On To The Post-Season

Baseball's regular season is now over and the playoffs are set to begin this week. The Yankees go limping into the post-season, having completed a terrible September and final week of the season. The Division title was there for the taking, but I think four months of over-achieveing and playing their asses off to compensate for a myriad of injuries (the biggest being DH Nick Johnson and Damaso Marte, who was expected to be the main lefty in the pen), combined with the UNDER-achieving of many that were expected to be key players on this team (Burnett, Granderson, Vasquez...et al) finally just caught up with them.

Despite that, they did finish the season with the second-best record in baseball (one game behind the Rheys) and managed to snag the Wild Card. I am not expecting much but with a short series, you never know. The pitching staff is in a state of flux and the key will be if Sabathia can come up big and Phil Hughes can step up. Jeter also needs to be "Derek Jeter" again, not what he has been for the second half of the season (the second coming of Wayne Tolleson). Arod will also have to be Superman again and Texiera will have to snap out of it. If any one of these things does not happen, it will be a short post-season trip this year.

A note to all the self-appointed "baseball purists" out there (the ones that watch 10 games a year and call themselves experts) that do nothing but complain about "modern" baseball (which hasn't actually changed in ages): enough already. The DH has been around for thirty-nine years. The Wild Card (with all its' minuses and believe it or not, pluses) has been around for fifteen years already, and is probably not going to change until Bud Selig's corpse is dragged out of the Comissioner's office. In other words (as the kids say), 'it is what it is' and it's probably not changing any time soon. Stop obsessing and complaining about it like little spoiled chidren every fifteen seconds and shitting on the people that just want to watch a damn baseball game. You hate the way it is? Great...but those of us that still like watching the game are sick of listening to the never-ending whining. We get it. Change the channel. Go watch something more your speed, like bowling on ESPN Classic or something.

Here's a late-breaking news bulletin: nothing is the same now as it was 150 years ago, including baseball. There were times when hitting a runner with the ball was an out and the World Series was a best of nine. There were times when the post-season was a round-robin tournament (you know...like poker). There was a time when ballplayers wore high-button collars and corduroy pants. They don't do any of those things anymore, either. Change is gonna happen in every walk of life no matter what you do, and complaining about it endlessly is, well, a bit OCD. I'm not so much of a narcissist that I need sports (of all things) to be tailored to my every personal whim. I can still can enjoy watching the game regardless of some arbitrary playoff system I have no control over.

In other words, I have dealt with change and MOVED ON, rather than succumbing to BDS (Baseball Derangement Syndrome). Life's too short to obsess about inconsequential bullshit when there's so much there to relax and enjoy, know whut ah mean?