From coast to coast, the NBA finals appeared on phones, radios and bracketed bar TVs, giving what would normally have been a big event - the Redsocks vs the Yankees! - the relevance of a Benny Hill rerun.
Which is how I perceive the Yankee batting order - sped up and swinging to the tune of Yackety Sax.
Imagine: The Yankees hosted Boston, and nobody cared.
There was certainly no help from our middle of the order. It began with Paul Goldschmidt. Oh for four. Then Cody Bellinger. Oh for three. Then Jazz Chisholm. Oh for four.
Sandwiched between five hits from Ben Rice and the mysterious Spencer Jones. Oh for eleven.
Insert a big oh-for-the-night into the order, and that's the Yankees - not only last night, but throughout 2026, when not facing a certified tomato can.
Which is why last night was, well, mysterious.
For the record, Boson is a tomato can. The Yankees had four innings to score two runs. They couldn't solve Sonny Fuckin' Gray. In the nineth, their Aroldis Chapman - the sweaty el Chapo, the Cuban Water Cannon - generously walked two of our first three batters. Didn't matter. Coupled with Tampa's win, the Yankees now sit three games down in the loss column.
Of course, the brain trust - in reaction to Judge's injury - made a bold move. They sent backup catcher J.C. Escarra to Scranton and promoted an obscure RH-hitting millhand named Ali Sanchez. (No relation to Gary, though there's a joke there, somewhere.) He's 29, and has kicked around the sport for 13 years, with the Mets, Cardinals, Marlins, Blue Jays and Redsocks. He was hitting .226 in Scranton, though it is hard to imagine him looking worse, offensively, than Austin Wells, now at .168.
Bright spots last night?
1. Spencer Jones had three hits. Naturally, in the nineth, he was removed for a pinch-hitter. You can't make this shit up.
2. Nobody watched. Nobody. It was the night for the Knicks, in the Year of the Knicks. New York is preparing the Canyon of Heroes. It could be the biggest sports celebration in this decade. The Yankees will watch on TV.
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19 comments:
Not sure I’d buy this after reading the review: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/jun/05/the-strange-history-of-baseballs-superstitions-magic-is-in-the-sports-very-structure?CMP=us_bsky&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Bluesky#Echobox=1780667120-1
As for the Knicks - fingers crossed
I'm personally trying to avoid the "Canyon of Heroes" talk. I think we're all old enough to remember what happened after the Knicks got to 3 wins in '94.
Pinch hit for the guy who was 3-for-3.
Boone is an idiot.
Steve - absolutely. And JM - 100%.
I’m nearly indifferent to the Yankees right now (after all, they’re indifferent to me). The Knicks-Spurs game was chaotically entertaining & I hope refs are just as biased towards the home team in NY as they were in SA. I’m a happily tired guy right now. NY will be bananas next week. I’m tempted to take the train up just to hang around in the city on Wednesday, especially if the Knicks win Monday.
You should
“I pitched the chapter, ‘baseball is dead, the magic is over, the league killed it by implementing new rules,’” Baird says. After doing more research, she had a realization: “I was entering a long tradition of people who had been saying this since the 1860s: ‘They don’t play baseball like they used to, baseball’s dying if not dead.” What she’s come to believe is that “the game should evolve, an unchanging thing is a dead thing.”
Hmmmmmm
I still pine for a day we could have the opportunity to watch this team managed by someone other than Boone.
Metrics have ruined baseball...
Hear, hear, Hinkey!
And as for whether baseball is dead or not...
It's true that all games do evolve, and that they probably should. And it's true that people have been saying "Baseball ain't what it used to be for a long, long time."
But that doesn't mean that every change is good, or that at times baseball should not RE-adjust...
For instance, most of us here are old enough to remember the baseball of late 1960s. It was, in many ways, epic. Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson or Juan Marichal would throw a fastball at the head of Willie Mays or The Mick or Frank Robinson, who would then pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and hit the ball 500 feet.
Or strikeout. Epically.
That's much of what we remember. That's what's left on the highlight reels.
BUT...all too much of that time was the likes of Don Wertz or Ray Oyler or Jerry Kenney unable to hit even the Thad Tillotsons of the world.
The game had become too one-dimensional, and the fans were staying away...
Baseball adjusted again, with the DH, lowering the mound, etc. And ushered in what I think was the real golden age of the sport: c. 1975-93 or so.
For pretty much the only time in baseball history, guys did everything: hit for average, hit for power, stole bases, threw complete games, racked up saves, etc. There were great pennant races and incredible playoffs and World Series. Attendance boomed...
Yankees Sign Adam Kloffenstein, Payton Henry To Minors Contracts
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/01/yankees-sign-adam-kloffenstein-payton-henry-to-minors-contracts.html
Wow do I feel a lot better now...smh...
Today, baseball needs to adjust again. Trouble is, it's not so much the new rules, as it is the way the people running it want to play the game: by the algorithms.
The pitcher is the hero of the game, making baseball the only sport where action is started every time by a defensive player. But now the pitcher has been minimized, made almost interchangeable.
Hitting has been destroyed by the Three True Outcomes malarkey. And the insistence on players being pumped, with or without steroids, is ruining their bodies, putting them out for long periods of time (witness our own Judge)....
It makes for a bad game. And the other stuff regarding the sport—how everything about it costs way too much for the fans, the ballpark has been made into another luxury destination, the noise there (often ads) is incessant and unbearable, and the sell-out to gambling—is only hurting it, too.
But I think it will be a long time before anyone does anything about any of that.
Meanwhile, inane NY Times (sorry, Athletic) analysis saying the Yankees are so much better equipped to deal with Judge's injury than in 2023.
No, they are not. The Yanks did not have enough hitting BEFORE Judge went down, and they sure don't now. Instead, they will miss the playoffs again, as they did in 2023.
Lowering the mound made a HUGE difference.
Hoss, in the olde days, there were guys who hit for average, hit for power, stole bases, threw complete games, etc. There were great pennant races and World Series, too, as you know. I actually liked those short, fast pitchers' duels, the bunting and all that stuff.
I don't know. You could well be right, I certainly get your point.
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