Now, the real test: Beating Boston in a NINE inning game

 We all see it. We ALLLL see it...

Don't stare. No need to gloat. No posting of Mr. McBroom. It's just the wild card standings. Nothing big. In case you missed them...  

No celebrations. You hear that, juju gods? Nobody partying. Yesterday brought just a routine, doubleheader sweep over a team that's happened to own us since April. It came about because of two ho-hum miracles in the late innings, which should have been the middle innings. 

1. Jonathan Loaisiga somehow pitched out of bases loaded, no outs jam to save the first game. Have to give Aaron Boone credit: He never even warmed up a replacement, as Loaisiga drifted toward what could have been another catastrophic loss. He found his fastball and fanned the final two batters. Yeesh.

2. Wandy Peralta somehow threw out a baserunner on a comeback liner that bounced off him and landed between home plate and third - a certain base hit. I didn't think Peralta could move so quickly, or throw such a perfect strike to first. I could watch that play 100 times and still not believe it. Yeesh.

Tonight, the ultimate juju test: Andrew Heaney, whose outings have been brutal, takes the mound in a nine-inning game. Yes, nine - with a good chance that our bullpen will be pitching by the fourth, and we'll be down by five. 

Of all the deadline deals orchestrated by Cashman, this one looks like a clunker, from the git-go. It could be (should be) Heaney's last Yankee start. The fact that they're using him speaks to the overworked staff. Or maybe there is a strategy we're not seeing.

Maybe this will be the blowout night, when the Yankees DON'T need a closer, when they'll be 10 runs behind - a night for Stephen Ridings, Nick Nelson, Lucas Luetge and the Amazing Kriske. This is a night when we play with house money. If we somehow win, Paul O'Neill will be chuckling, and the YES Fantasy Machine will be cackling in full force. 

Still, someone must pitch the ninth. Until the real Aroldis returns, not the heart attack version, calls to the Yankee pen won't be greeted by Cellino & Barnes, but by champagne... in the visiting dugout. Some other tidbits... 

1. Corey Kubler pitched three innings last night for Scranton.  He walked two, gave up three earned runs and surrendered a HR. His rehab ERA stinks - 9.00. The Yankees applied their usual lipstick: It was his best outing yet, and it didn't end with an MRI appointment. Still, stints like these don't inspire confidence. Two weeks ago, we were awaiting Setback Sevy and Comeback Corey. Now, it's all Nasty Nestor and the Gil-Man.   

2. Brett Gardner gets the most out of his speed, range and experience, but his arm looks shot. Last night, his throws from shallow centerfield were rolling to second base. We may cringe when Jonathan Davis comes to bat, but Boone almost has no other choice. But here's the question: Can Joey Gallo play CF? Can Aaron Judge? Once Andrew Rizzo returns, especially if Luke Voit's bat heats up, that's the full-tilt lineup. 

3. Down below nowhere, The Martian is not hitting. Jasson Dominiquez went 0-3 last night in low Single A, and while it's clearly too soon to sound any alarms, we are learning once again that big bonus prospects look their best when not playing. Dominiquez has struck out 41 times in 114 at bats. Of course, he'll play winter ball, and the Yanks have him on an aggressive schedule. He's only 18. Still, when you hype a player to the degree the Yankees have done, he gets watched. Right now, he's not hitting. Just sayin.'

4. So, who WILL pitch the eighth and ninth tonight? One advantage to having Heaney take the ball: If we're down by 10, Voit can pitch. Hmmm. Where's Mike Ford? Have we uncovered a plan?

2nd game thread

 

Two seven inning games at home against a floundering Redsocks team? What could go wrong?

The Yankees currently have two problems: The 8th and the 9th. 

Today, they face neither. By tomorrow, with luck, they'll be holding a wild card birth. Look at the standings, look!

Why, after we take game one, all we need... wait... WTF is happening? Everywhere you look... is that, um, hope? Dear God. I'd forgotten what hope looks like. And.. gulp... optimism? This is nuts! Where's the despair? Where's the existential rage? This is a Yankee blog, goddammot! Where are the chains? The torture devices? What is happening to our world of pain? 

(Oh, and by the way, ha ha, did I mention that Oakland today plays the White Sox, still smarting from last weekend's spanking. Ha ha. We could bypass them, too!) 

Moreover, for reasons of juju, I shall not post the infamous Ryan McBroom profile. 

