Did we just lose the pennant over $932,833.34?

 

Poor Scott Floss. His whispy prom beard newly shaven, he looked like an adorable schoolboy when the first batter he faced in Yankee Stadium nearly took him deep. 

He retreated all the way to the third base line, grimacing queasily as the ball he served up dropped just short of the stands.  

Not, let us say, the traditional Yankee closer look. Sparky Lyle or Goose Gossage would have stood on the mound and scowled and glowered that fly down. The Great One, Mariano, would have given it the long-faced look of a mosaic saint, forcing it down with the wisdom of the ages.

Not Floss—seen below preparing for his Social Studies exam. I half expected him to chomp on his fingers as he watched it descend.

Hey, you go to war with the army you got, as the man in charge of making the army better once said. Floss was what we had, acquired dirt cheap from the tanking rebuilding Chicago Cubs.

It's just a shame the Cubbies didn't have available somebody who had pitched in New York before. Preferably under the pressure of a pennant race. 

Maybe, even, someone who had pitched in the Bronx twice before during pennant races, including the last time the Yankees won it all. Who had even been a closer here for a whole season, and had recently become a highly effective closer again, and was so good at wriggling out of jams that his nickname was Houdini.

Nah, no one like THAT was available from the Cubs...were they?

And surely not somebody who the Cubbies would give up for no more than a one-time, 33rd-round draft choice—a 22-year-old pitcher who, in his sixth year of pro ball, was no further along than 3-5 in the Single-A Sally League.

Some goofball who looked, say, like this, just below. That couldn't possibly be the case. Right?

And if it did, there MUST have been a good baseball reason for it all going down like that.  Correct-o?  

Our veteran general manager, nobody's fool, would NEVER have passed up a chance to acquire the likes of Dave Robertson for, well, some fool like the one here, unless there WAS a good baseball reason. At least a very, very good baseball reason.

I mean, it couldn't have been all about the MONEY or anything. Could it? 

After all, Houdini Robertson is only making $3.5 mill this year. You pro-rate that after two-thirds of a season, and we're talking about a mere $1.2 mill. Less, even.

Of course, young Floss is making only $701,500 a year. You pro-rate that, calculate the difference, ipso facto, abracadabra, and you end up $932,833.34, rounding off the final cent.

I mean, they couldn't POSSIBLY have brought in Dross over Houdini because of that sort of money. 

Could they?