Loser City.

 

"Never have so many owed so much to so few."

    —Winston Churchill

"Never have so many been so so injured playing so little."

    —HoraceClarke66

Yeah, I know, I know.  

I was tempted to launch into yet another jeremiad about how is it that Brian "Wishin' & Hopin' & Prayin' " Cashman never builds up enough in the way of a bench, or provides us with a decent farm system.

How—somehow—that deep-dive inquiry into why, every year, the Yankees have ungodly numbers of severe injuries...never does take place.

How Yachtzee Hal Steinbrenner won't spring for those extra dollars, no matter how dire the situation, and won't let even the most blatantly crippled old Yankee nags just hobble off to the glue factory if so much as a dollar remains on their contracts.

Yeah, I was gonna say all that stuff again. 

But that's when I realized, no, the fault lies not in our sports stars, but in our city. 

Loser City. Nepo City.

Think back, back, back through the hazy, quavering TV screen to the spring of 2024. A time of hope. A time, it seemed, of renaissance. A time when New York was on the verge of a sporting jubilee of a sort that had not been seen in at least a generation.

A time when the suddenly resurgent Knicks actually look capable of challenging for their first NBA crown in over half-a-century. When the Rangers seemed like a real contender for their second Stanley Cup in 84 years. When the Mets were back, and when a young man named Juan Soto taught all us Yankees fans to hope again. When who knew what awaited in the fall, when the Jets' Super Bowl-caliber defense would finally be united with Aaron Rodgers. 

"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive/ But to be old was very heaven!"  

Or something like that.

Well, I don't have to tell you how it all worked out. The Knicks put on a gallant run, but fell a little short, due mostly to injuries. They made some moves, tweaked the roster...and came up with a team that was maybe the third best in the conference. Until their star got injured again.

The Rangers finished with the best regular-season record in the NHL, made a nice playoff run...and one year later are struggling just to get into the playoffs. Of the Jets, Giants, Nets, and assorted other hockey teams, I shall not even speak. 

And then there are our New York Yankees. Unmanned before spring training even started by the Mets, and now mysteriously crippled, thanks apparently to the onerous, off-season task of holding up martini glasses at poolside.

Same as it ever was—with stunning, decades-long periods between championships extending into the foreseeable future for pretty much every big-league team in the city.

How could this be? Simple.

There is absolutely no incentive for any New York owner to win.  

Decades of throwing new stadiums and arenas, and enormous subsidies and tax breaks, at all of these idiots—most of whom never earned a dollar in their lives—has resulted in...decades of our Nepo Noodniks looking only to maximize profits, while occasionally throwing out risibly empty threats to move away from the nation's number-one honey pot.

Oh, please, oh, please! You'd be doing us all a favor!

Here in Loser City, the gravy train for our First Son Flops has reached a point where it is actively deleterious to life in New York.

—We are paying higher bus and subway fares because the Nets, a team that has never won anything beyond an ABA championship, got a sweetheart deal for a remarkably ugly arena in the heart of Brooklyn.

—We had to forego plans to build a splendid new Penn Station—maybe even rebuild the original Penn Station—because James Dolan capped half-a-century of tax-free living by refusing the move his ugly, brown drum of an arena without a major bribe.

—And then there's Yankee Stadium III, built on a beloved public park, with fewer seats and higher prices for all. But hey, millionaires got three new in-house bars and the Wall of Candy!

I'm sure that, somewhere right now, Brian Cashman is dancing a jig. "Look at all those injuries! The perfect excuse for yet another year of disappointment and under-performance!" 

I'm sure that, somewhere right now, Hal Steinbrenner...could not care less.

It's not a coincidence that the only team left standing, with any hope of winning anything, is the Mets—owned as they are now by a Wall Street grifter who actually wants to see his new toy win things. 

Yeah, don't get too cocky, Mets fans. There will come a day when Stevie II or Stevie III will be shaking his head over the luxury tax, and wondering why it is this baseball thing should cost him even a penny of his hard-inherited lucre.

And how was this possible? We the people let it happen, that's how—just as we let so much happen in this country. We let our elected politicians cut whatever deals they wanted, in return for whatever, pathetic payoffs they got. And now we can sit back and watch our favorite, beloved-from-childhood teams...lose.

It's what we're all about. After all, we're in Loser City.