Today, wow, look around: The Yankiverse is a pleasant, joyous meadow - a garden of tits and ice cream, where shiny happy fans smoke the good weed and cheer their Olympian heroes. It's a bit, um,  disconcerting. Where are the bugs? Shouldn't there be a wildfire? Let's throw a little, um, perspective onto this picnic basket of fun.

1. Something's wrong with Clint Frazier. I mean, there are injuries, and there are injuries. Apparently, Clint won't be back in 2021, and from the bleacher seats, this looks particularly serious. He has vision issues and apparent vertigo, said to be not stemming from past concussions. So... WTF? I don't even want to speculate about such symptoms. But yeesh, let's hope he's okay. I mean, the guy is just 26. No Yank since Cameron Maybin brought a more infectious smile. I hope he rejoins the team, if only in spirit. I mean... should we be thinking about armbands?

2. Last night was the classic example of a HR victory. The Yankees won 2-1, on a 2-run blast from Joey Gallo (who makes the strangest faces I've ever seen on a player). In between, they squandered rally upon rally, twice via DP grounders from Luke Voit, who looks and runs like a circus strongman. The game should not have been so close. We should have scored four or five runs, and I cannot escape the dread that, come October, the homer-happy lineups always wilt against good pitching. The Yankees need to manufacture runs. They cannot homer their way to a world championship.

3. This weekend, I happened to watch a men's slow pitch softball tournament for about five minutes. It was wonderful. The pitcher tossed the ball, and the first batter hit a liner to center. Next pitch, a grounder to SS. Next pitch, single to right. Next pitch, RBI double. Next pitch, fly to deep center. Five batters, five pitches. And it hit me: 

Once upon a time, baseball was game of nonstop action. 

I watched five batters in the time it'd take for Aaron Judge to work a walk. 

Baseball is baked into American culture, but all the Field of Dream cornfields in creation cannot save the sport from the five-hour, 30 strikeout game. Watch the real game, and you'll see what we've lost. 

I’ll Tell You What Sucks

Not a damn thing.

You see, I’ve been away for the last 3 ½ months. Drove across the country twice. 30 States in all. Just looking at stuff. (And visiting my mom in NY. 94 this month. She’s good. Thanks for asking.) 

Did a lot of Route 66.

This is what I learned – and I promise, eventually it relates to baseball. Eventually. 

There is a concept in both Hinduism and Buddhism called Samsara – roughly, the beginningless cycle of repeated birth, mundane existence and dying again.

Route 66 is a two-thousand-mile meditation on Samsara. Towns that were. Attractions that only attract people seeking irony. An abandoned Radio Shack located in an abandoned shack. The greatness of post WW2 America and where we are now.

Birth. Mundane Existence. Dying Again.

I experienced America as a story told in billboards. The dominant messaging in each state revealing an aspect of itself, reflecting its struggles and solutions.  In CA it’s pot stores and medical facilities. In Nevada, casinos and rehab. Wyoming offered Jesus and Jesus, (and Trump 2024, and sometimes Trump as Jesus.) 

Missouri was Adult Superstores vs. Jesus in a 500-mile battle. A cartoon devil and angel on your shoulder kind of thing.  Also lots of caves. Caves to Hell? Caves as glory holes? That is one messed up state.  

I won’t do them all.

That said, every state is inundated with billboards for Indian Casinos. This country has a serious gambling problem and the irony of MLB celebrating a movie that reveres Shoeless Joe Jackson on a broadcast that had commercials for Fan Duel should be noted. Maybe it’s time to put him in the hall.

And there’s my segue…

Thanks to MLB Extra Innings I was able to end every day on my trip watching the Yankees. But, truth is, the further along I drove, the more my attitude changed towards the game. I started to see it in a broader context. The Yankees as Samsara. Birth. Mundane Existence. Dying Again.  

The game starts, the game ends. Players get sick. Players return. Birth. Mundane Existence. Dying Again – particularly with our current bullpen. Dying a little too often if you ask me.

Oh, and for the record, Brain and Boone still need to go. Look, I had an epiphany but I’m not insane. They are the worst.

I guess what I’m saying is that I can’t get mad at Gardy who, even though he should have retired, is giving everything he has left. I can’t get mad at Stanton even though he should just pick the batting stance that works and stick with it. I can’t get mad at Andrew Heaney who… actually, I can. Fuck that guy. He should never pitch for us again. Seriously that guy sucks.

Damn it. Something does suck. 

