Goodbye, NY. Hello, Cleveland!

After careful consideration, and with due diligence and deliberation, I have decided to turn traitor and become a fan of the Cleveland Guardians. This is not a decision I have made lightly. My first and perhaps strongest memory of the game of baseball at large and the NY Yankees in particular was the sight of Bill Mazeroski sending the ball over Yogi Berra’s head and the left field wall of Forbes Field (the 66th anniversary of which is tomorrow Oct. 13 at 3:39 PM) to win Game 7 of the 1960 World Series. I was 8 years old, and devastated. The next season I followed the M&M boys as they chased the Babe’s home run record. My father had been a Yankee fan before me. I was hooked.

Today’s Yankees don’t thrill that little boy remaining in me anymore. The Cleveland Guardians do. What follows are the reasons why I am making the switch. Listicles are stupid and they suck, so however many reasons there are, that’s what it is.

I grew up in the NY metropolitan area. My parents followed the traditional post-war path from urban dwellers (144th and Amsterdam) to suburban dwellers (Nassau County). The 60s were a pretty good era overall for NY sports, but baseball and the Yankees were always the first in my heart. When the interloping Mets showed up in 1962, I would have nothing to do with them. Even Casey Stengel’s presence couldn’t make me switch.

But I don’t live in the NY metro area anymore. I live in western NY, between Buffalo and Erie PA, and the Guardians are the closest MLB team in the region (for the record, I live in the blackout region for the Yankees, Mets, Guardians, and Pirates). Cleveland is a two-hour drive away, and Progressive Field is a cozy place to take in a ball game. And for the rest of you old-timers out there, I just want to bring you up to speed and let you know that they put out the fire on the Cuyahoga River 49 years ago, and in the meantime built the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, a beautiful new Science Center, the International Women’s Air and Space Museum, and a modern football stadium for the hapless Browns. It ain’t your father’s Cleveland anymore, and the Mistake on the Lake is history. So why not root for a local team?

Have you noticed, by the way, what a terrific young roster of players they have on the team? Let’s start with a player who may be the best all-around player both offensively and defensively in the game today - José Ramirez. He has played his entire career with the Guardians (14 years), spat on big-money contracts as a free agent to sign with Cleveland (7yrs/$128.5M from 2026-2032), hustles every single second of the game, plays through injuries, never complains, never a breath of scandal - nothing. He’s a career .276 hitter with 297 HR, 1002 RBIs, 1072 runs, and 324 stolen bases. He’s 33 and stole 37 bags this year. His lifetime OPS+ is 128. His 162-game average over 14 years is 28 dingers, 94 RBIs and 30 SBs. Give me this guy any day in my lineup. No one in the game today compares with him on an overall basis.

He leads a young collection of players who are showing surprising promise. There are five - FIVE - rookies on this team, all contributing. Chase DeLauter, Angel Martinez, Brayan Rocchio, Steven Kwan, Travis Bazzana, Petey Halpin - all of them contact hitters with some pop. They put the ball in play, run the bases hard, and force defenses to react. They are even getting production from guys like Jo Adell and Nathaniel Lowe. They could use a tad more slug, but hey - they’re in the ALCS. Which team isn’t? Oh and PS - not a head case in the bunch. Not one guy in the lineup who’s a veteran just hanging on for one more contract. No would-be stars looking for that big free agent payday. The exceptions are Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, nabbed in the 2025 gambling scandal for throwing games.

Pitching? They have pitching. Parker Messick, Gavin Williams, and Tanner Bibee form a strong starting core to go along with a strong bullpen, including Shawn Armstrong, Hunter Gaddis, Eric Sabrowski, and their closer Cade Smith. Joey Cantillo can start or go long from the pen. The Guardians have always had good starting pitching (Corey Kluber, Shane Bieber), and that continues with this core. TBH, NY’s pitching is better, but this pitching staff doesn’t suck.

