...again. One takeaway from last night's game, for me -- following what seemed like unified "what's really wrong with Judge"/"IS there really something wrong with Judge"/"Judge need hit ball more times" coverage from the writers I follow -- was the shots of the fans in Yankee Stadium. Leaving aside that it's FOX coverage, with all the blunt-force melodrama that implies, every shot of the faithful was a portrait in baffled outrage. How can this be? We're the Aaron Judge YANK-ees!!
I know not all Yankee fans are like this. I used to be one; I tried my best not to be That Guy. (I actually wrote years ago about early-aughts Yankees teams, which were more like a B/B-, being more fun to watch because the shit-talk was better.) I know other teams' fans have their issues, and I know a Met fan's "fine, we'll just sit here in the dark" self-loathing isn't cute, etc. etc.
But Met fans can comprehend things like "getting beat by better teams" -- reeeeeally well, like PhD-level comprehension -- in a way Yankee fans often seem incapable of. Like, can't compute information such as "the Dodgers have home-field for a reason that is not a coin flip" or "this line-up is more consistently dangerous than ours."
(Or "Juan Soto does not care to play an attentive RF," which is not a point of interest when he's tearing the cover off the ball, but a terrible look when he's not.)
This isn't Judge's "fault"; it isn't anyone's. The Dodgers are better -- maybe not this much better, but more accustomed to having to adapt and patch holes. But it's the Yankees, so Judge is going to get blamed, instead of the front office not trying harder to bolster the pitching at the deadline, or instead of giving credit to the way October activates dudes like Edman and Kiké.
"You know it's only Game 4 tonight, right?" I do. But I think L.A. has the brooms out, and I may not have as much time to do analysis tomorrow, so: here it is now. Hope I'm wrong.
Speaking of wrong (sigh), here's the smattering of points from last night...
Betts 1
Freeman 4
Hernandez T 1
Ohtani 0
Smith W 0
Judge 0
Soto 0
Stanton 3
And with that, Stanton moves into a tie with Vientos for pool/points MVP. This is not a bad team! Freeman is just having a postseason straight out of Joseph Campbell.
No real change to the money, with Ohtani (IMO) playing hurt mostly to reassure Dodger Nation and none of the other popular picks doing much:
104 MArbour 2
98 JArbour Winklepleck LLC
92 Bauer Snooze
89 Shotwell 1
86 Johnson
85 Quinn
high 60s Stempel and Wonsetler
low to mid 60s Cameron 2, Dunn, and the SDBs
50s Fell, Tormey, Shotwell 2, Cameron 1, and Drake
40s Reid 1 and Bingham
30s Reid 2 and Brady
26 MArbour 1
Now that I've said the Dodgers are set to sweep, the Yankees are going to come out behind Gil and hammer...whoever Los Angeles sends to the mound, which is still TBD as of this writing. But it's on FOX at 8 ET; good luck, everyone!
3 comments:
What made you switch from a Yankees to a Mets fan?
VERY short version: I was raised a Mets fan, but between always losing the college TV-room fight to Yankee fans and then dating a Yankee fan for several years after that, I flipped to the Yanks, just out of laziness/for consistency's sake.
Then in the late aughts I realized I didn't really enjoy following the Yankees because their broadcast coverage was a tiresome tongue-bath across media, so I went back to the Mets, who were often as bad as the booths were good.
I don't hate the Yankees, and the fans of theirs I know are reasonable people who aren't going to boo Judge or whatever. There's just only so much Michael Kay one woman can tolerate.
Here’s to hoping the Yankees win tonight and Judge goes off (but that I stay in the money 😉)
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