There goes my premise. 

Never mind. 

HoraceClarke66: An' ANUDDER thing...

From the tundra of HoraceClarke's desk...

  So Tyler Kepner, the New York Times’ baseball columnist, made one of his rare appearances on Friday, to celebrate the White Sox win in the “Field of Dreams” game.

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/sports/yankees-white-sox-field-of-dreams.html

 You can rest assured that, had the Yankees hung on to win the game, no such article would have appeared in the Times, probably the first major newspaper in the history of the world to root openly against the most popular sports franchise in its home city. For a time, you’ll recall, the Times even owed a part of the Boston Red Sox.

 The most annoying part of this piece, though, was all the comments from players and managers about how wonderfully peaceful and bucolic Iowa was.

 For instance, Aaron Judge: “I know there’s a bunch of guys wishing we could stay here for a couple nights. Just because it’s so peaceful—getting a chance to get out of the city, stay in the country and see all this corn we’ve got out here.”

 Awww.

Or Ma Boone: “There’s something majestic about it. It’s cool, right? You see people outside their homes with their banners and signs, having lunch and waving with their phones out. Them videoing us, us videoing them. That was really neat.”

 Kill me now.

 Hey, I’ve been to Iowa. It’s a nice place, great history. But c’mon.

Back in the day, ballplayers couldn’t wait to get to the big town. It was where they could make some serious money, hobnob with celebrities, become famous themselves.

Mel Ott used to canoodle with Tallulah Bankhead. Joe DiMaggio met a certain Miss Monroe.

Reggie Jackson used to hang out at Studio 54—and with George Steinbrenner’s financial mogul friends, picking up business tips. 

And hey, if you didn’t have a date you could go down to Toots Shor’s, and pal around with Ernest Hemingway, or Jack Dempsey, or Earl Warren. Or play stickball in the street with the local kids, like Willie Mays AND Mickey Mantle.

It’s a game of the city. And as the old Yiddish saying goes—“Life is with people.”  

Now, they can’t wait to get to the lovely “quiet” of Iowa, with all the just-plain-folks there.

You’ll notice that, somehow, none of them live in Iowa in the off-season. Instead, they tend toward McMansions in Florida, or Texas, or SoCal. Could it be that it gets a little TOO quiet in Io-way, come December and January?

This all started, I think, with the ’86 Mets, who rather than explore the amazing possibilities of being a celebrity in New York City started hanging out at a generic Long Island watering hole called Finn MacCool’s, where the bartender would make them their favorite alcohol punch. 

Ever since then, it seems that all ballplayers prefer to live in a sort of moving bubble, where all they seek is quiet, and people waving at them from a porch as they pass by.

Blow me.

Few if any ballplayers today even live in the city they “play for.” That’s a pity. They should check it out—just as they should check out all the splendid cities where they play.

They can always retire to Iowa.

The Yankee problem is not in starting games, but finishing them... and the unlikeliest pitcher of them all might just hold the key

Aside from Gerrit Cole - who's been everything touted - no Yank pitcher seems to pitch with as much grit and guile as Nasty Nestor Octavio-Cortez, the mustachioed maestro from Cuba. 

Ten years from now, he might look like a Bartolo or an Enrique - some rotund retread too ugly for MLB batters to solve. Right now - at 5'11" and 220 - he looks like a bus driver who made off with a uniform. The phrase "crafty veteran" comes to mind, but he's only 26. What's he doing out there? Is the radar gun not working? How is this guy getting people out? 

Well, that's the fun. And no matter how much the Yankee rotation might soon be refortified, Nasty Nestor has earned a spot in the final go-around.

The potential order for September: 

Cole, emphatically!
Jameson Taillon, obviously.
Jordan Montgometry, hopefully.
Corey Kluber, possibly.
Nasty Nestor, yeah, dammit!

Of course, there is a second tier.

Domingo German, maybe.
Luis Gil, perhaps.
Andrew Heaney, uh, nah.
Michael King, doubtful.
Deivi Garcia, humina-humina-humina...
Luis Severino, (remove hat, look down, moment of silence...)

As we head toward fall, every main Yankee starter is either returning from the Unknown (Cole/Montgomery = Covid) or facing workload limits (Taillon/ Kluber = lost year) - everyone, that is, except Nestor, who yesterday befuddled the Chicago Costners, as he has done now for nearly a month.

