Last night, everything came out of left field.
First, the awful: Making a heroic catch down the line, Yankee LF Tim Locastro blew out his knee. Torn ACL.
It is impossible not to feel sick over this.
Locastro - born in Syracuse, raised in Auburn - had just turned 29. He was playing for the team he grew up following. He was appearing on national television, arguably the biggest game of his career. Now, he's done for 2021. He'll seek a comeback next spring, and it's possible his greatest asset - his speed - will be compromised.
I believe I speak for the Yankiverse in saying to the juju gods...
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! You slimy assholes should be ashamed of yourselves. If there is a god, I hope He cleans house with two-bit, game-fixing deities like you. Who put you up to this? Last night is the rottenest thing you've done since Dustin Fowler, in his MLB debut, tore up his knee in Comiskey Park, causing Joe Girardi to weep.
This just sucks. You know, I can understand the notion that the Yankees field a bunch of overpaid china dolls, thus we collect injuries like fleas at a dog show. But Locastro is no prima dona. Two weeks ago, I watched him turn a single into a double, by pure hustle. And last night, after slamming into the wall and grabbing his knee, he bounced up to keep a Redsock runner from scoring. And you saw fit to do this?
Seriously, fuck you. I am keeping a file on you shitwads. Someday, if there is any justice in this universe, I will haul you fucktwats into a tribunal, where you will be held accountable for your actions. (And I will demand you are placed under a conservatorship run by Jamie Spears - or better, Alphonso. How would you like that!)
Insert sigh here.
Another thing came out of left field last night - a baseball, thrown by a fan at Boston outfielder Alex Verdugo. As a result, the game was stopped for several minutes - all during a driving rain. I don't blame Boston for walking off. There are shitheads in the clouds, and there are shitheads in the bleachers. God spare us from both. But it used to be the biggest assholes - by far - appeared in Fenway. That's where the security guard fought Jeff Nelson. That's where the fan punched Gary Sheffield while chasing a foul. That's where the fans made Roger Clemens' wife fear for her life. Now, it's happening in New York.
Okay, we're not exactly angels on this site. We live and die for the Yankees. That's our thing. But I hope that everyone here recognizes this site as a place to vent, not to actually wish for injuries upon a player or to launch stupid fights, like nutjobs out behind left field.
That said, I have a solution to this current malaise:
Let's stick Giancarlo out in left. Hey, what can happen?
Yes, finally some clarity (out of left field) on the true nature of Juju. Evil. The big bad. Give Stanton a glove.
ReplyDeleteThe rolling gunfight along the third base line in our nation's capital doesn't warrant a mention among last night's parade of horribles? Don't tell us IIHIIFII...c is just another media outlet neglecting to tell the people just how out of control things are getting in DC.
ReplyDeleteDuque
ReplyDeletePreach! Your anger is righteous.
The only "good" thing about the horrific and sad injury to Locastro is, since it happened in the bigs he will be paid as an MLB player during his rehab. For a fringe guy that's a good payday. Especially if it is his last one. I think he also gets health insurance for life.
Totally sucks for him but at least there is that. Still...
Doug K.
That was sad. I like the guy. He's fast, he hustles, he visibly TRIES. Sure, he's not an offensive weapon, though he has had his moments, but is Stanton? Sanchez? Torres?
ReplyDeleteOK, those last two came through in the pouring rain last night, and I hope we see more of it. Sanchez--as noted by Fox--had a terrible start, then a fantastic middle period, and is mired in a terrible slump at present. Torres hasn't had the fantastic middle, or any, period. As noted by the Fox announcers, also. (Captain Obvious)
But Greg Allen looks like a nice addition, so far. Not as fast as Locastro, but decidedly more offense (so far).
And then there's Gittens...I guess we have to give the big lug a longer stay, so maybe. Just maybe, he starts producing. At least he's good at defense. An upgrade from Jay Bruce.
None of us live in DC, Publius. But would you LIKE to have a discussion about the horde of assholes who descended on that city earlier this year to literally shit and piss all over our nation's Capitol? While also killing at least one cop and beating and macing many more?
ReplyDeleteThis is about the tenth comment recently by our brethren on the right regarding politics. You really want to go back to that? I don't.
