Having watched Sunday's Yankees game, I now feel bad for having complained about Saturday's. Seems ungrateful, looking back. The Yankees' latest meltdown featured inefficient starting pitching from Mike Mussina, ineffective relief from the bullpen -- though I appreciate the effort from Roger Clemens, who is too old for this shit -- several futile pinch-hitting appearances, awful baserunning, and, to top it all off, a series of Keystone Kop defensive plays. The way the Yankees look right now, they're not winning the Wild Card unless the Indians and Tigers engage in a pitched, armed battle to the death sometime in August (which: not a bad marketing idea, actually. Ratings would be through the roof, and they'd be higher for the playoffs, too, without those pesky small-market midwest teams involved. Somebody get Selig on the phone!).
Don't worry though, Yankee fans, the team knows what it has to do:
“We’ve got to find a way to pitch better and score some more runs and look like a ball team again,” said starter Mike Mussina...Allowing fewer runs while scoring more: that would probably help, yes.
Moving on and following up, the Israel Baseball League kicked off last night, with the Modi'in Miracle kicking some Petach Tikva Pioneer ass, 9-1. You may well be witnessing the origins of The Curse of Shuki Friedman.
I just now noticed that the Miracle are managed by Art Shamsky... you know, it's a strange world we live in.
5 comments:
I also appreciated the tough guy Clemens totally wimping out and not even challenging Mr. Potato Head in the battle of HGH supremacy.
I believe you mean, some Petach Tikva *tush*.
Quite right.
Oy, who'd have thought it would be more interesting to watch the Israel Baseball League than the Yankees? ("Keystone Kop defensive plays" is so perfect to describe the Yanks in yesterday's game, Emma!)
All this talk about Jews in baseball -- i.e. the Israel Baseball League, Jewish Baseball Week, and the now-infamous (at least to me) American Jewish Life article about how Jews must favor the Red Sox over the Yankees or else face the wrath of the Lord -- reminds me of an old Woody joke. Actually, my late friend Morrie told it to me shortly before he was whacked.
It goes like this (I am quoting more than is necessary because the whole thing is good, plus Morrie quoted it all):
Woody: "I was in analysis, you should know that about me, I was in group analysis when I was younger, 'cause I couldn't afford private...I was captain of the latent paranoid softball team. We used to play all the neurotics on Sunday morning. Nailbiters against the bedwetters, and if you've never seen neurotics play softball, it's really funny. I used to steal second base, and feel guilty and go back."
I'd focus on some human interest stories:
1. groupies, aka "Baseball Marys"
2. Patrons and vendors haggling over a box of crackermatsa
3. All sports radio: "Mike and da Meshugana" or the upstarts, "Cain and Abel" show
4. The 7th inning seder
5. reform-ball vs orthodox-ball
6. the designated mensch
7. the ever popular taxi-racing (always bet on Bennie)
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