In essence, we did nothing.
Sweet and wonderful nothing.
Tasked with choosing the horrible present or the frightening future, Brian "Cooperstown" Cashman settled on NEITHER.
And so here we are - Aug. 2, and waiting for football to begin.
Spoiler Alert: The Yankees won't win anything this year. Or next. It's probably too soon to predict 2025, but if we're lucky, the ice caps will have melted, and we'll be sailing the Lake of the Adirondacks. There is no reason to be hopeful about the Yankees, not under the current regime. The worst part? We all know it.
Yesterday, the Mets converted their massive disappointments - Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander - into future potential impact players. You could say they were fools for thinking two coots could lead their team in 2023, but at least they are playing a strategy for the future.
The Death Barge, on the other hand, simply lashed itself more tightly to its drones - Giancarlo, Rodon, Sevy, et al - and did nothing. There is no plan. There is no solution. And let's be honest: Nothing is an improvement over past Aug. 1 debacles, when we dealt our future - currently our present - for the likes of Joey Gallo and Frankie Montas.
So... it's over, eh? And no, I don't just mean the 2023 season.
What's over is the Yankee brand name, the former "mystique" that came with shaving your beard and suiting up in New York. It took him 15 years, but Hal Steinbrenner finally blew to atomic smithereens his father's most cherished legacy, the Yankee tradition. And what does he have? A new boat? Another ranch in Montana? Infinity stones? The Dial of Destiny? Whatever...
The Mets own NYC, and their fans can hope for better times. The Yankees are lost in the ocean, not even knowing which direction to swim.
Today, let us celebrate the Four Yankees of the Apocalypse: McKinney, Bauer, Cordero and Calhoun. Of course, this Malaise is not their fault. Each represents one of Cashman's great parlor game skills - finding middling spare parts in the recycling bins of Triple A. One after another, they arrive, they hit for two weeks, they start to slump, and then they settle into their past outputs. Over the long haul, none of them matter. But they will be remembered as linchpins of the 2023 Yankees: Another team to be remembered for its failures, which were apparent last spring to everyone in the world except the Yankee front office.
So... our players jog out grounders. They strike out 18 times in a game. They turn middling starters into Koufax and Drysdale. The franchise could destroy Aaron Judge's foot by pushing him to play injured. But who cares? It might have derailed Anthony Volpe's career development by pushing him too hard, too soon. But who cares? There is no plan. There is only tonight's game, which the Yankees will lose, and their unfathomable hubris, which assures them that - no matter what the record says - they are smarter than everyone else.
Yeah, it's over. So who are the Jersey Giants playing first?
Trapped in an mind-numbing morass of mediocrity and muddling.
ReplyDeleteGreat article from Joel Sherman today. The Ca$hman toadies are jumping ship.
ReplyDeleteAlso rough night for Ed Whitson, oh I mean Carlos Rondon, last night.
Here's another guy that Ca$h will have to spend $50-100m to get rid of next year.
I had to laugh when I read that the asking price for Torres and Holmes were exorbitant. Only idiots spend multiple prospects for marginal players at the deadline.
I propose that we all dress up like the Grim Realer for the Event with UNWAVERING across the length of both sides of our scythes.
ReplyDelete(This is both an inspired character choice whilst also being wonderfully practical because we can all wear multiple, mini, portable, battery-powered fans underneath our grim black gowns to keep us cool if it’s hot {and we all know it’s gunna be a “Pissah of a blistah”out there } ).
It's beginning...
ReplyDeleteJoel Sherman rips the crap out of Cashman in the NY Post. As does the Atlantic and Sports Illustrated. That's all I've read so far.
The fire Cashman chants at the stadium have begun...
When we are there I suggest we go with an orchestrated "Fire Cashman" (beat) "Fire Boone" until our collective lungs give out.
ReplyDeleteOld Father Harold
Went to the cupboard,
To give poor Brian a bone:
When he came there,
The cupboard was bare,
And so poor Brian had none.
Harold made a curtsy,
Brian made a bow;
Harold said, Your servant;
Brian said, Bow-wow.
