Relax, Yankee fans: We can either steal this year or embrace the collapse

The iconic scene in Meatballs, Bill Murray's 1979 one-man movie, comes when he rallies the future computer nerds of Camp North Star with the chant, "IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER! IT JUST DOESN'T MATTER!" And whenever life goes blooey - when the songbird craps your windshield, when the PBS fund-raiser pre-empts Ken Burns' 10-part salute to potatoes, when the Yankees slip below .500 - I relive that epic moment: It just doesn't matter. Because - pssst, pass it along - it doesn't.

Today, as the Death Star wobbles in orbit, let us breathe deeply, congratulate ourselves for surviving this wretched year, and celebrate - yeah, celebrate - the 2020 baseball season. 

Two months ago, I'd have bet the chicken coop that, by now, this season would have collapsed into a round-robin of the few cities still fielding a lineup. But here we are, watching an authentic Yankee collapse, just like the other great meltdowns that have punctuated this new millennium. And it didn't even take 162 games.  

So, buckle up. Seems to me, Yank fans have two paths ahead, and both can be quite enjoyable, if we achieve the proper mindset. With two weeks left in the regular season, here are the roads:

1. We steal the election season. This preferred option is simple and oh-sooo delicious. Here's what happens: We troll the league at .500, as we have done, until Stanton, Judge, Urshela, Paxton et al return, and the others awaken. We snag the final playoff spot in the AL. That means a three-game series against Tampa or Oakland, the best teams out there, with a fresh lineup, and when they are most vulnerable. With no fans in the stands, the home field advantage means nothing. We run the playoffs and steal the season. As villains go, we'd be just a notch below Houston, cheating with their garbage cans. Can you imagine how pissed off the rest of baseball would be? Ahhh... Calgon Bath Oil Beads, take me away!

2. We embrace the meltdown. Why not? It's been a-comin' for a while. We've watched the Yankees evolve into a string of tiresome, homer-happy whiffers, who cannot solve an over-shift or bunt a runner to second. A complete collapse would clean out the stables, from top to bottom. And who cares? The 2020 and maybe 2021 seasons will be remembered in the way we now see baseball during World War II, when stars like Ted Williams, Hank Greenberg and Joe DiMaggio joined the service, and the number of minor leagues collapsed from 44 to 12. 

When this pandemic ends, assuming we're here to monitor it - (hey, let's make a pact to do just that) - baseball will be vastly changed in ways that we cannot yet know. You can't predict baseball, Suzyn. But here's one: Gary Sanchez will no longer catch for the Yankees. 

So, oh, no, the sky is falling! We're collapsing, eh? Well, bring it on. You know what I say? It. Just. Doesn't. Matter. And, in fact, it could still be fun.

I'm Going to Miss Ma Boone When Cashman Comes for His Head.

Sure, he's not really a manager at all (How's that trip to Buffalo going, Bri?  Amazed your pep talk tonight didn't turn the team around?).

But he's trying so danged hard!  You just gotta love what he told the press yesterday about the possible return of the Judge and Giancarlo Show this season:

"I don't have a timetable on you, but I do feel like we're inching closer to starting to get really ramped up."

Wow.  Let's parse that for a moment, shall we?  Unless I have miscounted, I think we're talking 7 caveats in a 22-word sentence:

—"I don't have a timetable on you":  What he really means to say is, "for you," but unconsciously, yes, he's saying, "It's on you, scribes, asking me something you know is unanswerable."  And of course, there is no timetable.  That train been gone a long time.

—"but I do feel":  "Feel," not know.

—"like":  He doesn't definitely "feel," but it's like a feeling.

—"we're inching":  Suddenly, it's not even about the actual Judge and Stanton anymore, but all of us together.  And we're only inching, moving oh-so-slowly.

—"closer":  We're not there.  But we're closer.  By inches.

—"to starting":  So, we're getting very slowly closer to starting.  Wow, that is slow.  We're really not even close to starting yet.

—"to get really ramped up":  Mind you, not to necessarily get to a point where Judge and Stanton are actually back on the field yet, but to get to where their rehab might be ramped up.

In other words, Ma hasn't really been told anything, but he's got this crazy optimistic feeling that—who knows?—pretty soon, well, maybe they'll really get into getting better.

Bottom line:  The Twin Towers are inching toward 2021.  Maybe.

Virtual Baseball: Cole Train Hits the Express Track, Pathetic Sox Tied to Rails! New York Back in First!

In virtual baseball tonight, the Yanks and Gerrit Cole chugged right through the festering Dead Sox, as the Yanks steamrolled Boston, 12-0. Cole picked up his league-leading, fourth complete game of the season, even though manager Ma Boone had pledged to limit his innings as much as possible this September. Nonetheless, in striking out only 4, Cole was able to pitch the entire game with just 76 pitches. "It was something Giancarlo taught me, something called, 'Pitch to contact,' that he said was an ancient Hopi Indian concept," Cole told reporters afterwards. "Boy, I miss that guy! He was truly a man of knowledge." Home runs by Clint Frazier, Miguel Andujar, Gleyber Torres, and Aaron Judge blasted the Yankees back into first place, a game ahead of the Tampa Bay Ray-Rays. Yet for all the festive atmosphere in the upper decks of a packed Stadium III, the game was overshadowed in the luxury seats by the fact that the stock market dropped another 9,000 points today, finishing at just 36,000, as "the Red Bear" continued to run amok on Wall Street. Some Yankees' luxury box magnates were so overcome with despair that they actually hurled themselves from the moat that protects their exclusive seating bastion. The fall was not long enough to seriously injury any of them, although several suffered boos and scrapes on their knees and shins that Yankees creature Lonn Trost personally kissed to make all better. They were also served more complimentary lobster rolls.

Buffalo: A Verdant Paradise!

Because your New York Yankees are unlikely to be up in Buffalo for a series, well, ever again, I want to continue pointing out some of the best points of our beloved little sister, the second-biggest city in New York State.

Did you know, for instance, that "the [Other] City of Light" was graced with some of the best work by our very own landscape artistes, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux?  It's true!  Here is the entire park-and-parkways system they crafted for the 19th century's city of the future:



Olmsted and Vaux, the greatest battery this side of Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson, left their handiwork on some of our most beloved metropolises, and even in Boston.  Here are some more enticing images of all that awaits you in the home of the BufFeds:



Nice, huh?  And to think, this leafy wonderland is a mere seven hours away by torturous train ride!  Well, hey, it beats watching our team play, doesn't it?

1000 Yard Stare

I remember when Rich Kotite coached the Jets to a 1-15 season.

The team might appear competitive for a while, and then something would go wrong.

And that would be compounded by a player error.

A key play would be inches short. A pass for a first down, dropped.

And then the wheels would come off.

The camera men got used to covering Richey's face at each of these junctures, and it was obvious that he had entered a " trance-like state," by the time the outcome became inevitable.

It was the "1000 yard stare," a descriptive phrase coined during the Vietnam war. Where nothing good was down the road.  Only more of the same.  Horror and loss.  Horror and loss. Yet on they must slog. 

The Yankees are getting that "look."  

When Voit bungled that ground ball, he got the look. 

Torres  has the look when a ground ball approaches. 

 Sanchez is buried by it.

Chad Green walked off the mound with it.

Ottavio's eyers bulged with it as he gave up runs

They are beginning to realize they aren't going to win this war. 

And they might not make it back in one piece. 

The 1000 yard stare.

 

It's time to acknowledge the depth of this Yankee malaise

Last month, an angry Redsock fan verbally cole-cocked me, claiming that whatever the Yankees do this year - like winning a world series - wouldn't count, because of the "short-season asterisk." It was sad, embarrassing, to see how this poor fellow had deteriorated: He practically winnowed, Nya-nya-nyaaah. I generously ignored him, because the Yanks were leading the AL East and - hey - like all New York Tough fans, I am smart, united, disciplined and loving. To prove this, I even wished Mookie Betts well.

But his foul, mean-spirited toxicity still stung, and the question of 2020 remains: 

Is it real, or is it Memorex? 