Nestor's 2.55 ERA leads all Yanks with more than five starts. (Gil has started two, without yielding a run, so there's that.) In his last four starts, Cortez has thrown nearly 22 innings and given up 8 earned runs. (In that bad outing against KC, he was victimized by a poor defense and a leaky pen.) 

Of course, the Yankee problem is not starting games, but finishing them. When the seventh inning arrives, it's best to watch from your fallout shelter. Zack Britton looks hopelessly fried. Aroldis Chapman was floundering badly before the injury. Mean Chad Green doesn't seem to work as a closer, and Jonathan Loaisiga might be year away. From there, it's a long hard drop to magically thinking about Stephen Ridings. 

Unless El Chapo returns in full, the Yankees may have no single person capable of finishing close games - nobody who offers the versatility and mentality to assume the role of Yankee stopper. 

Wait a minute. There is a guy. I'll give you a hint. He's Nasty.

A huge victory celebrates a rare Yankee attribute: Patience.

After all the bridges have collapsed, wouldn't it be weird if Albert Abreu turned out to be the most significant part of the famous 2016 Yankee teardown?

Forget Gleyber. Ignore Clint. Abreu came over in the relatively minor deal for catcher Brian McCann, who had achieved redundancy by the fantastical arrival of Gary Sanchez. One year later, McCann would haunt us in the ALCS, perhaps because he and his Astros teammates knew what pitches were coming. The Death Barge has held onto Abreu for five disappointing seasons, constantly touting his potential despite a Zager & Evans-worthy ERA last year of 20.25 - (if man is still alive.)  Abreu is one of those prospects who - at age 25 - feels like a thirtysomething due to the tiresome rain of ink and ether. 

And last night, he may have saved the Yankee season.

Okay, you're grimacing. I get it. That phrase, "may have saved the Yankee season..." it's a bit dramatic, don't you think? The key words are "may have..." And let's face it: A hallmark of this blog - all fan blogs, frankly - is our addiction to hyperbole. When the Yankees win, God is good. When they lose, it's over, and somebody must pay. 

Last night, despite Aaron Boone's continuing best efforts to mess things up, Abreu somehow pitched out of a bases-loaded jam to record his first MLB save. Therefore, I humbly suggest that, if anything becomes of the 2021 Yankee season, last night will have been a turning point when the Yankees realized that young and ascending pitchers - Abreu and Jonathan Loaisiga, basically - offer our best chances, and that the tribal elders - Zack Britton and the currently injured El Chapo - are past their sell-by dates. 

Any Yank fan who saw Britton warming up in the 10th probably turned off the TV and went to bed. Could you blame them? 

But Abreu saved the day. A line drive out, and a ground out. (Not exactly Mariano, but hey...) The Yankees stayed one game behind Boston in the loss column and - perhaps more importantly - increased their lead over Toronto, the scariest team in the AL after Tampa. 

But getting back to that 2016 trade... the Yankees dealt McCann to Houston for Abreu and Jorge Guzman, another Cashman Cutie. (In the Yankee-owned press, all Cashman deals are Cashman steals.) Guzman fizzled, but later became part of the deal with Starlin Castro and Raul Devers' kid brother that brought to Gotham - wallah! all roads lead to him, don't they? Giancarlo Stanton!

So, in a wandering alt-universe, somewhere out there, lurks a planet where the Yankees didn't do the 2016 teardown - no Gleyber, no Red Thunder - and they never traded for Stanton, and they lost last night behind Giovanni Gallegos because - oh, don't get me started - he's the guy they traded for Luke Voit - and a butterfly flaps its wings in Wuhan, China, it causes, what? Hurricane Fred, perhaps the funniest-named hurricane since Floyd? (Love the headlines that say Fred is currently "disorganized." Wasn't he always?)

So, the morale of last night? Kenny Rogers wrote it. You gotta now when to hold them, know when to fold them. The Yankees have held onto Abreu for five years, and he finally delivered. If you think about it, it's amazing that he's still here. Five years, and he finally paid a dividend. I'll take it, happily.

Year after year, the best teams in baseball have one thing in common: They all grow their own players. Don't bother looking at the Yankee home-growns - Judge, Sanchez, Gardy, Higgy, Monty, Tyler Wade, Luis Gil (and the Amazing Kriske). And Abreu - obtained in a trade - doesn't technically qualify. Still, I'm calling him one of ours. And last night, our farm system came through. Score one for patience. Imagine that: the Yankees... showing patience.

