Shalom Bitches

Enough already – time to set the record straight. And we have a record on which we can rely, so there’s no arguing with the facts. For example, my friend Danny told us, in a comment to the October 31 posting, that, “Yankee fans have learned humility, dignity and greatness.” Say what? How exactly do humility and self-declared greatness coexist? Only with another ingredient, which is the chief characteristic of all Yankee fandom – hubris. And once again, the record speaks for itself. Back on April 20, a Friday night, the first Sox-Yankee game of 18, Danny began texting John, who was sitting out in right field in Fenway. It was early in the game, and Danny was crowing about A-Rod’s home runs. Only problem was that Danny spoke too soon. Sox scored five in the bottom of the eighth, and Okajima shut the door in the ninth – his coming out party. See, it was hubris led Danny to spout off before the game had ended. And if you don’t believe this happened, if you think I’m making this up, check the record. Look at the posting for April 21. Once again I have to ask, if that’s a fact, am I lying?

And so it was hubris all season long that led Yankee fans to predict post-season success, or RedSox collapse. I counted no fewer than five occasions when such predictions were made on the record, in the open blog so to speak, for all the world to read. Of course, none of these preposterous predictions came true; what happened, and again these are all established facts, is that the Yankees went home early, so they could begin negotiating their contracts, and the Sox swept the Rockies to win the World Series. But the question we need to ask, the question that’s relevant to this posting, is whether this Yankee hubris was in any way responsible for the Friday Night Plague? And if so, don’t Yankee fans think it would be smarter to keep their mouths shut, at least until they resume accomplishing anything in October? Wouldn’t it be smarter to see your team actually win the Series once again, and then to tell us how great they are?

Or perhaps I’m missing the point here, maybe the fault is mine. Remember early in the year, when I pointed out that Clemens would make more in each inning he pitched than Mays had made in most seasons he played? Yes, I know, everyone makes more today, but this was just throwing money away. And all year, we’ve been talking about what a bitch A-Rod is, with his bimbo shenanigans, with that bush league play up in Toronto, and of course, with his October nonfeasance. Of course he stepped up this year, and had his first post-season RBI since 2004; just one, but it was an improvement nonetheless. Anyway, ever since the Yankees’ season ended, and Boras and A-Rod engineered that ersatz departure, I’ve been delivering a consistent message, which was completely ignored by the entire Pinstripe crowd – first that the Yankees were better off without A-Rod, and second, that you wasted your money resigning him. Now Danny has set me straight. “The Yanks will make a huge return economically on the contract….Baseball is a business.” Well, I can’t argue with the latter; it is a business, but is the purpose of the business to win anything, or just to generate revenues? And even though I’m no economist, and not much of a businessman either, I still figured that the Yankees could save that $275 extra large, find a good young third baseman who could actually get a hit in October, and thereby spend less money while having more post-season success. Am I wrong? OK then.

Really, what’s going on is that the Yankees and their fans are reduced to this – “Wait till next year.” We in the Nation know all about that, having lived by that motto for years and years. It’s what makes us look forward to each spring; it’s the hope everyone carries through the long winter; it’s what makes spring sweet for sports fans. But that hope is often like whisky in a barrel. Sometimes it improves with age, but sometimes, it gets bitter after a while. Be careful for that.

And speaking of ‘wait till next year’, I’m happy to do the bet with any of my readers. Here’s how we did it this year – best regular season record won a bottle of Highland Park 18. The particular whisky can be negotiated each year, as I suppose, can the terms of the bet: for example, who goes farther in the season, or post-season if we’re both lucky? And again for the record, the 2007 bet was made early on; G-Man and I agreed in principle before the season even began, and the stakes – HP 18 – were settled on by April 9. But thanks to Beckett, and Manny, and Papi, and Pedroia, and Pap, and Oki, and Youk, and even J.D. Drew, I’m one bottle to the good as of today, and happy to double the stakes in 2008.