It's October, All Over Again

Well, it’s October and the Yankees are losing – and not just losing – getting their clocks cleaned and spit-shined. If you can’t pitch, you can’t win. You give up more than ten runs in a playoff game and you can kiss the dream goodbye. The Yankees are great when they’re on, but mediocre when they’re not. The only way they can win is to hit; if they don’t hit, which they often fail to do when the opposing pitcher is Josh Beckett or Jared Weaver or John Lackey or CC Sabathia, they lose.

Damn depressing. The Yanks scurried off the field in Cleveland like wet rats, every last one of them with his head bowed in shame.

Another quick October exit, another Winter & Spring spent listening to twisted rants and merciless retribution from George Steinbrenner, a couple of stupid off-season signings of players beyond their prime by Brian Cashman, and then another season when the Yankees win ninety-plus games with their offense, only to see it all go south when they find themselves in a short playoff series against a club with solid pitching.

How about the Rockies? That team is on a major roll, but do they have the pitching staff to go much further? Wild Card teams have a good historical record of winning the World Series, however, so who knows? Colorado has the mojo, the Cinderella aura. Sometimes the October crown is won by the team that catches fire at precisely the right moment. When it’s all over and they’ve doused one another with cheap champagne and hoisted the championship trophy you can’t quite understand how they pulled it off against clearly superior clubs.

In baseball, weird stuff happens.

Indeed, and no one knows this better than my Yankees, many of whom remember the horrid collapse of 2004, when they had the Red Sox by the throat and let them get away. The boys can’t be sleeping well tonight. Their dreams will be tortured by crazed Indian fans wielding wicked unhittable sliders, high heat, and nasty, nasty off-speed stuff. A-Rod’s probably pacing the floor – unless he’s out chasing some floozy – and wondering if he will ever redeem himself in October, if Yankee fans will ever truly adopt him into the storied pantheon of Yankee greats, or if he will always and forever be known as a superb “regular” season player. Back and forth, back and forth, while the Cleveland night deepens and the homeless disappear into alleys, and traffic lights blink over deserted streets.