HoraceClarke66: An’ Anudder T’ing!

 From the whirlwind mind of HoraceClarke66...

No, I’m not letting that awful, “Field of Dreams” excrescence go. 

 It was a celebration, first of all, of a movie that badly mutilated the book in some awful ways—starting with the use of (the civil rights) Bob Moses as a prop. 

James Earl Jones’ character is a thinly disguised depiction of the recently departed Moses, organizer of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, as brave and dedicated an American as there’s ever been…and a product of the Bronx.

 Not Iowa.

 For that matter, the original Hateful Eight on the Chicago Black Sox didn’t have anything to do with Io-way, either. They were streetwise guys who actively sought out gamblers to finance their fix. 

 (For an excellent movie on them—also excluded from Jack Curry’s woeful list of best baseball films—check out John Sayles’ Eight Men Out.)

 Who saved the game? Why, New Yorkers, of course. 

 The colonels, Ruppert and Huston, who owned your New York Yankees, and brought Babe Ruth to the biggest stage in sports. The Black Sox scandal was forgotten overnight, as New Yorkers rushed to see the Bambino, giving baseball its first million-fan gate.

But hey, in the endless media pandering to “the heartland,” somehow saving the game Chicago nearly wrecked becomes all about Iowa, where “the mighty Yankees” are the bad guys.

 The corn is as high as a pig’s eye.

 

Shocker: The return of Setback Sevy will be delayed

 

He missed his rehab start last night. So it goes.

Oh, well... 

Jasson Dominiquez went 3-for-3 in a game yesterday.

He's hitting .245.

And Clint Frazier went 1-for-3, somewhere. 

Will we see him in September? Or lose him... to a summer love.

HoraceClarke66: “Heaney! Heaney! HEANEY!!!”

 From the desk of HoraceClarke66...

Attend the tale of Heaney, Clod!

Chorus: Attend the tale of Heaney, Sod!

 His pitches were slow and his pitches were odd!

Chorus:  His pitches looked like day-old scrod!

 Throw your pitches fat, Heaney,

See them rise into the sky!

Swiftly go the balls that you call major-league!

Up in the Bronx he took the mound,

Chorus:  Up in the Bronx, thanks to that clown!

 For a team of some renown.

Chorus:  We’d rather have him in Boston town!

 And there he gave up a homer an inning,

As bad at the end as he was beginning!

 Chorus:  Heaney sees signals that no one sees,

They hit his pitches as if off tees.

Heaney’s throwing October away,

Heaney’s worse with each passing day!

 No one can help,

Nothing can hide you!

Isn’t that Heaney

There beside you?

 Chorus:  HEANEY, HEANEY, HEANEY!

 

Attend the tale of Heaney, Clod!

He served a vengeful juju god!

His pitching is dragging us straight to hell,

But with our bullpen he might as well.

 Oh, Heaney!

The demon pitcher of

Cash-

Man!

 

With extreme apologies to Mr. Sondheim.

 

Will the NFL follow suit on Field of Dreams?

 How did this thing get overlooked?

With Ray Lewis, Marshall Faulk and Dwight Freeney... Ray Liotta as Roger Godell and Kevin Costner as Iowa Farmer's Dad

I am not making this up. Because those who cannot remember the past...

Mr. Glass-Half-Full (of Old Overholt)

Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe I'm just a Libra, obsessed with balance. Maybe, baby, I'll have you for me. But while Joebuckco's WS comment is hysterically funny, the essence of it isn't. The injuries--more specifically, the Covid problem--have taken an awful lot out of this team. No Covid, no Heaney. Instead, Monty and Cole. No Heaney, we probably win last night. It's not like the White Sox's great Lance Lynn was any good, nor was their bullpen overall. And that's still without Sanchez and Rizzo in the lineup. And Torres and Gio, for non-Covid reasons.

Hats off to Tyler Wade, the oft bag a la punching, for showing what he can do offensively. Talk about stepping up. Even Gardner has come through more than we could ever expect. Last night, Judge was the Judge of our dreams, and Stanton actually hit a home run that mattered.

Our biggest issue is the loss of three starters and the way that's fucked up the bullpen. Britton shouldn't be closing. He still hasn't come all the way back from his injury, and he may never fully do so. Chapman, for all his horror show performances, could have come in handy. Maybe he would have failed like Britton, but maybe not. We'll never know. The Torre-like knee-jerk use of Britton in the ninth was stupid. Try Green (who may be way overworked), or Lasagna (ditto), or even Ridings (definitely not). But we're saddled with Boone and these things will happen.