In two weeks, the regular season ends, and both Yankee and Redsock fans will likely join together in shouting, "Good riddance." 

Is any of this legit? 

Honestly, I dunno.

Last night, we watched our veteran lug nuts, Adam Ottavino and Chad Green, explode like downtown Beirut. Each faces the worst season of his career. Would another 100 games provide time to rectify things? Maybe. But this year is dog meat. And should we have seen this coming? 

Last year, Green's ERA shot up from 2.50 to 4.17. (The previous season, it was a microscopic 1.83.) At age 29, he's well known to the league, and - let's face it - his game is steadily deteriorating. For bullpen innings-eaters, four years is a career.  

Ottavino, 34, fell apart last fall, though he still had a great season (1.90 ERA.) This year, he's struggled, and last night - well - hello, Kenosha! His ERA is above 7.00, and he won't get enough innings in 2020 to restore it to decency. 

Zack Britton is 32 and four years past peak foliage. Aroldis Chapman is 32 and sweating like 40. Jonathan Holder is an old 27, Luis Cessa, an ancient 28. The wave of young fireballers we touted last spring never materialized. Other teams bring in no-names, up from wherever, and our bats go to sleep. Then our high-priced vets - maybe not awakened from winter hibernation? - get shelled. 

Make no mistake: This Yankee collapse is due to the bullpen, our hyped strength of spring. 

(Note: No recap of the malaise is complete without mention of the pitiful Gary Sanchez, who has been far worse than Eric Kratz or Kyle Higashioka, or whatever fodder remains stashed in Scranton. Just saying.) 

The Washington Nats - last year's champs - sit 10 games below .500, last in the NL East. The cheating Astros, whom they beat last October, rest one game above .500. The Marlins, Mariners and Orioles - last year's definition of awful - are chasing us for the final playoff slot. So... is this a short-season illusion? Or are the Yankees really this bad?

Honestly, I dunno. But last year's famous "Next Man Up" resurgence - great performances from middling players - now looks like the anomaly. We wrongly thought it would last. And last year's wave of injuries - a statistical fluke of nature - was the new reality. We wrongly thought it would end.

Whatever happens over this next two weeks, alarms should be sounding across the Yankiverse. This collapse is no asterisk. The 2020 Yankees are a dull, slow, sad, fragile, over-the-hill team. It's too late save this wretched mini-season. But this winter, we will need a tear-down. 

Virtual Baseball: Breakdown in Birdland! Yanks Drop First to Baltimore in Almost Two Years, Fall Back into First Place Tie.

Virtual Deivi Garcia's brilliant debut as a Yankee hit a speed bump in Baltimore this Labor Day afternoon, as a couple of butchered balls at first base and a pair of timely hits by royal family member Sir Ryan Mountcastle enabled the O's to grab some final scrap of pride and beat New York, 5-3.

Deivi often looked sharp, striking out 10 in 5 innings of work, but he was betrayed by his defense and by a Yankees lineup that was looking for pitches in all the wrong places.

Voit partially redeemed himself with a long, solo home run—as did Miguel Andujar and Clint Frazier—but again and again, the Bombers' navigation system went haywire with men on base, as they stranded 14 runners.

The loss dropped New York back into a tie for first with the wretched Rays, but manager Ma Boone seemed unconcerned.

"Ah, you guys know me.  Why, you could set off a bomb in here and I wouldn't get excited.  I like to keep things calm and steady.  To understand how the long season demands a level temperament.  To never get too high or too low ZZZZZZZZZZZZ..."

As Boone's head fell on his desk and he drifted into a deep sleep, the New York press corps tucked his manager's jacket up over his shoulders and left a note saying to wake him in time for the Amtrak back home, before tiptoeing out the door and shushing the players in the clubhouse.

"Shuffle Off to..."

Time to take a break from the mind-boggling breakdown of your New York Yankees, and enjoy a brief travelogue on the city where the Boys in Pinstripes will play games that count for the first time.




The last team considered "major-league" to play in "the City of Light," was the Federal League's Buffalo Blues, more commonly dubbed the "BufFeds."

(The one great thing about the Federal League was the often exotic nicknames of its teams, official or unofficial:  the Pittsburgh Stogies, the Newark Peppers, the Baltimore Terrapins, the Chicago Whales, and the Brooklyn Tip-Tops, among others.)

The BufFeds finished 4th in 1914, sixth in 1915, and promptly disbanded, along with their league.  Their outstanding player was the sinister ex-Yankee, Hal Chase, who batted .347 in half-a-season in 1914, then led the league in home runs with 17 the next year.  After that, Chase, who had already developed a notorious reputation for throwing games and being a general no-goodnik, was deemed major-league ready again, and he returned to New York just in time to help organize the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

Before the BufFeds there were the Bisons, one of the least imaginative team names of all time.

The Bisons put in 7 years in the NL, 1879-1885, without accomplishing much of note, good or bad.  At various times they did boast some of the best players of the 19th century, including pitcher James "Pud" Galvin, who won 46 games two years in a row, catcher and infielder Deacon White, and first baseman Dan Brouthers, one of the very best hitters of the era, maybe THE best.

For a year, they even had Old Hoss Radbourne, a pitcher especially dear to my heart for obvious reasons, who would go on to win an all-time, major-league record 60 games in 1884 for another, long-dead National League team, the Providence Grays.

Old Hoss had won 48 games the year before in Providence, and in 1884 he actually powered the Grays to their second and last pennant.  Providence went 84-28, swept the annual "Temple Cup" series from the New York Metropolitans of the American Association in three games—even in the 19th century, the Mets were losers—and then disbanded after Old Hoss finally gave out the next year and won a mere 28 games.

Put Old Hoss together with Pud, and you have a 19th century superteam.  But in Buffalo, Radbourne was just a utility infielder who reportedly hurt himself by practicing too hard, and was released (The more things change...)

Some of the old Bisons tried to get the band back together in the 1890 Players League, but the team finished dead last, and the league folded.

That was pretty typical for Buffalo, which was pretty much considered the can't-miss metropolis of the century (Call it the 19th-century Gary Sanchez).  With electricity coming in and Niagara Falls right there, Buffalo's population rose from almost 118,000 in 1870 to nearly 507,000 in 1920.

But that was pretty much it.  The president got shot there, and soon you could get electricity anywhere, they'd ship it right to your house, and Buffalo wasn't exactly the first place you thought of when somebody said, "the City of Light!"

The city reached its peak population just after the war, at 580,132 in 1950, but after that it was all downhill.   Fewer than half that many people live in Buffalo today, which is a crying shame because it looked like a very nice city indeed when I once went through it on a train.

Sadly, the Yanks will not be playing in the wonderfully gloomy old, War Memorial Stadium (see below), where they filmed The Natural, but the current, pleasant, generic minor-league park.

And so we bid a fond farewell to the plucky little city of Buffalo, still number two in New York, with this one remaining bit of trivia:

Did you know that the only major-league player NOT listed as having been born in any one place, played with the BufFeds?

It's true!  Edmund Joseph Porray, who went 0-1 with a 4.35 ERA, is officially listed as having been born "At sea, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean."  Incredibly enough, Porray also died at sea, "somewhere in the Pacific Ocean," in 1954.

No, I made that up.  Portray actually died in a hairy little Pennsylvania town called Lackawaxen (get it?), and was buried in the Odd Fellows Cemetery there.






 

The Yankee season is broken, and the great lie of 2020 has been exposed.

It's a modern tradition: Every late spring - around May-June - the mighty Yankees slip-slide into the doldrums, a two-week losing streak that causes terrified IT IS HIGH posters and commentators - (I plead guilty) - to shriek that all is lost, that the season is dead, that this godforsaken, nepotistic, monopoly-built, corporate money-machine needs to clean house. Were we political, we'd say the Yankees needed to drain their swamp. 

But but BUT... then - as the red, boiling sunsets of July and August fry our systems - the team's plucky veterans would heal themselves, right the ship, and make a pennant run. We end up winning an elusive AL wild card slot, which then leads to an early playoffs knockout, and - by golly! - we'd have come soooo close that, by next winter, we'd tell ourselves that only a minor tweak was needed, and come Feb. 20, we'd happily wait for the big wheel to turn again.