And yes, throwing anything at a player is unacceptable. But it was done for years in Fenway Park without the Yanks pulling their team from the field.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, Hoss. Quick trigger there. I offered last night's gunplay as another example of the, let us say, difficulties baseball is currently facing. Threw a little media criticism in there too, as well as a swipe at the seat of the federal government. Time was, pointing out that the media is generally full of shit, and the federal government ain't worth what we pay for it, were fun, healthy poly- partisan enthusiasms. If one side or the other now feels compelled to hug our nation's scribblers, script readers, preeners and bureaucrats as their own, immunizing that lot from all criticism, well, that'd be yet another good thing gone in the 21st century, like affordable gas and an entertaining, well-run Yankee team.
ReplyDeleteI still say, watch Brockmire. Especially the last season. It's the future.
ReplyDeleteFor some reason, whenever a manager pulls his team from the field, I think of the time Joe Torre sat like a stone Buddha while the biting midges attacked Joba Chamberlain at Jake by the Lake. Bad memories.
ReplyDeleteI hope the guy who threw the ball gets at least three months of prison time. And I hope that it's highly publicized. It's the only way to deter this kind of stupidity. It ruined a really good game.
The Hammer of God
The swing that Gary Sanchez put on Sawamura's fastball was picture perfect. Took a fastball down the middle and served a laser into the right field stands. When you see a swing like that from Sanchez, you know that this guy could hit well over .300 with some other team that knows what it's doing.
ReplyDeleteGleyber Torres, on the other hand, took a swing that was almost the opposite aesthetically. That was about as ugly a swing as you'll ever see that produced a home run. Maybe his front foot slipped a bit in the rain. Anyway, he looked like a drunk trying to play golf. When it came off the bat, I thought he'd popped it up. Perhaps he is getting a little closer to getting his timing back and driving the ball again. We can only hope.
The Hammer of God
When Cole starts, and rain washes out the last three innings, the New York Cashmans can beat anybody. Let's go, baby! Second wild card is kinda sorta maybe in sight!
ReplyDeleteSorry if I jumped salty on you, Publius, and I'm always up for making fun of government or the media—especially the Paper of Record, which for some reason has essentially stopped covering baseball.
ReplyDeleteBut I'm not aware that the Grey Lady is covering up anything in DC; if you'll look, it's one of the top stories on their online news today. If not the Times, I'm not sure who you're referring to; I heard about the shooting almost in real time. Hard to say it's being ignored.
And in any case, your main jibe seemed to be that we here were not paying attention to the shooting. Don't know that we qualify as anyone running the media or the government (though we certainly should be!).
I frankly can't keep up with all the assorted horrors going on everywhere these days, it seems. Shootings, floods, assassinations, pandemic, genocide...baseball is such a relief, by comparison!
Yes, I remember that all too well myself, Hammer. I love Joe Torre to death, and in many ways he saved this franchise. But that was one of the worst, most inexplicable non-moves I've ever seen a manager make.
ReplyDeleteI think it fits in all too well with other examples of Torre's weird inaction in the last 6-7 years of his Yankees career. He was never a good field manager, but things started to get stranger and stranger—particularly in the 2004 Boston Horror, when he refused to put on a steal sign even when the Sox had a catcher who could not catch a knuckleball—and a knuckleballer—out there.
I'm with Horace on this one. And I'm not shy about expressing my political views in any forum, even a Yankees blog.
ReplyDeleteI don't know Publius and do not know his politics. But I will say this: If government "isn't worth what we pay for it" , it's because uninformed and lazy people continually vote against their own interests. So we get what we vote in. Additionally, while neither party has a monopoly on integrity and righteousness, they are not equivalent. One party believes in the " Big Lie " and generally lives in a conspiracy-filled, alternate universe. And one party has consistently obstructed anything the other political party advocates for even if they, themselves, pushed for it only a few years earlier. Only motivation is their desire to lessen the chance of the other side being re-elected. The people be damned...even their own voters. As Barry McGuire once wrote " A handful of Senators don't pass legislation".
I will let each person decide what party I am alluding to.
The Whigs?
ReplyDeleteUhhh, no. Strike One!
ReplyDeleteThe Whigs believed that government and private industry should try to function as partners in order to get things done. So not the party I was referring to.
Bull Moose?
ReplyDeleteLove the Barry McGuire reference, Carl Weitz, and it certainly does seem like we're on "The Eve of Destruction."
ReplyDeleteBut I still think we should stay away from politics here.
When it comes to politics, I do not think we now share enough of a common view of reality to constructively argue or even tweak each other.
Hence, we turn to baseball, where we can all agree that Brian Cashman is a dangerous maniac, and HAL a doddering fool.
