September 21, 2007

Kapparot '07


In honor of Yom Kippur, Day of Atonement, I hereby present some of my more egregious blogging sins of the past year and humbly ask for your forgiveness. For whatever reason, most of my most painfully inaccurate opinions have related to the Yankees this season... I guess because it didn't take a genius to realize that El Duque would be injury-prone (although: arthritis and bunions?!), or that acquiring Ambiorix "Young Dominican Kyle Farnsworth With Elbow Problems" Burgos wasn't such a hot idea.

October 2, 2006: "...you just can’t be too impressed by a team whose putative ace is Kenny Rogers. The Detroit GM could have asked any New Yorker over the age of, say, 17 about this, and saved himself a lot of trouble and money. And I know there’s no better way to make yourself look like an idiot than to try and predict a short playoff series… so I’m not going to start now, I guess… but, honestly, I will be flat-out stunned if the Tigers beat the Yankees. Anything can happen, sure, of course, but you’ll have to scrape my jaw off the floor with a spatula."

Well, I wasn't totally wrong there, really. I mean, I was flat-out stunned.

November 29, 2006: "I know very little about Igawa... Still, given the choice between Igawa, Ted Lily or Gil Mesh, I’d take a flyer on the Hanshin Tigers ace."

December 6, 2006: "Alternately, perhaps Cashman's just been laughing too hard over Gil Meche's $55 million five year deal to use the telephone coherently."
I'm so sorry, Gil Mesh; I was wrong to treat you that way. And just look at you now; has your ERA lost some weight? Kei seemed so exciting, exotic and new -- but baby, I was a fool.


May 27, 2007: "It's still May, but by now it's pretty safe to say this is just not the Yanks' year... [they're] still much better than their current record, and I'll be shocked if they don't end up well over .500. That, however, seems unlikely to earn them a playoff spot this year... A comeback is still possible, sure. It's also possible that Clive Owen will knock on my door tomorrow night carrying an Al Green CD, a kitten, and a bottle of Glenlivet, but frankly, I'm not loving the odds."
May 28, 2007: "While the Yankees pick through the burned wreckage of their season, looking for anything that might have survived the cataclysm ("look guys, this Chien-Ming Wang is hardly even singed!"), the Mets are just plain rolling... Honestly, everyone could sense the reversals of fortune coming last year... But I certainly didn't think the divergence would be this extreme."

I'm still waiting on Clive, though.

What can I say? I didn't think the Yanks had it in 'em. Whatever happens in the next week, even in the playoffs, coming back to make the AL East a real race is a remarkable turn of events. (Though, by that same token, sucking like such a gaping black hole for the first two months was quite an achievement in itself). I hope fans will be able to properly appreciate it -- even if the Angels once again knock New York out in the Division Series. Or the Indians; am I the only one who's afraid of the Indians? Fausto Carmona is not fucking around this year.
July 31, 2007: "... the Red Sox just made their bullpen even better with the addition of Eric Gagne. The Yankees weren't catching them anyway, frankly, barring massive injury to half the Boston pitching staff; but now they're really not catching them. It's all about the Wild Card..."
I repent.

Now will you please let the Mets win a goddamn series?!?


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very funny look back. The funny thing is that I predicted many of those things to go the same way. Oh, where have you gone, Kei Igawa?

John

Anonymous said...

Emma,
You're a little too self-flagellating (or is that a different religion?; I forget myself sometimes). How about all the times when you were dead-on correct about things? But, if you insist on atoning: you are hereby forgiven and inscribed in my book for an excellent year.

Anonymous said...

I forgive you.