"You'll take it and like it."

Great discussion yesterday guys, on how the Yankees manage to lose one extra-inning game after another, by refusing to ever adapt to the given situation. 

Even if you're convinced that the algorithms indicate that it is ALWAYS better to swing for the fences than to, say, bunt or hit to the opposite field—and I'm not convinced of that at all—this must change when the rules of the game change, as they do with the extra-inning, Manfred Man on second base.

In a larger sense, that is how all sports have always been played. At least, until a few years ago, when the managers, players, and front-office palookas who run major-league baseball all agreed that they would play the game—indeed, would play ALL games, in every sport—the way they decided was best, whether we fans objected or not.

You'll take it and like it.

The fact is that the very best teams—in baseball, and in pretty much all sports—have always been able to win in a number of different ways. They have almost always been the best at adjusting to what they are given.

Take the famous Boston Massacre of 1978. The Yankees went into cozy, homer-happy Fenway Park and won the first game, 15-3...without hitting a home run. Instead, they banged out 21 hits—16 of them mere singles.

Over the next three days, they went on to sweep the Sox, 13-2, 7-0, and 7-4 through a variety of ways: some homers, great pitching, taking advantage of Sox errors, and downright bloop hits. Check out almost any other championship team, in any sport, and that's how it is: they can beat you with small-ball, and beat you with the big boppers.

Take the Knicks' fabled comeback from 29 points down against the Spurs in the NBA finals this year—and from double-digits down in the second halves of, I think, every other win they had in the championship series. 

There is simply no way that happens in the NBA of up to, say 5-10 years ago.

Don't get me wrong. I was absolutely thrilled to see the Knicks win, and would have been if it turned out they had been carrying those joke buzzers to give Wemby and co. little shocks every time down court. 

But in the past, a team up 29 points in the third quarter of an NBA finals—ANY team—would have slowed the pace down, forced the Knicks to foul desperately, and coasted to victory. 

The Spurs, on the other hand, seemed to operate on the premise that they simply could NOT, for any reason, change their brand of play. They may have been particularly stupid about this, as Charles Barkley proclaimed, but it is not uncommon.

All teams in all American sports, at least, seem to have decided that they now have found THE best way to play their games, and that that is what they will do, no matter what changes in the real world.

Ghost runner on second, in extra innings? A lead so big it looks like you're playing the Bulgarian National Team? 

Doesn't matter. You have to be you. You have to play your game the entire way through, and that's that.

This is, by the way, not a particularly isolated idea in the America of the last 50-80 years.

Check out almost any cultural expression, and the ideology is pretty much the same. Want some new forms, even maybe some decoration, in architecture? Fuhgeddaboutit! You're getting the same crap everyone now gets all over the world.

Representational art? Whattayou, a hundred years old?  

On and on it goes, through almost every art form, every political custom, every way of doing business. Baseball is no exception. We, the elites, have decided what's best for you.

And you'll take it and like it.