Last winter - ah, do we remember last winter? - we were so certain, so absolutely sure, that adding Gerrit Cole, a legitimate ace, would bring us a ring. All we needed to do was avoid the massive injuries that crushed us last year - and that was mere happenstance, right? Cole was the missing ingredient, the Game One starter, who would lead us to Valhalla, or maybe Skaneateles.  

Well, you don't need me to say how disappointing, how disgusting, this year has been. The Death Star has blown its fuses. It's dead in space. You sense it in every stranded base-runner, every botched grounder, every called third strike on a fastball down the middle. If an opposing team scores three runs, three!, holy crap, we are in an inescapable pit! Three runs? Impossible!

This pandemic has laid naked the great Yankee lie of 2020 - the bottomless depth of our farm system. Last year's "Next Man Up" miracle is gone. This year, nobody has replaced any of our injured starters, the lineup is pocked with sub-.200 batting averages, the YES team deniers yesterday were relegated to suggesting we can eek out a playoff spot, get our stars healthy, and make a miracle run. We're betting for a magical resurgence. It's come to that.

I suppose it could happen. And Russia might overturn Putin, too. The Yankees are still playing as if it's late May, and they have 100 games left. They are stretching out pitchers and waiting for - well - for Godot, I guess. Other teams are playing with the abandon of mid-September, the O's happily giving hungry youngsters their chances to shine. 

We keep waiting for Aaron Hicks to hit, for Miguel Andujar to field, for Gary Sanchez to do something - anything - and for our vaunted ace to save the day. Three weeks left. It's not May-June. 

It's quite possibly the most depressing Yankee season since 2008, the year of Sidney Ponson. 

So, here is my official shriek of despair. The only hope I can conjure: It will all be over soon. 

Virtual Baseball: Deivi Is Less, but Yanks Are More, Beat the Orioles Again, Take First Place!

The virtual Baltimore Orioles touched up Deivi Garcia early, but it mattered little to a New York Yankees team that steamed past the Birds, en route to a 9-4 victory.  It marked the 21st or 22nd or 23rd straight time the Yankees had bested Baltimore.

Garcia ran into trouble repeatedly but each time, like an old friend, D.J. Stewart was up there for the Orioles, and Garcia fanned him three times on a total of 10 pitches.

"You know, I was thinking, last week the Mets, they blew a big lead late in the game.  And I was thinking, maybe my pitch sequences weren't right, maybe Stewart would hit me," Garcia said—then collapsed into helpless laughter.  "No, no, sorry for all that bullshit.  The Mets, who cares what they do?  And D.J.  Stewart?"

The interview then ended in further gales of laughter.

For the Yanks, it was smooth sailing as Luke Voit, Sunday catcher Kyle Higashioka, Gleyber Torres (of course), and Aaron Judge all homered.

The win gave the Yanks sole possession of first place, with just 20 left to play.

"You know, I've had my doubts this whole season.  But this is a team that really wants to play," Ma Boone told reporters.  "I know this is a little premature, but I think it's smooth sailing from here on in.  I mean, what could possibly go wrong?"

Are these the words of a man who can lead us to a World Series title?

Gerrit Cole's postgame statement yesterday:

“Some really nice pitches tonight, some really nice sequences.  But you know, in the end, I guess, when the biggest pitches mattered, we just kind of fizzled out, we weren’t able to make good enough pitches.  It’s a fickle game.  I mean, it can change really quickly, it’s a game of inches.  Wasn’t that long ago that where we had an inning that broke in our favor against the Mets.  Started with a, you know, started with a shift here then a botched whatever to third base and all of a sudden we scored four and came back and ended up winning the game, so we’ve been on the right side of it, tonight we were on the wrong side of it.”   

Uh-boy.  (Makes Lou Costello hand rubs all over his face.)

A conspicuous lack of "I's" no?

I hate to keep playing the age card here—all right, I love it, I admit, it's one of the few fun things about getting old—but I'm aged enough to have watched a few innings of Whitey Ford's last shutout as a Yankee.

For all the Yankees aces and stoppers I've seen since—Ford, Al Downing, Mel Stottlemyre, Catfish Hunter, Ron Guidry, Tommy John, Jimmy Key, David Cone, David Wells, Roger Clemens, Orlando Hernandez, Andy Pettitte, C.C. Sabathia, Masahiro Tanaka, and Luis Severino—I have never heard them say, after a bad start, "It's a fickle game," "baseball is a game of inches," or (my personal favorite) "Hey, the Mets blew a game last week!"

The only exception to this was Mike Mussina, who—after he retired—blamed the Yankees never winning a World Series during his time with the club on...wait for it!...Mariano Rivera.

I saw that coming, and made a bet of one Faicco's prosciutto sub that the Yanks would never win it all with Mussina as one of their top starters.  That was a bitter sub to swallow, but I did so with a certain relish (I can't remember which brand), because I had taken the measure of the Moose from the start.

But I digress.

Suffice it to say, that statement from Mr. Cole comes from the most passive point of view I think I've ever heard from a pitcher.  "We" fizzled out?   "We" didn't make enough good pitches?

Oh, son, it wasn't the whole infield out there helping you throw the ball.  (If so, you might not have given up a home run to a guy who literally had not had a hit all season.).  It's not "we" who are leading the AL in home runs allowed.

Sure, the back-up shortstop made an error.  Funny, nobody heard Thairo Estrada after the game saying how "we" botched that play and you know, 'if it can happen to the Mets it can happen to anyone!'

The proper response in a situation like this, Mr. Cole, is more along the lines of:

"Hey, I know we really needed a win today and I messed up.  It's my bad and nobody else's.  Lately, I've been doling out gopher balls like M & Ms, even to meat like D.J. Stewart.  It's got to stop and it's going to stop."

Well, let's not hold our breath waiting.

I'm not going to crack wise about his salary because thinking $36 million makes you a good pitcher is Steinbrenner Family Logic.  I thought it was a great idea to sign Cole, and I was very glad to see that the Yankees did, for whatever price.

But there's an element of character in playing this game that neither Brain nor all the statheads in the world want to acknowledge.  So far, this tin potsky of a pitcher hasn't shown a lick of it.

I can't wait until next year, when the fans are back and the boos start to roll.

Uh-boy!


 

Let's Play Two !

Who is the Ernie Banks of this Yankee team?

Anyone vote for Gary Sanchez ? Chapman? Hicks?

I know, it is Giancarlo Stanton.  Encouraging the team from a yacht in Biscayne Bay.

I am speechless.  

I don't think a single Yankee wants to play two today, or even one.  

The Yankee line-up, yesterday, had six hitters in a row (#5-1#) who were at .202, or well below that.  Why DJ did not play is a mystery.  He later pinch hit and struck out.

Twelve strike outs were posted on the Yankee box score.  Who can even watch that, or call it baseball? Were we facing Nolan Ryan or Sandy Koufax?

Our young gun, Estrada , struck out three times and made an unforced throwing error which cost Cole the game. Gary got a sombrero with four tassels for his work in the batters box.

But we wouldn't have won with one run, anyway.

I thought Andujar would play at third.  It is his natural position.  

He played in Left field.  

Aaron Boone is working his magic.

Pray for rain. 

As the Yankee season slips away, should we start pondering the vast changes that surely lie ahead?

Midway through last night's debacle - aka: the Barbarity in Baltimore - it became clear that John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman were suffering from P.T.S.D., along with acute lock-down depression. On every Yankee front, no matter how hard he sought to conjure a wisp of hope, The Master spake only more pain. 

Not long ago, 2020 had stacked up perfectly, boundlessly in potential, a Yankee lineup for the ages. Now, they were getting crushed by the no-name O's, formerly our patsies, and with our ace on the mound. 

"This is not what we expected," John said mournfully. Suzyn could only murmur her dark despair, as if reciting a promo for Cellino and Barnes. 

Comrades, this is now an official shit show. 

