Difficult to Process

When you get to a certain point in life, you realize certain things. Yesterday, I had beautiful weather, a good day the supermarket, I got to see one of my nieces, and I got talk to the other 2 on the phone. Last night, I got to see some decent television. I've had one of my COVID vaccinations, and am currently awaiting the other. And Donald Trump is no longer occupying the Presidency.

Based on that, I had a good day.

However, the Yankees lost the finale of their home series against the Houston Astros, in ignominious fashion. And Arsenal were knocked out of Europe, possibly for the long term.

Sports-wise, yesterday was a very bad day. But, with what was going on a real life, I can see that it wasn't the end of the world.

Whoever said sports, or any sport, was life and death was wrong. Whoever said sports, or any sport, is a microcosm of life had a point, but wasn't completely right.

*

Before this series with the Asterisks started, if you had told me that the Yankees would take 2 out of the 3, I would have taken that. But if you had told me the 1 they would lose would be the 1 that Gerrit Cole started, I would have been stunned.

Certainly, it wasn't Cole's fault. He breezed through the 1st 3 innings, before allowing a home run to Yordan Alvarez in the top of the 4th. He shrugged it off, and was fine through 6. But in the top of the 7th, he gave up another home run to Alvarez.

That made it 3-2 in the Yankees' favor. Giancarlo Stanton had hit another home run, this time leading off the bottom of the 3rd, to the opposite field. Aaron Hicks, hitting so poorly until this series began, continued his comeback with 3 hits and a walk. He was hitting below .150, now he's at .202. His single in the 4th was followed by a home run by Clint Frazier.

But in the 8th inning, Aaron Boone brought Chad Green in to pitch, and he had nothing. Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you, especially the leadoff variety. He allowed a walk and a single, before getting a strikeout. And then, of all people, it was Jose Altuve -- the midget at the heart of the Astros' 2015-19 cheating, turning 31, and facing chants from Yankee Fans of, among others, "Fuck your birthday!" -- who hit a home run, making it 5-3 Astros.

The bottom of the 8th featured a wild play that sure seemed like an omen that the Yankees would come from behind and win. Gleyber Torres led off with a single. Mike Ford struck out. Then Hicks singled, against the shift. Torres was running all the way, and noticed that the Astros' positioning meant that he could score. And he did. 

The run against the shift was reminiscent of Johnny Damon's double steal in Game 4 of the 2009 World Series. Scoring from 1st on a single was reminiscent of Enos Slaughter's "Mad Dash" in Game 7 of the 1946 World Series, giving St. Louis the title over Boston.

It was now 5-4 Astros, and easy to believe that the Yankees would get it done. But Kyle Higashioka, who has done so well this season, grounded into a rally-killing double play.

Cliche Alert: Walks can kill you. Justin Wilson (no relation to the late famous Cajun chef of the same name) gave up a walk and a homer in the top of the 9th. In the bottom of the 9th, Brett Gardner led off with a single, but DJ LeMahieu struck out, and Stanton grounded into a double play.

Astros 7, Yankees 4. WP: Andre Scrubb (1-0). SV: Ryan Pressly (5). LP: Green (0-3).

I hate losing. I hate losing in ignominious fashion. I hate the Astros. This was all 3. Still, taking 2 out of 3 against the Astros is a good thing.

*

But Arsenal...

Based on Premier League position, Arsenal would, for the 1st time since the 1994-95 season, fail to qualify for Europe. They would have to finish at least 7th to qualify for the UEFA Europa League for the 2021-22 season. They are currently 5 points short of 7th place, and both of the teams ahead of them have a game in hand.

There was still a chance that they could win this year's Europa League, and thus qualify for next season's bigger tournament, the UEFA Champions League. But to do that, they would have to win the Semifinal against Spanish team Villareal, and then win the Final.

Villareal are managed by Unai Emery, who had previously won the Europa League 3 times with Sevilla, before winning the EL automatically qualified a team for the CL. In 2018, Arsenal hired Emery to replace Arsène Wenger. It was a horrendous decision: Emery was completely out of his depth in the Premier League, alienated Arsenal's best players, employed pathetic tactics, got Arsenal to the 2019 Europa League Final against Chelsea but hopelessly botched it, and had to be fired midway through the 2019-20 season.

Mikel Arteta, who had captained Arsenal to FA Cup Final wins under Wenger in 2014 and '15, was hired, and somehow took a team built by Emery to the 2020 FA Cup Final, and did what Emery couldn't do in his Final the year before: Beat Chelsea. It looked like Arteta was the spiritual successor to Wenger.

