Hoss' take: “Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel…”

 From the demented computer of HoraceClark66... 

“…Never ending nor beginning, on an ever-spinning reel”—this is the musical definition of our Yankees conversations nowadays.

 The song, “The Windmills of Your Mind,” was first sung by Noel Harrison for the 1968 movie, The Thomas Crown Affair, in which Faye Dunaway and Steve McQueen first introduced us to the idea of chess as foreplay.

 

(That’s right, young people:  That’s how classy America used to be!  Watch it and weep!)

 

But I digress.

 

A full season of games like the ones your New York Yankees played this week and not just the Yankees but the entire game of baseball will be deader than a mackerel. This is not only pathetic, it’s mind-numblingly dull.

 

A few statistical milestones:  last night, the Yankees dropped to 6-11, their worst start since 1991. They have scored all of 58 runs this year—their worst total in the first 17 games of the season since 1984.

 

Last night, the Yankees became the last team in the majors this year to score in the ninth inning. They have also scored one (count ’em, 1) run in the first inning this season.

 

We were discussing earlier the fizzle of Gleyber Torres, our superstar of the future, who is hitting .186 this year, with no homers, 1 RBI, and all of 2 doubles—never mind his awful fielding. 

 

But Gleyber’s problems didn’t start this season. According to the good souls at YES, he has hit all of .238 since mid-2019.

 

Nor is it All About The Gleyber. The fizzle, as you have named it, extends to nearly every player who blossomed for the Yankees since the glorious “Bronx Spring” of 2017. 

 

Aaron Judge is 3 for his last 17, with 1 ribbie, no homers, 3 walks, and 7 strikeouts.  Take away his 3-hit, 2-homer game against Toronto, and he’s 3 for his last 26. 

 

Clint Frazier’s blooped single finally drove in his first run of the season last night. He’s hitting .175 on the year. Gary Sanchez is down to .200 and sinking fast. He’s had no homers and 1 RBI after the first two games of the season.

 

We are all fizzle, no rake.

 

I have never seen so promising a group of young players crumble so fast and so mysteriously. 

 

Players get hurt, and they are gone forever. Dustin Fowler runs into a utility box, and is never right again. Miguel Andujar slides back into third and goes from Joe DiMaggio to Joe Shlobotnik. Greg Bird looks like a world-beater until he fouls a ball off his foot and it’s as if he’s fallen into, well, “a tunnel you can follow to a tunnel of its own, down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone.”

 

Everyone gets hurt, no one gets better.

 

We’ve come up with a hundred visions and revisions as to why this Yankees team is so bad and getting steadily worse. But it all comes down to the same, terrible tautology.

 

Obviously, the Yankees’ coaching and training staffs—not to mention their scouting and player development departments—stink.

 

They should be replaced, a clean sweep. But they can’t be replaced. Why? Because Brian Cashman hired them, and getting rid of them would reflect badly on Brian Cashman.

Obviously then, Brian Cashman should be replaced. But he can’t be replaced. Why? Because HAL Steinbrenner is convinced that Brian Cashman is a baseball genius who saves him millions and millions of dollars.

 

Obviously then, HAL Steinbrenner should be replaced. But he can’t be replaced. Why? Because he owns the team.

 

You see the dilemma here.

 

“Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream, or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream…”

 

Nothing can get better until it gets very much worse—and maybe not even then! In the meantime, we’re stuck, as the images unwind, like the circles that you find, in the windmills of your mind.