Baseball was supposed to lift us, to provide a diversion through the stay-at-home pandemic, after Netflix and Hulu had run out of tropes. Now, we need a diversion from this diversion, and watching the nightly wars in Portland, Kenosha and now Rochester won't cut it. It's time to start - gulp - thinking about next year, because 2020 is a rusted spike in the nail keg.

Some observations I'm sure you have already made...

Nothing personal here, but Gary Sanchez needs a new life in a new city with a new fan base and new coaches... a new number, a new bat, a new car, a new pet poodle, and maybe a new position - though I cannot think of one that works. The mere fact that we have him on contract through 2023 does not warrant keeping him as a tired, overwhelmed Yankee serf. He is a terrible defensive catcher and now among the game's worst, offensively. Last night, John noted that Sanchez has the most single season homers for any catcher in Yankee history, and he nearly lost his composure, reading the list of titans: Dickey, Berra, Howard, Munson, Posada... only to gulp silence over the reality of Gary's ship-wrecked career. It's really a tragedy, but Gary Sanchez must go. There is no plan B. 

Likewise, Giancarlo Stanton must be paid off, wished well and set free like a singing, top-hatted frog. Surely, some middle-market franchise with hedge fund money will take him, if we pay most of the movie money. He will be our Bobby Bonilla, cashing massive checks until Manhattan is six feet below the ocean. 

Last night, John occasionally drifted into our last, most idiotic, 2020 LSD delirium:  That Stanton and Aaron Judge magically return for the playoffs as superheroes, homering our path to the championship. Folks, take another pill. If he returns at all, Stanton will still be chasing curves in the dirt like Wile E. Coyote in an ACME rocket belt. The cavalry is not coming. And Stanton's era in Gotham needs to end.

Brett Gardner needs - damn, I hate to write this - he needs to retire. Look, we all love Gardy, and we want him as a part of our bullshit tradition, maybe a coach, maybe in the YES booth. But he has made the mistake of playing one season too many. If he returns in 2021, it will only worsen. The Yankees must not re-sign him.

Instead, they should try to keep DJ LeMahieu, though this won't be a cinch. LeMahieu is our best player, and the only Yankee who hits pitches where they are thrown, instead of swinging for the fences. (Maybe Clint Frazier does, too.) He will not come cheaply, and some desperate franchise might out-bid us. We need LeMahiue, but we cannot sustain another 10-year contract. He's 32. He won't be the same at 40.

I believe the Yankees this winter must clean house - starting with Cooperstown Cashman and rampaging rung-by-rung down the ladder. The franchise needs to devote its vast resources to pitching, to youth, and to contact hitters - not batters who simply try to hit home runs. Where does that leave Judge? I dunno. It depends on what we might get in return. He should be on the block. It's time to start pondering life after the pandemic. We need a change. This is not what we expected.   

The Magic Number is 10. Which Is Not Good News.

All the Yanks need is 10 more wins to clinch their 28th straight winning season.  Which is not good news.  Usually, with 21 game to go, that would be a given.  Not so much this year.

I cite this goal as the only one the Yanks still have a reasonable chance to attain—but even that is growing increasingly unlikely.

It won't much matter, of course, not in this sad, rump season.  No one is going to take anything the Yankees do or do not do very seriously, which is the problem.

People have already started to forget just how well this fragment of a campaign was set up for the Yankees.  Only 60 games for their fragile veterans to get through.  No games played until they had recovered from what has become the usual wave of spring training injuries.  Two sets of short series in the first two rounds of playoffs.

The Yanks were a gimme to make it to the ALCS—and with the AL pennant winners of the last three years now forbidden to cheat, why, how hard could it be to make the World Series?

Alack and alas, this Yankees team is not even going to make the playoffs, which is singularly disgraceful.  Gary Sanchez hitting all of .130?  Lineups, day after day, night after night, with half the team hitting below .200?

No doubt, we'll be told after it's all over that the Sanchise and the like had very, very severe injuries.  Which they might well have.  But that's only to underscore just how dysfunctional this team that can't stay on the field really is.

Back in the old days, they used to talk about how players became better when they came to the Yankees.  Now, it's sort of the opposite.  Joining the Yanks is sort of like catching the pandemic.  The worst thing about this Yankees team is how even their best hopes for the future have been exposed.

Gerrit Cole, all but unbeatable for the past two seasons, has now shown himself to be nothing close to a big-time stopper.  (I expect we'll soon hear that he has loose bone chips in the elbow, or maybe a lat strain.)

Gleyber Torres?  Well, I have a confession to make.  With this guy, I feel like I did with Phil Hughes.  Everybody always told me he was sure to be a superstar, but I just couldn't see it.  Everything he threw seemed to be a slow fastball down the middle.

He had some spectacular games, even a good couple of seasons, so what did I know?  But he sure wasn't a superstar.

I'm beginning to think the same of The Gleyber, our new, surefire superstar who once hit .278, and can't play the position we were told he was destined for.  Oh, I know:  he's been injured much of this year, for the fourth straight season.  Well, that just makes him a Yankee, right?

 

Virtual Baseball: Orioles Peck German to Pieces, but Yanks Rally to Top Orioles! Again!

Virtual Domingo German had little enough to throw at the Baltimore Orioles tonight.  But that didn't matter much with Gleyber Torres in the virtual lineup for New York.

German was hit hard, early, and not helped by two Torres throwing errors.  The Yanks trailed, 7-2, after six innings, and had Chad Green in the game, a sign of desperation in many indigenous cultures.

But a three-run homer by Torres, a two-run blast by Miguel Andujar, "El Matador," and then another three-run shot by Torres brought the Bombers around to a 10-9 win.  "Cool Hand" Chapman pitched the ninth for the save.

The win drew the Yanks even with the TB Rays, and marked the 20th or 21st straight win over the O's, and the19th or 20th straight win over the Birds, or something like that.

"Frankly, they beat Baltimore so constantly, who's keeping track?" said the Elias Sports Bureau.

"The team's done nothing but hang in there like a bunch of real pros," said manager Ma Boone afterwards.  "Sure, we've had injuries, but we've overcome them, and kept stepping up to the plate when the going got tough.  What else would you expect from the New York Yankees?"

Tied for second, fading fast, all the Yankees might glean from this wretched season are some long overdue answers

Yesterday, Miguel Andujar went 2-4 with 2 runs and an RBI, his first of 2020, lifting his MLB beautistics to .176 with 0 (zero) HRs. Two years ago, he chased Joltin' Joe DiMaggio. Now, he chases Thairo "the Pharaoh" Estrada. Worse, until yesterday, Miggy's Yankee prospects were confined to the LF/DH dung heap, a location that mysteriously has attracted all Yankees, Railriders and the former cast of Glee. However... beginning tonight, for at least the next two weeks, Miggy's exile into the red rocks of Central Pennsylvania has ended: Two years after finishing second for AL Rookie of the Year, he'll get his true tryout at 3B.

That's because Gio Urshela is no longer "a happy fella." (The other day, though, John Sterling labeled Gio "a top Yankee," so there's that.) He's out with a bone spur, and though the YES men (and women) swear on the Bible that he'll soon return, that's a little like Trump saying the vaccines will be handed out on Halloween night. When it comes to reporting injuries, the Yanks have a worse record than Baghdad Bob. There is no guarantee Gio will return in 2020. Suddenly, for better or worse, the job of playing 3B is Andujar's. And I'm all for it. In this wretched mini-season, maybe that's the best we can hope for: An answer on Andu.

Meanwhile, Gleyber Torres drove to Baltimore yesterday to watch the Yankees pee themselves in the second game. Today, for better or worse, they will activate him to play SS and become the team's Jeter, (a de facto role that's been handled by DJ LeMahieu.) Before he tweaked a drumstick last month, Gleyber had been lost in a trainwreck of a season: .231 with one HR and six RBIs. Maddeningly, he seemed to be heating up, just before the injury. (That's the Yankee way.) Gleyber looked uncomfortable at first, raising questions of whether he can play SS and hit. Now, the job is his. In this wretched mini-season, maybe that's the best we can hope for: An answer on Gleyber. (Plus, maybe a better Homer Holler than, "And like a good Gleyber, Torres is there." That's gotta go.)