This wonderful dog
Was Harold’s delight,
He could read, he could dance, He could sing, he could write;
He gave him rich dainties
Whenever he fed,
And erected a plaque in Monument Park
When he was dead.
Well, at least Hal will always have MilanAC.
ReplyDeleteYes, it’s time for the fans at the Stadium to make their displeasure known. Dont go to games, stop watching, don’t buy the merch…and if you must go, boo! Boo every time Stanton trots to First, every lousy Rizzo swing, and especially every time the execrable boone shows his ugly, jug-eared visage. Should cashman ever appear go apoplectic with righteous rage that this incompetent has been permitted to destroy the heart of our childhoods and younger years and be rewarded for it.
ReplyDeleteDo it!
Ca$hman convinced Hal that we still have a chance for the Wild Card being 3.5 games out of the last spot. They sure played like they still have a chance last night. And to hear Jack Curry tout the corporate line that getting Cortes and Loáisiga back to save the day will get us in just makes me want to take an ice pick and shove it in my ear canals...
ReplyDeleteSo ends the most overinflated season in NYC baseball since 1973. It seems incredible, now, that people who are supposed to know better thought there actually might be a subway series.
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, I keep thinking of the old Mark Twain quote: "A scalded cat won't jump on a hot stove again. But it won't jump on a cold stove, either."
Having finally overcome his usual paralysis last year at the trade deadline, Cashman promptly torpedoed the team. This year, he decided to do nothing. This was indeed an improvement. But it still wasn't enough.
What a shit show, if you'll pardon my French. Stanton and Rizzo already done at 33. Carlos Rodon looking like the most psychotically bad acquisition since Pavano and Ellsbury...
Cashman is, I think, a dead man walking. But it will still take years to get rid of him.
I'm going off to a Trappist monastery for a few days to contemplate the whole situation (really, I'm going up to my in-laws in New England). But this team is done for the foreseeable future.
And great poem, Dick Allen!
ReplyDeleteI think I've finally had it.
ReplyDeleteCashman has to go of course, and the only people who don't realize that are casual fans with no stake in their fandom, and complete morons. Hal is one of those, maybe both, and so Cashman's not going anywhere. And I've had it.
The stubborn refusal to bring up Florial, maybe Pereira, definitely Peraza, is not only mind-boggling it's infuriating. This bald little biscuit who inexplicably thinks he's outsmarting all of baseball, who thinks he's the cat's ass while the rest of the baseball world dismisses him as the out-of-touch clown he is has pissed me off for the last time. I've had it.
There's no hope for this season and no hope going forward either; 2024 will be a run-back of 2023, which is just a run-back of 2022, with the only things changing being the ages of the declining formerly good players and the cast of misfits surrounding them. I have to be able to see some sort of light in this tunnel to stay interested in the Yankees but there's no light. There's a shit sandwich and then another shit sandwich and on and on as long as Cashman is here. I've had it.
So I'm checking out, rescinding my fandom. I feel sorry for Judge for trusting Hal just like I felt sorry for my old friend Randy who married a serial cheater and had a few kids with her, tying him to the bumper of that truck for the next 18 years. Poor guy, but at the same time fuck him - we all knew. I hope Cole opts out. I've come to a level of respect for him, seems like a genuinely good teammate, a guy the Astros would love to have back. Go, get out while you can. I'm sick of Torres, tired of LeMahieu's stoicism shtick. Stanton couldn't run to the kitchen for another beer, Volpe's just a new deck chair. The team stinks. They stink now and they'll stink harder next year.
I'm fucking done, lost interest, don't care anymore. Fuck Cashman and fuck Hal for keeping that little weasel in our henhouse. Fuckers.
I'm not angry anymore, but I really am invested in this team collapsing into 1966 form.
ReplyDeleteWe're only three games over .500 now, and pulling away from the Red Sox to go after the cellar title.
I know we can do it. These guys really suck, I have complete faith in them.
Currently tied for 13th in next years draft according to Tankathon.
ReplyDeleteC'mon boys you can suck into the top 10!!
AA, That is a helluva great idea!
