"There's got to be more to life than this. Unless there's less."—Mary McCarthy
"The Man in the Brooks Brothers Suit"
Recent reports tell us that methane is slowly leaking out from underneath the Antarctic ice shelves, where it has been nicely stowed away for countless millennia so could have a civilization.
Methane, as it happens, is a gas with about 25 times as much planet-heating capability as carbon monoxide. What's more, there is apparently a vast, almost limitless amount of it down there.
Ruh-roh.
Next thing you know, our battered little sphere is heating up faster than a Yankee Stadium rat dog, and then we take some desperate measure to stop it, like seeding the atmosphere with stuff to mitigate the methane but instead that plunges us into a new ice age and the only people who survive are those circling the planet endlessly in a global super train as that Korean movie and cable series told us and Hey Lady!
An absurd scenario, of course. There is no way these United States are ever going to invest in building a train.
In a similar vein, John Jastremski, one of SNY's funniest and most astute commentators—and, of course, a Yankees fan—recently told us that he thinks GM Brian Cashman has, "as always" some big, unseen unexpected deal, some blockbusting trade or signing, bubbling under the surface as ominously as that Antarctic methane.
Uh-huh.
Why is it I think we'll all be on the Korean Super Train before that happens?
What's perhaps most amazing about the sporting scene here in Loser City, is how little our many teams put out, for all that we pay them off.
Yesterday, we got to see the Jets start an undrafted, walk-on QB, for the first time in 50 years.
Our other football team, meanwhile, still cannot find a placekicker who can find the ball with his toe, never mind the uprights.
The Giants' bizarre new head coach, the wonderfully monikered Mike Kafka—eyebrows coiffed as menacingly as those of Ming the Merciless—then entertained himself by scoffing at questions about why he seems determined to drive the Jints' one faint hope of the past ten years into concussion oblivion.
When it comes to basketball, well, we're all paying higher subway fares because we had to give the Nets the Moss House, their weird new arena over in Brooklyn, and some day I know they will reward us with a winning season.
Sure, it's been over half-a-century since the Knicks have won an NBA championship. But they are on the verge, perhaps of winning a meaningless, in-season tournament—the NBA equivalent of the FIFA peace prize.
Mike
And for all the hockey teams we have littered about the place, when was the last time we had a true superstar of the ice in NYC?
I'm thinking maybe a declining Wayne Gretzky, who last skated for the Rangers before the turn of the century.
Our latest grifters seem to be your New York Mets, who I had high hopes for, thinking that if Stevie Cohen and David Stearns were sincere about their desire to spend their way to a dynasty, they might-
Ming
—might—just steal away enough of the baseball market to force even Tightwad Hal Steinbrenner into actually competing.
No such luck, it seems.
Instead, Stearns is happily ripping apart the "core" of a Mets team that wasn't really the problem with the club, downgrading the franchise at every turn. Pete Alonso, Edwin Diaz, and Brandon Nimmo for Marcus Semien and Jorge Polanco, anyone?
Stearns thus far seems like a bookend egomaniac to our own dear Cashie, albeit with a wonderful, cat-who-hate-the-canary smile. And could it be that the canary is...us?
Funny how the Mets disassemblage is taking place just months after the NY state legislature voted to allow the public land around the Stadium Formerly Known As Shea to be developed...and just days after some murky government board gave Mr. Cohen the go-ahead to build a ginormous casino out in the old Valley of Ashes.
Could it be that the casino was the real prize all along?
Could it be that our local club owners are each and everyone the very finest of scamsters, making money off both the bait and the switch?
Could it be that Cohen will soon join Messrs. Steinbrenner, Dolan, Mara, Johnson, etc., as one more lump in our lumpenscamatariat, sitting on yet another lump habitat where most of us fans aren't even allowed in?
Sorry, Mr. Jastremski: with all pressure removed, Hal & Pal ain't doin' nothin'. Tatsuya Imai wanna come to the Bronx, but as far as the Yankees are concerned, he can not. The Yanks won't even re-sign Bellinger, which might not be so bad if it meant a real effort to play and develop Spencer and The Martian.
But it doesn't. Instead, we will get to watch Amed Rosario attempt—and fail—to play yet another position. Don't even count on them taking a small risk on a talented but oft-injured pitcher like Mike King.
Never gonna happen, my friends. All that's bubbling below the surface is the methane. All aboard!
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