The Death Star is now tied with Toronto for second place in the AL East, though the teams seem headed in different directions. Last night, our once-vaunted bullpen blew yet another lead. It's laughable, recalling the YES spring propaganda that touted the team's trove of young arms - a vast stable of hard-throwing kids, the envy of MLB, a sleeping giant of fireballing prospects, each on the verge of a promising career! Remember?

What a joke.

Last night, Aaron Boone put a cherry on it. He brought in Clarke Schmidt, a starter throughout his minor league career, to launch his MLB career with two runners on and a game in the balance: His first major league appearance, in a high-pressure role, trying to cork-up a rapidly leaking team. Here you go, rook. Hey, you ever relieved before? Watch the runners. Hope you're warmed up. 

At times, this miserable little season cannot end soon enough. 

Tonight, Gerrit Cole pitches. Thus far, there is no other way to say it: He has been a disappointment. Maybe it's not his fault. Maybe it's just the cloud that hangs over this team. Everything - everything we do goes sideways. Maybe all we can hope for from 2020 are answers, even if they're not the ones we want.

Virtual Baseball: Tanaka Guts It Out, Gleyber Saves the Day!

The virtual New York Yankees moved to within one game of first place tonight, with a rousing, 7-5 win in Baltimore.

Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka, bleeding visibly from both ears, gave the Yanks a gutty six-and-a-third tonight, as his teammates plastered up a 4-3 lead behind two home runs by Miguel Andujar, and another by Gary Sanchez.

But a long home run by Sir Ryan Mountcastle, the only royal personage playing in the major leagues besides Sir Didi Gregorius, gave the O's a rare lead and cost the Yanks' fine fellow a win.

However, a three-run blast to dead center by The Gleyber, heretofore unusually quiet in a Baltimore appearance, salvaged the win for Adam Ottavino and the Yanks, with Zack(h) Britton(ain) securing the win.

Thrilling as the Yankees' rally was for Yankees fans, most of the country was absorbed in hoping for a bigger rally on Wall Street.  That didn't occur, as the Dow dropped below 45,000 for the first time in weeks, with worries about "the Red Bear" manipulating American stock markets running rampant.

In an effort to calm the country, the White House released a statement from President Trump that read in its entirety, "What're you losers worried about?  You're still ahead of the game, ain't ya?"

There was no comment from Democratic consolation candidate Joe Biden, although in the latest poll, his approval rating had ticked up to 23 percent.

What's missing in Yankee Stadium...

When Gary Sanchez marches back to the dugout...

When a reliever coughs up the game...

Whenever Aaron Boone steps from the dugout...

A loud, pre-taped, angry, stadium-wide chorus of boos.

Have the Yankees bottomed out? Nope. That might come this weekend.

Existential Essay Question Number 1: 

Was last night the most horrific, soul-devouring Yankee loss of 2020? 

As a forensic fan-vestigator, I refer you to the Colter Bean Scale of Unimaginable Pain, which has since 2007 become the gold standard for rating Yankee defeats. And make no mistake: Last night's debacle scores a solid Four-Bean Salad. A walk-off homer, dished up by Aroldis Chapman, after our bullpen blew a three run lead heading into the eighth. Against the Mets, no less. That's an extra Bean. FIVE MAGIC BEANS. That's some serious gas. Still, was it the worst of 2020? 

Let's consider the Aug. 26, 2-1 loss to Atlanta - game two of a doubleheader - when Chad Green surrendered a late inning two-run homer to Freddie Freeman. He recorded the first two outs, walked a batter, then gave up the blast. Who in Hell is writing this Yankee season, Sylvia Plath? This game also featured Aaron Judge re-hurting himself: Add an extra Bean! FIVE MAGIC BEANS.  

Or there is the Aug. 19, 4-2 loss to Tampa, when Aaron Boone pulled Gerrit Cole, so Zack Britton could pitch two innings and injure himself - hey, that's an extra Bean! This came as the Yankees were blowing their lead in the AL East. Remember? The old days? Back when the entire season seemed a warm-up to the playoffs? We were so young, so innocent... we believed. FIVE BEANS. 

But wait... Let's not forget the Aug. 28, 4-3 walk-off loss to the Mets, when the Water Cannon walked the lead-off batter - an evolving strategy; more on this later - let him steal second, then gave up the two-run HR to slap-hitting SS Amed Rosario. Add a Bean because it was a double-header sweep, and another for it being the Mets. FIVE BEANS! Practically a methane factory. 

Honestly, as horrifying as it was, last night's defeat hardly rates as the worst of this season. But in a truncated 60-game year, the juju gods are serving up the full torment of 162 games. Incredible. 

As a forensic fan, I have detected a disturbing trend line in these pain super-spreader events.

The bullpen. 

Remember when this was unabashedly our superpower? Two veteran closers, plus three top set-up men. Even when Tommy Kahnle blew out his elbow, the golden trove of power arms at Scranton would far surpass the teams that would have to rely on Chaz Roe. 

Today - along with the lack of a LH bat and a catcher - our bullpen is a catastrophe. We can safely say that no lead is safe. 

I have a suggestion, though:

Next time El Chapo pitches - probably this weekend - if he walks the lead-off batter, take him out. 

It that means having another pitcher warming up, so be it. Take him out. 

If he protests, if he screams and curses, causing sweat to fly, so be it. Take him out. 

If he is humiliated and angry, furious at the embarrassment of it all, regardless of what he says or does, take him out. 

If he walks the lead-off batter, take him out. 

If he cannot come into a game and throw strikes, he is not an effective closer. And if we lose the game with another pitcher, it makes no difference. We were going to lose, anyway. 

If he walks the lead-off batter, take him out.  

Existential Question Number 2: 

Will our current top-tier, out-of-body losses stand up in the coming week of Orioles and Blue Jays? 

Normally, following bitter Yankee defeats, Baltimore offers us a healing balm. Something tells me that's about to end. I am stuck in an abusive relationship with my lover. I feel the car turning, causing the Yankees to press their hips into me. "Oh, Duque," they say. "We could have such a nice life together." "Yes," I say. "Isn't it pretty to think so?"

Blasphemy!

Since my special, cutting edge "dirt" rehab worked better than Aaron Judge's, I was somehow able to get back out and run—albeit in my trademark, "crippled wildebeest" style—and so was able to delight in The Master and Suzynita again this afternoon.

This time, the pair—weirdly relegated to Yankee Stadium as the game played out at Shea—went full blasphemy.  With The Master leading, both proclaimed that the Yankees, at least with all those great sluggers out, should "try to win games in other ways, such as advancing the runner, and hit-and-running, and settling for what the pitchers give them."

This was no doubt the craziest act of defiance of established, unimpeachable, divine authority since Martin Luther nailed a few of his thoughts to the door of a Wittenberg church.  The blasphemy of John and Suzyn had the advantage of being considerably shorter—and also, not in Latin—but they were no less earth-shattering.

No sooner had they spaketh such things, than the Yankees, seemingly attendant to their every utterance, ran off a four-run rally in much the manner they had proclaimed.  Well, actually there was no running or advancing runners involved, let's not be ridiculous, but they DID seem to hit balls where they could, all over Shea, instead of just swinging from the heels.

Happily, I turned in to the old corral soon after—don't want to test that rehab!—so I got to miss what may be the real, signature loss of the season.  Talk about driving a nail through something!

In fairness, the Yanks really did manage to produce some offense today (though eight Mets walks helped mightily), but still couldn't beat a team that looks increasingly like it's just running out the string this year and, oh yeah, has the worst bullpen in Christendom—Protestant, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Coptic.

Well, what can we say?  When bad teams start going bad, they find ways to lose.  Nobody wins without pitching, and the Yanks showed just how little they have today.

In just 3 years' time, this bunch has gone from rising dynasty of the future to a broken shell of its former self, with no idea of how to even begin putting itself back together.

But...all of that will be quickly excused, and swept under the rug.  We will hear all about how everyone was thrown off by the pandemic, and the empty seats, and worrying about their families, and all the stopping and starting this season.