The White Sox are widely considered the best team in the AL, and even with Heaney giving up seven runs (holy fuck, Booney!), we played them to a standstill. And that's with all the IL action. The last time we faced Tampa, we won two out of three. Three of four against Seattle, a W-L "peer" of sorts. Those teams aren't tomato cans.

Like Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's one-legged man auditioning for Tarzan, we're hanging in against very long odds. You want to start chiseling our gravestone, fine. Go ahead. I'm just a cockeyed optimist, playing wait and see.

Not in Kansas any more; the "mighty Yankees" are a different beast when not facing the Royals, Marlins and O's... (Oh, my...)

Another soul-crushing defeat on national TV... 

Another recap of past Octobers...

Another foreshadowing of what's ahead... 

We expected Field of Dreams. We got Friday the 13th. A drive-in horror fest. But were you surprised? Really? I watched all nine innings hiding behind the couch, never believing "the mighty Yankees" - as mellow Kevin Costner called them - would prevail. Even after Giancarlo Stanton's HR? Nope. A one-run lead in the ninth? Not enough. Just a typical Hollywood ending.

Last night's undoing happened as if scripted in a bad  M. Night Shyamalan movie (which, in recent years, is every M. Night Shyamalan movie.)  Some day-after thoughts...

1. The Yankees look big and bad against tomato cans. Pit them against a solid team - a future playoff adversary - and the giant balloon deflates rather quickly. It's hard to rip a lineup that scores eight runs, but those early-inning opportunities that lead to nothing? That's the hallmark of this team. Against a good opponent, they come back to haunt you.  

2. Whatever the Yankees saw in Andrew Healey, well, I'm not getting it. Apparently, someone in the front office thought they could tweak this guy and show up the dumb, stupid Angels - who were delighted to jettison him for a pair of prospects. (Remember the unforgettable name of Janson Junk. And yes, he's a pitcher.) This was a hubris deal, the Yankees thinking magically that everything would turn out okay. (And I'm the idiot for believing in juju?)  Healey will be a free agent next winter. December can't come fast enough. 

3. I had to laugh when Joe Buck and John Smoltz spoke in awe of the towering wave of injury talent that will soon return to the Yankees. At one point - I swear I'm not making this up - they speculated about how difficult it would be for the Yankees to calculate world series shares for all the fringe players - the most daft Yankee hallucination of 2021. What Buck/Smoltz ignored is THE IRON LAW OF THE MODERN YANKEES: As soon as someone returns, someone gets hurt. So, yeah, Luis Severino might come back. When that happens, watch Jameson Taillon.

4. Okay, I'll admit it was fun, watching the game with a 1950's backdrop of corn fields, farm houses, and rich white people. But I cannot forgive MLB for ditching the annual Hall of Fame Game - an actual tradition - for a Hollywood production. I've lived all my life in upstate New York. You cannot imagine how much that Hall of Fame game meant to people. (My dad took me to one; it's one of my greatest memories.)  When MLB pulled out, it took the silverware and pulled up the rug. So, now, they produce this show, this fake tribute to the game's pastoral roots? Fuck them! I'm sorry, but I cannot join this drunken bandwagon of gold-plated hypocrisy. 

5. As an olive branch, I propose that baseball play one game a year - or better, one weekend a year, with all teams involved - in minor league cities. Give something back to small towns. What MLB would lose in ticket sales - (and some teams wouldn't lose anything; looking at you, Tampa) - they'd make up in TV ratings. And they can play the Field of Dreams game, too. I'm okay with that. I have nothing against Iowa. (Better yet, play the All-Star Game in the cornfield. Or hold the Home Run Derby there.) (Wait... actually, the corn wouldn't be high enough in mid-July, but then again, they could use fake corn, right? Or CGI corn. Hooray for Hollywood!)  

5. Over the last few years, I've come to like Zack Britton. Not only has he not ended our last two seasons by delivering walk-off gopher balls - as another closer did - Britton is the team's union rep. He's always on the right side of arguments. Remember how he spoke out last spring on Domingo German's domestic violence issue? He's a standup guy. But, fuck me, right now, he's awful. Even his successful outings are nail-biters, often saved by line shots that happen to find gloves. Last night was always going to come down to Britton pitching the ninth. And like an evil villain in a Bond movie, we were always going to lose. I'm sorry, but the ending was formulaic and obvious. Hollywood should have done better. Two thumbs down!

