Before yesterday, the last time the Yankees went sparkless, featherless and scoreless in a home opener, this was the storied lineup.
In that
Fifty-seven years later, let us take comfort in knowing that:
1. The Yankees this year cannot finish 9th.
2. In the modern playoffs format, finishing a few games over .500 wins us a participation trophy.
3. Boston and the Mets should be rather terrible.
That said, don't stare directly into the current Yankee lineup without a pair of welding goggles. Otherwise, Giancarlo Stanton, Anthony Rizzo and Oswaldo Cabrera might burn a hole into your brain. And if anything happens to Aaron Judge or Juan Soto - or if they simply do not hit, like yesterday - yeesh: The dominoes could line up for a truly awful season, "an impossible nightmare."
Listen: I really shouldn't whine. The Yanks remain 6-2, tied with Boston atop the AL East. And if the Redsocks win anything this year, it will be - at worst - an Improbable Dream.
But the Yankees yesterday offered their fan base a plate of bad clams - a lowlight reel of swings and misses, of failure that has become normalcy in recent years. When the Yankees fall behind, it's nearly an impossible dream to think they'll rally. Yesterday, as usual, they simply didn't hit. Not a lick. And then, in the ninth, they seemed to mount a rally, bringing the tying run to the plate. Of course, they did! They always do! And the final long drive fell about 15 feet short. Yes, we've seen this for years!
Over four games in Houston, we dreamed that this team might be different from all the others. Suddenly, not so sure. Close your eyes, and in this modern lineup, you see the ghosts of Horace Clarke, Tom Tresh and Peppi.
Damn... opening day in the Bronx, and we couldn't score a run? Worst since 1967. Wow.
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Actually there were several worse lineups in 1967:
ABC Wednesday - Custer, The Second Hundred Years, ABC Wednesday Night Movie
CBS Thursday - Cimarron Strip, CBS Thursday Night Movie
and
NBC Saturday - Maya, Get Smart (All Star) - NBC Saturday Night at the Movies.
Best Line up -
NBC Monday - Monkees , Laugh In, The Danny Thomas Hour (Like batting Stanton third) I Spy
Very Close Second
CBS Wednesday - Lost in Space, Beverly Hillbillies, Green Acres, He and She (Or batting him cleanup), The Johnathan Winters Show.
It was a solid year for TV but you had to get up off the couch and change the channel a lot.
I mentioned 1967 a week or so ago. It's a year that's going to come up a lot this season, for good reason. It helped shaped the psyche of many of us here on this noble blog.
NBC's Thursday was pretty good as well...
Daniel Boone, Ironside, Dragnet, The Dean Martin Show.
Just sayin'
One thing to note from that ‘67 box score: that lineup, weak as it was, only struck out twice. Yesterday we whiffed 11 times.
Wasn't there a Tuesday NBC lineup that was anchored by PLEASE DON'T EAT THE DAISIES?
That was Murderers Row. For daisies, anyway.
2021, part four. I was wondering who this year's Rougned Odor would be, and now it looks like we are one or two tweaked gonads away from it being Rougned Odor himself!
I remember that game! Yaz made what they used to call "a circus catch"—later banned for being unkind to circus folk—off Tom Tresh to start the 9th. Billy Rohr beat the Yanks again, a few days later in Fenway, then won only 1 more game in his major-league career.
I remember it being a very overcast, maybe drizzly day, with almost nobody in the stands. (And indeed there weren't; attendance—for Opening Day—was only 14,375.)
The Stadium looked like a big, grim cathedral after it had been overrun by Goths. The Great Dynasty was definitely dead, and the Devil was waiting in the wings (because a TV network didn't understand the idea of synergy).
Ol' George would bring us some more thrills. But the devil always gets his due. We will pay for those with year after year in the wilderness.
It seemed to me that, in general, NYC's brief-lived, false spring died yesterday.
The UConn women lost in a heartbreaker, the Knicks announced devastating injuries that will keep them from winning anything, and the Yanks came home and showed their true colors. All that's left is for the Rangers to spit the bit in an early round again, and the city's perpetual sports misery will be complete.
(P.S.: Aaron Rodgers is going to wish he took that VP slot.)
I liked The Second Hundred Years. Well, I liked anything that had a strange, kind of sci-fi premise. Monte Markham was the star of that, wasn't he?
Summer of Love, baby. Sgt. Pepper's. The Doors. First Jeff Airplane LP? But the Yankees team was not groovy. Not at all, man.
Oh, one more thing. The Yanks did great in Houston and really well in Arizona, WHERE IT WAS WARM. Yesterday was a shit day, cold and really not suitable for baseball. Or not for our guys, anyway. Home stands might be tough until the weather turns.
Just saying. In case there's something to that.
I think Jim Lyttle and Jerry Kenney would be upgrades
I missed yesterday's game. I was passing a kidney stone while at work. I looked at the box score before I went to bed early and sober. It made me grateful for the kidney stone.
Fuck it all.
Fun fact:
Ben Rortvedt hits a game tying single against the Rockies.
He’s hitting .400 with a .955 OPS as a member of the Rays
Brian Cashman here, to remind y'all to accentuate the not-negatives:
-- our pitching staff gave up only 3 runs. In nine innings!!!