(Already, at the start of the broadcast, Suzy Q. and Big John offered the thought that maybe, just maybe, Happ could give us two straight good starts because he was "working on regular rest again.  So much for that thesis.)

Completely forgotten and conveniently shot down the memory hole for Brain Cashman by the local media will be how this team wasn't ready to go at the end of spring training as it was, and how all the injuries and all the backsliding in talent and performance just continued a trend of three seasons, one broken only by the constant application of fresh patches from the junk pile.

To suggest that any such general trend is evident will be considered the true blasphemy, even as we all settle back into our seats in 2021 and watch the full campaign version of this sad, tatterdemalion of a season.

Virtual Off-Day: Nothing Happened! Stocks Start to Wobble! But Just Wobble!

In virtual baseball today, the 94-45 Yankees took flight track to Baltimore, to start their stretch run against the Orioles.

In keeping with the old-timey means of transportation, en route back to the Babe's hometown, Aaron Judge dangled Ma Boone by his ankles from the back of the last Amtrak car, to the delight of photographers, and Aaron Hicks dashed through the aisles smashing in the straw hats of every passenger who wore one, just like the Babe used to do.

(Hicks actually found no passenger wearing a straw boater, but had to go to the IL anyway, with a strained fist.)

Back in New York, meanwhile, concerned investors crowded Wall Street as "the Russian Bear" market ran amok.  Discovering the fraudulent nature of so many of their investments with potemkin Russian companies, thousands of "plungers" demanded an investigation.

"What, what're they so worried about?"  President Trump tweeted in response.  "It's not real, it's only figures on a page.  That's what I always told myself when I was building my business empire, and look where it got me!"

The sharp drop in stocks upped unpopular candidate Joe Biden's poll numbers to 22 percent.  Thousands of Bernie Sanders supporters, however, vowed never to vote for Biden, just as they had not voted for Sanders in the primaries.

Homage to a Met

Tom Seaver saved the first ballgame I ever watched all the way through, the 1967 All-Star Game.  It lasted 15 innings but my father let me stay up to see all of it, which probably should have turned me off baseball forever.

The game was a royal snore.  One of the geniuses who ran major-league baseball even then decided that it should start at 5 p.m. in Anaheim, to maximize East Coast viewership, and as a result nobody could see the ball in the golden California dusk.  There were 30 strikeouts in all, and for a long time it looked like nobody would ever score again.

I loved it anyway.  But then Tony Perez homered and, in the bottom of the 15th at the Big A, Tom Terrific came in, and quickly worked his way through the inning, judiciously walking Yaz in that, his Wonder Year, but striking out Ken Berry (Ken Berry!) for the final out.

I was devastated.  A Met?  How could a Met do anything?  It was the one consolation for me, a fan of the 9th-place Yankees then still living in New Jersey that at least the Mets were still worse than my team!

Well, even worse—and better—was to come, and as I grew up I came to appreciate just how great Tom Seaver really was.

Besides his exploits on the field he was the first—and in many ways, the best—of the New Ballplayer.   A college man, he had also been a Marine Corps reservist, worked manual-labor jobs, and traveled widely by the time the Braves first drafted him.

Because that violated one of baseball's byzantine rules on amateurism, he was commanded to return to college—only to learn that the Lords of the NCAA had now deemed him ineligible to play for USC.  In the not-so-very-old days, that would have been that, and Tom Terrific would've had to just sit out a year.

But Seaver was nobody's fool, and his father was a corporate executive who knew very smart lawyers.  Baseball backed down, and Seaver ended up a Met—in a random drawing performed over the phone, by Lee MacPhail.

Hey, who knows, but Tom and Nancy did prove the perfect fit for New York.  Everyone wanted them—wanted to know them, wanted to use them.  With their clean-cut, all-American image (Nancy's meticulous, matching outfits at the World Series were stunning!), the establishment wanted to claim them.  So did the counterculture, trying to push Tom into coming out against the war.

But Tom Seaver was nobody's boy, as he would show again and again in his career, most famously in facing down Dick Young and the aristocrat-poseur running the Mets, M. Donald Grant.

The pity was that he did not into the postseason more often.  There were a couple of delicious what-ifs there.  The Mets, incredibly, bumbled him away a SECOND time after the 1983 season, when they would almost undoubtedly have won the 1985 and maybe the 1984 East Division titles with him in the rotation.

In 1985, had things gone just a little differently, he might have faced the Yankees in a 1985 Subway Series.  Thank goodness we were spared that.  Whatever the case, he might well have appeared in that Series with the other great Met pitching icon, Dwight Gooden.  For that matter, had he not been injured, he would have pitched in the 1986 World Series for the Red Sox, and against the Mets.

A shame we never got to see it.

But we did get to see him notch his 300th win on Phil Rizzuto Day at Yankee Stadium, the same day the cow knocked over Scooter, and what were the odds of those stars ever aligning?

I remember, that same day, Mike Lupica wrote a fanciful column that imagined Gooden, years later, winning his 300th game.  As it happened, Gooden never even got to 200, which is no knock on the Doc, just another measure of how very hard it is to be that good, for that long.

R.I.P., Tom Terrific.

Tired and bleached

Aging clothes.

Out of fashion.  Worn to threadbare. Washed and re-washed. 

The Yankees need new new fucking wardrobe.  

Someone willing to tell the truth and make changes.

We have too many guys with extraordinary talent who cannot stay on the field. (Judge, Paxton, Giancarlo Torres, etc).

Or worse, they stay on the field but fail to hit or play well ( Sanchez ).  

We have held on to back-ups who are not producing ( Gardner, Ford, Tauchman, etc ) and barely give the light of day to young, hungry talent ( Andujar, Garcia, Schmidt. Florial, Holden ).  Boone is managing the old way.....and that has given the Yankees no shot at the world series since 2009.  It is a safe, conservative way.  

- Hard to criticize keeping a spot for Giancarlo when your boss paid $350 million for him until 2027, when he wont even play an inning. 

- Hard to criticize hoping that Judge will be an MVP candidate.

- Hard to criticize the hope that Torres can play SS.

- Hard to criticize the memory that Sanchez once wowed us with his skills.

Someone needs to jump up and say;  you know what?  We are not going to win this way?  We are going in a different direction.  We are going to play the kids and live or die with them.

But none of that is going to happen. 

Andujar will have to go 20-20 and hit 10 homers and 6 doubles to earn a spot every other day. 

Deivi will have to pitch 6 or more shut-out innings every outing to get another start.   

We'll never see Holden in pinstripes.

Gardy will start every day and Tauchman will bat clean-up.  We have seen that already.

We aren't winning because we are living and managing in the past. 

Teams that beat us; make contact, are aggressive and confident, have speed and show hunger.

Our best hope for major change is continued failure.  Perfect outcome for 2020.

When is next year?

Words trending on Twitter last night projected dismal times for the Yankees

 Around 9 p.m. last night, the word "Tauchman" began trending on Twitter. It wasn't pretty. (A cautionary note: The following contains words and images of fan brutality that some viewers may find troubling.) 

Trust me: These are some of the nicer tweets. Around 9 p.m., Mike Tauchman was 0-3 with three Ks, on his way to a withering 0-4, lowering his average to .250. Between him and Brett Gardner - the Yankees' lefty OF options this year are 32 for 151, a paltry .212. Tauchman has yet to hit a home run. Our next trending handle on Twitter might be "Train wreck." 

In March, we wondered if last year's "Next Man Up" heroes could duplicate 2019. Luke Voit came through, becoming one of the best first-basemen in the game. Gio Urshela's glove keeps him viable, though his average has fallen to .260. Unless Mike Ford learns to stop lashing balls into the over-shift, his future looks tenuous.  And Tauchman - whose troubles began in spring training with a .194 average - is starting to scare me.

Coupled with Brett Gardy, who hasn't hit a pat of butter, the Yankees cannot protect themselves against RH starters, which comprise about 80 percent of the MLB pitching population. 

Last night was tortuous in so many ways, it's hard to list them. 

1. We were blown out from the first inning on, with little hope against Charlie Morton, a known Yankee death trap.

2. We might need to ditch our fantasy that Jordan Montgomery is a front-line starter. Last night, giving up 4 runs in two-thirds of an inning, he looked on the verge of collapse.