And let’s spend some time with the organization. Stephen Vogt, their manager and 2x Manager of the Year, is light years better than BaBoone (a low bar, to be sure). He manages to get the most out of all his players, and they hustle like hell for him. Pitching coach Carl Willis can read the stats, but he also has years of on-field experience to go along with the numbers. Sandy Alomar Jr. coaching first base adds his knowledge, presence, and historical stature to the team chemistry. And GM Mike Chernoff, PBO Chris Antonetti, and owner Paul Dolan of the Dolan family don’t sit around just hoping to get to the playoffs and see what happens. They have a plan (gasp!). They are committed to building a winner with the resources that they have as a small-market team. They made smart pickups in the last trade deadline. I can’t help but wonder what they would become if they had the budget of the NY Yankees that Ca$hman seems to squander every year. Their 2026 payroll is $148,966,666, 24th in the league (two spots lower than Tampa Bay).

Finally, they are a franchise with a lot of remarkable history. No, they haven’t won 27 World Championships. Their last World Series title was in 1948, and they only have one other, in 1920. But they have 6 AL pennants, 14 Central Division titles, and two Wild Card series. They were the first American League team to sign a black player, Larry Doby (guess who was the among the last and tried desperately to keep that player on the bench?). They were the first franchise to employ the strategy of locking up young players early and developing them through their early careers as winners. They wisely and gracefully retired their Indians name and the racist stereotype mascot Chief Wahoo (unlike the smug southern hand-chopping racists in Atlanta), taking on the name of the four statues on the Hope Memorial Bridge, the Guardians of Traffic (fun fact - the Hope Bridge is supposedly named after Harry Hope, who represents all the stonemasons who carved the statues, and is the father of comedian Bob Hope, a Cleveland native). Those sculptures, by the way, would blend in nicely with anything you can see in Rockefeller Center. In short, a class organization, which would have been completely destroyed had George actually bought the team.

So yeah, in my dotage, I want to return to the feelings and excitement I had for baseball as a boy growing up and rooting for the Yankees. Today’s Yankees make me sad and depressed, and there’s enough about being old to be sad and depressed about without having to watch the Yankees play. I’ll just hop in my car, take a two-hour drive, grab a hot dog or three on Sugardale Dollar Hot Dog Days, and enjoy watching a young, hungry, motivated, and talented baseball team play the greatest game ever invented. And when I can’t get to the stadium, I can listen to one of the finest radio broadcasters for the past 35 years, Ford Frick Award winner Tom Hamilton, call the game from the corner of Carnegie and Ontario off the shores of Lake Erie (another fun fact - Hamilton spent the first three years of his broadcasting career with the AAA Columbus Clippers from 1987-90). All in all, I consider this a significant upgrade in fandom. Go, Guardians!

100 years ago today

   

The World Series

Heywood Broun

The New York World

October 12, 1926

 

The World Series just ended gave professional baseball the worst black eye which it has worn since the White Sox scandal. Crookedness alienated the rooters then, and the caution which became epidemic in the closing contest is not much more endearing. New York commentators have endeavored to take the defeat of the Yankees with grace and to say, “The best team won.” Maybe the better team did win, but not without nesting deeply among white feathers. 

 

In the final game Babe Ruth was passed four times, and in the entire series he received eleven bases on balls. One editorial writer compares St. Louis to Cinderella. This is a comparison most unfair to the little lady. She took a chance. If her conduct had been governed by strategy such as that of Rogers Hornsby she would never have lingered at the ball until the clock struck 12 and her coach became a pumpkin. No, indeed; under the St. Louis system Cinderella would have left a little before 11 rather than run the risk of having the white horses turn to mice.

 

And, speaking of mice, I don’t understand why sporting writers should pay tribute to the grit and fighting spirit of the Cardinals. When a team grows so panic stricken that it will not allow a famous hitter a chance to swing at any ball within his reach I don't precisely understand just how or why it is called courageous. There was much big talk before the series about how St. Louis pitchers would pitch to Ruth, just as to any other batter. But after he broke out into home runs, they didn't do it.

 

There is no more tiresome spectacle in baseball than watching a catcher step way out beyond the plate while the pitcher tosses him four wide ones. If this practice is to continue, let's at least have some rule to simplify the procedure. The pitcher could advance to the plate and tap the batter on the wrist, thus indicating his intention of passing him. Such a system would save time and be less hypocritical.

 

Very much has been said and written about baseball as the national game. It is an institution almost as sacred as the Constitution, and we have all been given to understand that no other game in any land can be compared to it. Maybe so, but in despised cricket I believe the bowler cannot wave the batter away and say, “I'd rather not have anything to do with you.” On the contrary, I understand that the famous hitters are up for hours and whack drives all over the premises till they tire. It isn't too much, I think, to demand that Babe Ruth ought to be allowed at least one wallop in every turn at bat.

