This is all the fault of the New York Knicks.

 

It's the Knicks who did it. The incredible, amazing, jaw-dropping, unbelievable, gobsmacking, miraculous run of your New York Knickerbockers is what is leaving Yankees fans in such a funk about this season.

The Knicks! Of all people. Yet another taxpayer-subsidized, New York ball club run by a certifiable nepo troll...whose front office, coach, and never-say-die players nevertheless somehow got it together to win it all, and set the city's hearts (and the odd school bus) aflame.

How else to account for why it is that Yankees fans are sooooo disgruntled over their team going a mere, record-setting 12 straight games without scoring more than 4 more runs (and 14 games without getting as many as 10 hits)?  

Why, won't they understand that this team is still right in the midst of the wild-card hunt?

The reason has to be...the Knicks.

I kid, I kid, of course.

BUUUUUTTTT...you can absolutely expect to hear this argument made, in one form or another, by someone in the Yankees front office, or at least the YES broadcasting booth (same thing). Especially if the crowds continue to diminish.

(The Yanks still lead the AL in attendance, but the last two games each saw fewer than 40,000 fans, even with the Skubal-Schlittler "duel." What, people don't want to pay through the nose so they can come out in 100-degree heat and watch teams full of mediocrities flail futilely at the ball? Slackers!)

If the US soccer team somehow makes a run (it won't), you can expect to hear this rational applied to them, too: 

"People were distracted by this whole, marvelous, ne'er to be repeated spring and summer of special events. It won't last."

Except, that it will. 

This Yankees team is the oldest in the American League. It's not rebuilding, it's breaking down. And there are no viable replacements in sight for even its worst players: Wells, McMahon, Volpe, Jazz. 

There has never been much relief pitching this season, and now the starting pitching is falling apart in a hurry. The team can't hit, but insists on sticking to techniques that have been shown to fail for years now. Running, fielding?  That's SO pre-Sabremetrics.  

The general manager won't fire the manager, and the owner won't fire the general manager, and all we New Yorkers keep doing is ladling money over the owner. 

The Yanks aren't merely bad, and rapidly getting worse. They are unwatchably, historically bad, and there is no incentive to change the system that is making them so

Rrrrr...those Knicks!