Up in the Bronx, we can already hear the rumblings of the Yankees' latest disinformation campaign, this one carefully calculated to shift the blame should Aaron Judge walk.
As our Peerless Leader alerted us, Andy Martino ran a piece on SNY the other day, headlined: "Will the Yankees' external toxicity problem cost them Aaron Judge, other free agents? More than one Yankee player has told his agent this week that playing at the Stadium was an unusually brutal experience."
Hmm, "more than one," you say? Meaning, uh, two?
Amongst Martino's other, conveniently anonymous sources, was "One longtime exec" who texted him that he was especially taken aback by:
"the irrational opinions on Cashman and Boone. I get that it's World Series or bust but damn they're spoiled."
Uh-huh. I wonder who that "longtime exec" could be. I'm guessing it's Thing One or Thing Two.
Unless, of course, it's the Cat in the Hat himself.
Martino goes on to note that "even before the Astros swept the Yankees in the ALCS last weekend, the clubhouse and the front office had quietly noticed that the external energy surrounding the team felt as angry as it has been in ages."
He added that "If you're Aaron Judge, booed in the playoffs days after setting an American League home run record, why wouldn't you prefer sunny Los Angeles or familiar San Francisco?
"And if you're a free agent talking to your friends already on the team, why would you subject yourself to the experiences they describe?"
You see, good people?
If Aaron Judge should walk—AND if the Yankees should fail to sign any future free agent, ever...well, it's OUR fault, NOT theirs. Is that foresight, or what?
I shouted out who killed the Kennedys, when after all it was...YOU, not me!
You gotta hand it to the Yanks' front office. They are absolutely BRILLIANT at buck-passing and blame-shifting, if nothing else.
And as if weasel words such as "external toxicity" were not bad enough, reporter Martino—
Wait. Full stop. Titles such as "reporter," "journalist," or "writer" have much too honorable a pedigree to apply to someone like Martino, who moonlights as a corporate flak for the Mets' own network, and MLB itself. We need something more appropriate. Maybe "lickspittle." Yeah, I think I'll go with "lickspittle."
—Lickspittle Martino went on to disavow that any of this was coming from him:
"First, this is not a criticism of folks who feel angry and disappointed that they don't get to cheer for their team in the World Series. It's just an objective truth that the team is taken aback by the level of negativity hitting them after a division title and a 99-win season. Those feelings could have real consequences for the roster."
Like what?
"Even a difficult person and underperformer like Josh Donaldson was turned into a somewhat sympathetic figure internally [corporate-speak much, Andy?] by the force of the jeering."
oh no. We could lose Josh Donaldson!
Even worse, we could lose, well, gulp:
"The gap between industry [how are you not ALREADY in p.r. full-time, Andy?] and fan perceptions of Cashman and Boone is particularly striking. Rivals consider Cashman one of the greatest executives in sports, and say that Boone will immediately become a coveted free agent if the Yankees fire him. Other GMs and agents are genuinely baffled by the fan hatred toward those two."
Right. It couldn't possibly be that other GMs—unlike Cashman himself—DON'T like to reveal when they have a real patsy in place.
Martino claims he learned all this "after embedding with the team through a difficult month."
Yeah, he actually wrote "embedding." As if he were in Fallujah with the Old Breed, as opposed to traveling with the team, staying in nice hotels, sitting in the press box, and talking with players from time to time in the clubhouse.
But I digress.
To start with, let's sift the obvious lies here. Free agents don't want to come to New York? Funny, they seem to show up here as faithfully as the swallows return to Capistrano. Witness Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. I guess Hal must have warned them about the booing.
The players found the last week at the Stadium "an unusually brutal experience"? Mr. Martino ought to try embedding with the average fan for a month, sitting out in the cold through hours-long rainouts—or hours-long strikeout fests.
And just who were those fans, during the playoffs? Well, a disproportionate number of them were not from the Yankees' main fan base at all, obviously, but the sorts of filthy rich folks who are pretty much the only people who can afford playoff tickets these days.
Of course, the entire thrust of the Yankees organization for decades now has been, in one way or another, to price out the ordinary fan, and bring in richer and richer ones. Hence, Hal rewarding enormous taxpayer subsidies by lopping thousands of seats out of his Second Gift Stadium, and replacing them with luxury boxes.
So what we actually have here is rich people booing other rich people for not performing well enough. Does that say America today, or what?
And Hal Steinbrenner doesn't like the attitude of the fans he labored so tirelessly to bring in? That's rich.
It's a longstanding belief of local sportswriters that New York fans are so tough on their own players. I don't know how true that is. I seem to recall an awful lot of football fans, in an awful lot of cities, wearing bags over their heads.
And a few weeks from now, with the World Cup, we're going to witness millions of fans, from all over the world, who routinely boo, whistle, snap their fingers, and otherwise show their extreme displeasure. Not only if their team isn't winning, but if the style of play has become less than enchanting (and these days, baseball is nearly as soporific as soccer).
In the real world, people who don't do their work well—or even people who do their work great—routinely have their pay and hours cut, are yelled and screamed at by their bosses, or are fired. Ballplayers endure absolutely nothing like that, even if they're awful, too hurt to work, or just don't feel like really putting in the effort.
People boo them when they stink? Gee that's terrible.
It's probably true that baseball fans in most cities today don't boo as much as they do in New York. They show their displeasure in other ways: by staying home, and changing the channel. Attendance and viewership is way down all over baseball. Would the Yankees prefer THAT means of protesting?
Ol' Lickspittle concludes by telling us who's REALLY behind our bad attitudes:
"The Yankees created this problem long ago. George Steinbrenner's oft-repeated theme, later adopted by Derek Jeter and others, that a season is a failure if it doesn't end in a championship has come to define the Yankee brand."
That's right! Damn you, Derek Jeter, and your unceasing commitment to excellence! You're making Josh Donaldson uncomfortable!
