Joey, We Hardly Knew Ye

So Joey is gone now, leaving behind all sorts of lamentations as to how he fared in New York, including what some read as a reasonable indictment of Yankees fans for all our booing.

(I haven't actually been to a Yankees game this year, but I booed lustily from home.)

What can we tell poor Joe, who really seemed at the end of his tether this past week? New York is a tough town. Mickey Mantle got booed here. So did Derek Jeter. So—unforgivably—did another Joe, DiMaggio.

Gallo claimed that, while living in Manhattan, he would not even leave his apartment, so intimidated was he by the prospect of running into a disgruntled fan. (I swear, I had no idea where he lived!)

There is, to be sure, no excuse for harassing a player off the field, and no excuse for the sort of language we fans fling at some players—along with actual objects.  

That sort of behavior is beyond the pale.

But Joey actually seems shocked that people booed at all. I guess they don't do that in Texas. 

He expressed his feeling that he couldn't get untracked because he was used to playing everyday, which is silly. He  did play everyday, until he absolutely played his way out of this job.

He pointed out that he had "always been" a "Three True Outcomes" sort of player, which is a somewhat more legitimate complaint. Gallo is a terrible reflection on the lords of baseball, people so enamored of statistics that they have ripped the heart out of the game, and reduced to the increasingly boring spectacle it has become.

No doubt, Joey was encouraged not to change a thing, even as his average kept plunging, and the strikeouts kept coming.

But the truth of the matter is still that Joey did nothing to help himself, while his game went into a death spiral—even by "Three True Outcomes" standards. In New York, his batting average dropped 62 points below his (already low, low) lifetime average, while his OPS fell by 173 points.  Nor did he look anything like the Gold Glove outfielder he has been in the past.

Trot out all the Sabremetrics you like.  He still stunk.

Of course, nobody likes to be booed. Or to be run out of a city in disgrace. (In one of his sadder complaints, Gallo lamented that his parents would now have to come and clean out his Manhattan apartment for him. Hey, Joey, there are people who will do that for you now—but like so many of these man-children orbiting our celebrity circuits, he's still clinging to Mom and Dad.)

But the fact is that Joey doesn't play for good ol' State, and we fans are not his teammates, pulling for him to do well no matter what.  

Ballplayers today are right-wingers almost to a man, products of a no-excuses culture that has little sympathy for failure. Well, fair enough. Except that they seem absolutely mystified when some expresses dissatisfaction with their own performance.

According to baseballreference, Joey Gallo has made nearly $23 million in major-league salary alone in his young life. At 28, he is among the very richest individuals ever to exist. I know the money doesn't make you good, but it should make you understand that today—in a society where people are routinely downsized even though they did their work diligently and well—there is limited sympathy in return.

We—even those of us who are not fans—are now forced to pay extortionate subsidies for our sports teams. And extortionate prices for tickets, concessions, souvenirs, and even television and streaming services. Forgive us, dear Joey, if we expect some kind of entertainment value in return, and are impatient when we don't get it.

But you took the money, and now you need to play the game.