Baseball in New York officially ended late this past Monday night. Nearly 48 hours later, the coverage and the scrutiny have been, predictably, unreal. This has been going on since the horrific playoff collapse of 2004 so, by now, it’s old hat for seasoned Yankee fans like me. Every time the Yanks lose in the playoffs, the earth holds its collective breath, awaiting eruptions from Mount Steinbrenner and the eventual pyroclastic fallout. Will Torre be fired? Will so-and-so be traded?
I love baseball more than just about anything else in my life. As the first-generation son of two European parents, it was my embrace of baseball back in 1985 that made me feel connected to this country and made my then-accented English a little more acceptable for the kids in the playground. Baseball is life, as I’m wont to saying. Over the past 22 years of following the sport, I have matured from merely a “fan” to more of an amateur historian and student of the game. I recite stats. I relate daily events to their larger context in baseball history. It’s what being a baseball fan means to me.
Unfortunately, over the past several years, that joy has been tested on numerous occasions. For, as I was explaining to several people on Tuesday morning, I’m not in mourning over the end of the Yankees season. While it’s true that I lost faith in our chances to beat Cleveland after that lousy loss on Friday night, and while it’s true that I watched exactly zero innings of Yankee baseball on Sunday and Monday nights, it wasn’t their eventual – and in some ways inevitable – defeat that turned me off. It was the anticipation of the negative post-mortem that awaited the team and its fans. Shutting down my baseball brain two days early was my way of moving on to football, basketball, and the Hot Stove league. Why do I need to torture myself with all the horrible things that people will write and say about my favorite team? What’s the point? Most of what would be written or said would be the ill-conceived concoctions of half-baked brains. I am confident (arrogant?) enough to know that my thoughts on the subject would be far more astute and on point anyway.
So, when my buddy the Hitman sent me this and asked for my comment, this is what I wrote to him. It sums up exactly what I think of the current state of ESPN and baseball scholarship at large.
* * * * *
Short version: it’s garbage.
Long version: Jeff Pearlman is what ESPN has become. He’s a slow-witted tool whose only real accomplishment was getting John Rocker to state, on the record, that Asian women can’t drive and the #7 train in New York, a train apparently full of homosexuals with AIDS, goes through bad neighborhoods that evoke images of Lebanon.
In the height of the dynasty, Steinbrenner opened his famously bombastic and hyperbolic mouth and uttered the so-called “Steinbrenner Doctrine” which everyone took far too literally. And even if Steinbrenner meant those words literally, the rest of us should’ve been smart enough to realize the folly of such a decree. Now it’s legendary in the media and everyone runs with that story. Buster Olney has spent the past two days basking in the glow of studio lighting, reminding everyone that because the Yankees “failed again” Joe Torre will be fired and that Torre “knew the price of failure.”
Yes, Yankee fans probably believed Steinbrenner at first, when making it to October seemed so easy. But they don’t believe it anymore, and certainly not after what happened in 2004. Pearlman is playing up to a national audience that sees Yankee fans as spoiled and filled with a sense of entitlement. That’s the public perception of Yankee fans and it’s completely wrong. Just as in Boston, every Yankee fan lives and dies with every game, fretting about the standings and enduring anxiety every time it looks like the team won’t make the playoffs. If that isn’t “enjoying the journey” then I don’t know what is. Now, sure, anxiety may not sound like enjoyment to most others, but to East Coast baseball fans, that’s exactly what it is.
We live and die with this stuff, far beyond the limits of what is reasonable or healthy. But we enjoy it nonetheless. And I don’t know a single true Yankee fan that didn’t enjoy every minute of A-Rod’s MVP season, nor do I know a single true Yankee fan that didn’t go absolutely bananas every time Joba Chamberlain came out of the bullpen and lit up the radar gun at Yankee Stadium. Are there Yankee fans out there that still believe in the Steinbrenner Doctrine? Certainly. But I’d venture to say that most of them are casual fans that look forward to October because they get to experience the playoffs. And if you’re just a casual fan, then how much of the journey could you possibly be enjoying? Take it from someone who knows and who watches at least 120 games a year on the YES Network: this season was incredibly gratifying because no one – not even diehard Yankee fans – truly thought the team had a prayer to make it to October when we were 14.5 games out after six weeks.