 

And, also, what is this stuff I've heard about the excellent moral training baseball affords to the young? Are the little lisping tots supposed to watch and get the notion that the best form of behavior is to dodge each issue if it happens to be a tough one? I'm not wholly out of sympathy with that, but unfortunately it will not always work. There are Dragons of a sort capable of reaching out and swatting even those who seek to go round about. Launcelot did not take a short cut across the meadows when he spied an approaching knight capable of giving him trouble.

 

But let's not be romantic, period. The thing is practical. Are ballplayers and managers by any chance forgetting that the game is played for the amusement of the people who pay at the gate to enter? Not even a hometown fan likes to see a dangerous batter purposely passed in the pinch. Out in St. Louis, they hooted their own man when Ruth was denied a chance to hit. The thing is too silly to be continued, and yet it has gone on season after season without interference by the rule makers. No wonder many prefer to stay at home and listen to games over the radio. There at least you can take a drink or read part of a good book while some timorous twirler is throwing four wide ones in the general direction of Babe Ruth.

 

I swear in all sincerity that it is nothing to me which city holds the world's championship. It isn't local pride which is offended. St. Louis had not even won a pennant for thirty-eight years. Until this season. But that's no excuse for all their pitchers, except Alexander, falling into a panic at the mere sight of our Babe Ruth. Let them have the flag and lock it in some strongbox or do whatever else with it they please. But I'm not going to join in any chorus of compliments to the Cardinals. They were and are a gutless crew.

____________________________ 
From The Best in the World: A Selection of News and Feature Stories, Editorials, Humor, Poems, and Reviews, from 1921 to 1928, Viking Press, 1973.

Top ten scary - and circular - "if"s for Yank fans in 2027

 

1. If the owners pull their lockout, there might only be a partial season.

2. If there is a partial season, it might come with a cap on payrolls. 

3. If there is a payroll cap, the Yankees will find themselves way over it. 

4. If the Yankees are way over the cap, they'll have to cut players. 

5. If the Yankees must make cuts, they will face big holes in their lineup.

6. If the Yankees face big holes, Hal will keep Cashman.

7. If Hal keeps Cashman, Cashman will keep Boone.

8. If Cashman keeps Boone, we'll have the same basic team as 2026.

9. If we have the basic same team, nothing will have changed.

10. If nothing changes, the owners will pull their lockout...

See Number One.

With these four guys, the Yankees could have won the World Series.

Forget, for a moment, the outstanding players who came knocking on the Yankees' door over the years, all the Bryce Harpers and Manny Machados willing to take less money to play in the Bronx, only to have Brian Cashman hide under his desk. 

Forget all the free agent greats they never seriously considered, all the J.T. Realmutos and Max Scherzers and Freddie Freemans, and the 45 available shortstops passed up because Anthony Volpe was going to be the next Jeter. 

Forget all the terrible choices made over the many years, all the Sonny Grays over Justin Verlanders, the Giancarlo Stantons over J.D. Martinezes, all the way back to Garry Sheffield over Vladimir Guerrero.  

Forget all that, if you can. 

Let's look at all the quotidian mistakes, the smaller, offhanded, casual blunders that demonstrate every day, just how terrible Brian Cashman is as a general manager, and how terrible the management culture around him is. 

I doubt if disposing of each of the four players below took up so much as a minute of his attention span. 

And yet, if they alone had been on the New York Yankees this year—never mind any of the stars we scorned—this team would undoubtedly have won the AL East Division, and be in position now to win the World Series.

Ezequiel Duran—Ezequiel, still just 27, was widely considered to be the Texas Rangers' team MVP this season. He hit .260, with 17 homers, 4 triples, 27 doubles, and 83 ribbies, and stole 12 bases in 16 attempts. 

Of course, Ezequiel already won a ring with the Rangers, back in 2023, when he hit .276 with 14 homers for Texas.  

Where does he play? Everywhere. Hence his great nickname, "The Situation."

Duran is basically a middle infielder, but he has played every single infield and outfield position during his time in Texas. He even pitched in 4 games in 2025, for a total of 3 1/3 innings...allowing 1 hit and 0 runs.

