To whom much is given, much is expected.
It is a wise, old axiom, and can be directly applied to the New York Yankees and their fans as they all commiserate two losses at home to the Detroit Tigers in the American League Championship Series.
While everyone acknowledges the baffling batting woes of a team rife with future Hall of Famers and post-season experience, two terrible calls continue to rise to the surface of every discussion, emerging from the deep like Godzilla in the Sea of Japan.
From the other side of New York City, where winning occurs far less frequently, the whining and whimpering is laughable. The New York Mets funneled all of their breaks, good fortune, and game-turning calls into two years, 1969 and 1986. It seems those were the only two years the Yankees didn't benefit from them.
Let's give a hall pass to manager Joe Girardi, who has to feel he's on the business end of somebody's voodoo doll. Principle among his misfortunes is the passing of his father last week. With that grief clinging to him, Girardi should be able to scream about anything he wants with no repercussions or admonitions. Add to his troubles the loss of Derek Jeter to an ugly ankle fracture, and the mystifying lack of hitting against ordinary to decent pitching over the last few days, and he should have everyone's sympathies, including the umpires.
But please, the Yankees are somehow the oppressed now? Has anyone been watching Yankee baseball all these years? They've been the beneficiaries of so many mystifying calls and breaks, it borders on supernatural. In response to a century's worth of good fortune, is it too much to expect for fans to take the high road and acknowledge that? If you were listening to the verbal pom-poms of the radio team of John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman, you'd have thought someone tear-gassed the Yankee dugout. The outrage was palpable, and they've seen more of that good fortune than anyone from their booth vantage point.
The Yankees being the Yankees, all this unsightly karma will reverse just in time for another magical finish. Because everyone knows it, please pipe down in the interim.
Glenn Vallach has been a New York Mets fan since foolishly abandoning the mighty Yankees in his youth after Mickey Mantle retired. Since the fond, fleeting memories of the Tom Seaver, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee years, he sits quietly yearning for a fraction of the success enjoyed annually by the team that inhabits the borough in which I was born...waiting and hoping...waiting and hoping.
Sources:
- · Yahoo! Sports New York Mets page
- · Yahoo! Sports New York Yankees page
- · Yahoo! Sports Detroit Tigers page
- · Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports, Yankees deserve boo-birds and empty seats after looking like $200M bust in ALCS
