The fact is, if you disappear Aaron Judge from the lineup - (replacing him with a tire iron from Scranton) - the mighty Death Barge becomes a small, leaky sunfish, seeking to contend through September for the final wild card slot. And Boston is once again clogging toward a July 31 clearance sale - (literally, including Chris Sale) - along with anybody else who might swap out for hope in 2024.
Last night was important only to those of us who remember Pedro, Bucky, the Gerbil and maybe Chicken Stanley. As rivalry villains, neither Connor Wong nor Kyle Higashioka are gonna cut it.
Every year, Akron and Kent State suit up to battle for the coveted Wagon Wheel trophy, formerly the Blue and Gold Wagon Wheel trophy, signifying dominance of these two gallant adversaries, located about 10 miles from each other. The winner takes home the Wagon Wheel! Pretty exciting, huh?
I suggest the Yankees/Redsocks create a cup, or an obelisk, or an old, mildewed set of cleats, which they can annually fight to the death over. Wait - better: Maybe Jason Giambi can donate his old Golden Thong, which the Yankees used to break out of slumps.
Imagine the excitement when, after a thrilling walk-off victory, ensuring the Yankees have taken the seasonal rivalry, Giancarlo Stanton straps on the Golden Thong and runs the bases! That would draw some eyeballs to Fox.
Oh, well...
Don't worry, our Ace will come through with a big performance against a last place team.
ReplyDeleteOh, that was last night?
Never mind.
At least the players in the Kent St. v. Akron care about their fans.
Interesting tidbit in NJ.com by a Yankee shill . He suggests that we move Torres to LF to keep his bat in the order and still keep Donaldson and DJ playing every day. Boone was his typical mealy mouth in response.
How about trading the bastard, bringing up Peraza and just rotate them until either Donaldson and /or DJ get hurt again.
Luckily we have so much flex with our DH, cuz you know in several weeks Stanton will be able to play once a week in the OF, unless he gets hurt again.
I’d say Rizzo picked the wrongweek to stop hitting
ReplyDeleteJackie D - 5 HR 6 RBIs. That’s the Yankees offense in a nutshell
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteThe Yankees have played 65 games. Judge has been in 49.
There were some posters here (I was NOT among them) who warned, when they were about to sign him to the huge contract, that his health (ability to show up for games) was NOT reliable.
I don't remember who those IIH geniuses were.
BUT: It is just possible that they were right. This team would be worse than they are now without the guy. He plays hard in the field. I like him.
But how much better are they with a guy who is great but shows up for only 75% of the games?
Joe, considering how the rest of the team is going, I'd say we're quite a bit better with Judge. Even 75% of the time, or even 50%.
ReplyDeleteWith this team, having him in once a week is an improvement over not having him at all.
@ AA...saw your post from last night. I'm not quite sure what you meant about a company from the 80's or 90's.
ReplyDeleteYou can contact me at carw9@aol.com. I know, with an AOL email address, I must be up there in age!
Plus, someone has to break the news to the Yankees Front Office, that all 10 position players in last night's FCL game were Spanish, as were almost all of the P.
ReplyDeleteIn today's game, after 2+ innings all 9 position players are Spanish. The P is a White dude.
Also, the Tampa team just oozes with Spanish.
Obviously, the perpetually racist Yankees have been duped !!
I think that people here got on Sanchez cuz he was Spanish.
There could be no other possible reason.
Yeah, I know that this is obnoxious. But its ok cuz It's just the way I was born.
I think that July is National Obnoxious Month, so I am just starting the celebration early.
[I'm not a robot.]
Ahhh, yes...AOL is from the '80s and '90s!
ReplyDelete@ Arch....I realize that your post was dripping with sarcasm. Yes, the front-office Yankees of the '50s into the '60s were almost certainly racist. I have no proof that they are today either overtly or subconsciously. But intuitively, George Steinbrenner seemed to be a bigoted asshole and stuck in an era where racial stereotypes died hard. And since Hal is George's son, who knows? As they say, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."
ReplyDeleteWell, Carl, you know what they say. The apple rots from the head down.
ReplyDeleteJM, LOL!
ReplyDeleteAOK KARL
ReplyDeleteAll of you guys are correct and I recognize history, but I won't wallow in guilt for things that I did not do to try and show how morally chaste I am.
ReplyDeletePerhaps Hal is not a racist. Perhaps he is just an elite asshole.
There is a difference.
I worked my way through school working summers in blacktop and landscaping in the 70s.
I worked with more black and Spanish people than most people here.
Certainly by percentage.
Luckily I learned that you need to judge each individual for their own worth.
Im part African per my genealogy and get very dark in the summer. Probably Tunisian.
People at places that I worked thought that I was Spanish like my co-workers.
Some treated me very different . On more than one occasion I was complemented on my command of English.
I would tell them that English came in handy at college/law school and watch them dither away.
My point is, we have come a very long way since the 60s.
If you don't see that it's because you chose not to.
Grievance is a cottage industry. Look at what it got Sharpton and the founders of BLM.
How much do they actually give back to their "community."
To beat up the Yankees because of what our fathers or grandfathers did is silly.
I learned in criminal law, some people are really good people and some are just assholes.
Don't presume one or the other based upon pigment.
Now lets hope that our FCL and DSL kids play well enough to be Yankees some day and that us old farts live long enough to see them play.
