Supervised Play.

 

Halfway through, this is shaping up to be perhaps the most dismal New York baseball season in my memory—and my memory, Swiss-cheesed though it is, goes back a long way, to the truly awful Yankees and Mets teams of 1966 and 1967.

There have been plenty of other awful ones along the way. The "Worst Team That Money Could Buy" Mets of 1992; the abysmal Yankees squads of Stump Merrill and Dallas Green and Bucky Dent and Stump Merrill and Dallas Green and Bucky Dent and—

But those teams tended to be limited by age or injury, or awful design. They were rebuilding or recalculating or something, and there was always some young slugger or pitcher or just the game itself to give us hope.

Not so much anymore. 

Your 2026 New York Yankees and New York Mets have to be the two most singularly overpaid, overrated, characterless and BORING baseball teams I have ever seen on the grounds of our city ballparks. What's more, they are both subsidized by us taxpayers to an extent unprecedented in baseball history. 

What's more still, the very brand of baseball they play so badly is intrinsically boring. Three True Outcomes—each one of them guaranteed to put you to sleep before the TV. 

Yes, they're riddle with injuries—as they are every year. No, they aren't living up to their potential—whatever that may be. 

Instead, we have the Lollipop Kid, Jazz Chisholm, defending his right to suck candy during a game, The Martian wrecking himself on an advertising sign, a whole array of pitchers who can't go five innings to save their lives, and no one, no one at all, who can catch and hit.  

The result is that a very decent, knowledgeable baseball man like Carlos Mendoza is given his walking papers, while the dopes who run the Yankees ride high as ever. What a world.

Thank goodness that this summer we have...soccer.

Yep. Genuine, bona fide, World Cup soccer. Never thought I'd say that, but here it is.

Went to what is now, temporarily, New York/New Jersey Stadium to see the Norway-Senegal game the other day. As soccer games go, it ended up being full of action: five goals, constant chances right in front of each net. 

Beyond that, most noticeable was the sheer feeling of joy amongst the thousands of fans walking into the stadium and throughout the game.  

Sure, the price of it all was outrageous (I had my ticket courtesy of my remarkable brother-in-law, who is somehow able to pull off things like this). Concessions were even crazier than they are at major-league ballparks.

But the fans didn't seem to care, chalking this up, no doubt, as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. They bantered good naturedly, and went into their time-honored chants and celebrations.

The Norwegian fans did their hilarious, "rowing" chant, something they even performed on the subway.

But of course, it wasn't enough that a good time was being had by all. 

About an hour-and-a-half before the game began, all else was buried under an ear-splitting barrage of noise even louder than what we were subjected to on our recent excursion to Yankee Stadium.

Much of this was in the form of ads, of course—apparently, the constant, changing video ads for all kinds of things, all around the stadium—was not enough. Some of it was contemporary music, in its all but unbearable glory (no, the kids are NOT all right).  

But much of it was in the form of some FIFA-designated MC, who kept constantly "leading" cheers, and demanding that "New York-New Jersey fans (yes, he said it like that) make more noise."  

We've all endured that sort of nonsense at Yankee Stadium—indeed, at every American stadium, park, arena, and pitch we've all been to in the last thirty years or so. A desperate endeavor, it always struck me, to convince us we were all having fun, all the time.

But these were the most enthusiastic, innovative fans in the world. They know how to entertain themselves, and everyone else in the park—and once the game itself started, they did exactly that. The chants, the songs, the routines they have developed have evolved over decades. And they're pretty damned good.

We have now slipped into being the nanny state of sports. 

Our every moment inside a sports venue must be controlled. It must be utilized for some monetary purpose. We the fans must be dominated, our thinking capacities and individual initiatives obliterated, our brains re-oriented to thinking of what we must buy next—what we must do and say that will serve the purpose of the product (not something so silly as a "game") we are...no longer just watching, but promoting.

We are all the studio audience: "Oh, look, Marge, all those people are in a big place, full of flashing lights and loud noises, and with an MC! What a great place that must be! How important this must be!"

We are now, at all times, under the supervision of the same people who are systematically ruining all our games, just as overweening parents do the same on a playground. 

At least we're still allowed the mute button on our TVs.