-- we only used 3 relief pitchers
-- no one was injured, as far as I know
-- Hal S cracked a smile (he might have been passing gas)
-- down 3-to-0, it was almost impossible for Lorna Boone to screw up the game from the dugout.
-- we created a mindset where, when we win the next 2 games, everyone will be ecstatic. And we'll be 8-and-2.
-- Juan Soto's BA is still over .300. Stanton only struck out twice. Volpe got 2 hits!
-- if we all thought Aaron Judge was due to break out BEFORE Friday's game, now -- well, he's really, really due. After all, he got 2 walks and only 1 strike-out.
AND: Despite all of you fire-him-mongers, I, a Future Hall-of-Fame GM, still have a job.
Winnie -
There is a product called Stone Breaker that I started taking after my first trip to the ER. Since then I have passed eight stones with barely the slightest discomfort. The only reason I even knew I passed them was I was looking down. Yes, you can say that the science isn't in and that I am a short statistical sample but Winnie - I swear by it.
In fact the only other time I had to go to hospital for a stone (that I passed in an IKEA - people thought I was screaming and crying because I didn't like the snaaarfluden (sometimes called the veetibfeezer in Yiddish) was because I got lazy and stopped taking it for a few weeks while crossing the country and eating a lot of grits. (for some reason grits are really bad for you if you are susceptible to getting stones.)
Winnie, my friend, I'm telling ya... Stone Breaker. Amazon has it. I'm sure it's other laces too. Accept no substitutes.
Stone Breaker would be a good name for an action character. Start your novels now.
When I was in college, our athletic director was named Brick Stone. Really.
Doug - did you request the Ikea security cam footage after the event?
It might have been something to share with the grandchildren someday.
Since Duque used an eclipse header for this post...this is for Hammer. A good explanation of why a total eclipse is worth experiencing.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/06/opinion/total-solar-eclipse-chaser.html?unlocked_article_code=1.iU0.Vx_s.ccvZRBWPOg4G&smid=url-share
Lost in the hoopla surrounding the Odor reunion, check out this line from SWB
2B Caleb Durbin 2-2, HR, 3 BB, 3 RBI, 2 SB, picked off — perfect day at the plate, swiped a pair of bags, and his first homer at Triple-A
you don’t think that he might…nah, can’t be.
Here comes the shit ...
Here it comes ... here it comes ... here comes your 19th nervous breakdown ... oh who's to blame ... that girl is insane ....
That last pitch to Verdugo was hittable. If it had been Spencer Jones at the plate, that woulda coulda shoulda been a 3 run HR.
Down 1-0 in the bottom 8th, Boone lets Trevino hit against Trevor Richards. Wells didn't even play. Cabrera didn't even play. Methinks HAL & Co. told Ba-Boone that their record was too good. Gotta slow it down, lose some games. Don't want to blow out the rest of the league and make it look too easy in the early goings. Ba-Boone under surreptitious orders to lose a bunch of games this homestand.
Probably see more egg laying this weekend.
FROM SNY.com:
Yankees' Jonathan Loaisiga to undergo season-ending elbow surgery
The reliever says he has a torn UCL and will need 10-12 months to recover
Basically his career is over.
Isn't there a game tonight? Where is it?
It's on YES, JM. And great points about the warm weather.
Is there anything MORE senseless than scheduling this game at night?
Let's recap:
—Early April, when it will likely be freezing. Check!
—Yanks will be going up against not the Mets, but the men's NCAA Final Four. Check!
Brilliant scheduling. Tonight's forecast is heavy fan torture, with a high probability of muscle pulls, and zero percent chance of home runs, still pretty much the team's only way to score.
Thanks, Hoss.
It was the best of times…not the other thing…
Other than the fans, it’s really the pitchers who suffer on nights like this. Gausman, a pretty good pitcher, struggled against us tonight, and Schmidt is not really sharp and probably won’t last 5.
And the hits keep on coming…
This is on Boone for not having a guy ready when it was clear weaver was done.
Take the win and run.
Yes Doug, boone has been worse than ever this season. Are they really going to extend him?
Also need to change the rule that says a starter must go 5 to get the win. Weaver is awful, but has 3 wins simply because he’s the first guy out of the bullpen. That’s wrong.
Jesus, this game was in the bag, a laugher, and the pitching and managing almost blew it. Incredible.
Just as predicted by a few guys here, we'll score plenty, but we'll give up a lot, too.
Was Soto really not hurt? I won't believe it until another two or three days go by.
I was in the car all day doing what one does whilst in a car (ok ok ok I was driving - none of that Hugh Grant Hollywood Boulevard stuff) - BUT - that said - to Hoss - if Soto is a NY Yankee it’s only a matter of time before he’s on the IL. Why not today or tomorrow?
He could pull an inferior rectus during the Eclipse on Monday.
AA,
Everyone knows you weren't on Hollywood Boulevard. You were searching for that Divine impersonator in Golden Gate Park. --- that baby definitely got back!
PS, Boone is an idiot. Ca$hole is worse. And HAL is a trust fund twerp.
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