Some quick hits as we prep for the home stretch and hope like hell the Yankees don’t have to deal with Vlad Guerrero, Chone Figgins, Garret Anderson, Howie Kendrick and Orlando Cabrera, at least not yet:
- The Yankees will be making their 13th straight October appearance. Never mind that they’d have clinched earlier had Joe Torre not mismanaged the bullpen Tuesday night at the Trop (more on that below.)
(It’d be 14 straight had it not been for the ’94 Strike, and Donnie Baseball would have a World Series ring following a five-game dispatch of the Expos. Tony Gwynn would have hit .400, too, but now I’m in Tangentville.)
For all the Yankee haters who relished at the thought of a regular-season failure, and Met fans who currently have no comeback for the line, “Well, at least we know we’re playing in October,” let’s reminisce, shall we? July 2007: 1050 ESPN Radio jock Don LaGreca’s sardonic soliloquy to fans on the last weekend of play before the All-Star break, where he said the Yankees would be interesting and would win games but it wouldn’t be enough. They had too many games to make up. Too many teams to hurdle. I’ll admit, the rant was pretty funny. Anyone else want to join me in submitting recipes for crow?
If any of you reading this happened to tune in to that particular segment of the Saturday show, what made LaGreca’s bit even funnier were the “Ta-dow, how you like me now?” calls from Met fans thinking their team had finally assumed the spotlight. Nope. This is still a Yankees town.
That fact is evident in the way the breadth of coverage the teams have shared lately (except in Newsday, where Mets stories have outnumbered Yankees stories due to a heavy Mets fan base on Long Island). The presentation has been mostly doom-and-gloom for the Queens franchise that borrowed elements from the three previously existing New York baseball teams so it’ll forever have an identity crisis. (It’s never good when the New York Times dedicates includes the Mets’ current nosedive in a special Metro Section bulletin featuring “Greatest New York Collapses.”) Yankees depictions have been mixed, depending on game results. I’ve found for the most part that the articles have reflected the mood of the players who made the news.
