Sorry to have to stoop this low to call Major League Baseball teams derogatory names in this day and age of professional sports writing. However the product I just viewed over the past 72 hours leaves me with little choice but to degrade these teams that pretend to be high class organizations that put out a quality product.
I guess that’s what’s expected when the combined yearly payroll of these 2 teams equals the entire Gross National Product of a dozen third world countries where poverty and starvation runs rampant.
You ask what does this have to do with baseball? It has to do with the inequities of the game I love. I’ll be less damning on the bombers because they have been trying to buy championships for the past 30 years and since they haven’t yet to win one in the 21st century it serves them right.
They have a grand total of 2 quality men on their 25 man roster. Derek Jeter is the consummate professional and the fact that he smiles during the game and shows emotion probably the same way he did 25 years ago in Little League is the reason why I would still build a team around him.
The same thing can be said about Mariano Rivera. This future first ballot Hall of Famer notched his 500 career save tonight while driving in his first RBI in the his major league career. Good going Mariano you deserve all the accolades you get. I liken him to Barry Sanders who would drag people into the end zone and just turn the ball over to the ref. That’s class, That’s Mariano.
The truth of the matter is that when all is said and done for the 2009 “Subway Series”, the Yankees are not as good as they looked and the Mets are not as bad as they seem.
The Yanks beat a AAA team out scoring them 18-3. Their two very rich free agents easily handled the “B” Mets as expected and Mao Tse Tung showed that he still can get minor league hitters out.
When the dust clears and September rolls into October, the Yankees will be nowhere to be found. Boston is a far superior team in every aspect of the game and the Rays are starting to heat up so when July is finished the Yanks will be looking up at them as well.
As far as my beloved Mets, they need to only make one move to keep tham alive in the already terrible NL East. They MUST part ways with Jerry Manuel who is single handily managing the Mets right out of contention. I have been saying this since April and the last three games did nothing to change my mind.
For the sense of brevity I will give just one example of his obvious lack of managing skills which never fails to amaze me.
OK, ninth inning. K-Rod, the Mets always exciting closer , never knowing quite to expect has given us some agata by putting two men on with 2 out and Derek Jeter coming to the plate. On deck sits Mariano Rivera who has a grand total of one at bat last Wed in Atlanta.
Now try to keep this in mind. the Mets are paying Frankie close to 13 million dollars a year to get out of situations just like this. Any Little League manager knows that when you’re behind one run in your last at bat you never under any circumstances put the insurance run 90 feet away. If you load the bases anything bad can get that run home. An infield hit, a passed ball, a wild pitch, shall I go on.
So Jerry starts it off by doing the right thing and pitch to Derek. First pitch 93mph at the knees, strike one. The next two pitchers just a bit outside, not Bob Ucker’s “just a bit outside” but really just a bit outside. So what does Jerry do now? He calls for the intentional walk.
Are you frickin kidding me?. Over managing again. This is what he is paid for, to get out the hard out. You could see K-Rod’s eyes come out of his head when he saw the sign.
Well, he walked Rivera putting the game out of reach. Jerry has been doing this kind of nonsense since the day Delgado left the line up.
Will the Mets leadership do anything about this? No. It was ok to fire Willie Randolph in the middle of the night after his Mets beat the Angels 2 out of 3 last June but in this case it won’t happen and this year we won’t have to wait for a September collapse again. Why? Because the Mets will be buried in 4th place by then.
Not a fun weekend for this reporter.
June 29, 2009
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