HoraceClarke66: No, it didn't start in a cornfield

From the tear-stained desk of HoraceClarke66... 

 Just to riff off El Duque’s excellent skewering of Fox Sports’ fake nostalgia broadcast—baseball in a cornfield!—it’s time once and for all to put paid to the idea that baseball, baseball as we know it, has pastoral roots.

 Chasing exactly when and where people started playing bat-and-ball games is a fool’s errand. It probably started somewhere around the time we first moved out on the savannah and left behind our previously favored pastimes, swinging from trees and not being eaten.

 Ancient hieroglyphics depict Egyptians with bats playing at something called seker-hemat, around 2500 B.C. Berbers in the 1930s were observed playing ta kurt om el mahag, or “the ball of the pilgrim’s mother”—a game one historian theorized was brought to North Africa in the fifth century A.D. by the Vandals. Medieval Normans played grande théque, while their French cousins played la balle empoisonee, or “poisoned ball,” the Germans had schlagball, and the Finns played pesapällo.

 Countless other bat-and-ball games were played under different rules and different names in England. The whole welter of English and continental games followed the colonists over to America. Hired Polish laborers were playing “long ball” in the Jamestown settlement by 1609.

 I’m not making this up.

 Nor was baseball invented one day by Abner Doubleday along the banks of the Glimmerglass. Doubleday, sort of the Forrest Gump of the 19^th century, had an amazing life—but he did not invent baseball.

 Abner’s best friend for 20 years was the president of the National League…but he even he admitted that Doubleday never so much as spoke of baseball (“Hey, you know that sport you run?  Well—”).

 Doubleday himself wrote that, “In my outdoor sports, I was addicted to”—drum roll, please—“topographical work…”

 No, baseball as we know it was invented by these guys, the o.g. New York Knickerbockers. 

  While they may look like a bunch of Mennonites on a picnic, they were mostly Manhattan “merchants, lawyers, Union Bank clerks, insurance clerks and others who were at liberty after 3 o’clock in the afternoon.”

 As anyone who knows anything about the expanses of American agriculture can tell you, it would’ve been damned hard to get 18 guys together regularly for a game. In the U.S., instead, the roots of the modern game were urban.

 In the New York area, it was played on vacant lots and the remaining swathes of grass to be found anywhere in the city. Or at the Elysian Fields, a sort of 19^th-century amusement park over in Hoboken.

 The Knickerbockers, contrary to some accounts, were far from the first New York baseball club, but they were the great consolidators of what became known as “the Knickerbocker Rules,” the heart of “the New York Game”—or modern baseball.

 This was thanks mainly to the guy in the first row, middle, with the James Harden beard and the cigar. Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams, graduate of Yale and of Harvard Medical School, would do more than any other single individual to invent the game we love.

 Doc played everywhere on the field save for pitcher—No curveball? But then there weren’t curveballs yet—and personally invented the position of shortstop.

 As secretary of the Knickerbocker Club and a player well into his 40s, Adams also invented the relay throw, horsehide baseballs, and the called strike. He also pushed through 9 men on a team and 9 innings in a game, secured bases set 90 feet apart, the pitcher’s mound in the middle of the diamond, and “the fly-game,” in which you had to catch a ball in the air to get an out, instead of being able to catch it on the first bounce.

 And none of it had anything to do with cornfields, or Iowa.

 To Doc Adams, the fly guy who invented the fly game, right here in New York City!

Great ex-Yankee to Manage White Sox in Odious "Field of Dreams" Game

Confessed turkey lover and former utility infielder Miguel Cairo (2004, 2006-07), who led the Yankees to a .615 win percentage in games he appeared in (scroll down), will manage the White Sox in tonight's odious "Field of Dreams" game. The gobbler-gobbling Sox bench coach will fill in for skipper Tony LaRussa, who will be in Florida for a family funeral. Condolences to Tony, cheers to El Pavo!  

Who and when

Kluber, "they" say, September 1st. Everyone but Sanchez will be awhile.

And t-shirt of the day...

 

Will "Moonlight" Wade get a shot at the Hollywood game?

Lately, Tyler Wade has been the Yankees' best player.

Tyler Wade. 

Trouble is, the Yankees have no place for overachievers. 

