We have become what the Red Sox used to be.

 

When I was a kid, after we moved to Massachusetts, I could never get over how all my Red Sox-fan friends expected things to be different...when every year, the team did the same thing.

Every spring, the Boston papers would be carried away with enthusiasm over how great the Sawx looked. And many years, they would get off to a good start—only to fade in the stretch, or collapse in the playoffs.

And almost always for the same reasons.

The team was always built too much to order for Fenway Park and its Green Monster, with a surfeit of right-handed power hitters, and not much else. They always had trouble getting pitchers who wanted to come and throw there, were always a little weak in the pen.

And—the undercurrent that never quite dared speak its name—they always had a strict quota on just how many Black and Hispanic players they would allow on the roster.

Every year, I could never figure out why my little pals thought they had themselves a winner.

And yet, in the wake of the Great Karmic Reversal that was ushered in with the 2004 ALCS, we have now become the Red Sox and their fans. 

The Hal Steinbrenner/Brian Cashman Yankees have come to lose the same way every year, much like the old Yawkey Family Red Sox. And every year, it seems, we fall for it. It's like some kind of Twilight Zone episode, where the Nazi U-boat commander ends up on the ship his sub is about to torpedo.

No, the Hal-Bri Yanks aren't racist. And no, they don't orient the lineup too much toward one feature of their home park. Until recently, in fact, Cashie seemed blissfully unaware that the team had quite purposely built a nice porch for itself in right field.

But as we've seen, the Yanks now lose the same way every season.

Every year, they go into the regular season without enough bench or enough bullpen—guaranteed. No matter how often that comes back to haunt them, in September or in the playoffs, the same mistake is repeated the next year.

Every season, the team is short on viable prospects from its middling-to-poor farm system. Every year there is a sudden rash of injuries.

Every year, there are maybe 2-3 genuine stars...and everybody else is a hope and a prayer. Occasionally, one of those desperate hopes comes through. 

Not often.

This year, Cashman seems to have added a new twist: a catcher who can't throw. Or did he? Did Trevino's arm woes come about because he was forced to throw late-inning relief, thanks to what are once again the pitiful shortcomings of our pen?

I doubt if we'll know for years to come. Just as we won't know how it is that The Brain turned The Martian into Glassman II, or if Juan Soto hurt his elbow making that catch over the wall in right field, or if Luis Gil has already frayed his rotator cuff. 

These are the mysteries we are not privilege to, because every year the show must go on. Every year the big tent goes up, the carney barkers take their places, we suckers get in line...and the pickpockets who run the New York Yankees lick their chops and start loosening their fingers.