It was something, or a combination of somethings, that came up.
Maybe how Aaron Judge, the only watchable player on the team, would be out indefinitely.
—Plus how Oswald Peraza had mysteriously disappeared from the Railriders' lineup, but the Yankees weren't saying anything about it.
—Plus how Everson Pereira had mysteriously disappeared from the Somerset Patriots' lineup, but the Yankees weren't saying anything about it.
—Plus how the Yankees' entries in the Minor League Futures Extravaganza would be Spencer Jones and Clayton Beeter, two prospects whose relative excellence this season (Jones is hitting all of .268) are due mostly to the fact that they are too old for their respective minor-league levels...
Something just broke. Maybe it was the realization that the Yanks will not be any good, not really, for a long, long time. Maybe it was sheer exhaustion.
Whatever the case, in this season of Steely Dan reminiscence, a random lyric popped unbidden into my head:
I don't care anymore...
I don't mean, "give up," as in lose all hope that they'll win anything (usually, that hope never really existed). Nor do I mean "give up," in the sense that I will actually stop following the team.
I confess, after 57 years of fandom, I'm addicted. And even if I weren't, you gang of lovable rogues, roustabouts, and general mountebanks would keep pulling me back in.
I mean, "give up" in the sense that I have to step back, emotionally, from the now downright neurotic way in which this franchise conducts its business.
I don't care anymore
Why you run around...
Much like the narrator in "Big Black Cow" speaking to his secretive yet transparent girlfriend, running around on him behind his back, I just get exhausted by all the Yankees' shenanigans. They are the actions of a classic narcissist—the classic narcissist who runs the team—thinking that he has discovered any number of great, hidden wisdoms and ways of doing things, and cannot reveal them to those of us who simply wouldn't understand.
Break away
Just when it seems so clear
That it's over now
Drink your big black cow
And get out of here...
Sometimes, I just need to take an emotional step back from looking down into the sandy desolation that is our New York Yankees. 'So, after a scintillating series win against a leading team in the AL, they get an off-day, fly out west...and get beat by one of the worst teams assembled in recent decades. A team whose owner is actively trying to lose...' Okay.
I don't care anymore
And you know the worst part about it? I'm sure I will care again, probably very soon.
People are crazy times are strange
ReplyDeleteI'm locked in tight, I'm out of range
I used to care but things have changed
I love the way Bob Dylan pauses a moment before singing "things have ... changed". This song is outrageously funny. And amazingly applicable to us Yankee fans, and maybe, the whole world right now as well.
If only Yankee management were as good at what they are supposed to do as we are in expressing our unrequited love.
ReplyDeleteThings could be worse, we could be living in 1945 Dresden for example.
I will drown myself tonight, not in a big Black Cow, but in the mysterious, "why am I drinking this" drink-----YooHoo, the drink of Yogi Berra and Sheldon Cooper.
YooHoo--Yogi Berra's favorite drink, as the announcer said over and over back in the 60s.
ReplyDeleteDylan 1, Steely Dan 0. One's a legend, one's an arid non-rock (minus the first LP) overwrought faux jazz soulless ego project.
Hey, guess what famous band I really, really don't like at all, whatsoever?
What, what?
ReplyDeleteDylan, overall? Of course! DECADES of incredible music and lyrics, in all sorts of different styles. I wish he'd quit advertising products, and I don't think we should give Nobel Prizes in literature to song writers, BUT...an all-time great, no question.
But Steely Dan had a bunch of terrific songs—Bad Sneakers, I'm Never Goin' Back to My Old School, Do It Again, Reelin' In the Years, Peg, Big Black Cow, Deacon Blues, Doctor Wu, Katy Lied, Ricky Don't Lose That Number, etc.—that suit a lot of moods.
Particularly while contemplating the future of the Yankees.
So which band do you hate even more, JM?
Though I like both, Dylan is a legend at the very top of the rock pantheon. Steely Dan is a great 70’s band, more a duo as time went on quirky but with a fantastic pop sensibility on their best stuff, which Hoss neatly detailed above.
ReplyDeleteThen there's this bit of lovely news, courtesy of The New York Times:
ReplyDelete"With Aaron Judge injured and Gerrit Cole not guaranteed to pitch, the Yankees could be shut out of the All-Star Game box score for only the third time in the event’s history."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/sports/baseball/gerrit-cole-yankees-all-star.html
Hoss - You captured my feelings towards this team exactly. They aren't even worth making fun of.
ReplyDeleteAs to Steely Dan v. Dylan I think bornto nailed it. I'd like to add that I don't hum a lot of Dylan.
Then again, William Shatner never felt compelled to cover a Steely Dan song.
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ReplyDeleteActually he could probably ace Ricky Don't Lose That Number.
ReplyDeleteRICKY! Don't... losethat number.
Itttt's the ONLY one you wan't.
You... mightuseitifyoufeelbetter.
When youuuu ... get home!
:)
ReplyDeleteVery funny, Doug! I heard those Shatner covers, too. Man!
So we're pretty much agreed? Steely Dan great, Dylan greater? But JM, what band do you hate even more? Gotta hear it!
Doug, LMAO, I can almost visualize it!
ReplyDeleteQuestion: What did one Deadhead say to the other after they ran out of pot at a Grateful Dead concert?
ReplyDeleteAnswer: "Hey this band sucks!"
One more bad joke...
ReplyDeleteQuestion: What do you call a dog with wings?
Answer: " Linda McCartney".
I'm a fan of both, but Dylan and the Dead is some of the worst singing this side of Yoko.
ReplyDeleteAnd Steely Dan was not bad. Rick Derringer, Skunk Baxter and Larry Carlton on lead guitar. Only missing Ry Cooder.
Carl, Linda Eastman did more to break up the Beatles than Yoko Ono. Which says a *lot*.
ReplyDeleteLinda Eastman, God what an awful voice! But I'd listen to her all day v a single Oko "song".
ReplyDeleteSteely Dan, GREAT BAND!