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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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.
Most unpopular take of the year: I hate the Knicks. I always have. As a rebel, growing up on LI in the early 70’s I became an unrepentant Nets fan. The Nets…the most woebegone of all NY franchises. But they were a sight to see in the early 70’s with Dr. J. leading the way, winning 2 ABA championships.
In truth, I don’t follow professional basketball at all anymore. The game has changed, the players are too big (raise the baskets!) defense has vanished…I’m cynical about the state of modern sports in general which helps me fit right in on this enlightened blog.
Please allow moi to put on my fascist dictator hat, proceed out on to the balcony, make imperious faces and hand gestures, whilst proposing these simple solutions to baseball's complex problems:
1. Move the fences back. A lot. The standard CF should be 500 ft to dead center. 365 down the lines. 425 to the power alleys.
2. Lower the mound - again. What's it now? 18 inches? Lower it to 12 inches.
3. Limit the number of pitchers to 11 total.
4. Get rid of the ridiculous ghost runner in extra innings. I thought that was for the coronovirus epidemic. To make sure games didn't last too long and cause widespread virus contagion. Get rid of it. Or load the bases with ghost runners. One or the other but not this ridiculous lone runner on 2nd base. Seriously, where the hell did that guy come from? I thought he was out?
Good article! Thanks for posting.
These changes will force teams to change their strategies. They will draft and develop smaller, faster outfielders. They will emphasize contact hitting. They will emphasize pitching to contact, with pitchers who know how to pitch, not just throw 100 mph heat. It will make the games faster, much more interesting to watch. Just like the old days.
No. 4 is gospel.
Mill-walk-key Brew Crew are doing it right. Yesterday, down by 2 going into the 9th, they put up four runs in the 9th and four runs in the 10th to win the game 9-7. Entertaining baseball! The Brew Crew are my new favorite team! You know what happens every time the Brewers win a game: Hey Brew Crew, this BUD's for you!
Meanwhile, the team has optioned Escarra back to Scranton and brought up Ali (don't call me Gary) Sanchez, a .183 lifetime hitter whose primary virtue seems to be that hits RH.
Scranton throws no-hitter against Syracuse Mets
https://www.mlb.com/yankees/news/triple-a-yankees-affiliate-no-hitter-brendan-beck-carson-coleman?t=mlb-pipeline-coverage
Ridiculous, incremental move. My snail beat your snail by .00001 mm!
I would raise the baskets too! And make 'em smaller also! Too much scoring has made the game boring. You only need to watch maybe the last two minutes of the game. Almost every game comes down to the last second buzzer beater.
I used to watch the Knicks back when they had Bernard King. They always lost, but King was fun to watch. I remember he put up 50 points in one game. Then there was the game where he jumped up to shoot (I think) and he came down wrong and blew out his knee. Although he came back from the injury, he was never the same afterwards. After that, I never watched basketball again.
Hey, did ya'll see the latest news on Judge? Now the Post reports that Judge said he hurt himself on a dive back on April 26 against the ASS-stros. With the Yankees losing 7-0, on a pop fly to right, Jizz Chasm ran a bit deep into the outfield, Judge hesitated & then ended up diving underneath Chasm to avoid a collision. Chasm made a basket catch and then threw to 2B to double off a base runner who thought the ball was going to drop. I sure wish Jizz had just stopped or peeled off there. It was a 7-0 blowout loser anyway.
This stuff with the dives, wall crashes are all over the place. First Judge said he didn't hurt himself on any one play. Now he says he was hurt on the dive in Houston on April 26. Another article says April 27. WTF!? I still think no one play did it. This was an overuse stress fracture. Maybe all these plays contributed, but there was definitely something wrong even before. I think he wasn't right even during the World Baseball Classic. He himself probably doesn't even know for sure.
Post reports that Judge was battling soreness and pain for a month, didn't tell Ba-Boone about it until just recently when the pain became unbearable.
Judge has to do a better job assessing his own body. These guys will get tweaks all the time. But, if a tweak ain't getting any better after 3-4 days, he's gotta tell Boone.
Ba-Boone, what else can we say? If I knew there's something wrong with Judge since the beginning of the year, but Ba-Boone don't know, what's that tell you about Boone? This is not a major league manager. I wouldn't let him manage a Little League team.
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