Yankee Haters, Savor the Moment
I’m sorry, before we get to the World Series … can we talk about this for a minute?
All season long, Michael Schur and I have been arguing with Brandon McCarthy about what makes for the best possible outcome for Yankee haters. Mike and I would like to see the Yankees have an all-around terrible season. They have not had a losing record in THIRTY YEARS. I mean, enough of that. They have made the playoffs 24 of the last 28 seasons.
So, yeah, as Yankee haters, we’d like to see the team completely flop just once. The last time the Yankees lost 100 games in a season was … well, never, they’ve never lost 100 games in a season as the Yankees.* They’ve lost 95 once. Is it too much to ask for the Yankees to have just one fully disastrous season where they’re out of the running in May, and they fire the manager in June, and they’re sellers at the trade deadline and the stadium is one-third full … you know, one season where the fans can feel like the rest of us do?
*They did lose 100 games in a season twice as the New York Highlanders — 1908 and 1912.
But Brandon argues that’s not at all what we SHOULD want.
Instead, he says, the perfect Yankees season for us should be … well, this season.
Why? Well, this season, the Yankees filled their fans with false hope by playing out-of-their-minds baseball for three months. Everything clicked until July 8, absolutely everything, the team was an incredible 61-23, far and away the best record in baseball (that day they utterly pounded the Red Sox, 12-5).
Oh, those halcyon days! Matt Carpenter was doing a spot-on Lou Gehrig impression (he homered again that day), and Nestor Cortes was doing his own Andy Pettitte impersonation, and Aaron Judge was Aaron Judge, and the Yankees bullpen was looking untouchable, and the Yankees’ team ERA was 2.95 and the offense was averaging 5.39 runs per game, and the only question in the air was: Is this the best Yankees team ever?
A calm observer — meaning someone other than Mike or me — might have told you that there was potential trouble brewing: The Yankees didn’t SEEM that good. They had pretty glaring holes at shortstop and elsewhere. Joey Gallo was a disaster. Josh Donaldson was kind of a disaster too. The bullpen pitchers seemed to be outperforming their talent. Plus, this team was OLD. And you know what happens to old teams nine times out of 10? Right: The injuries start piling up.
Still, our antipathy and fear of the Yankees wouldn’t allow us to see any of that — even as the Yankees limped home with a 38-40 record after July 8. Brandon kept telling us that this season was setting up perfectly for us, that the Yankees had built up all these expectations and dreams, but they aren’t really all that good, and the ending would be a spectacular crash. We refused to believe him.
Then the Yankees squeezed by a limited Cleveland team in five games, setting up a showdown with the Houston Astros. Objectively, yes, Mike and I could see that the Astros were the better team. But we cannot be objective about the Yankees, and anything can happen in a seven-game series, and so we worried like always.
Only … in the end, I have to admit it, Brandon was exactly right.
The Astros-Yankees series was everything a Yankees hater could ever want. It wasn’t just that the Astros won it in four straight, and it wasn’t just that each game offered a different delight.
— Game 1, the Yankees struck out 17 times and looked entirely feeble.
— Game 2, the Yankees struck out 13 more times and managed just four hits and didn’t score an earned run.
— Game 3, Houston’s Chas McCormick hit the wimpiest home run imaginable over the Little League wall in rightfield to give the Astros a lead they never relinquished. This was the game where announcers John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman could not stop talking about how dead the crowd was.
— Game 4, the Yankees scored first, had a 3-0 lead, and let it slip away thanks to some sloppy defense and shaky bullpen work.
No, it was more than that. Every game, the Yankees pushed a different panic button. They switched shortstops. They switched leadoff hitters. They shook up the lineup and then shook it up again. Yankees manager Aaron Boone had a look of sheer terror on his face throughout the series.
And then, unbelievably, with the Yankees down 3-0 they SHOWED PLAYERS VIDEO HIGHLIGHTS OF THE 2004 RED SOX COMEBACK IN THE HOPES OF INSPIRING THEM.
It’s one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen. This is like Darth Vader showing stormtroopers video highlights of Luke Skywalker taking out the Death Star exhaust port as inspiration. This is like the old television Joker showing his henchmen video highlights of Batman and Robin beating the POW! OOF! AWK! ZOWIE! out of them as inspiration. This is like the Los Angeles police department showing officers video of The Terminator police station shootout as inspiration.
I mean … I can’t even with this thing. The Yankees showing the 2004 Red Sox beating the Yankees to motivate their own players? How would that even go? “Hey, guys, we’re still in this — remember we once blew a 3-0 lead to our most hated rival!” It’s an idea so ridiculous, so nonsensical, so antithetical to what the Yankees are supposed to be about, that … well, yes, I absolutely love it.
And then the series ends, and the Yankees are in shambles, and the buzzards are circling, reports are out about the Giants wanting to bring Aaron Judge home, reports are out of the Dodgers thinking about moving Mookie Betts to second to make room for Aaron Judge, etc. Let the panic reign!
And there should be some panic — the Yankees have a lot of long-range problems. They have quite a bit of dead money on the books, they will have to go to the wall to bring back Judge (and I think they will), they’re going to have to figure out how to get some lefty power, they need a shortstop, they probably need a third baseman, Anthony Rizzo will certainly opt out of his final year and force a decision, they have to completely rebuild that bullpen …
Of course, the Empire will strike back. They always do. But, at least for the moment, it’s pretty good to be a Yankee hater.
Do the Yankees players ever look like they're having fun? Look into the Padres', Phillies and Astros dugouts. They do look like they're having fun playing a kids game. The Yankees need to end the stupid "no long hair or beards" rule. Baseball is a team game played by individuals. The Yankees look like 28 Stepford husbands.
I think the 2022 Yankees watching highlights of the 2004 Red Sox is all the proof anyone needs that players don't really identify with their teams. For most of the 2022 Yankees, there's no "we" to see in the 2004 Yankees - hell, some of the current Yankees were barely out of diapers back then.
Also, when I heard that, the first thing I wondered was who on the current Yankees would play the role of Papi, or Millar, or Varitek, or any of the other guys who had the kind of spirit to rally a team from a 3-0 deficit. I'll admit I'm a Yankees hater, but, man, I couldn't see anyone remotely like that.