3. Mike Brossard - infamously buzzed the previous night - bashed two HRs, showboating on the base paths, while we stewed in El Chapo's sweat. Talk about revenge. That was ugly.

4. Tampa showed that the Yankees are not in their league. Message received. 

5. Then there is Tauchman...

Last year, he looked like the second coming of Paul O'Neill. Last night, he couldn't hit meatballs bisecting the plate. On Aug. 16, Tauchman was hitting .357. Ever since, he's plummeted like a bus off a cliff. 

And the cavalry here is suspect. Aaron Judge remains probably two weeks away. Considering how quickly he re-injured himself, he's probably out until mid-to-late Sept. 19. Meanwhile, Giancarlo Stanton is a punch line. If he returns this season, he'll have to DH. It would be crazy to play him in the OF. That kills a lot of flexibility. 

Make no mistake: This team could finish out of the playoffs. 

Last night, a Redsock fan mocked me on Zoom, saying he hopes the Yankees win in 2020, because the season will carry an asterisk and never truly matter. This is how bad it's getting: I was mocked by a Redsock fan. Worse: In response, I assured him the Yankees will win nothing in this fucked-up season. Yeesh. What hath God wrought? 

Final note: Another word began trending last night on Twitter...

I cannot leave without remembering the great Tom Seaver, whose final days in baseball came in the WPIX broadcast booth. In the early 1990s, when the Yankees were terrible, our "Poetry of Phil Rizzuto" appeared weekly in The Village Voice. Often, in a playful way, Seaver would tease poems from The Scooter, or mention the "pure poetry" of his words. I always had the feeling that Tom knew what we were doing. Also, the two loved each other; you could sense it. After Phil's legendary friendship with Bill White, I'd say his times with Seaver were next on the list. (He also loved Bobby Murcer, as we all did.)

Seaver and - later - Ken Singleton proved that great Yankee announcers don't always need to have been great Yankees. In fact, I believe the YES team would be well served to add to its ranks one of our greatest nemeses - drum roll, please, and no booing - Pedro Martinez. 

Yeah. Pedro. I am not kidding. He is funny. He is personable, rich with tales to tell. Best of all, in the end, like all announcers, he would come to root for the team that is paying his bills. He would be a Yankee homer. It would wreck Redsock fans - like the one who mocked me last night - in a way that arguing with them cannot. Just a thought.

Dear Mr. Steinbrenner, hire Pedro Martinez for YES. 

And Rest in Peace, Tom Terrific. Thank you for the memories.  

Virtual Baseball: Cole Train Back on Track, Runs Down Red Sox!

Virtual Gerrit Cole continued his dominance of the American League today, shutting down the BoSox in BoTown.  Cole breezed through seven quick innings, striking out 10, before he was dismissed early for the evening, with an 8-0 lead.

The Yankees' ever-reliable bullpen reliably surrendered four runs over the last two innings, but the Bombers held on for an 8-4 win.  Miguel Andujar, D.J. LeMahieu and Aaron Judge all homered for the Bronx team, with Judge's blast a tremendous shot that cleared the Green Monster, while Sox fans spat furiously at it, and mooned the Yankees slugger.

"I have no idea where they pick up behavior like that," said Sox skipper Do-Ron Roenicke.

The win moved the Yankees to within two games of the division-leading Rays, while the Sox dropped ever deeper into last.

Meanwhile, there were some troubled stirrings on Wall Street today, as it was determined that the latest broker investors have been flocking to, novichok.com, may not be all that it seems.  Discoveries of other fake Russian traders and dummy corporations have been occurring for weeks now, but this may be the one that starts a slide of perhaps epic proportions, what with the Dow still over 60,000.

"This one may be the real poison pill, but who could've known?" Treasury Secretary Steve Metuchen Mnuchin said today, of the company named for a deadly poison.

Meanwhile, back at the Ministry of Information...

So Cashman is now saying that Judge had a "failed rehab" of his calf strain, which will likely keep him out at least another three weeks, i.e., the rest of the season.



Nonetheless, the Hand of the Brain, Ma Boone, told the press that, "I know he [Judge] feels pretty well with what he's doing."

And why wouldn't he?  A minor calf strain that turns into two months of inaction?  What could POSSIBLY go better?

Meanwhile, Boon also said that he's "pretty pleased" with how new pitching coach Matt Blake is doing.

OF COURSE HE IS!  Half the pitching staff is injured, and the other half is underperforming.  How could anyone possibly do better???

Wouldn't you like to work for the New York Yankees?  Wouldn't we all?  The place where it's always okay for you to take as many days off as you need, and where your performance is never, ever graded according to objective reality!

I hate to say it, but Aroldis Chapman was wrong to throw at a player's head

 (With respect to HoraceClarke66, whose opposing views are below...)

For these last four weeks - actually, these last few years - the Tampa Devil Rays have wantonly thrown baseballs at their chosen arch-nemesis, the NY/Tampa Yankees. They "live on the inside of home plate," their manager's poetic way to describe bean balls. But it's not a literary thing. It's a thug thing.

Last night, you could say Aroldis Chapman - our "Water Cannon" - gave the Tampons a taste of their own Lysol. With two outs in the ninth - ("Clobberin' Time," Ben Grimm would say) - El Chapo fired a 101-mph fastball at the head of pinch hitter Mike Brosseau. Somehow, he ducked. From there, the usual events happened: Benches cleared, bullpens emptied, fingers flashed, threats echoed - a mini-COVID super-spreader event. Tonight, they'll probably do it again; that's what helmets are for! Any trip to the 2020 World Series must surely pass through Tampa.

Let's note here that the Rays organization has traditionally hated the Yankees with the heat of a billion suns. We steal their market by playing spring games in their back yard. We broadcast games on Tampa's WHBO (1040 AM), the Yankee radio network driven by Jeep. How galling is that? I still remember the spring of 2008 when a Tampa warm body named Elliot Johnson flattened Francisco Cervelli at home plate in an exhibition game, breaking the young prospect's wrist, an event so foul that MLB later declared it illegal. Yet the Rays horrifically defended it. (Thank God for Shelley Duncan, who came up swinging a few games later, after spiking a Tampa infielder in the balls. It's part of history, folks. We. Never. Forget.)

That said, the Rays last night had a point: There is no reason for a guy like Chapman to throw at someone's head. If Brosseau hadn't ducked, he could now be in a hospital, and - beyond all rightful concerns about his health - the Rays would have a martyr for the 2020 post-season. 

For some time now, I've worried about Chapman. He is a fierce competitor, a warrior, a powerful presence on the mound. But he can unravel at any moment. There's something about his crazed eyes - watching him sweat makes me sweat. Last night, he could have made his point by whacking Brosseau's knees. (The Rays would still squawk; that's what they do.) But throwing at the head is a bad idea, and I'd hate to think of DJ LeMahieu getting drilled tonight.

Baseball doesn't need its version of Kenosha.

"The cheaper the hood, the gaudier the patter."

I've always admired the ability of baseball managers to work themselves into a rage over pretty much anything—a blown call that they didn't see themselves, an underhanded tactic by another team's player that they quietly encourage on their own side, etc.

This season, Kevin Cash obviously decided to work his Tampa Bay Rays into a lather whenever they play the Yankees, no doubt in order to show that they had nothing to fear against the big team.  Hence all the chirping and the headhunting they've engaged in this year.

Hey, more power to him.  I often wish the Yanks had someone so interested in lighting a fire under our boys.

But then a couple of Pinstripers retaliated last night, including Sweats Chapman whizzing a 101-mph fastball just over the head of one of the very chirpiest Rays, Mike Brosseau, who has played a grand total of 73 major-league games in his life.

After striking out to end the game, Brosseau made out as if he were about to charge the now-empty mound, and Manager Cash took it upon himself to inform us that he had "a whole stable full of guys who can throw 98-mile-an-hour beanballs."