ESPN continues to resuscitate tired old angles such as this one. Is it laziness? That’s part of it. But a larger part of it is the fact that this is what the rest of the country wants to read about and wants to believe about those haughty, rich New Yorkers who are so disconnected from the rest of the middle class values in this country. And far be it from ESPN to challenge the intellect of its readers with pieces that might – GASP! – inform people that things aren’t as simple as the stereotypes we create in our minds and define others by.
I love baseball more than just about anything else in my life. As the first-generation son of two European parents, it was my embrace of baseball back in 1985 that made me feel connected to this country and made my then-accented English a little more acceptable for the kids in the playground. Baseball is life, as I’m wont to saying. Over the past 22 years of following the sport, I have matured from merely a “fan” to more of an amateur historian and student of the game. I recite stats. I relate daily events to their larger context in baseball history. It’s what being a baseball fan means to me.
Unfortunately, over the past several years, that joy has been tested on numerous occasions. For, as I was explaining to several people on Tuesday morning, I’m not in mourning over the end of the Yankees season. While it’s true that I lost faith in our chances to beat Cleveland after that lousy loss on Friday night, and while it’s true that I watched exactly zero innings of Yankee baseball on Sunday and Monday nights, it wasn’t their eventual – and in some ways inevitable – defeat that turned me off. It was the anticipation of the negative post-mortem that awaited the team and its fans. Shutting down my baseball brain two days early was my way of moving on to football, basketball, and the Hot Stove league. Why do I need to torture myself with all the horrible things that people will write and say about my favorite team? What’s the point? Most of what would be written or said would be the ill-conceived concoctions of half-baked brains. I am confident (arrogant?) enough to know that my thoughts on the subject would be far more astute and on point anyway.
So, when my buddy the Hitman sent me this and asked for my comment, this is what I wrote to him. It sums up exactly what I think of the current state of ESPN and baseball scholarship at large.
* * * * *
Short version: it’s garbage.
Long version: Jeff Pearlman is what ESPN has become. He’s a slow-witted tool whose only real accomplishment was getting John Rocker to state, on the record, that Asian women can’t drive and the #7 train in New York, a train apparently full of homosexuals with AIDS, goes through bad neighborhoods that evoke images of Lebanon.
In the height of the dynasty, Steinbrenner opened his famously bombastic and hyperbolic mouth and uttered the so-called “Steinbrenner Doctrine” which everyone took far too literally. And even if Steinbrenner meant those words literally, the rest of us should’ve been smart enough to realize the folly of such a decree. Now it’s legendary in the media and everyone runs with that story. Buster Olney has spent the past two days basking in the glow of studio lighting, reminding everyone that because the Yankees “failed again” Joe Torre will be fired and that Torre “knew the price of failure.”
Yes, Yankee fans probably believed Steinbrenner at first, when making it to October seemed so easy. But they don’t believe it anymore, and certainly not after what happened in 2004. Pearlman is playing up to a national audience that sees Yankee fans as spoiled and filled with a sense of entitlement. That’s the public perception of Yankee fans and it’s completely wrong. Just as in Boston, every Yankee fan lives and dies with every game, fretting about the standings and enduring anxiety every time it looks like the team won’t make the playoffs. If that isn’t “enjoying the journey” then I don’t know what is. Now, sure, anxiety may not sound like enjoyment to most others, but to East Coast baseball fans, that’s exactly what it is.
We live and die with this stuff, far beyond the limits of what is reasonable or healthy. But we enjoy it nonetheless. And I don’t know a single true Yankee fan that didn’t enjoy every minute of A-Rod’s MVP season, nor do I know a single true Yankee fan that didn’t go absolutely bananas every time Joba Chamberlain came out of the bullpen and lit up the radar gun at Yankee Stadium. Are there Yankee fans out there that still believe in the Steinbrenner Doctrine? Certainly. But I’d venture to say that most of them are casual fans that look forward to October because they get to experience the playoffs. And if you’re just a casual fan, then how much of the journey could you possibly be enjoying? Take it from someone who knows and who watches at least 120 games a year on the YES Network: this season was incredibly gratifying because no one – not even diehard Yankee fans – truly thought the team had a prayer to make it to October when we were 14.5 games out after six weeks.
ESPN continues to resuscitate tired old angles such as this one. Is it laziness? That’s part of it. But a larger part of it is the fact that this is what the rest of the country wants to read about and wants to believe about those haughty, rich New Yorkers who are so disconnected from the rest of the middle class values in this country. And far be it from ESPN to challenge the intellect of its readers with pieces that might – GASP! – inform people that things aren’t as simple as the stereotypes we create in our minds and define others by.
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