In its 2025 Power Rankings, I believe the Athletic has creatively added to our existing Yankee Dictionary of Debacles.
Here's what they said, while listing the Yankees 7th (behind Boston, by the way.)
7. New York Yankees
Playoff odds: 70.4 percent
The past few months have not gone well for the franchise. They were defeated and clowned by the Dodgers in the World Series. Juan Soto bolted for the Mets. And after an effective offseason pivot involving Max Fried, Cody Bellinger and Devin Williams, the spring went sour. Gerrit Cole underwent season-ending Tommy John surgery. Luis Gil, the reigning American League Rookie of the Year, hurt his lat. The Yankees should still contend. But the path looks rockier now. — McCullough
Defeated and clowned? As in "Cassius Clay clowned Sonny Liston?"
Is this proper usage of "clowned?" Let's go to the Cambridge Dictionary.
Way I sees it, "clowned" is sorta the act of having acted like a clown. Technically, you can clown around, but the notion that somebody can clown you - as the writer suggests the Dodgers did to the Yankees - that's not right.
Unless you believe that the Yankees were so humiliated and embarrassed that a new word has to be tweaked in order to describe what happened.
In that regard, yeah, they fucking clowned our asses.
As in, they "defeated and clowned" us?
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11 comments:
True, dat clowned shat
Yeah, they fucking DUNCED the Yankees.
Duque, a most interesting and entertaining read! I would quibble with only thing: they did not clown "us"; they clowned the Yankees. Nobody can clown us. We're invulnerable to clowning. In fact, we've been clowning Yankee management for quite some time.
Was “Send in the Clowns” on the post-loss song list? Perhaps it should be the default tune.
It went like this: 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡 and like that: 🤡🤡🤡🤡.
So, yeah. We were friggin’ clowned.
Beautifully apropos IMO:
But where are the clowns
Send in the clowns
Don't bother, they're here
But where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns
Well, maybe next year…
If I were playing the odds, I'd bet that clowned was a typo, and the word was meant to be owned.
That’s a clown question, bro.
Carl, "clowned" is, indeed, a verb. It goes back a long way. The Dutch used to say "Clounfokked" and the English picked this word up when visiting Dutch ports, specifically the port of Manhattan during the 30-something years when it was under Dutch colonial control. They bastardized it to "clownfucked" and it slowly got shorter. Legend has it that, when the Brits blew up the heavy water the Nazis were transporting across Lake Tinn in Norway, Churchill jumped up and down in his onesie-boiler suit and chortled "We clowned them! Stupid clown-fucked motherfuckers." He then drink some Drambuie and fell asleep. It has lingered in the subculture, like a yeast infection, for the past 80 years, especially in the S&M subculture in Detroit and the Michigan peninsula, and has finally come into its own again.
I was amused until I got to "the S&M subculture in Detroit and the Michigan peninsula," which is when I completely lost it and laughed my ass off.
I never let the truth get in the way of a good story, as a friend of mine likes to say.
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