ReplyDeleteThe eve of destruction? Hell it’s already here! Fuck politics. We got much bigger problems here on earth:
Record heat waves, massive fires, polar caps melting, oceans rising and dying at the same rate; flooding. Oh, and a plague. Brought to you by the kind-hearted leaders from China.
The planet is about to rise up and destroy humanity, a fate it richly deserves. Much like the Yankees. Now if only the Harlem River would overflow its banks and swallow up Yankee Stadium. I can just picture it floating downriver, taking bridges with it and barely getting through the Spuyten Duyvil before making a hard left into the Hudson, then drifting slowly out to sea.
I would pay to see that. It would be slower than a baseball game, but eminently more satisfying.
Still no definitive evidence that COVID was “created” in China, but plenty of evidence that the career criminal occupying the WH in 2020 is culpable of exacerbating the crisis, resulting in the deaths of 600,00 people, all with the assent of his knuckle dragging supporters.
ReplyDeleteThat would explain why the place is called “The Wuhan Novel Respiratory Coronavirus Lab.
ReplyDeleteCouldn’t be though. That’s just a coincidence, right?
DickAllen--that lab in Wuhan was getting funding from the CDC, with Fauci's approval. So let's tamp down on the xenophobia. The US is the leading per capita carbon emitter, with tens of millions of jerks, driving their off-road trucks one mile to buy a loaf of bread. So if you're hungering for a scapegoat, look no further than your next-door neighbor or your own garage.
ReplyDeleteI don't wish injury, much less a torn ACL, on anyone. But Locastro is not a ballplayer--another of Cashman's perversities. A net gain for the Yankees, however marginal.
ReplyDeleteThe return of Ryan LaMarre, along with Greg Allen? These two washout/retreads are the best this organization can do for outfield backup? Forget it.
ReplyDeleteinfowars redirects here.
ReplyDeletemoveon.org redirects here.
Can't we all just get along?
Boone sucks
Cashman sucks
Hal sucks even worse
Don't we all agree on that?
Re. the Wuhan Lab, it is a pretty sure thing that the first coronavirus cases occurred in close proximity to that lab. So you have a virus lab in the middle of a city, next door to a live animal food market, and it was getting some of its funding from us, and the Communists attempted to cover up the pandemic and are still not cooperating in the investigation. The only rational conclusion is that it did originate in Communist China and that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was either grossly negligent or intentionally allowed the virus to spread.
ReplyDeleteI don't quite get why someone would think that it's xenophobia to say that the virus came out of China. All indications are that it originated near Wuhan. It may be fear of "commnunism", but that fear would be well founded.
Communist China is not our friend, nor is it ever going to do any other country any good. I would say listen to Taiwan, which has said that the CCP lies about everything. Look at the current situation in Korea, with that overweight idiot in North Korea playing with his nuclear toys. Communist China interfered during the Korean War and is the main reason why Korea is divided today, with the constant threat of violence hanging over the Korean Peninsula. Communist China also interfered during the Vietnam War, and you know what, no sooner had American involvement in Vietnam ended when Communist China had a war with Vietnam. And Communist China is now busy constructing artificial islands all over the world's oceans, to try to claim territorial rights over international ocean waters. And it's very active on the border with India, trying to build on disputed territories. It also tramples on everyone's intellectual property rights and actively encourages espionage and theft of military and commercial designs.
What can we do about the menace that is Communist China? Well, for heaven's sake, stop buying stuff made in China. Always check country of origin info before purchasing. Put pressure on American companies to stop making stuff in China. And for crap's sake, stop giving money to China to experiment with viruses. Don't we import enough crap from China that we now have to import viruses from China as well. Tell your Congressional rep to make viruses here. Sorry, I'll get off the soapbox now.
The Hammer of God
People on all sides—such as Jon Stewart—think it was the lab. And it's well-known that comedians have enormous scientific knowledge.
ReplyDeleteMe? I'm taking a novel position for an American: I'm refusing to form an opinion on something I know nothing about. Crazy, right?
I hate all dictatorships, of every kind, everywhere. I think people with the best of intentions can make all sorts of honest mistakes—but I find them unbearable when they refuse to admit they ever make mistakes, and/or try to pass the blame onto others.
Oh, and Dick Allen? I disagree with you on one big thing:
ReplyDeleteIf Yankee Stadium drifted slowly out to sea, it would NOT be slower than your average major-league baseball game in 2021.
