Even The Weather Hates The Yankees

The good thing about the Yankees playing the O's is that I can watch all of the games on MASN (the Mid Atlantic Sports Network). The bad thing is when the Yankees drop two games and then just as they retake the lead in the third game the rain sets in and the game is suspended.

You don't see a lot of games called mid inning, in fact I can't remember the last time it happened. I checked out the rule about this and found something eerie. According to ESPN:

Before 1980, the score would have reverted to the start of the inning,
giving the Orioles a 6-4 win. But the rule was changed after a game on Aug.
13, 1978, when Baltimore led 3-0 after six innings and the Yankees scored
five runs in the top of the seventh.

That means that the rule was changed the night my mother went into labor with me....because of the same situation with the Yankees against the Orioles. Of course that is the storied '78 season that I have written about previously. Is this an omen of things to come? I certainly hope so.

I Just Don't Get It

Just as quickly as the Yankees turned around their bad start, they have slid right back into the hole they had so desperately tried to dig themselves out of. There are still reasons to be optimistic, but the dream of catching the red sox is quickly slipping away. I hate to say this but the sox simply won't lose on a regular basis. True, they haven't been plagued by injuries the way that the Yankees have, and that could still happen, but one gets the sense that this new slide the Yankees are on has stolen the momentum away from the team.

I only saw the highlight reel of Clemens relief role last night, but I'm not quite sure what to make of it. He's certainly had a bit of a shaky comeback so far and it seems that Torre wants to get him some more time on the mound to settle in. What I'm afraid of is what I thought from the beginning, that he is just to old. He does have some gas left in the tank but I don't know if it is enough.

I don't want to give up on the season yet, I'll reserve that disgrace for a few weeks after the all-star break. But pretty soon it's going to be time for a little session of loving honesty if we don't start getting some consistent wins. If we finish out July more than 8 games behind the red sox I'm afraid we'll have to concede that our long and glorious string of division wins has come to an end, and that the playoffs may not be in our future. But wouldn't it be great if Phil Hughes comes back strong, the red sox suffer a string of injuries, and the Yankees mount a historic comeback to not only win the division, but win the whole thing despite everything? Well, here's hoping.

Good Article on Pavano

Since I don't have much time to write today I call your attention to Yankee hating ESPN which has a great article on Pavano that you should check out. Click here. Of course it is a bit harsh on Yankees fans, but still worth a read.

In a quick Yankees Rockies update Clemens stunk today and gave up 2 homers in the 2nd. Right now it's 4-2 Rockies lead.

On Being a Real Fan

I get annoyed when people say that they are fans of a team and then can't name a single player. This most recently happened to me last night when I was having a discussion with one of my friends who claims to cheer for the Red Sox. I realized that he had no idea what he was talking about (kind of like some of the commenter's on this blog) so I asked him to name a single player....well he did name Curt Schilling, but that came after a mental wrestling match. This mentality is especially frustrating when wannabe fans claim to hate the Yankees. Any true Red Sox fan has a list of reasons to hate the Yankees (somehow even Billy Buckner was the Yankees fault) and vice versa. But for those fair weathers the excuse is always either that they hate the Yankees "because they win all the time" or because "they spend too much money." Any baseball true baseball fan knows that the Yankees don't win all the time, and there are plenty of other clubs around the league that spend, or could spend a ton of money on their pay roll.

Personally, I have been a Yankees fan for as long as I can remember what baseball was (and that was during the 80's). Since I am sure that fair weathers don't remember the Yankee teams of the '80's, to put it plainly....we stunk. Poor Donny Baseball played throughout that era and retired just as the Yankees were beginning their new dynasty of the '90's. But that is what it takes to be a true fan. You have to watch the team year after year, disappointment after disappointment, but refuse to ever give up on them no matter how many times they miss the playoffs. There are always a ton of people who jump on a winning teams bandwagon after they win a championship, (and the Yankees certainly had their share before they became the team everyone loves to hate) but I swear the fair weather red sox fans are the worst. In contrast the real red sox fans, even though I hate them, at least are knowledgeable about the game and have the memory of suffering year after year. But the new brood encompasses all of the bad things about cheering for Boston. They wear pink hats, know nothing about the team (most still think that Jonny Damon plays for Boston), and ignorantly yell Yankees suck at the drop of their aforementioned pink hats.

I could rant on about this forever, but the main point is this....before you yell something stupid about the Yankees, or tell me how much you love whatever team you pretend to love...at least have the common decency to be able to name more than one player. I'm not asking you to know who played second base in 1942 for the Giants, just a basic common knowledge and a little respect for the game.

On Giambi, Bonds, and Suspensions

It looks like Jason Giambi is headed towards a suspension for his comments in USA Today about his steroids use. Keep in mind he never openly admitted it in the article, but it certainly isn't something that has been a secret. But making an example of Giambi who has at least apologised is not the person MLB needs to make an example of.* Of course I am speaking of Bonds, the poster boy of the steroid era who basically needs to be caught on video injecting himself with steroids and wiping steroid cream all over his body in order for something to happen to him. Bonds said something to the Balco grand jury, whether he said he never "knowingly" used, or that he did use doesn't matter. We all know that he did and so does he. Love him or hate him, Bonds is going to break Hank Aaron's home run record this year and as the saying goes and press is good press (especially in the eyes of Selig).

