here and now, on a bright October day when it feels good just to be alive.

I'll get back to bashing the reprobates who have doomed us to another early winter soon enough.  For now...nothing to do but sit back and love the game, just because of what it is.

Go team!