Forgotten But Not Yet Gone

Not mere run of the mill defeat. This is the ignominious variety.

Losing to bad teams. Getting embarrassed by good ones,  mutilated by great ones. This is not like suffering from a simple illness, but as if one had the plague.

These cannot be my New York Yankees, thirsting for every run, sending out pitchers who have "hit me" pinned on their uniform. This cannot be a group cut from the same cloth as Jeter, Rivera, Posada, Pettitte and Williams but merely a rag tag bunch assembled from among the over the hill and the never gonna be.

The rhythm of my existence since childhood has been to invest my focus and energy, from first bloom of spring to the shortening light of late fall on my team. My team. To live with each win and die with each loss. To have the feeling that no matter the low, there was something magnificent just around the corner. To have the ultimate joy of anticipation. Now, there is but a terrible void. Mere emptiness wherever I fix my gaze.

I no longer even pretend to watch these games. It is still mid-August and there remains the last full quarter of the season. But the fat lady has already sung, the party is over, the air is out of the balloon. Stick a fork in it. They're done.

This has now become the endless summer. Not in the good sense, not riding the waves at the beach, warm breezes, sunshine and smiles. But in the when will this bad movie finish, the same bad film for almost three hours, night after night. Groundhog day, ad infinitum.

All we are left with is to wonder whether Brian Cashman, who has been around since George Steinbrenner still roamed the planet, the same Steinbrenner who used to play he loves me, he loves me not with Billy Martin, will soon be collecting unemployment after a quarter century at the general manager's desk. Or if the magic of that Aaron Boone home run off Tim Wakefield has finally worn off two decades later and if he too will feel the executioner’s blade. Heads will roll after this debacle comes to a fitful conclusion. Somebody is to blame. Actually almost everybody is.

Gerrit Cole and four days of snow does not have the same ring as the Spahn and Sain ditty but the bodies lined up behind him are like a freeway pile up. What is Luis Severino doing throwing batting practice to the opposition every time he is on the hill? And the remainder of the putative starting rotation has spent most of this season in the doctor's office or the doghouse. There was that blip on the radar screen for Domingo German, perfect for a moment, a mirage that then disappeared before our bewildered eyes. One blink and he evaporated into thin air.

Apart from an occasional sighting of the second coming of Derek in young Mr. Volpe, there has been virtually nothing to warm the cockles of the heart or light the fires of the imagination. And that miraculous catch by Aaron Judge, when he literally ran through the outfield wall, turned out to be the beginning of the end. Something great morphing into nothing but trouble. Superman's Kryptonite  his toe. 

And so may the 2023 Yankees rest in pieces, their season over even as it continues. And even as there is no rest for us, their bewitched, bothered and bewildered fans.

This misshapen team forgotten but not yet gone.