Thursday, March 18, 2021

With everything going well, it's time to invoke the IRON RULE OF YANKEE JUJU: "Nothing good comes from being optimistic."

Yesterday, Jordan Montgomery threw five no-hit innings.

Lucas "the LOOGY" Luetge continued his scoreless spring.

Giancarlo Stanton might be having the greatest spring of his career.

Four Yankee essential workers - El Chapo, Loaisiga, German and Taillon - have yet to give up a run. The Aarons - Hicks and Judge - are healthy. Clint Frazier ran into a wall and didn't crack. Even Miguel Andujar's bad hand - which in normal times would require amputation - looks like, well, just a bad hand. 

Across Camp Tamp, hope abounds. The Yankees look like the class of the AL East. It's almost impossible not to be optimistic. 

God help us...

How can we be falling for this? We've seen the movie. DON'T go into the basement! DON'T take home that devil doll! Let's NOT do the Ouija board. Those sounds in the attic? It's NOT mice, let's NOT investigate, and yeesh... for our own sakes, let's NOT pencil in Corey Kluber for the 2021 Cy Young. IT'S A TRAP! DON'T FALL FOR IT! LET'S NOT GO CAMPING ON THE HAUNTED LAKE!  

Listen: Being a fan is simple. You have one job: Always - always - expect to lose. That's it. If you expect to lose, you can never go wrong. If your team loses, you were right! Get it? You saw though all the crap. You're a prophet. And all those fools who said the Yankees would win? They're dupes, stooges, idiots. They ate the bait. You were right, and they were wrong.

I say this to anybody who is getting hopeful about 2021... WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO YOURSELF, TO YOUR FAMILY, TO YOUR FELLOW FANS? Do you understand what is happening: YOU ARE JINXING THIS TEAM. Nothing good comes from optimism. NOTHING. What must I do? Buy a billboard?

True story, I swear: Last night on a Zoom call, a Redsock fan told me - I swear this is true - that the team is going to "surprise everybody" this year, that Chris Sale is going to come back in August and be the closer, that Boston is going to make the playoffs. I just nodded and smiled. 

Let's show a little discipline, okay? Let's be a little smarter than these Bostonian hub chumps. 

By the way, for these unfortunate spasms of hope, I blame the YES Network. Once upon a time, back in the nineties, YES meant a financial advantage, which allowed the Yankees to dominate. Today, with de facto payroll caps in place, the network gives us no spending advantage - Food Stamps Hal simply banks the extra money - while it serves up a relentless stream of jinxing juju. YES would put a positive spin on the apocalypse: Should be a dazzling light display! Pre-Doomsday Show starts at 6:30 - on YES!

On that note, let's take a page from our greatest purveyor of hopelessness, destruction and reverse juju...  Alphonso: 

Until Kluber and Taillon have each thrown 75 innings, we can't begin to depend on them. (Even then, fear their workloads.)

Until Clint Frazier gives us a big season, he's Ricky Ledee with a cherry top. 

Until the breakables - Hicks, Judge and Stanton - last a season, they remain just a series of muscle tweaks, waiting to happen.

Sevy? He'll never return. German? He'll pop like a balloon.

I hate to say these things, I really do. But let's NOT sneak out to the cemetery to dig up the grave and find that cursed ring so we can evict the gypsy lady and find where the door in her cellar leads... LET'S JUST NOT. I think you'll thank me later, when the sequel comes out. 

10 comments:

ranger_lp said...

In my younger days, I would listen to The Master on WMCA doing his call-in sports talk show. After the year the New York Football Giants went 1-12-1 after going 6-0 in the preseason, I took an oath with him (as many others who were listening) that "I will not give any credence to the exhibition season." So I'll leave it at that.

Take away from this? There will be injuries and COVIDs so they will all play at one time or another.

Lieber said...

Duque, thank you for this dose of Alphonso realism. The only possible outcome of a successful March is a tragic April. I foresee Judge, Hicks, Frazier and Stanton all colliding on the same fly ball while one of them is DHing.

JM said...

Hal is smiling a toothless hillbilly grin as Cashman revs up the chain saw...it's the horror movie we expect every Spring because every season since 2009, it's been the way the postseason goes, no matter how dominant the team seems in the regular season. Which isn't exactly always.

One thing is certain: there are tweaks and bruises and pulled muscles in our future. It's inevitable. It's Bowie in "The Team That Fell to Earth," Dolly Parton without the implants, Gibbon's "The Rise and Fall of the Yankee Empire."

And don't get me started on the false hope of the Ides of a Sanchezian March.

Alphonso said...

I am honored.

HoraceClarke66 said...

I was at the last game of that season, ranger. My first pro football game ever. Yankee Stadium was full of Giants fans singing choruses of, "Goodbye, Allie!" to Coach Allie Sherman, who had only won three division titles for them.

I swear, too, they were actually waving pennants that read the same thing: "Goodbye, Allie!"

This is a tough town.

TheWinWarblist said...

Naught but doom and heartbreaking pain. Are in our future. We will all meet at the stadium again this year only to see the Yanks get massacred by Baltimore. The gods of JuJu will flick us into the river with a stool encrusted thumb.

el duque said...

We had Vince Lombardi coaching the OL. We had Tom Landry coaching the D. We let them both go. We turned to Allie Sherman. We'd have been better served with Ali Sheedy.

TheWinWarblist said...

Ali Sherry? I would have consented to that serving.

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