A hustling young guy who can play everywhere and do everything? Who would the Yanks possibly trade him for?

Why Joey Gallo, of course! Duran was part of the package—a package!—sent out to bring us back one of the very worst (and certainly the whiniest) players in Yankees history. 

But hey, Ezequiel just didn't measure up as the kind of analytic, "Three True Outcomes" kind of guy.

T. J. Rumfield—Yeah, you might remember me writing about this guy a time or two. After wasting two years of what should have been his major-league career, Brian Cashman peddled him to Colorado in the off-season for one Angel Chivilli—a pitcher with a lifetime record then of 3-8, 6.18, though a veritable star compared to Joey Gallo.

(In fairness, Chivilli did go a much-improved, 1-1, 3.78 for us in 2026...and spent most of the year on the DL.) 

Rumfield, by contrast, led the NL in OBP, at .390. He also hit .300, with 30 doubles and 16 homers, and an .843 OPS. Nor were these merely Rocky Mountain highs. On the road, Rummy hit .295 with less power, but got on base even more often (.395).

An excellent fielder at first base, Rumfield, you'll recall, might have helped us pull out the Fifth Inning Fiasco in Game 5 of the 2024 World Series, had he been at first instead of a crippled Anthony Rizzo. But again, not Brian Cashman's kind of ballplayer.

With Rumfield on the team this year, we at least might have been able to escape watching Luis Garcia, Jr., go 1-10 with 3 strikeouts against Tampa Bay. But don't worry: we'll get a chance to see that particular performance again and again in the years ahead.

Luis Torrens—Torrens wound up catching 91 games for the Metsies this year, and hit all of .235, with 9 home runs. 

Not so amazin'...until you compare it to the .186 our catcher of the future, Austin Wells, hit. 

What's more, while our Mr. Wells threw out slightly less than the league-average percentage of base thieves, Torrens gunned down 38.6 of them, as opposed to an NL average of 23.3.

In 2025, he did even better, leading the Senior Circuit by nailing 40.8 percent of all attempting to steal (The league only caught 23.3 percent.).

Yet another game, all-around player, Torrens also can play first and the outfield, and even put in 2 games at second for Seattle a few years ago.

What the Yanks got for Torrens was...nothing. They drafted him in 2012, lost him in the Rule 5 draft to Seattle in 2016, signed him as a free agent in January, 2024...then sold him to the Mets before he ever played a game in the Bronx. 

Because, you know, Hal Steinbrenner can never have too much money.

Oswaldo Cabrera—In what was perhaps the most inexplicably stupid move in Cashman's career, the Yanks watched Ryan McMahon and Anthony Volpe deteriorate miserably throughout 2026—and Jazz Chisholm hit the DL—and...DFA'd the one man they had who might have capably replaced all three.

This wasn't even a money deal, to refill the insatiable maw of the Steinbrenner coffers. They just let him go.

Cabrera, of course, had helped prevent the Yanks from blowing an enormous lead when he first came up in 2022, and was last seen in 2024, lying at the plate with a horribly busted leg, asking..."Was I safe?"

Yeah, no desire in that guy. 

He had fought his way back at Scranton this summer, hitting .288 with 19 homers, stealing 12 bases in 13 attempts, and—yep—played every position on the field except pitcher, catcher, and centerfield.

We should have seen him up for all of September, seeing if he could replace—or at least push—all of the accumulated dead weight in the Yankees' infield. 

Instead, we got to see Ryan and Jazz make ridiculous errors and strike out like industrial fans throughout another playoff collapse.

This is how you end a playoff series with no one left on the bench to pinch-hit or pinch-run. This is how you are reduced to fielding a team full of players who can't field the ball or run the bases...and don't seem to much care about it.  

To master any profession is to master the details of it, to know the little things, the small improvements that make up a craft.  

That is not what anyone in Yankees management knows or cares about.

 

Top Ten Yankee Reasons for Hope in 2027

 

1. Cam Schlittler

2.  Ben Rice.

3. Aaron Judge.

4. George Lombard Jr.

5. Redsocks still Redsocks. 

6. Hal's $2.6 billion from Appollo Investments. 

6. Owners' lockout. 

7. Civil war.

8. Russian plague.

9. A.I. destroys humanity.

10. Giancarlo!

Why public ownership matters.

