Invisible men play invisible game.

 

How appropriate that last night, a Yankees team that once again didn't bother to show up was playing on a television channel no one could find.

After a string of games that were at least exciting (if not all that well-played), your New York Yankees seem to have hit the snooze button again. 

In what really matters to the front office, the team has now gone from:

—Playing free games on local television channels to

—Playing pay-per-view games on cable channels to

—Playing pay-per-view games on its own channel to

—Playing pay-per-view games on 3 or 4 or 5 channels, all of which seem to require their own subscription.

This move goes hand-in-hand with the general deterioration of YES, which once used to delight us with "Yankeeographies" (however poorly made) of beloved stars and "Yankee Classics" games, going back as far as Game 7 of the 1952 World Series. You could actually turn on your TV and watch a 20-year-old Mickey Mantle hit a game-winning homer out of Ebbets Field.

Such items have become steadily more and more rare on YES, where instead we're now force-fed a steady diet of English soccer games, WNBA basketball, exercise shows, and worse.

This is, I suppose, in keeping with the latest mode of American capitalism, which has morphed from "The customer is always right," to "The customer had better sit down and buy whatever the hell we choose to sell him."

Forget the fact that you're a Yankees fans who wants to see Yankee baseball. YES has determined that there are many other products that you can be sold, whether you like it or not. 

Meanwhile, profits are maximized by having the Yankees jump from station to station and starting time to starting time like so many Big Bang Theory reruns. First pitch at 11:30 in the morning? Sure, why not? I'm certain they once used to start games at that time...maybe in the 1860s. 

This is a business model that—as the great Elvis Costello sang—one day is gonna end sooner than greater.

It was just as well for Steinbrenner, Inc., that as few people as possible could watch the Yankees last night. As it was, over 46,000 individuals senseless enough to show up in person were treated to what was, shall we say, a less-than-good-faith effort, against the struggling Friars of San Diego.

After being thoroughly manhandled by the great Kyle "Call Me Bob" Gibson the night before, the Yanks were shut down just as easily by Joe Musgrove, another journeyman who came into the game with an eight-year, lifetime record that was 5 games under .500—and a 2023 campaign in which he was 1-2 with a 6.75 ERA.

No problem! Musgrove was all but unhittable against a Yankees team now being routinely exposed for the claptrap, jerry-rigged contraption it is. 

Let's face it: the kids are not all right, their game plummeting rapidly back toward Scranton. D.J. LeMahieu: injured or old? Or both? 

Meanwhile, the air seems to be leaving the Harrison Bader Experience. There was some solid statistical evidence to hope that the Westchester Whammer was previously a prisoner of Busch Stadium III, but of late our hometown hero seems to be reverting to mean. 

After a dynamic, .440 start to open his (much-delayed) season, Bader is down to .250. He is 5 for his last 30, with just 3 walks and 12 strikeouts on the season. In his last 15 games, he's scored 4 runs and driven in all of 6. 

As for our pitching staff, well, I think the best that can be said of them is, their name is Legion.

The truth is that no one—no one—in this entire Yankees organization is doing what they can to maximize the team's chances of winning.

We have:

—A manager who will not so much as bunt a .200 hitter in a 1-0 game in the 7th inning, so afraid is he of stepping outside of the analytical box he has been ordered into.

—A general manager who continues to believe, after 25 years of failure, that his sheer genius at picking up other team's scraps will make up for his utter inability to build a first-class farm system.

—An owner who is apparently most interested in finding another patsy to air his crumbling team. Or the teams of the English Premier Division.

—Perhaps worst of all, a team on the field that is not all that interested in playing hard. As Zach A.'s helpful stats revealed, the Yanks are no longer a team of grinders. Faced with a pitcher they can't solve, they're no longer hanging in there, working the count until they wear him down and get into the pen.

They are, instead, a bunch of well-mannered young men who look as though they would just as soon be elsewhere. So would we—not that we get much choice in the matter.