The Art Neuro Weblog

Circling Buzzards
The Yankees lost 11-8 to the lowly Devil Rays. Yesterday they gave up 11 behind Kevin Pound-For-Brown and an execrable bullpen; today their rookie Sean Henn and execrable Bullpen got clobbered for 11 runs again. Seriously, there was a time during the late 90s dynasty when, if the Yanks scored 4 runs, they would win. 8 was like, a blowout. Now they're losing so many runs on the other side of the ledger it just hasn't mattered that they've got 4-8 runs. The long and short of it is this: at 11-17, the Yanks are not going to make the play-offs unless they go on one amazing streak and then continue to play well the rest of the way. Let's see. 134 games remaining, they need to go 84-50 to get 95 wins. That's a whopping 0.626 win% the rest of the way. Well, they might be expensive but they're just not that good. Even a respectable 90 wins will need a .589 win% the rest of the way. Well, 90 wins won't get it done in this division.

So this is it. This is the year the Yankees don't make the post-season for the first time in nearly a decade. Short of a total catastrophe for the other serious contenders such as *gulp* the Orioles in the AL East, they're done on May 5.

I remember when the wheels came off the 1970s 'mini-dynasty' around 1982. Graig Nettles, my favourite player of my childhood commented 'We grew old real quick'. The Yankees didn't make the post-season after 1981 until 1996. So maybe it's going to be another long, dark tunnel for the famed pinstripes. Maybe there will never be another Yankee dynasty given that the Commissioner and other owners keep coming up with rules to rein in George Steinbrenner. When Big Stein is dead and gone, you can count on them to only approve of a very weak owner. By the time they retire Derek Jeter's number 2 the whole Yankee *thing* might be history.
Well nothing's forever, we know that now; especially with the Red Sox breaking their 86 year hoodoo and all. Maybe it should be Yankee fans bracing for a very long Championship drought. The more the years pass the more we'll realise how spoilt we were to have witnessed 101 win teams like the 2004 Yankees and complain that they lost to the Red Sox.

The funny thing is that the buzzards of the Yankee-hating throng have been waiting for this moment since... What... 1998? It's finally here and they're very muted if anything. I thought the dancing on the grave thing was going to really erupt. Or maybe they haven't done the maths yet. I'm sure they'll be out in force by the season's end as the Orioles charge to the World Series.

- Art Neuro