Here is Matt LaFleur, not simply the owner of the most finely trimmed facial hair in Christendom, but also coach and resident genius of the Green Bay Packers.

As you may know, I'm a lifelong Packers fan for complicated, person reasons. 

The Packers, just like the Yankees, own the most championships and the best, all-time winning percentage in the history of their respective sports.  (I know, I know: I do penance the rest of the year with the Knicks and the Rangers.)

For many years, roughly 1992-2018, the Packers had one of the very best quarterbacks in the history of the NFL, first in Brett Favre, then even more so, in Aaron Rodgers. Sure, each of them was, well, kind of a dick. But still, they were damned good.

Somehow, though, the Pack only reached three Super Bowls during this time, winning two of them. Frustration mounted amongst the fans, particularly those of us who remembered the Lombardi era.

As a result, the Packers' front office brought in Matt LaFleur, widely known as an offensive genius. This seemed strange just on the face of it. If you have a great quarterback and regularly score a ton of points...why bring in a guy who knows offense? 

But many figured LaFleur would be just the sort of young, dynamic coach to take us over the top. We looked forward to him shoring up the generally under-performing defense and special teams with some great trades and draft picks. 

Instead, LaFleur acted like he was taking over a floundering college program, looking to remake it according to his ideas. He feuded with Rodgers, even as he won two more of his four MVP awards, and soon drafted Jordan Love, a quarterback nobody had ever much heard of.

We fans were...perplexed. Still, LaFleur had his advocates, mostly in the press. People who early on would point out that his regular-season winning percentage was better than Lombardi's.

Well, the Packers went from winning 13 games and the division title, three years in a row, to slipping further and further away from the Super Bowl, losing two conference title games and then a division game. 

Rodgers, the other resident ass, was finally pushed out. The LaFleur Packers kept winning—but fewer and fewer games, barely scraping into the playoffs in some low, wild card slot. This was always blamed on injuries and bad luck.

Hmm, sound familiar?

Last season the Pack actually looked as though it might have a shot at winning it all...only to lose the last four games of the regular season and their wild-card playoff game against their arch-rivals—often in humiliating fashion, blowing big, seeming insurmountable leads.

People stopped saying how LaFleur's record was better than Vince Lombardi's (because it wasn't). 

A proud franchise once known for winning and sustained excellence had become synonymous with choking and collapse. 

Again, sound familiar?

Calls for LaFleur's head rang throughout the land of milk and honey. For some reason, though, the Packers' management decided to double down, re-signing LaFleur to a new, multi-year contract.

So far, the Packers have looked so terrific after this vote of confidence that...they barely managed to beat the Jets.

I shrug. 

I shrug because I know that, sooner or later, as the Packers sink through the standings, people will be held accountable. The Genius of the Goatee, now in his ninth season leading the team (hmm, who does that remind me of?)...will be fired. 

The Packers are owned by the public, as all professional sports teams in America should be. As such, they are accountable, and some day the genius will ride off into the sunset, and we can begin again.

Not so much with the New York Yankees.

The Yankees' brainrust, uh, trust is younger than many of us. Brian Cashman is 59, Hal, 56; Boone a mere stripling of 53. Chances are, they will still be running the team when we die. 

And if they are not, no doubt another Steinbrenner nepo baby—crazy stupid like George, or coolly indifferent, like Hal—will take over the franchise, and surround himself with another bunch of flatterers and office politicians dedicated to maximizing...just how much money the Yankees make for their owner.

If they do manage to blow up the greatest sport that ever was this off-season, mayors across the nation should insist that any new baseball league be owned by the people who root for them.

 

Scientific pie chart of reasons why Yankees crumbled

 

Perspective.

 

This is mostly just to echo our Peerless Leader's sentiments—it is, I think, impossible to out do, "The Yankees exist as a massive cultural and political grift"—but I couldn't let this postgame quote from Aaron Boone pass:

"...all due respect, and with the perspective that they're playing a game..."

Nothing like the 21st Century, when millionaires lecture you on perspective!

Perspective.  Yeah.

—I had perspective when it cost less to get a seat in the grandstand than to go to a movie, and most days you could buy a ticket a few minutes before he first pitch.

—I had perspective when you didn't need to take out a bank loan to buy some stadium food, or a souvenir.

