All yesterday, one divine revelation kept recurring.
Great day for a ballgame! Let's play four!
It was a perfect autumn day. Sunny, 68, warm breeze. They could have played at lunch, during happy hour or under the lights. Floridians call it "Chamber of Commerce weather." Ideal. Today would be for travel, as the teams reset themselves.
A 6-year-old would get it. You play two in NYC, rest a day, then play two in the Mayfly Capital of Ohio. If there's a Game 5, you rush back to Gotham. A perfect playoff schedule.
So, what are we now facing? After nearly a week of rest, the Yankees face a dead zone that - if the weather grunts are right - will last into Friday.
Here's today's hourly forecast for NYC. (Read under an umbrella.)
Rain. All day. Rain. All night. Rain. So... the options?
1. The Bud Selig Plan. Play the game, damn the conditions. Ignore the potential for tweaks and sprains, for sloshes and mudslides. Disregard the welfare of fans who spend hundreds of dollars - in some cases, thousands - to sit through a carwash. Just shut up and play. The TV ratings won't suffer - wait - actually, they might improve, as viewers nationwide recognize this ongoing train wreck.
2. The Elon Musk Plan. Start the game, get everything going, then call it off. (Or maybe wait four hours and restart at midnight.) This would successfully squander outings by two starting pitchers - and every Yankee fan in captivity believes that losing Nestor Cortez will implicitly help Cleveland.
3. The NASA Plan. Just read the fucking forecast and call the game - today - before people board the subways. Play it Friday. (Forecast: Clear and cold, mid-50s.) The teams rest their starters. Then, the teams play four straight games, no travel day off. (Imagine this if the Yankees were playing Seattle.)
Again, this favors Cleveland. It means the Yanks lose a potential Game 5 start from Nestor, who would pitch on two days' rest. That kills Jameson Tailion working out of the pen; he must be held in reserve as a Game 5 starter.
Any way you look at it, the Yankees got screwed.
Of course, a rainout tonight will ricochet through the playoffs. If this series goes five games, the winner could lose a day of rest, as it prepares for (probably) Houston. And why? (Insert laugh track.)
Same old story: MLB wanted to gouge on the TV rights, so they staggered Day 2 between the AL and NL, seeking to avoid competing with football. They made the AL wait a day and miss - well - a perfect day for a ballgame. And I just felt a drop.
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14 comments:
Greed kills.
On the other hand, I've seen days where the forecast was dismal and the feared horrors never happened. Ya never know.
The worst thing that could happen is that the Yankee genius weather service (who are they, anyway?) does what they often do: decide the game can't be played or must be started two hours late, followed by a nice evening for baseball.
Nice article on Bader in the NY Post.
No link to follow as you’re on your own to find it….
(hahaha - just kidding)
https://nypost.com/2022/10/12/harrison-baders-yankees-postseason-includes-his-family/
MLB - not just Hal, but MLB - no longer cares about the game. You all know this. When I saw the post season schedule, I started to scratch my head and make phone calls. It didn't make sense. Except, of course, that it MUST make sense, just not for US. It makes sense for the media algorithms - as my friend Tommy Shirts pointed out - we cannot compete with football anymore. So factor that in, as well. Let me put it this way: THEY HAVE THEIR REASONS. It's just that their reasons, don't align with our interest.
Their reasons are easy enough to understand, Bitty: $$$.
Carlos Correa is opting out of his contract with the Twins, and will enter free agency.
Move IKF to third, where he belongs. Get rid of the goofball at third. What an infield that would be.
Yeah, yeah, I know...
I don't really give a crap anymore. Tuesday night I listened to Judge's first inning at bat, then switched off and watched two new series: "The Winchesters" and "Professionals". The latter new show was definitely more captivating than any MLB game. Between the greed and stupidity of MLB and the greed and stupidity of Yankee management, they've lost me as a devoted fan. I don't hang on every game like I did from 1981 through 2009. Watching highlights or checking in on IIH is enough.
BaBoone hitting Judge leadoff does make it real quick, I'll give him that!
Yeah, Judge hitting first is absurd—and all the more absurd as we go into the playoffs, and are not just chasing a record.
The WORST case scenario, I think, would be starting Nestor and losing him after two innings. That must be avoided at all costs. If it looks bad at game time, Boone has GOT to do something like put German or another "opener" out there.
Will he do this?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
What I EXPECT is more fan torture. A 2-3 hour delay, followed by a cancellation.
But that's the ideal scenario for MLB and HAL: an extra, free evening of rat-dog and gear sales. Yippee!
Funny, was at a friend's event last night, filled with fellow Yankees fans. To a man (and woman), their basic take was, 'Hey, thank goodness, Judge did it! That was great!'
And...they have absolutely no hope of winning it all. Their feeling—understandable—is that we have no chance to win anything more, and the season is basically over.
Never seen that sort of fatalism among Yankees fans before.
They cancelled for tonight. Watch. I bet it will be very playable, and we'll be screwed for the rest of the series.
I was watching some video of the 2009 ALCS this morning.
In Game 2 of the series, with the Yankees trailing 3-2 in the 11th inning, A-Rod steps to the plate against Brian Fuentes and smacks the ball the other way for the game-tying home run.
At this point of his career, Alex is still labelled with that playoff choker moniker since he'd been a full-time player for 13 years and hadn't had much October success. (I wonder if Mike Trout will soon start receiving criticism for his lack of a title as he enters his 13th season, but I digress.)
The ball sails into right field and into the first row.
Bobby Abreu gives it a fairly spirited effort at the wall, but he comes up short. The ball is dropped by the fan who caught it and falls back into the field of play. Abreu picks it up and throws it in to Maicer Izturis.
A-Rod is paying attention the entire time. He gets to second base with his eyes glues to the infield umpire waiting for the signal. He even stops for a moment at second base. The umpire circles his fingers to signal "home run," and A-Rod claps his hands together and continues to run the bases.
Here's a guy who had all the pressure of the world on him in that series. The playoff choker label. The highest-paid ballplayer at that time. The heart of the Yankee lineup. And instead of pimping the game-tying home run that barely cleared the wall, he keeps his eyes on the play all the way. He's already at second base when the Angels get the ball back to the infield, and he holds up just in case that ball hit the top of the wall instead of going over.
There are plenty of things to (rightfully) criticize A-Rod for but I always loved his baserunning. For a guy who hit almost 700 home runs, his baserunning was where his baseball IQ really showed. He was a very successful base stealer, seemingly always advanced two bases on a single when possible, and very rarely made stupid outs on the bases.
I guess what I'm saying in short is: fuck Josh Donaldson.
YES! Game will be tomorrow at 1.
I hear ya, JM, but I think the much bigger fear is that we get shut down after two innings. At least now we will get Nestor as far as he can go.
If they can cancel the game with so much time to go, they can also announce that the start time I moved up to 6 or 6:30 to avoid rain later in the evening.
Lost cause. I'll take an afternoon game. We play better during the day, or at least we used to. Of course, it might rain tomorrow.
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