The Astros have now eliminated the Yankees 4 times in the last 8 seasons, 3 in the last 6, and have won their 4th Pennant in the last 6. They will play the Philadelphia Phillies in the 2022 World Series, the Fightin' Phils having eliminated the San Diego Padres in 5 games for the National League Pennant.
The most anger-inducing part, if not the worst, was how inevitable it all felt. We all knew the Yankees weren't going to come from three games to none down and win a postseason series. No team has ever done that. Not without cheating, anyway.
But even after Harrison Bader hit a home run in the bottom of the 6th inning tongice the Yankees a 5-4 lead, was there a single person among the listed (if not actual) attendance of 46,545 who believed the Yankees would hold onto that lead? I sure didn't believe it.
Nestor Cortés didn't make it out of the 3rd inning, and Wandy Peralta and Jonathan Loáisiga were little better. And it seems fitting that the game and the season ended with Aaron Judge at the plate. Would it be a strikeout, symbolizing ineptitude? Or would it be a long drive that didn't quite make it out, caught at the warning track, symbolizing the nearly 8-month tease this bunch of gutless wonders put us on? Neither: It was a weak grounder back to the pitcher.
Judge did run it out, getting all the way to 1st base, even though he had no chance. Will he ever come to the plate for the Yankees again?
The fact that Brian Cashman will still be the person making that decision was a big part of why the result felt so inevitable. The fact that it doesn't seem to matter whether the manager putting Judge's name, or that of a replacement for the man who put up the greatest regular season in Yankee history, will be Aaron Boone or a replacement, makes it worse. As The Who put it, "Meet the new boss: Same as the old boss."
Not the really old boss: Unlike his father, Hal Steinbrenner, to whom Cashman answers, seems never to have figured out that, if the thing that matters the most to you is making more money, you can make more of it by winning the World Series than you can by simply getting to the Playoffs.
And so, he continues to entrust the Yankees to a man who makes me paraphrase another British contribution to pop culture, the film V for Vendetta, even though it's one of the villains: We are being buried beneath the avalanche of your inadequacies, Mister Cashman!"
Thirteen years without a Pennant, much less a World Championship. Thirteen failures.
See you next year? Whatever the hell for?
1 comment:
Depending on whether or not they'll even try to get Judge back, will there even be a next year? Even the Giants had done more to deliver due to their title being slightly more recent and they're not even in the city anymore.
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