Baseball needs to come clean about the drug abuse problems of the last ten years, Selig seems to only want to go after smaller name players, or players who are past their prime enough (or injured) so that their loss of contributions are negligible. If it takes some sort of amnesty program where players who admit to past use are disciplined, but not suspended that is fine. Hell, I'll even say they get to keep their records if they willingly come clean. But if they don't they are headed for asterisk-ville.

So will Bonds ever be officially called out? No, of course not. Lets face it, anyone who even knows what a baseball looks like knows that Barry juiced, but Selig wants home runs more than he wants a fair game.

*Full disclosure, I met Jason Giambi in a bar in Boston and he bought me a beer so naturally I kind of like the guy.

Too Busy to Post Again Today

But I am happy to report that it is Yankees 4 D-Backs 1 in the top of the 6th.

The Spirit of '78

I could be jinxing the Yankees (I feel like I am every time I say things are turning around) but it certainly feels like the Yankees are back in the race now. Half way through June they are poised to repeat (actually better by half a game) the accomplishment of the 1978 Bombers who came back from a 14 game deficit to win the whole thing. You get the sense that something special is finally starting to take hold in the Bronx. I don't know if A-rod is more relaxed because he is thinking about strippers, if the return of the Rocket gives the rotation a sense that they are not under quite as much pressure, or just the fact that everyone is having a lot more fun now that Paris Hilton is in jail. One thing is for sure, it is starting to get exciting.

But is this really like 1978? Yes and no. In '78 The Yankees didn't begin their comeback until mid July, by that time the Red Sox record was 62-28. The Sox have had an incredible start this year just like in '78, but everyone knows that can't last forever. Traditionally the Red Sox have been great (or at least in the race) right up until August. Maybe it's something about how the August sun sets over Fenway but that is always when they have traditionally collapsed. This year the Yankees started their comeback a full month earlier than they did in '78 giving them more time to catch up, and giving them a big jump on when the calender flips from 7/31 to 8/01. Another similarity is that in 1978 Goose Gossage didn't save a single game in April, eerily similar to Rivera's start. One thing that is really different this year is that no one has been fired (yet). In '78 things started to turn once Billy Martin saw the door. The Yankees also have the wild card possibility which gives them an added option that the '78 team didn't have.

The Yankees are making their comeback with a lot of untested pitching, Tyler Clippard for example. I have to believe based on what I have seen that as the summer progresses they will only get better. The Rocket may not be the Rocket of old, but last Saturday's performance against Pittsburgh proved he still has some gas in the tank. Not to mention Phil Hughes will be returning in a few weeks and there is no reason to believe that he won't come off the DL ready to prove himself.

So here is to the Spirit of '78, why not, it would certainly make for a year when no one could say we didn't earn it.

On the Nationals

A commenter on my blog "King of All Whites" seems to think that Montreal was robbed of its team and that giving baseball back to the Nations Capitol is a bad idea. I have written on this subject in the past, but since much of baseball is all about statistics lets really look at his arguments and compare them to actual numbers.

King of all Whites writes

"People [in Montreal] are starting to wake up to what happened to them. And don't be so smug and so sure. DC has lost the Senators not once but twice and look at how attendance and performance has been in DC.

Ok, so then the King is arguing that attendance Washington's declining attendance marks the death bell for the team and that they never should have left. But how bad is the attendance really? Let's look at the average for the Expos over their final four seasons at Olympic Stadium:

2001 - 7,935 - Rank 30 out of 30
2002 - 10,025 -Rank 30 out of 30
2003 - 12,662 -Rank 30 out of 30
2004 - 9,356 -Rank 30 out of 30

Comparatively let's look at average attendance at RFK stadium since the Nationals have been in existence:

2005 - 33,651 -Rank 11 out of 30
2006 - 26,582 -Rank 21 out of 30
2007 - 21,966 -Rank 26 out of 30

So the average attendance is going down, but that is to be expected since the team is in the process of settling in to its new ownership, rebuilding its player depth, and also building a new stadium. Even taking that into account, the nationals have double the average attendance than the Expos had at the end of their run. One would think that if Montreal was really a city that cared about baseball then at the very least their last season in existence would have seen a sharp increase in attendance. It didn't. Which leads one to believe that if people are "waking up to what happened to them" in Montreal, they are waking up and realising that they never really cared much for baseball and it took them this long to even notice that they were gone.

While it is true that DC has had a shaky relationship in the past with baseball, the area is one of the fastest growing in the country. The potential market was enough to scare Orioles owner Peter Angelos into robbing viewers of Nat's games for two years. There is no question that Washington's market potential is much stronger than that of Montreal.

Incidentally, average attendance at a Nationals games is just behind Baltimore and better than Pittsburgh and Kansas City. Granted those teams are awful this year, but surely no one would suggest that the cities they represent don't deserve to have a team.

Finally, I was unaware that Caucasians were ruled by a monarch, maybe I should be careful lest I am beheaded.

Busy Again Today

But one thing that I will say is that the Fenway crowds over the top heckling of A-rod is just one more example of why I hate red sox fans. I swear they are the rudest fans in all of baseball. Despite what they yell out to the Yankees, I've been spit on, had beer poured on me, and had my life threatened by the worst fans in baseball. You guys won in 2004 and now you're in first place, grow up for god sake.

Most importantly though...YANKEES WIN!!!