Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Glug, glug.

 


The Yankees are...let us say...a ship.

We like to think of them as a great ship—a Yankee Clipper, even. One of the original "skyscrapers." All sails up in the worst of gales, skysails and moon rakers on the masts, and studdingsails on the booms. Doing 24 knots around the Horn, making our 50-50 in seven days—the fastest, finest ship afloat.

But in fact, the ship we're used to is more of a creaky old wreck, trimmed and lacquered up nice to fool the paying customers. 


Oh, it usually makes it out of the port all right: bands playing, pennants from years past flying in the breeze. A grand sight.

But then, out there on the high seas, something always goes wrong. 

Often, the crew is just too small for a ship this size—but the owner likes his economies. Increasingly, the crew is too old—but they've signed long contracts with the owner, indentured themselves for life, and he's determined to get every drop of sweat and blood he can out of 'em. 

It's always something. The captain and the pilot were removed years ago, and replaced by an automatic navigational system, operable from the owner's Florida home. It doesn't work too well, despite the incredibly life-like robot the owner's shipping agent has installed at the helm.

Sooner or later, our ship veers off course, gets stuck in the doldrums, comes to grief on reefs clearly marked on all charts but which the shipping agent told everybody to ignore. There was a gaping hole in the hull we forgot about, or a mainmast that looked rotten from the day we sailed.

But the order came from Tampa: sail on!

Usually, the problem lies in those areas of the ship we old sea dogs know as "the bullpen" and "the bench."  The shipping agent believes that these don't matter much, and can be manned by any landlubber press-ganged or shanghaied off the streets. But somehow, the ship never makes it back to port.

There are those who think the owner has some other scheme going—that he's primarily interested in raking in the insurance money. That's hard to say. No one's seen him down at the docks for years. At most, we get a glimpse of him on the widow's walk of the family mansion, scouring the seas with his telescope—a weird little look of satisfaction on his face, and glittery red boots on his feet.

Not that it much matters. We all knew where this voyage ends, before it commenced.







 

21 comments:

  1. On that note, Kahnle is back! Whoo. Season saved!

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  2. Sigh

    https://sports.yahoo.com/yankees-owner-hal-steinbrenner-says-teams-payroll-3rd-in-mlb-not-sustainable-for-us-financially-224443070.html#:~:text=%E2%80%9CI'm%20gonna%20be%20honest,we%20have%20to%20pay.''

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  3. You might be right Hal, but that's not the real problem.

    In allowing a shallow, inept fool to spend your money (which is something only another fool would do), you've saddled Our Beloved Yankees with a bloated roster filled with holes, and if you had been paying attention (any kind of attention at all), you would have noticed, you smug, entitled brat, that your intern has been throwing away your money for the last twenty years. You should have given him his walking papers a long time ago.

    He's proven conclusively that his knowledge of baseball (and acquiring the talent necessary to win championships) is non-existent. So, don't go blaming the amount you're spending on anyone but yourself and the lapdog you keep giving your purse to.

    The fault lies not in the payroll, but in your and your toady.

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  4. Do they have another debacle in their bones?

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  5. If they have another meltdown, I’M gonna have a meltdown!

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  6. Vertigo.

    Did you notice how Kay and Todd were waxing ecstatic over the Yankees reclamation pitchers --Weaver in particular --just before Weaver coughed up a three run homer? Priceless.

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  7. Horace, you salty dog you! We are slowly pulling away from the Boids and the Rays. Let's enjoy, we have 5, maybe six reliable starters hence no long losing streaks. Some very lethal bats. A bullpen which is as good as anyone's after almost a third of the season! But I probably caught malaria on this voyage and haven't noticed the wood worms, so humor me... I'm having visions:

    "All hands on deck, we've run afloat", I heard the captain cry
    "Explore the ship, replace the cook, let no one leave alive"
    Across the straits, around the horn, how far can sailors fly?
    A twisted path, our tortured course
    And no one left alive

    We sailed for parts unknown to man
    Where ships come home to die
    No lofty peak nor fortress bold could match our captain's eye
    Upon the seventh seasick day we made our port of call
    A sand so white and sea so blue
    No mortal place at all

    We fired the gun, and burnt the mast
    And rowed from ship to shore
    The captain cried, we sailors wept
    Our tears were tears of joy
    Now, many moons and many Junes have passed since we made land
    A salty dog, this seaman's log
    Your witness my own hand

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  8. Basic maintenance on the hull is not sustainable. Those other ships that get regular maintenance are not realistic in there goals.

    The Yankees win and the cheap fucker Hal doesn't give a fuck.

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  9. Not just malaria. COVID and dengue hemorrhagic fever too!

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  10. Damn, Winnie!!! Maybe I need an antipsychotic...

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  11. Ahhhh hell, better get some Depends...

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  12. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  13. See Hal's payroll 2025 comments? He's either as clueless and self-defeating as we all suspect, or he fired the first salvo in Soto negotiations.

    Could be both.

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  14. After 2 bad losses and having seen the Lede as "glug glug" and that tall sailing ship in the background, I was sure you would describe your night with Cutty Sark.

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  15. Just when everything seemed to be going right, Spreadsheet Hal returns. Like an economist warning the economy was 'too strong,' first he celebrated having a 'championship caliber' team and then complained that payroll was unsustainable.

    Then the owner of the most profitable and valuable baseball team in human history whined about how a championship caliber team shouldn't cost 300M. Well, maybe, Hal, if you had competent baseball professionals running your team. But you don't. You have a bunch of trust fund brats spending daddy's money and breaking the family glassware as fast as you can buy it.

    So, the biggest threat to a championship season remains Spreadsheet Hal. The opposite of his competitive father. A useless trust fund brat himself, from a family that ran their shipping business into the ground and now survive on sports franchises. A useless trust fund brat who wishes he could have all the billions the Yankees make, on a minor league payroll. A miserable mill town factory owner who's biggest gripe in life is having to pay their workers.

    New York ain't Toledo, Hal. Ya gotta pay to play.

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  17. we are really lucky to have the writing talents of Horace, Duque and others on this blog.

    It's like opening my Kindle every morning.

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