ReplyDeleteyeah, horace, you're probably right about that one
Not xenophobic to think the bug originated in Wuhan; xenophobic not to understand the US role in supporting and funding the lab. Meanwhile, as for which country presents the greatest menace to humanity: the US has 800 overseas military bases in 80 countries; China has one, while helping to finance infrastructure projects in 70 countries around the planet. China combats global heating with thousands of miles of high speed rail while US infrastructure crumbles.
ReplyDelete"Global heating"...that's an interesting formulation. Welcome, comrade anonymous. The less said about the slave labor used to build that high speed rail the better, isn't that right? And let's not mention the usurious and confiscatory terms of those international infrastructure financing agreements. That wouldn't please the Party. I suppose if we have to come to terms with the Red Sox dominating baseball in the 21st century, we'll have to adjust to China dominating the world in the 21st century. The Yankees, and America, seem to be things of the past.
ReplyDeletePublius-- First of all, your "comrade anonymous" is simply ugly McCarthyite red-baiting--the sure sign of someone with a bellyful of bile but few facts at his disposal. You simply spew corporate-media myths and lies with no citations. Here's a study from two distinguished scholars--one from Harvard, the other from Johns Hopkins--that puts paid to your propaganda about the Belt and Road initiative.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2021/02/china-debt-trap-diplomacy/617953/?fbclid=IwAR11siGV81JCVh9h36L_e8ChJYklzxmwZnkXvdECWPpJ2wLSWbyJ_lGRLEo
Second, Pubius--you evidently have no clue about how serious the global heating emergency has become. Here's some more documentation for fact-starved righ-wing McCarthyites:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.timesofisrael.com/scientists-say-it-is-too-late-to-stop-climate-change/
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending
From me, according to my abilty, to you, according to your need, comrade. Neither more nor less.
ReplyDeletePubius-- you have no abilities--and no facts or sources. Only McCarthyite invective and a mind clogged with reactionary bilge.
ReplyDeletePubius--public spending accounts for only about 20 percent of the economy. That's far less than the US, at about 35 percent. You subtract from the summ of the world's knowledge every time you take to the keyboard.
ReplyDeletesum
ReplyDeleteJoe McCarthy? A gentleman by all accounts, and an excellent leader. Aaron Boone would do well to emulate him. As for your sources, well, if we stop pretending and accept that it's too late to stop climate change, that's nothing but bourgeois fatalism. It enervates the progressive, revolutionary spirit necessary for the Chinese Communist Party, as the inevitable agent of history, to lead humanity into its bright, exquisitely equitable future. Be careful, comrade.
ReplyDeleteBoth Joe McCarthys were drunks. I would scarcely doubt that you admire them for precisely that reason, given your penchant for mindless, fact-free sputtering. Be careful, you ignorant snarling right-wing asshole.
ReplyDeleteBy the way Pubius--the heavily documented New Yorker piece on climate change was written by Jonathan Franzen. Another esteemed author you've never read on a subject you know nothing about. I'm sure your mommy and daddy would be so proud to see the witless drunken howling beast they brought into the world.
ReplyDeleteI won $29,000,000 in the power ball lottery, I took advice from a person who talked about this great spell caster called Dr. OKOYE. The person placed a testimonies on a blog saying how Dr. OKOYE helped him win the lottery by sending him the winning number. I was curious and I thought it was all a joke not until I contacted this spell caster to know for myself how this works cause I have spent a lot buying tickets and I never win. I contacted he and him told me the necessary thing that need to be done and i did it and his told me to wait for 3 days and truly he gave me the winning numbers to play the lottery which i did, Can you believe my name was the first winner that is how i won {$29,000,000} Contact him on okoyespiritemple@gmail.com or Whatsapp +2348109476757 Dr OKOYE is the only answer to that your problem of winning the lottery
ReplyDeletePubius is SUCH a malicious, callous right-wing asshole that he proudly identifies with slave-owners:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-alexander-hamilton-slave-owner-180976260/
Jonathan Franzen? The middlebrow fiction writer? No surprise he's the New Yorker's weather guy.
ReplyDeleteNothing to admire about drunkenness per se, but neither should an unquenchable thirst be disqualifying. Where would we be without Mickey Mantle? Or Teddy Kennedy?
ReplyDeleteSlavery, whether administered by drunken ancient Roman aristocrats or abstemious post modern Chinese Communist appartachiks, is always condemnable. Join me, comrade anonymous, in condemning it.