They prefer underachievers, whom they theorize will eventually play to their career numbers. They are baseball's premier team for underachievers, playing one at nearly every position.

Joey Gallo is hitting .149 with the Yankees - .213 for the season. He's a career .209. 

Roughned Odor is hitting .225 this season. He's a lifetime .236. 

Wade has raised his average to .262. He's a career .205.

It's almost time for him to disappear into the corn.

Field of Schemes: If you hype it, they will watch...

 

WARNING... WARNING... WARNING...

THE NATIONAL BULLSHIT SERVICE HAS ISSUED A SEVERE BULLSHIT WATCH 
FOR THE FOLLOWING 50 U.S. STATES AND TERRITORIES. 
TONIGHT, THERE IS A SEVERE CHANCE OF CATAGORY 4
SHIT STORMS AND CRAPOLA TORNADOS BLOWING ACROSS THE NATION...

"Go the distance..."   

That's what the ghost said, right? Go the distance...  Yeah, right.
This, in a game where bullpen starters will throw two innings, 
if they're lucky.

It's taken about 100 years, but hey, everybody, we finally did it: 

We've gaslighted the entirety of baseball, stuffed it into a movie set, and
tonight - on Fox, of course - America will hold a massive pageant of crapola, 
pretending that a cutthroat industry is merely a pastime of love and rural 
values, because a long time ago, Hollywood made a film, saying so.

At last, we've found our strategy to defeat global warming, pandemics, 
economic catastrophes and political terrorism: Pretend it's a movie 
and that everything is okay. Look, there's magic in that cornfield,
where old-fashioned virtues remain, where souls are resurrected,
and where everybody has a gun. 

The Field of Dreams game. 

How did we lose our fucking minds?

And the Yankees are part of this? Shame on us.

Baseball has spawned 1,000 movies, practically all of which end with the winning 
run on third, but until now, none produced such a tornado of hype.

What's especially galling is that MLB once actually did dedicate one game 
each year to its small town, agrarian roots. The Hall of Fame Game 
in Cooperstown was played every summer at Doubleday Field, 
a picture perfect ballpark nestled into a rural community.

In 2008, MLB pulled the plug on the Hall of Fame game, apparently because 
it wasn't generating interest money. Keep in mind, it was an exhibition game 
played in the middle of the season, which meant no teams wanted to play it. 

So, they killed it. Ever since, MLB has sought a new con. And tonight, 
the Yankees play in this... well... monstrosity is the word that comes
to mind...  a game dedicated to selling baseball's version of The Big Lie.

The pushing of swag.

Once upon a time, a human ATM wannabe named Bud Selig came up with a
plan to help raise revenues for his beloved game. For one weekend, he sought to put Spider-Man II logos on the bases and home plate.  I am not
making this up. MLB wanted ads on home plate.

That day, George Steinbrenner - a man with many negatives - said
no. In his finest hour of life, old George refused to allow his Yankees
to take part in such a scheme. Within hours, all of baseball joined him. Nobody has ever since sold ads on the bases. (Though I suspect we'll get there.) 

Tonight, the Yankees will play themselves in a movie, dedicated to pretending that a trillion dollar industry is merely a sandlot game played by fathers and sons, as seen on TV. Thanks to the miracle of Hollywood,

we will pretend the game still has its virginity. The Fox announcers
will make pretty speeches, the cameras will shoot pretty sunsets, and
the players will wear less groin-hugging pants. 

Next year, another Spiderman movie will be coming. Won't it be time?

It Took Until The Ninth For Boone To Get It Right

Every time Odor loads up to throw to first base, from third, it is an adventure in physics. 

He should never be Boone's choice for third base.  Period. Stop the experiment.  The lab will burn down.

For " defensive purposes, " finally, Boone re-gigged the infield as follows in the last inning:

First Base - DJ

Second Base - Odor

SS - Velazquez

Third Base - Wade

He had Smith in left, Gardy in center and .149 slugger Joey Gallo in right.

There are better choices for the outfield, but Boone chooses not to make those ( Allen, Florial )

Anyway, Odor only made one error at third and one at second.  Whilst the Fordham Flash ( Velazquez) made one at short.  

Sorry, but Voit belongs on the bench.  He is probably as useful as a pinch runner as a pinch hitter, but he isn't good enough. 

Will we ever have a quality line-up again?

Jason Raspberry pitches tomorrow.  He is just up from our secret Yankee league in Venezuela. The right guy for the " field of dreams."