"History repeats itself..."

 ...the first as tragedy, the second as farce."

—Karl Marx

Okay, okay, the first time—the Phenomenal Flop in the Fifth, in the 2024 World Series—was pretty farcical, too.

A few observations regarding last night:

—Ryan McMahon, trying to summon up his best, postgame face of disgust, told the press that he was "pissed off with the way we played." 

This is nonsense, of course. 

Once a guy who could hit .240 with 20-25 home runs, get some walks, and play a very good third base, Ryan has shed skills over the course of his career quicker than a Times Square stripper (Do they still have those?). He can now do nothing well on a ballfield—yet he has still made almost $57.5 million playing baseball, and is guaranteed to make another $16 million next year, which will make him one of the very richest people who have ever walked the planet.  

To be truly "pissed off" about anything, he would have to be a psychopath, or a professional deeply devoted to his craft, and there is no evidence that he is either—just another mediocrity who has let his game deteriorate to the point where it can no longer be excused or ignored.

—The Yankees' roster is now filled with such players. Witness Jazz Chisholm, who is capable of doing anything at any time, none of it good.  Most of their other young players, a moment ago such an unexpected boon (sorry to evoke that name) from this season, now look like frightened rabbits in the terrifying AL Division Series.

—It occurred to me, watching last night's fiasco, just how much criticism was showered upon—of all people—Derek Jeter, over the course of his remarkable career. He didn't have enough range, he should have let A-Rod play shortstop, he was only "Captain Intangibles." 

Blah-blah-blah. Lost in all the inevitable blather of our online age, is the fact of what a consummate pro he was right from the beginning.

Not only did he hit .314 and score 104 runs in his Rookie-of-the-Year 1996, but in the miraculous playoff run the Yankees made that season, he was 22-61, and made only 3, inconsequential errors in 76 chances.

George Lombard, Jr., is not Derek Jeter. Which is okay. Almost none are. He may be a very good ballplayer someday—but then, he may also devolve into another Volpe. The odds are not good for him, if he stays on this awful example of a team.

—Perhaps most remarkable last night was how badly the veterans played, as well as the new kids.

Little remembered, for instance, is how the Dodgers actually rallied to win the game of the Fifth Inning Fiasco when Austin Wells managed to hit a badly injured Ohtani's bat with his glove. But there Wells was, in Tampa, making the exact same mistake in the first inning.

—Cody Bellinger, who has disappointed all year when we most needed him to step up, displayed that good ol' warning-track power of his—and once again butchered a ball in left field, as he has done all season. Luis Garcia proved to be yet another, power-hitting first baseman picked up by Brian Cashman...who cannot ht for power. Or play first base.

—Weirdly, the Yankees seemed completely unhinged by Tampa Bay's home dome. Admittedly, it's a ridiculous place to play a baseball game—but one where the Yankees repair to for 6 or 7 games every season, and where they had managed to play an errorless game just two nights previous.

Somehow, though—whether it was the Angry McMahon fielding a grounder, or a coltish Spencer Jones judging a flyball—they seemed completely unnerved by the park. If they were having trouble seeing or something, maybe they should have taken more grounders or flies, or otherwise found a way to adjust.

But no could do. Like so Yankees playoff games in the Cashman era—see the "Midge Game," or Stanton getting thrown out at second on a ball he hit off the Green Monster—the Bombers were thoroughly undone by their environment.

—A man who might have done something about that, of course, was their manager, Aaron Boone.

Talk about repeating yourself! Aaron Boone sat through almost the exact same, inning-long meltdown in that 2024 World Series, and did nothing. He did not come out to settle everyone down, he did not talk to them afterwards in the dugout.

Instead, every time the cameras found him in last night's game, he seemed to be deliberately trying to keep as great a distance as possible from the rest of his team. During the disaster with the Dodgers, he seemed to be almost curled up in a corner, looking like nothing so much as a begging street orphan. 

Last night, he stood up by the rail of the dugout, throwing sunflower seeds into his gullet by the handful, but still far from his players, as if he were embarrassed by them (which he should have been).

—It was Boone who managed to set up the most costly misplays of the game, which were not even official errors. That was in the latest Fifth Inning Fiasco when—after a game Cam Schlittler had managed to pitch out of most of the trouble his teammates had caused him, and Ben Rice, the only Yankee who seems interested in hitting this postseason had tied the game—Boone had the infield play half in and half out with men on first and third.

It was an all-too typical, either-or strategy of the Cashman era, and it ended predictably. The first batter hit the ball to Chisholm who was playing deep and could not make a play at the plate in time; the second one hit it toward McMahon, who Lombard cut off (wisely, methinks), but then bobbled the ball, allowing another run to score, while no outs were recorded.

—One might have assumed, for that matter, that any manager truly paying attention to the game, would have tried something to augment the Yanks' execrable hitting.

The Venerable Keefe reports that aside from Rice and Wells, of all people, who have gone a combined 4-12 in the ALDS so far, the rest of the Yankees are a combined 1-46, with a .086/.145/.224 slash line. 

This is, in itself, ridiculous. Tampa Bay has good pitching; they are not throwing Koufax, Drysdale, and Osteen out there. 

Still, once Rice homered to tie the game in the fourth, and Jones reached first with two outs, why not run the speedy Spencer? Did he really think Lombard was more likely to homer than single? Or was that just the analytics talking?

—Which brings us to the real problem with this Yankees team, and which is the same problem it is year-in, year-out.  

Aaron Boone is a bad manager because he has figured out that all he needs to do to keep his job is to do whatever General Manager Brian Cashman tells him. Brian Cashman is a bad general manager because he has figured out that all he needs to do to keep his job—apparently forever—is to do whatever owner Hal Steinbrenner wants him to do. 

Hal Steinbrenner is a great owner...for himself. He is a bad owner for the fans and the people of New York, because he has figured out that he can maximize his inherited fortune by not really trying to win it all, but just by contending enough to fill the seats and dominate the baseball airwaves in the biggest market in the country...and also by milking ever-greater subsidies out of the public treasury.

As soon as the postseason ends, he will apply himself to starting yet another labor war with the players, in the hopes of being required to annihilate his team's leading advantage over other teams in other cities, which is effective control of the biggest market in the game (sorry, Mets).

And hey, that tragedy/farce Marx was referring to? It was the "tragedy" of how Napoleon I ultimately squashed the original French Revolution of 1789, and the "farce" of how Napoleon III did the same to the 1848 revolution. 

Here is Bonaparte the Lesser, below. He sure does look the ultimate popinjay, and he couldn't live up to his uncle as a general. On the other hand, he rebuilt much of Paris, including the grand boulevards and so much of what made that city the most beautiful in the world...

When is Hal going to build us the equivalent of Baron Haussmann's Paris? Or even, you know, another championship?  

Keep dreaming, suckers.