I spend hours watching the MLB playoffs and the World Series. October is the time of year when I’m just getting back into TV after a summer hiatus. The best part of the postseason so far—the Yankees have already been eliminated! That’s right, the rest of the month is going to be Yankee free.
To avoid ruining my Thursday evening, last night I turned off the TV and read a book. That’s how sure I was that the Yankees would win their winner-moves-on game against the Tigers. But Detroit beat New York 3-2 in their division series finale. And they did it at Yankee Stadium before 50,000 disappointed New Yorkers. Yes!
Sure, I should have manned up and watched the game as it is exponentially more satisfying to witness a Yankee defeat than to read about it. But I’ll take the good news any way I get it. When I checked SportsIllustrated.com this morning, I got the biggest sports rush since the Texas Rangers defeated New York 4 games to 2 in last year’s American League Championship Series. Not the best baseball news this century as that had to be Arizona’s game 7 win over the Yankees in the 2001 World Series, but still pretty damn good.
So why do I detest the Yankees? Let’s start with leadoff hitter Derek Jeter even if he is a product of their farm system. The smug shortstop torques me off every time he starts a late-inning New York rally. I’m also turned off by their fans, the city, the management, the bloated payroll, and their expectation that the World Series championship belongs in New York every year. When the Yankees want a superstar player (like pitcher C. C. Sabathia in 2009), they just outbid the other teams. For the most part the team is a bunch of high-priced free agents who lose any goodwill that might have built up when they join the Evil Empire. (Tino Martinez left the Seattle Mariners for the dark side in 1995 and it still hurts.) Did I mention Alex Rodriguez, who makes $26 million per year and who denied taking steroids until he was caught and had to fess up?
This year the division-series scheduling was particularly annoying. It seemed like every Yankee game was on in prime time leaving no way to avoid them. Even if you watched the National League game on Tuesday evening on TNT, the Yankees-Tigers score (New York won big) kept scrolling across the bottom of the screen like a drip torture. OK, the sports producer was just trying to be helpful, but I felt like taping off the bottom section of my TV. At least now there won’t be any more news about the Yankees unless they’ve already decided whose heads are going to roll in payment for their early exit.
Enough venting. And enough gloating. I need to go watch today’s TWO game 5’s in the National League division series. I can taste the beer and pizza already.
Mud Bay Blog 