"I used to watch sports in New York City.
Every club there was disappointing,
With a Yankees team that only hit .230.
Young guns are coming to the canyons,
I can see them bangin' on my TV... "
—With apologies to the Mommas and the Poppas.
Okay, so we were manipulated once again, by the Machiavelli of the Office Suite. But last night still felt like a dive into a cool mountain lake, after this dreadful Death March of the 2023 season.
I missed the games, but SNY's nightly sports wrap-up was full of ecstatic families celebrating as The Martian went galactic, Ronny Mauricio smacked what was reportedly the hardest-hit ball of any Met this season, and Austin Wells got his first major-league hit. Their loved ones in the stands kissed, hugged, high-fived, and bounced around like little kids in, well, a bounce house.
Shamefully manipulative as this was, coming from two teams that have egregiously spit the bit this season...it can only be described as, well, heart-warming.
Is this all just an illusion out of the mottled September sunshine? Most likely—though Ronny Mauricio (formerly an aria from Rigoletto) looks like the real deal.
No doubt, The Brain is even counting on our (supposedly) rejuvenated football teams to sell his revival story. A September filled with dreams of things to come, followed by a rollicking pigskin season, culminating in...a Subway Super Bowl???
Why, come next March we will have forgotten all about the last five months of this miserable campaign, and be more than ready to fall for the usual lies.
El Duque is right. None of this should make up for our summer of misery. And four more weeks spent watching the likes of Cantrun and The Gleyber get their numbers in good working order will be more galling than anything else. Hell, maybe Tumbly Wumbly Rodon will pitch a no-hitter!
But...for one night...I gotta say it was pretty special.
I agree. The Summer of two deunces, Hal and Genius Cashman.
ReplyDeleteWatch and see if Booooone, The Idiot, puts the Martian in the cleanup spot tonight.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI am a follower of markets -- yes, the stock market. But also the bond market. And the gold/silver markets. And copper. And more.
There is something in "markets" called "regression to the mean." In the case of the NYYs, we -- meaning me, and most of you -- became habituated to WINNING. It's REALLY not normal. If you think G. Steinbrenner was so freaking wunnerful, I would refer you to a painstaking review of the 1980s.
It will be painful. I prefer to forget those years, the games I saw in person and on TV.
There is also something that happens (not a lot, but it happens) -- called an Outlier. For some in the financial game, Warren Buffet is an outlier (a big one). NO ONE CAN DO WHAT HE DOES.
But . . .
I once saw his success compared with a coin-flipping contest. You gather 1,056 people in a hotel room, and each pair flips a coin (one person calls "heads").
You now have 528 winners. Do it again -- there are 256 winners. Again, and there are 128 winners. And then 64, 32, 16, 8, 4, 2 -- and then just one winner.
This guy or girl has won 9 coin flips in a row!!! This is the greatest coin-flip-caller in the history of history. A 1-in-1000 type of guy. No one could do what he/she just did.
So maybe Buffet -- who does work hard at what he does -- has just been really, really lucky. Or perhaps he combined skill with luck.
How does that apply to the Yankees, in our lifetimes? Derek Jeter. An outlier if there ever was one. They drafted him. They developed him. He turned out to have a leader's personality (I don't remember seeing a lot of players NOT run ground balls out when he was around).
We were lucky. We shouldn't forget any of it. But perhaps we can't expect any of it to be recreated, either.