Publius....there's no comrade like a corporate comrade. Not a hint of government help to anyone of need. Strictly lassiez faire and no playing favorites....let the market determine the losers. Except, of course, when the banks or big business need a bailout. Then it's "give me money"-and plenty of it. In return, as a payback, they will finagle and use all the accounting strategies to avoid paying any taxes all even though they make billions. Such gratitude! Yeah, nothing like those corporate welfare queens.
ReplyDeleteAnd anyone who believes that there is no man-made climate warming is either delusional, ignorant or simply doesn't care. There is no more scientific debate.
However, perhaps Horace is correct. Lets save the vitriol for Hal and the entire Yankees Bloated Front Office.
No worries, Carl. Hoss is of course correct. I should resist shining the red laser dot on comrade kitty's wall. But what the hell. Like scotch on tbe rocks, I just can't let it turn into a habit.
ReplyDeleteThe byline is correct:
ReplyDelete"We're not here to heap abuse on each other. We're here to heap abuse on Brian Cashman."
Pubicius--Still waiting for your documentation about Chinese "slavery"--one of those mass-media lies so easily slopped up by people who imagine themselves well-read and well-informed while actually reading nothing but the baseball scores. And nice to see your affectation of hauteur in dismissming Franzen as "middelbrow," even though you obviously have read not one syllable of his work, including this New Yorker piece or any other reporting on the science of climate change, a global calamity that you dismiss with all the casualness of porcine, bigoted suburbanite--which is what you are at your core, your fatuous literary posturing notwithstanding. So Pubius, the brainless celebrants of mass human extinction, exudes the empty sanctimony of the illiterate "humanitarian," concerned about oppression and injustice everywhere but in his own backyard, and from the lethal tailpipe of his own piggy carbon-mobile that is doing its little part to eradicate the human race he's so unctuously concerned about. But such ironies are lost on smug illiterates who venerate slave-holders while exuding pieties about nonexistent slavery (which he can't document) among people of a different color whom he abominates. What a contemptible racist pig.
ReplyDeleteHey Pubius--the only light you're shining, laser or otherwise, is on your own witless pomposity and callousness in the face of imminent human extinction resulting in large measure from your piggy suburban/carbon lifestyle; your windup-doll, herd-mentality racist calumnies against Asians you don't like (except when they're doing your laundry, I suppose); and your hilarious compulsive masochistic revelations of your own witlessness and stupidity. In the realm of highfalutin', high-strutting self-abasement and self-ridicule, you are the unchallenged master.
ReplyDeleteNotice not the moderator swings into action only when the racist pig is called out, NOT when the piggy racism is purveyed. Duly noted.
ReplyDeleteLike humanity, the Red Sox seem to be facing extinction tonight. But like the weather, you can't predict baseball.
ReplyDeletePubius--you're so STUPID that you don't even know the difference between weather and climate, a typically ignorant howler you've perpetrated twice tonight in straining to affect your patented idiot-high-wit pose.
ReplyDeleteJust for the record: Pubius is a genocidal climate-change-denying racist pig who thinks it's hilarious to make punning jokes about a global-heating calamity that is is already destroying the lives of tens of millions of people and is poised to wipe out the human race in the coming decades. Just hilarious, you dumb piece of shit.
Some more grist for the endless hilarity-mill that is Pubius, the racist pig:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2019-09-23/climate-change-already-killing-us
Human race wiped out soon? Cashman included? Seems a little drastic but, as Mao Zedong probably said, needs must.
ReplyDeleteQED from the racist pig.
ReplyDeleteWhasssamatter, racist piggy? Mao's eyes too slanty for your taste?
ReplyDeleteSophomoric quips on the subject of mass death and suffering--favorite pastime of the racist pig.
So name a few of the "highbrow" authors whose works you can discuss with familiarity and detail--let's hear it, racist pig. C'mon--this should be good.
The usual, you know. Dr Suess. Jimmy Buffett. A few others.
ReplyDeleteBluff called, racist piggy.
ReplyDeleteIf he calls back, tell him I'm washing my hair. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteBluff called, racist pig.
ReplyDeleteIt is sad that on almost all occasions when people discuss anything remotely political, anyone who vents from the left feels free to openly insult anyone who disagrees with he/she/it.
ReplyDeleteMust be great to be so righteous.
Guys/Gals/Its, stop it.
Godot