Can you fire a manager for
blowing an All-Star Game?
For those of you who did not watch and may I say, I don't blame you one bit, it was a well played game for the most part with the American League coming back from a 6-0 deficit to tie the game and send it into extra innings.
Except...
The Lords of Baseball decided that there wouldn't be extra innings.
The game would be decided by a Mini Home Run Derby.
Sure why not? They already stopped the game for a long, long, long "Stand Up For Cancer" segment that included a song and music video and then again for a tribute to Hank Aaron with projections and a hologram that was pretty cool, and the game was in Atlanta, so I'm going to give it to them.
So, Aaron Boone, who never lets an opportunity to look like an idiot slip by, and whose record in extra innings speaks for itself, gets to pick the three players to represent the American League.
On his team he had the MLB Home Run Leader and guy who won the HOME RUN DERBY YESTERDAY, in the Big Dumper, Cal Raleigh, and the guy who holds the American League Home Run Record and is just killing it this year in Aaron Judge.
He also had and used, Brent Rooker from The A's. Rooker had homered earlier in the game.
Notice I said he used the A.
He did not use the other two. He did not use the MLB home run leader or Aaron Judge!
Instead it came down to some guy with eleven home runs so far this season. His career high by the way, Jonathan Aranda. He hit one to the fence and the other two would have been easily caught in the outfield.
Dave Roberts didn't even have to use Pete Alonzo and the American League lost.
They played hard.
They came back from a huge deficit.
And Aaron Boone flushed it away.
No interest in winning at all. Kept the two best HR hitters in baseball on the bench!
Here's a more important question...
Who would want to play for this guy?
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5 comments:
Sad, accurate and quite true - Doug.
Thanks for the capper for yet another Boone crapper . . .
The second half of the season is next.
It's all right . . . .
. . . . in front of us.
It's all right in front of us, but we won't get there with Boone on top of us. What an idiot.
By now, Boone's continued presence feels like an insult to the fans. Brian knows best and to hell with all of us. Hal most definitely does not care. If he DID care, he'd be really stupid to allow Brian to stay, so I'm thinking it's the arrogance of the rich, the rich who don't make anything, but who inherit their wealth and thus have no concept of work or the dollar. They can simply count. It's a very Yankees "let them eat cake moment" in history and it feels pretty crappy. This is what the oligarch-ization of sports feels like. The owners no longer even feint towards "doing right by the fans." It's about money. It has always been about money, but there was some pride and fun involved. No more from these gray men, these exemplars of peak crony capitalism. Thus, we are rewarded with one of the stupidest, least talented, least imaginative, least competitive managers of all time. Maybe he's the perfect guy for this distracted, disinterested age, but the team and the sport will suffer in the long term. I'm not wearing my Yankees caps this year at all. I'm wearing a Saints cap. I like the fleur-de-lis. I'm not giving them one penny, those cheap, rich bastards in the Bronx, and I'm not watching in real time, not giving them any eyeballs either - the new metric of success, how much they can steal of your attention span. I want real baseball. I want an owner who wants to win. Fuck the Steinbrenners.
"Wherever we were going, we're already there"- Jakob Dylan
Hear, hear! Great piece, Doug! And brilliant comment, Bitty!
Yep, the Steinbrenners have all ben nepo babies, ever since that boat went down in a Lake Erie storm, killing the first one's in-laws and giving him the company (True story! Wonder if there was ever an investigation into its seaworthiness.)
But at least Mad George really wanted to win. That is, awful as he was, to pretty much everyone, he wanted to give us what we wanted, which was exciting, winning baseball.
Never again, apparently—not from his heirs, not from the cartel known as MLB.
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