"Don't lose any sleep."

 

I apologize for my outburst last night, and I thank all here for your supportive and sympathetic comments. 

I would like to put the blame on bad gin, but actually the gin I was drinking was excellent (On bad gin, well, let's just say that outburst might have been a very, very ugly thing.). More than that, I was feeling whip-lashed by all of my chosen television viewing.

The Yankees' "game" in St. Louis, for starters—truly, about as perfunctory and uninvolved an affair as I've ever witnessed from this team—and then also from watching some of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (still, on second viewing a very weird film, not sure just what to make of it), and then watching a traumatic, new episode of ESPN's The Captain.

Yes, you can guess which one that was: the hour that takes us through what was the worst moment of my entire, 56-year, Yankees-watching life: the 2004 ALCS meltdown against Boston. I'm still not over it (obviously), and even if your New York Yankees manage to blow this record, 15 1/2-game lead—which they may well do—it won't be as awful as those four days in October.

What really set me off about it, though, was Joe Torre saying—as he has frequently since—"Hey, I didn't lose any sleep over it."

No, Joe, you did not, because obviously you were already sleeping in the dugout during those four games.

I kid, I kid.  Sort of.  

Trust me, I love Joe Torre somethin' fierce. He seems like the epitome of class and, let's face it, without him at the helm, chances are the whole enterprise comes a-cropper under Mad Old George, and we've spent the last 25 years or so watching the Dolans run our favorite ballteam into the ground (or into New Jersey).

Only Torre could have done such a brilliant job of making that clubhouse mesh, year-in and year-out, AND held off those perennial wolves at the door, the New York media and the Steinbrenners. The fact that Brian Cashman hated him and ultimately deep-sixed him is just one more point in his favor.

That said, Joe was never a great or even a good field manager, and his moves in October probably kept us from winning several more championships. I'm hoping that he is simply protesting too much when he says, "I didn't lose any sleep over it," or maybe trying to be too literal.

Yes, we all realize it's not football, Joe. It's a day-in, day-out game that requires a certain equilibrium. You had that, in abundance. Sometimes, maybe, a little too much. But better—much better, infinitely better—that you were here rather than not.

The whiplash came from Spike Lee almost immediately bringing on former clean-up man and colossal meathead, Gary Sheffield, to make mysterious claims that Torre was a racist—"All I know was that

when I went in to see him in his office, or when other Black players went in, I didn't get what I wanted."

It's hard to know what Shef could have wanted from Joe. Maybe, "Hey, be sure to juice up again, you're batting fourth"? 

Sheffield sure as hell acted as if he never needed anything from anyone while he was here. He was a helluva hitter, but an obvious juicer—i.e., cheater—and I always thought it was an enormous mistake for us to sign him off the free-agent market instead of Vlad, Senior, a man who always struck fear in Red Sox hearts.

Instead, we got Shef, 7 years older than Vlad the Lad, and last seen bragging about how he never watched the games while serving as an ESPN analyst. (Shef, incidentally went 1-17, with 6 Ks, 1 single, and 0 ribbies in the 4 games of the Great Boston Meltdown.)

Sheffield pivoted from his mindlessly vague Torre accusations, when asked by Spike Lee, to say that, essentially, Derek Jeter never had a problem with Torre because he (Jeter) wasn't Black. This was news to Jeets, who has spent a lifetime dealing with the usual nimnuts who gave him hell FOR being Black, of course, but never mind.

Some idiots will strike any pose, throw out any insult, just to be noticed long after their playing days have expired. But I digress!

The one saving grace of the whole show came when Lee asked Jeter and several teammates how THEY felt about that 2004 ALCS—Bernie, Jorge. I was delighted to see that, to a man, they had been infuriated about it. That they were STILL infuriated about it, or so it seemed.

And while I know I've said this before, this strikes me as the key to our fandom, my brethren and sistren:

Ya gotta at least pretend to care. Otherwise, the whole thing falls apart.

It's just a game? It doesn't mean that much? You didn't lose any sleep? Terrific! As my esteemed colleague Doug K. pointed out, then that means the whole game is free, right? 

Refunds at the admissions gate? Money off my cable bill? And since it really means nothing, then y'all are on your way to help starving people in the world somewhere, or donating your every penny to solving climate change, right? Because that means something.

Hey, I wouldn't mind living in that world where games are just games. We'd all just gambol down to the meadow to watch Tots Bader and the other local lads play ball for an evening's fresh air. Maybe we'd even agree to pass the hat for a match played with some real ginger!

And sure, everyone else operates that way, too, right? You go to the opera, or the ballet, or a Broadway show, and the cast suddenly stops and laughs, and says, "Hey, this is all just so much jumping around and singing! We're not bothering with the lines or the orchestration tonight, okay?"

Without a good faith effort, even in the silliest of endeavors, it's just not worth it. (This is why Aaron Boone is not a good manager, by the way, not so much because he follows orders from his silly little boss, but because he can't keep his team involved for a whole season.)

Those guys from the last great dynasty? They've led great lives. They've been showered with riches and honors almost beyond imagining. And you know what? They're STILL mad about how that 2004 ALCS went.

I like that.