—I had perspective when the Yankees used to get beat out by, say, Earl Weaver's fine Orioles teams, or the Big Red Machine, or even the worthy opponents who were the Kansas City Royals or the Boston Red Sox. Not some bunch of pick-ups playing in softball uniforms and a gimcrack excuse of a stadium.

—I had perspective when the Yankees didn't run the bases or throw the ball around like drunken sailors.

—I had perspective when the Yankees dominated opponents in The House That Ruth Built, not when they lost playoff series to five different teams at home in nine years, in The House That Hal Squeezed Out of the Taxpayers and Locked Us Out Of.

—I had perspective when the Yankees were run by true baseball man who knew and loved the game, not a bunch of sullen, failed apparatchiks who are apparently here for life.

I know this is all terribly unfair to Aaron Boone who is, by all accounts, a perfectly nice man, and only a stooge of the greed heads who run this sad excuse of a baseball team.

But c'mon. "...they're playing a game"?

We were playing a game when my pals and I used to get out the whiffle ball and bat, and hit flies up amongst the tree branches in my yard, and ran around like crazy trying to tell where they'd come down and catch them.

What the Yankees are supposed to be doing in the postseason is giving a command performance by the best players in the world, one which will thrill and delight us. What we saw this fall—what we now see every fall—ain't that.

If you were to go see a performance of Hamilton—which isn't much more than a Yankees postseason ticket—and most of the star sang off-key, everyone missed their cues, the dancers kept falling down, and the whole cast kept sneezing and coughing because they'd just got up after weeks in bed with the flu, you would see the entire audience quickly reassemble at the box office, and demand its money back.

They would get it.

The Yankees regularly evoke the grandeur of their past as a selling point.  The walls of the mediocre, luxury hotspot they forced out of us are decorated with great stars of the past, winning great games.

Not so much anymore. 

Stop trying to sell us the glories of the past when your entire business plan has nothing to do with them. Stop pretending that you are here for the fan, when the people who run your franchise now don't even seem to much like baseball—or anything at all, beyond money.

Stop trying to tell us how we should view your abject failures, and give us something worth watching.

 

I'm CONVICTED that Booney will land on his feet somewhere . . . .

... and here we go, deja vu-ing (with the ghost of Yogi) toward another gaslit Yankee winter

Glance around the Yankiverse. Does anything feel, well, familiar?

Check the headlines... 

Sorry, folks. Something shorted out. I cannot march in another black parade. Fuck the lists. Fuck the questions. Fuck Cashman and Boone. Fuck Dax Kilby. Fuck the usual October collapse, the same shit show we've endured for 16 years. Let's face the truth.

The Yankees exist as a massive cultural and political grift - a means by the ruling, billionaire class to steal our money, our time, our emotions, our energy and our attention to a malevolent system that imprisons us in a permanent freefall. You think I'm overstating this? Well, here's the only fucking worthy story in the Yankiverse today.

That's right. Dua Lipa hoovered a hotdog, and the clickbait bots that control the Internet got a viral stiffy. Last year it was Taylor Swift. Five years ago, Lady Gaga. Eighty years, Rosemary Clooney. Nothing's changed. Fools like me followed the Yankees for 168 games - all for nothing. Now, it's suddenly hurricane season, and we're supposed to start mouthing crapola about the Jazz Chisholm/Anthony Volpe rip in the fabric of realty? 

So, yeah, it's all about clicks, right? That's why we exist. Okay, on that note, here you go, everybody... 

Yep. Trained seals. The scoreboard says, NOISE!, and we scream our lungs out. The world is collapsing, the oceans are hot, death row inmates are waking up with injection needles in their arms, the Pentagon plans televising executions, and I'm supposed to concoct the five essential questions about next year.

Okay. Here are my five:

1. What the fuck? 

2. How do I get to the exit?

3. Why should anybody care about the Yankees?

4. Seriously, is there a way out?

5. Will Dua Lipa get fat?

Here we go again.

Awww, the poor, bewildered moron

 

Imitation of greatness.

The sellout crowd was on its feet. It was getting very late, and the Yankees still trailed in a game they had to have. The tying run was on base, and the muscled slugger stood near the plate, watching while the new pitcher took his warm-ups. 