ReplyDeleteMildred, so how do you really feel about the Yankees?
WOW, what a shit show this has turned into. What did I predict, something like 96 wins this year? I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.
What we feared for a long time has now finally happened. The wheels have finally come off. All four wheels. The transmission is shot. The muffler just fell off. The engine just blew up. It's looking even worse than that squad car that Jackie Gleason ended up driving in "Smokey and the Bandit". I was wrong. I thought it was going to happen last year. It did not. It happened this year. I suppose it's hard to guess the exact year. I made no claims to being a descendent of Nostradamus. Although I did hear once that Nostradamus was a Yankee fan.
I think it’s permissible for everyone here to take a victory lap. We have been proven right, totally prescient in our evaluations of this franchise, and the how’s and why’s as to how it came to this.
ReplyDeleteGod knows it’s the only victory lap we’ll be seeing ‘round here…
There is one way out of this mess. If HAL will not fire Cashman, at least turn him into a puppet GM. Bring someone in who knows what he's doing make all the player personnel decisions, the free agent contracts, the drafting, the hiring of scouts, the hiring of coaches, the hiring of a new manager. Cashman can just balance the checkbook. That is his name, right? Cash-Man. He should be able to work the calculator, add and subtract.
ReplyDeleteDoing nothing was not a great idea. At the least, they should've traded Torres & Bader. Like the Mets, at least get a few prospects.
If you're going to tank, do it the right way and get in the top five for the draft.
@ borntorun999, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, MY FRIEND. AND WE'LL KEEP ON FIGHTING TO THE END. WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS, NO TIME FOR LOSERS CUZ WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS!
ReplyDeleteheh-heh, Yes Hammer!
ReplyDeleteHammer - "Although I did hear once that Nostradamus was a Yankee fan."
ReplyDeleteWell he did write the quatrain...
A man of cash causes empire's fall.
Bubbles blow and pop.
Ancient gods reduced to stone
Boston Sucks!
Duque:
ReplyDeleteDid you expect otherwise. Loads of angry individuals on You Tube. The questions is, what can we do as fans, to send Cheapskate Hal a message.
I think due to luxury tax penalties the Yankees draft pick for next season gets moved back 10 spots?
ReplyDeleteI may be wrong
Is that so? Wow, a bad year just got even worse.
ReplyDelete@ DickAllen, "Old Father Harold", that is a fantastic poem!
ReplyDeleteAs borntorun999 suggested above, let us all join in spirit for a virtual fantasy victory lap around the running track in Yankee Stadium.
ReplyDeleteLet us Knights of the Keyboard, as Wade Boggs did in 1996, mount virtual white horses as the virtual crowds in the virtual Yankee Stadium roar with delight. LISTEN TO THE THUNDEROUS VIRTUAL APPLAUSE! THE NOISE IS LOUDER THAN A MILLION VIRTUAL ATOM BOMBS!! WE AT IIHIIFII...C ARE THE VIRTUAL CHAMPIONS OF YANKEE INTERNET BLOGS!!! WE FORESAW, PROGNOSTICATED, PROPHESIED, PRESAGED, AUGURED, FORECASTED ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED.
And let us, as Merlin told King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, those heroes of ancient lore:
"[L]ook upon this moment. Savor it! Rejoice with great gladness! Great gladness! Remember it always, for you are joined by it. You are One, under the stars. Remember it well, then... this [day], this great victory. So that in the years ahead, you can say, 'I was there that night, with [El Duque, Our Peerless Leader]!' For it is the doom of men that they forget."
KNIGHTS OF THE KEYBOARD, RAISE YOUR VIRTUAL SWORDS AND ROAR: ONE FOR ALL AND ALL FOR ONE!!!!
Hammer, I must confess I stole the original “Old Mother Hubbard”
ReplyDelete... Champions of The World ...
ReplyDelete@ DickAllen, Oh, I know. But it was still clever substitution, "borrowing". The same thing goes on with blues music. Led Zeppelin "borrowed" from a lot of old time blues musicians. It's a blues tradition.
ReplyDelete