That idea has completely evaporated, along with the ability to take the slogan "Trust the process" seriously. Arsenal ended up losing at home to teams that hadn't beaten them in North London for decades. Arsenal were now in what the idiots who demanded Wenger's firing lied and said Wenger had brought the team into: "Midtable mediocrity."

Arsenal reached the Semifinal of the EL, but lost the 1st leg to Villareal 2-1. Having an away goal was supposed to give Arsenal hope for the 2nd leg. But it ended 0-0, and Arsenal were so weak throughout, they never looked like scoring. Arsenal go out of Europe by losing to Unai Emery. That's pretty low.

Team owner Stan Kroenke is the new target of hate by the idiots and their protests. He didn't cause any of this, unless you want to blame him for hiring managing director Vinai Venkatesham and technical director Edu Gaspar, a former player on Wenger's 2002 "Double" and 2004 "Invincible" teams. They hired Arteta, and also made some transactions that cannot be rationally defended.

Arsène Wenger never had a loss as damaging as the knockout given to Arsenal yesterday by Vinai, Edu and Arteta. Until all 3 are fired, and another visionary takes his proper place on Arsène's throne, Arsenal will be one of those teams that must measure itself by derby results.

Jim Steinman, the pianist and composer who wrote Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and most of Meat Loaf's hits, recently died. I wanted Arteta to be Wenger's rightful successor. But it's just not going to happen. Looking at Arsenal's "process," I'm reminded of what Steinman wrote in Meat Loaf's song "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad":

You'll never find no gold on a sandy beach.

You'll never drill for oil on a city street.

I know you're looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks

but there ain't no Coupe de Ville lying at the bottom

of a Cracker Jack box.

I can't lie.

I can't tell you that I'm something I'm not.

No matter how I try

I'll never be able to give you something

something that I just haven't got.

*

"Trust the process." I seem to be rooting for teams that all currently use that expression: The New York Yankees, the New Jersey Devils, the Philadelphia 76ers and The Arsenal. (The Devils and the Sixers are owned by the same people. I haven't yet noticed the New York Red Bulls or the Rutgers University football team using the expression, but it wouldn't surprise me if they started using it.)

How long is the process supposed to take? The Yankees haven't won a Pennant, let alone a World Series, in 12 years. The Devils have made the Playoffs once in the last 9 years, and are currently 1 of the 3 worst teams in the NHL. The Sixers have been in "the process" for 8 years, and have won just 2 Playoff rounds. Arsenal are wrapping up Season 3 since parting ways with Arsène Wenger, and each one has been worse than the one before, in terms of League performance.

Thomas Boswell, the great baseball writer for The Washington Post, said, "Life can't be all big issues and heart surgery. Something has to bring joy into the day. And baseball provides this."

Sometimes. Other times, it's more like what Arsenal fan Nick Hornby put it, in his screenplay for the movie based on his memoir Fever Pitch:

Football has meant too much to me, and has come to represent too many things. See, after a while, it all gets mixed up in your head. You can't remember whether life's shit because Arsenal's shit, or if it's the other way around.

I've been to watch far too many games, and spent far too much money, fretted about Arsenal when I should have been fretting about something else. I've asked too much of the people I love.

Okay, I accept all that. Perhaps it's something you can't understand, unless you belong...

Processes begin. Some have a measure of success. A few of those ultimately succeed. Most of them end up failing. Some have hardly anything that can be defined as "success." It's then that you realize that Franz Kafka, a writer whose very name has become identified with surrealism, wrote a story titled The Trial, and its original German title is Der Process.

Life is difficult to process. Ideally, sports should make life easier to process. But we don't live in an ideal world. Hell, if we lived in an ideal world, we wouldn't need sports. As Yankee Legend Yogi Berra taught us, "If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be."

But sports is not life. Good things can happen in life, even when things are bad in sports. If life is "shit," then a team you love being "shit" doesn't help, but it's not the reason. Some of the best times in my life came when the Yankees weren't doing well. It's even true in sports: On some big days for the Yankees, or the Devils, or The Arsenal, another of my teams lost. You win some, and you lose some.

And, for as long as you live, there's another chance. As Hornby also put it:

The great thing is, it comes again and again. There's always another season. You lose the Cup Final in May? Well, there's the 3rd Round to look forward to in January. And what's wrong with that? It's actually pretty comforting, if you think about it.

We have to process it all. But that doesn't mean we have to trust the process.

This concludes today's Philosophy 101 lecture. Tonight, the Yankees begin a home weekend series against the Washington Nationals. Jameson Taillon starts against Patrick Corbin.