Now of course, if a Yankee manager ever said anything like that it would be treated as a war crime, and Commissioner Clueless Manfred would now be escorting Boone to The Hague to file charges.  Somehow, I suspect the punishment meted out to Cash will be a little less severe, which is to say nonexistent.

As for Mr. Brosseau, well sweetheart, some of us are old enough to remember the days when the likes of Willie Mays or Frank Robinson used to be splayed in the dirt dodging fastballs from Sandy Koufax or Bob Gibson, and somehow they managed to get up, dust themselves off and get back in the box without another word.

You might want to check out some of those clips, tiger.

Virtual Baseball: King Is No Deivi, Yanks Fall in Fenway. Tiffany Released.

Virtual Mike King was better than meh tonight, but the Yanks still lost in Boston, as left fielder Clint Frazier played two balls off the Green Monster into four baggers, and Nathan Eovaldi surrendered 10 hits and 3 walks, but managed to hold on for a complete-game, 5-4 win in the Fens.

Frazier's first miscue came when he misjudged the carom of a ball Xander Bogaerts hit off the scoreboard, then managed to kick it into centerfield.

Three pitches later, The Red Menace, waving at a flyball by Rafael Devers, slammed through an unsecured door into the scoreboard itself, where he could be heard for several minutes, yelling, "Hello?  Hello?  Why is it all dark in here?"  while the scoreboard operators audibly giggled and Devers ploughed on around the bases.

Frazier redeemed himself with a pair of jacks off Eovaldi, but the rest of the Yankees failed repeatedly with runners in scoring position.

Asked why he had played the Yanks' coordination-challenged Frazier in Fenway's notoriously difficult left field in the first place, manager Ma Boone replied.  "Um, I forget."  Boone denied that it had anything to do with the six-foot-long sabremetrics printout delivered to him before the game that mathematically proved Frazier playing left field in Boston would improve the Yankees' chances of winning by .007 percent.

The disappointing loss dropped the Bombers 3 games behind first-place TB, with just 24 contests remaining.

In an unrelated story that dominated the headlines, the Justice Dept. released Tiffany Trump, who had volunteered to turn state's evidence against her father, in return for favorable sentencing considerations.

In a statement today, Ms. Trump admitted that she had actually been charged with no crimes and had no evidence to give, but "I just wanted daddy to pay attention!"

President Trump blamed the entire incident on his closest presidential rival, Jesse "The Body" Ventura, who promptly challenged him to a steel cage match.

I Must Have Misunderstood

 So now I learn that the White Sox have two pitchers we can't beat, and we know Tampa has at least one.  

Cleveland is reputed to have another two or three.

My point is;  I thought we were buying the best pitcher in baseball, particularly with Verlander out with an injury.

The price we ( ownership) paid was for the "top of the line" Rolls Royce, not the "top of the 

line" Cadillac.

All of a sudden we have another 6 inning, 4-5 run wonder ( with 2 HRs, usually).  

And our "5 run +" offense is sitting in the injury ward.

What a plan.

In ignoring the trade deadline, were the Yankees betting on the virus?

 There are many reasons why the Yankees didn't make a deal yesterday. Here are some...

1. Teams like the Rangers (Lance Lynn) demanded the likes of Deivi Garcia and/or Clarke Schmidt, which the Yankees were not going to trade. 

2. The veterans being dangled in trades (Lance Lynn) just weren't so enticing. 

3. The Yankees expect a wave of players returning from injury, which is akin to making trades.

4. The ownership wasn't ready to absorb more bloated contracts.

And finally, perhaps the most interesting...

They could have questioned whether MLB can still pull off the post-season. 

Since the April COVID explosion, NYC has been blessed with relatively low infection rates. But October looms, and cold weather will force more people inside. 

Last week's COVID breakout with the Mets - confined to only two cases - sent shivers across the league. Now, as teams fall from the race, it would be a natural response for disappointed players to break quarantine rules. It will be harder, not easier, to keep teams without infections.

Baseball is halfway there. The Yanks have played 33 games, with 27 left to go. Could the ownership have decided it was not worth renting players for what might be a three-week collapse? And would it be wrong? 

Just asking.

The Yankees are now chasing second place and a demon from Hal Steinbrenner's past

 If the playoffs began today... the sixth-seeded, second-place Death Star would face the White Sox in a best of three in Chicago. (Game I: Lucas Giolito. Game II: Dallas Keuchel. Game III: Not necessary.) But it gets worse. Symbolically, they would face far more; they would confront Hal "Food Stamps" Steinbrenner's original sin: 

Yoan Moncada - ("That name! Slowwwwwly I turn...") - the single-most glaring and galling Yankee mistake of this millennium. 

In March of 2015, with the entire world expecting Hal to cough up the money to sign the 19-year-old Cuban refugee - (for months, we were said to have the inside track, and there was no downside to the deal, just money) - the Prince of Petty Cash suddenly hid under the bed, and Boston signed him. The Redsocks converted Moncada into Chris Sale and a world championship, while the Yankees dazzled us with Mason Williamses and Zolio Almontes, and an occasional Adonis Garcia.  

Yep, if the season ended today, we'd be facing the now 25-year-old Moncada, a rising star who hit 25 HRs last year while batting .315. But at least Hal saved some of his money.

But, but BUT... the season has a month left, plenty of time for the young and hungry Blue Jays to skate past us in the AL East. They are basically a carbon copy of Tampa - youngsters rising across the lineup - while we watch the calendar, check the rehab farm and wait for Judge, Hicks, Giancarlo, etc. - players who never play - to save this troubling season. 

We are the Herman Cain twitter feed of baseball. 

Last night, it became fundamentally clear that the Rays are simply a better team than what the injury-decimated Yankees put on the field. The last decade proved that baseball is a young man's game - players peak at 22-23 - not necessarily 27-28 - and you cannot buy a championship with veterans. Unless Gerrit Cole figures out how not to throw gopher balls, our "ace" is simply a place of the helpful hardware man. Over the next two weeks, we face Toronto (nine games) and Baltimore (eight.) There is plenty of time to cement a playoff spot... or blow it altogether. 

Some questions from last night...

Is Jordy Mercer, recently cast off by the lowly Tigers, really a better SS than Tyler Wade or Thairo Estrada? This weekend, Wade homered and seemed to wake up from his career-length batting slump. So why didn't he play last night? He's a LH batter, and they were facing a RH. Was a reason given? Did I miss something? Because the speedy Wade can still contribute to this team, and the 34-year-old Mercer just seems like a veteran passing through.

Is there a reason why we are babying Aroldis Chapman? He has pitched two innings this year, thrown a total of 45 pitches. He went 11 days between his first and second outings, then was immediately crushed by the Mets. He pitched an inning Sunday. He looks rusty. If he's only going to appear in save situations, we might not see him for a while. And without outings under his belt, how can we trust in him pressure situations?

Luke Voit limped slightly while rounding the bases last night, following his HR. Last year, he played with a hernia, and basically fell apart. He's the only thing we have going right now, offensively. What gives?

Virtual Baseball: Deivi, Deivi Garcia, King of Fenway Park!

Virtual rookie Deivi Garcia had a breakthrough start at Fenway Park tonight, pitching seven shutout innings, and was removed from the game only for reasons of pitch count, as the Yanks pounded hapless Boston, 13-2.

The Old Towne Tanke Sox were a picture of futility, striking out 10 times against Garcia alone, and 14 in all, committing three errors, and generally showing all the inspiration and energy of your average piece of scrod.  Frustrated Sox fans even jeered the nightly, Neil Diamond rendition of "Sweet Caroline" and started repeated choruses of "We want Tom-my!"—inspired by recent rumors that Tom Brady was in the market to buy the team.

For the Yanks, it was a night of "Kenmore?  Yes, more!" as the Bombers piled it on.  Home runs by a recovering Aaron Judge, Luke Voit, D.J. LeMahieu, and El Matador, Miguel Andujar, made the night a romp from the start.

The win finishes August for the Bronx team with a record of 93-44—one of the best in the franchise's history, but still two behind the torrid Tampa Rays.  Still, Ma Boone's boys seemed confident that they would eventually be able to catch up to the horrid, zooplankton-scarfing fish.