The TV cameras shot him from the side, a classic shot of the big man in the big house. They cut to numerous shots of the crowd, everyone standing, banging on the sides of the stands, hoping, cajoling, begging for one moment of ecstasy in what had become yet another dreary postseason of disappointment.

They would not get it.

In the past, other Yankee greats have come through in situations like this, Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth with his called shot and Reggie Jackson with his three home runs on three pitches.

But they were immortals, and even so none of them faced quite the mountain Stanton had to climb last night, taking only his second at-bat after more than 160 days out of action.  

I've long believed Stanton to be a fraud, a chemical creation whose presence on the team has been hugely destructive, soaking up so much money that could have been spent acquiring ballplayers who could at least stay on the field.

But no one deserves to have happen what the Yankees did to him last night, batting him in such a critical spot where he had almost no possible chance of succeeding.

The idea that they would even consider resorting to just such a thing indicates only how brazen Yankees management has become in its indifference. Giancarlo Stanton was sent up there like a living, breathing avatar of the great Yankees and the great Yankees traditions that Hal Steinbrenner, Brian Cashman, Aaron Boone, and other resident toadies constantly invoke but never seriously try to match.

Like all too much of America today, Steinbrenner and Cashman are men already wealthy almost beyond imagining but interested, respectively, only in the bottom line and a manufactured adulation, battening ceaselessly off a past that they neither understand nor truly respect.

Like Stanton at the plate last night, they have made our team merely an imitation of greatness.

 

Amid booing and self-immolation, the Yankees reveal their true identity

 Tomato can.

Ten takeaways on The End... as Jim Morrison-Boone would say... my only friend, The End.

1. Volpe's canceled HR was far too close to overturn. 

2. The fan who caught that ball didn't deserve to be duckwalked from the stadium. 

3. The Yankees are the only team to collapse and get swept in the second round.

4. Our best pitcher down the stretch, Carlos Rodon, never picked up a ball.

5. It was beyond hubris - more like madness - to think Giancarlo Stanton could return after six months and hit.

6. Yank fans should root for the looming lockout. Go ahead, MLB, padlock those gates!

7. Regardless of Boone's future, this sorry ending belongs to Cashman.

8. Aaron Judge is a failure as captain; somebody needed to pulverize a water cooler.

9. It's absurd that Ben Rice, at 27, is facing a career as fulltime DH.

10. Worst of all: The Dodgers will win again.

Instead of Jeffrey Maier, we got Jeffrey Dahmer

 

Is it his end ? My blogging friends, BØØNE'S end ? (Uhm – Game Three – ALDS)

 

 

Is it me, or is baseball ridiculous when they're catching fly balls off the ceiling?

 Seems to me that's a ridiculous home field advantage. The Rays turned a chaotic situation into an easy out.  Oh well... 

At the end of the world, Fire or Rice? (Apologies to Robert Frost)

 JAZZ OR RICE?   

Some say the year will end with Jazz,
Some say Ben Rice.
And if we're down to our last man,
I have no faith in Ryan McMahon.
For when they fail, we'll pay the price,
I think we'll find that even Goldy
Is too old for a golden oldie,
And playing Volpe over Jazz,
Won't matter much, I think, whereas,
I guess I'd rather go with Rice,
And hope our offense
Will suffice.

"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.

 

I just have one thing to say.....

 1.  Most of us, on this blog, predicted that the Yankee ceiling in2026 would be to win the play-in round, and then bow out of the playoffs. 

2.  If Boone ever lets Jazz  play again for this team, we shall know he is the worst manager in the history of the game. 

3.  Judge will be ready for the next round and the World Series. 

4.  Stanton will strike out again today, if the game is close. 

5.  We played baseball against Boston ( bunts, advancing runners, catching grounders, making true throws to the bases, no catcher interference, etc.).  Against Tampa, everyone swung for the fences and all, except Ben Rice, struck out. 

6.  With a non baseball guy in the ownership position,  Cashman and Boone will stay until they are taken out for health reasons.   Or, perhaps, a flash flood. 

That's my one comment.  That's all I have to say for this season. 

What a waste of time. 

A Big Thank You to Our 2026 New York Yankees!

I mean it. Thank you! 

To tell all of you the truth... I appreciate the way the Yankees are playing.They are doing us  a huge favor. 

Two reasons leap to mind... 

Number one.  

