If I Keep This Up I’ll Go Blind

Today I sat down to write my annual post on what the team should do next year. Standard stuff like don’t spend to acquire starting pitching, build the bullpen, get the Japanese free agent 3B, don’t give Jazz the Qualifying Offer… Things like that.

Then I had to stop. 

Because it’s all just jerking off...  And we are the jerks.

Sports fans are a curious blend of optimism and pessimism. Always hopeful that a few tweaks to the lineup, a couple of key additions, fewer injuries, and having the vagaries that make up a season break our way could make the difference and bring us the title.

Here at IIH IIF we tend to be more pessimistic that most but only because we’re a fairly well thought out bunch. 

Most of us, as reflected in the comments, are reaching a tipping point in our fandom. 

As long, long, time Yankee fans we have both suffered and been rewarded. That’s the natural course of rooting. 

This offseason the current state of the team feels different.

Ownership has broken the sacred trust that is the cornerstone of the relationship. We have to believe that the team is trying to win it all.

They aren’t. 

What’s worse is…

We know that we are being played.

And they are not trying to hide it.

We live in a time frame where powerful people seem to feel that they can say things that are demonstrably untrue and expect us to eat it. No accountability.  

Just Hubris.

Giving Brian Cashman another five years when he has proven to be inept is unconscionable. He is inept. All GMs make mistakes. That’s to be expected. To keep making the same ones? Inept.

Blaming the players and only the players for their failure and not the guy who spent over $300 million dollars acquiring them?  

Not firing Aaron Boone?

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There is a point in life where you realize that what you want to happen and what is going to happen are two completely different things.

Extending Cashman was it for me.

I believe the phrase is, "irreconcilable differences".

Fan is short for fanatic. It’s also part of the word fantasy. I’m through fantasizing that the Yankees will figure it out. They won't and any time that I spend thinking about how it could be or might be is just jerking off.

Maybe it feels good short term, but in the end it's a waste of energy that would be better spent elsewhere.  

And, if I keep it up, I’ll go blind.