Can't we all agree to disagree and go on collectively hating on Cashman, Hal and Boonie and the horses that they rode in on?
ReplyDeleteBut . . . . I don't hate horses . . . .
ReplyDeleteWell teams get beat up, go into the tank, heal, make a few lucky trades, go on a tear,and sometimes even pull in a pennant. A few years later,when a book or five is written it seemed so inevitable. Or so unlikely. Logically this team seems destined to end up in the Hoffa Landfill. But they could get healthy, a dead cat bounce back season from a player or two, and a lucky trade from The Brain... It happens. Maybe The Future's Highlight Reel has Florial hitting homers and making Willie Mays' catches in slo-mo. The Season just might be longer than we envision in our philosophies😮
ReplyDeleteI see, Obi Wan.
ReplyDeleteArchangel -- You seem seriously confused about some things--just because you consider yourself not to be a racist, it does not logically follow that other people--in this case, Yankee management--cannot be racist; this is logic fractured into fragments so fine that they cannot be put back together again.
ReplyDeleteIn just the past two years, Judge was silenced when he attempted to speak out about racism; Volpe was awarded the most important starting position on the team ahead of the more talented and accomplished Peraza; they have never given a meaningful trial to a coal-black, promising young outfielder whom Judge has characterized as among the most "gifted" of Yankee prospects; the team continues to enforce grooming and haircut rules that were implemented initially to ward off a proliferation of "Afros" when that hairstyle was fashionable among African Americans; Steinbrenner was reared in a right-wing militarist tradition that precisely overlaps with that of his long-time bosom buddy Donald Trump; that toxic tradition was passed on to his cognitively challenged son Hal.
The Yankees are happy to recruit and play lots of Latinos and a few blacks in the minors--the lower the level, the more you will find--and some with the Big Club, although biracials and light-skinned candidates are preferred. When the chips are down, and management sees an opening, the less-qualified Volpes are ushered ahead of the more-qualified Perazas--in this case with disastrous results. And there is no valid reason--exhausted options included--that whites like Bauers and McKinney are getting more of a shot than Florial ever did, even though both of them are proven repeat failures at the MLB level and Florial has been languishing in AAA as the years pass, killing it this season and getting nowhere.
Angry 😠 Young Woman 🚺, said hair policy had more, if not entirely to do with hippies and anti-war radicalism than Afro-American hair styles. Aren't you always preaching that the team rarely would have Players-who-were-Dark during George's Jim Crow era reign? 😷
ReplyDeleteThrough a lense (too) Darkly
P.S., maybe you should re-read your own thoughts more carefully before talking about racism. Shades of Color, INDEED!
ReplyDeleteArchangel, yeah, you sound confused 😕. Maybe you would benefit from an AWARENESS SEMINAR 🙏
ReplyDeleteSome catch by Bauers. McKinney had one, too.
ReplyDeleteThere's a game thread
ReplyDelete@ Arch....no one denies many people have evolved in their attitude regarding bias toward others that are not the same as they are over the past half century. Racism is often a learned response, passed down in families. It often recedes when people of all colors and nationalities live and work together.
ReplyDeleteThat said, while things might be better in our country, bigotry is still alive and well. The fact that Obama was elected and re-elected President not withstanding.
Oh, and should you want a perfect example of grievance, look no further than Donald J. Trump, a man that has made a career of telling the world just how unfairly he's been treated. We all should be treated as poorly as the Nectarine Nero.
@ EDB...While the Steinbrenner family has been friends with Trump, George was suspended from baseball because he made illegal contributions to his great pal Tricky Dick Nixon. "Birds of a feather..."as the old adage goes.
ReplyDeleteFlorial remains in AAA because he treads the terrible needle of being extremely K prone, is out of options [so if he is brought up and then returned when Bader and/or Judge a non-conceding cheap team like KC or Oakland would snatch him based upon 6 weeks in AAA achievements]and their desire to being able to trade him later. McKinney is
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's because he is so dark.
For example, No-Neck Williams was a fan favorite and he was extremely dark.
Trump has nothing to do with this. People's obsession with Trump on both sides continues to astound me.
Most people here read about race.
I lived it through my work.
Most of my victims while a prosecutor were black. I dealt with the families . My colleagues on the bench and as a prosecutor and defense attorney were colorblind as the results showed.
I represented almost entirely POC in private practice because I accepted Conflict Cases from PD. I tried 4 murder cases as defense attorney . All were POC who allegedly killed other POC. Two were acquitted and the others got Man 1 and Man 2. All were tried by a jury of predominantly non-POC.
None of the clients asked to have me removed because I was White. They were happy that I was an ex-ADA who knew the system.
Yes, some of the older Judges back in the early 80s were throwback, but they retired and were replaced by better ones.
By the time I retired from an Upstate county the Bench we were on was over 50% minority between Black/Spanish and women.
I guess that I am just a half-full guy because of everything I have seen through my life since my Dad almost lost his business in the mid-60s riots to the present. We have come a long long way and I saw it. I went through about 2 waves of 'tough on crime" reactions to drugs and homicides and 2 retrenching to more counseling, etc.
Constantly hammering present day people with the sins of their ancestors only breeds animosity and will be counter-productive.
I lived this every day. People had evolved to the better in these areas from the first time I walked through the DA's door in the Courthouse in 1979 until I walked out of the same building on my last day in Dec. 2018.
However, I am done talking about this in a sports blog. Believe what you want to believe.