Tuesday, October 1, 2013

The Yankiverse is a seething cauldron of rage

I just scanned the frothing peanut gallery at River Ave following a post about Girardi talking to (future California Angel?) Robbie Cano about running out grounders. It's like a Tea Party website discussing Obamacare, or a second grade lunch line debate over who is better, boys or girls?  It's Yankee fans attacking each other, even though they are practically unanimous in their anger about the team.

We saw it last week right here, when Anonymous battled the world, even nobody disputed the central tenet of the food fight: The Evil Empire has become the one portrayed by Rick Moranis in Mel Brook's "Spaceballs." (I should note, though, that the writing here is far superior. I've actually gotten personal emails from friends, professional writers, wondering who the hell are these people who post?) The fury is impossible to ignore.

Everywhere, Yankee fans are lashing out at a team mired in multiple quicksands: Age (Jeter, CC, et al), litigation (A-Rod), injuries, (Tex), greed (Cano), disappointment (Hughes and Joba), emotional fatigue (Girardi) and flat-out incompetence (the farm system.) I'm starting to think someone upstairs will walk the plank: the first major dismissal by the Steinbrenner Boys, who - in seeking to separate themselves from Daddy, have refused to mimic Old George's signature move: The firing. I think a mudslide is coming. There is too much frustration and too little hope. Yankee fans realize that short-term fixes will merely continue our long-term descent. If our main problem is aging players and bad contracts, how stupid could we be, if we simply run out and sign a new generation of them? (Stay tuned, and we'll learn.)

This will get uglier.

Listen: Yankee fans are bad losers. Met fans take a 70-win season in stride, thinking of all those virgins they'll sire in the afterlife. New York Football Giant fans can start imagining that Clowney guy as the first pick in the draft. Knicks fans don't even notice losing seasons; what else are there? And New Yorkers have no college football powerhouse - no Ohio State or Alabama - who almost never lose twice a year. We have no fallback, no Yankees methadone clinic. Thus, we go through October withdrawal throwing cups of piss at the orderlies who come to change our leg straps.

But consider this: Thank God we didn't make the one game Wild Card playoff to get into the one game Wild Card playoff.

Imagine our fury, our frustration today, if we were the Texas Rangers? Bud Selig - the $25+ million per year commissioner - can congratulate himself for adding yet one more team to the post-season. The Rangers last night sold 42,796 tickets - 88 percent capacity. Today, their fans are no better off than we are. They can rage against the cosmos. That is, if they care. My guess is that they're already zoned into Johnny Football.

But dammit, how can you ask for $300 million when you don't run out grounders?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

It could be worse. We could be the Mets.

KD said...

Let's see who has the better record next year and the year after, the Yanks or the Mets.

KD said...

You piqued my interest, Duque, so I checked out that RAB thread. I was amazed that so many Yankee fans actually support Cano’s slothful game. “It just isn’t worth the potential injury associated with hustle” seems to be the argument. I’m not buying it. Baseball should be fun and watching somebody not do their very best just is not fun to watch. Plus, besides being no fun, it causes me to question other aspects of his game. Makes me wonder just how good Robbie could be if only he gave a shit.

joe de pastry said...

Let me help those second grade debaters: girls are better than boys.