All year when people ask me about the Yankees I say they are a bad team that is not good at baseball. 

To this they reply, "But they have the second best record in the AL. They are a playoff lock. Another winning season.  Etc."

It's hard to refute. Especially when they blow-out the Red Sox in the first round. 

BTW they really need to stop with the champaign celebrations after every step up.

My kids both graduated grade school and I didn't reward them with a trip to Disneyland.They had cake.

Celebrate when you win the pennant or, if you want to be like the Knicks, when the real job is done and you win it all!  

Yesterday they demonstrated what I've been saying all along. THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT BASEBALL. The team is filled with guys from bad organizations that don't know how to win. They are poorly constructed and poorly run. 

McMahon and Donaldson etc. instead of Machado! It was the same money! 

Almost forgot, poorly managed. Boone is a horrible manager. 

Last night the Yankees showed their true colors for all the world to see. They are in fact a bad baseball team and are not good at baseball. 

Thank you! 

Number Two. I love baseball and I love watching the Yankees. Always have. From the looks of things there might not be any baseball next year thanks to a greed induced lockout. 

Normally, and especially if the Yankees were a team worth watching or G-d forbid the World Champions. the thought of no baseball in the Spring would make me sad. 

But, they are so, so bad from the Front Office to the back-up catcher that I will not miss them. I will fill the time with something that sparks joy. 

So... Thank You 

Thank you for being he worst playoff team I've ever seen. 

Last night  Jazz had me wondering if they should have started Volpe. Volpe! 

Wells makes me miss Gary Sanchez. Gary Sanchez! 

I need to stop. 

So again, and for the last time... 

Thank You 2026 New York Yankees!  

A nice one year owner initiated, money grubbing, self own sabbatical sounds perfect right about now. 

Rays in three!

It's a hail of horrors, and the worst is yet to come

I believe that we at IT IS HIGH celebrate Yankee wins more joyously than anywhere in the known Rizzutonic universe. 

And when our heroes fail, we fling our buckets of flaming feces harder than anywhere else in God's creation.

Last night, we ran out of gasoline and shit. 

Last night brought what should have been the worst Yankee embarrassment since - say - Babe Dahlgren and Spud Chandler headed the war-ravaged teams of the 1940s. In fact, it was merely our worst game since Saturday and - if you want to travel back further - since the infamous Game 5 of the 2024 World Series. 

October embarrassments now happen on an annual basis.

Choking has become the Yankee brand. 

Seriously. How else do you explain the last two games against Tampa, when they have... 

Nearly been no-hit. 

Failed to plate one baserunner.

Struck out 18 times.

Turned every routine grounder into an adventure. 

Played as if watching the game on TV. (Can someone explain to Spencer Jones that, in the postseason, players dive?) 

Resembled the Redsocks. 

Against Boston, they made every play. 

Against Tampa, they've botched everything their way.  

Listen: This is where we're supposed to say it aint over, that we can win two in NYC and send this thing back south (maybe to coincide with a roof-shredding Gulf Coast hurricane.) 

Sorry, but it aint gonna happen. (Actually, the hurricane might.)

The 2026 Yankees are a team of destiny. 

Just not the kind we wanted. 

We know how this ends. Like last year, and the year before. The Yankees have mentally cleaned out their lockers. If Tampa scores, it's over. It will end on a cold, blustery night, with the Yankees down by a handful, with the TV announcers blathering excuses, with the umps hurrying things along, with the Rays pointing to objects thrown onto the field, and with the authorities fearing the cascade of boos will become something far worse. 

We're going home, where the anger will be hard to ignore. 

The worst is yet to come.

A L D S – Game Number Two – YES WE CAM !

(PLEASE DO NOT BLOW THIS)

I think we need a touch of Harry in the night...

 

As one man more, methinks, would share from me
For the best hope I have. O, do not wish one more!
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through my host,
That he which hath no stomach to this fight,
Let him depart; his passport shall be made
And crowns for convoy put into his purse:
We would not die in that man’s company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is called the feast of Crispian:

He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when the day is named,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian:’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars.
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispin’s day.’
Old men forget: yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember with advantages
What feats he did that day: then shall our names.
Familiar in his mouth as household words
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester,
Be in their flowing cups freshly remember’d.

This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne’er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember’d;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.