Mutiny In the Sunoco Broadcast Booth!

It had been weeks since I'd had the chance to get out for a run or to listen to The Master and Margarita, so I was glad to take the opportunity on this splendid Sunday in New York.

True, after so much time off, I felt like various parts of my body were terribly strained and cramped, and that I might have to go on the 10-day IL.  But then I rubbed some dirt into the boo-boos, and the pain disappeared.  I mean to recommend this revolutionary healing method to the Yanks' training staff.

And hey, what a game!  Before the Yankees' crazy rally, Michael Kay had called it "an absolute slog" (yes, I watched the YES replay, I said yes, I said yes I watched YES—for that seventh-inning rally, at least), while The Master said outright that it was "a pretty ugly game."

They both had a point.  If the soulless corporate entity that is MLB thinks it has used The Plague Year to develop a winner on the field, it has another think coming.  The game—which only lasted an out short of 8 full innings, went 3 hours and 22 minutes.

It featured 17 strikeouts, 11 walks,  3 wild pitches, 2 batters hit at crucial moments, and two entire teams that seemed to be sleep-walking through the proceedings.

The Mets made one official error, and really 4-5 awful plays in the field, all of which cost them (Can't we play the Mets everyday?  Please?).  The Yankees repeatedly tried their darnedest to run into outs.

The Yanks really won the game by rope-a-doping Rick Porcello, allowing 3 runs in a sixth inning so absolutely excruciating—walking four batters in the frame and hitting another—that the Mets decided to pull their starter after only five innings and 85 pitches, even though he had been dominating the Yankees.

This set off the inevitable train of events that finally led to Edwin "The Definition of Insanity" Diaz getting into the game, and at that point anything was possible.

But what most amazed me was the outright mutiny in the radio booth—utterly absent among the YESmen—as Suzy Q. and The Master called the sabermetricious out by name—"the metrics man"—and openly questioned both Ma Boone's decisions, and Brain Cashman's work in constructing this wondrous team.

To wit:

—How was it possible to have 15 pitchers on the roster and not 1 lefthanded reliever?

—Really, Luis Cessa could not be used unless they at least tied the game?  Cessa?

—Brooks Kriske?  Even as he walked the bases full in his third inning of walk?

—The Yankees had only 4 players on their bench?  But no loopy?

—Even with the contrived device of putting a runner on second to start each "extra inning"—in this case, the 8th—the Yanks would make NO effort to move him over to third?   No departure ever, at all, from swing for the fences on every pitch?

—No one is EVER going to hit around a shift?

And so it went.  Ah, it was glorious.  Most likely, it will cost them their jobs.  But it was so good to hear.

At least someone is saying that the emperor has no clothes.

At least someone recognizes that, thanks to the way the game is being taught it is often a long, slow bore of endless walks and strikeouts, and sloppy play by a generation of players unschooled in the fundamentals.