Categories
New York Yankees

Rebutting the D.Y.F.C.[Dumb Yankee fan Contingent- Northeast Chapter]

There is, of course, a mind-bending level of stupidity entailed when jeering your home team’s best player. The reasons are often varied, and always retarded. Maybe you’re angry he makes more money than you, even though you could never do his job, not in a million years, which is why, of course, he makes more money than you. Maybe a jilted sportswriter told you not to like him, and you followed like a trained seal, clapping for a biscuit, [Do seals eat biscuits?] overwhelmed by the titanic brainpower of literary heavyweights like Woody Paige. Maybe he had a rough playoff series and made you cry, emotionally scarring you for two whole days. Whatever… the reasons are secondary, anyway.

Categories
MLB General

Dog Day Requiem: Analyzing the American League

The momentum builds now, we can practically touch and taste the heightened tension, as Mike Lowell’s rage literally lifts him skyward, and Ryan Braun icily eyes down a game deciding moon shot, preening as he plays an action movie assassin. Oh yes, the merciless dog days have arrived.

God bless us, everyone.

For there are trades to celebrate, executives to excoriate, victories to relish and heinous losses so hellish… prepare for sensory overload, a hypnotic season’s mysteries unwinding by the inning. In Spring Training, the contenders and pretenders gathered, surrounding palm trees swaying, whispering the impossible. Reality intervenes in April, the distilled winter chill slicing and dicing through the Opening Day pomp and circumstance, delivering winners and losers, preparing us for the grind ahead. What has happened to the thirty elite? Who rises or falls, disappoints or enthralls?

Shall we consider:

Categories
General Sports

The Pursuit of Happiness

Ah, the paradoxes presented by capitalism.

Here we are, America, set for a penultimate debate regarding the true nature of our society, source material provided entirely by basketball. What kind of discourse could crystallize us so clearly? Is it David Stern’s secret obsession with prestige fashion? Unfortunately not, though the commissioner is a key player in the correct answer. No, this article will attempt to analyze an issue affecting far more lives than a dress code ever could… or should.

Categories
General Sports

Diamonds are Forever

Not sure if I was ever meant to play baseball, but, for a time, if felt perfectly natural. I sometimes wonder if we are assigned dreams before birth, impossible missions never meant for completion, just so we could learn something from the failure.

Categories
General Sports

Everybody must get stoned….

I am equal parts fascinated and repulsed by human behavior. Looking back on it, this guy may have been better served pursuing a degree in psychology, as opposed to journalism.  

There exists an intangible, and often irrational, tendril implanted in every single human decision, and my own thought processes are hardly excluded. All too often, our well-furbished facades and fortified insecurities are precisely what land us in intellectual quagmire, where rationality has long departed from the breakfast menu.

  Buzz Bissinger, a superb writer by any measure, apparently stepped into a phone booth before appearing on an HBO Special examining American Journalism, transforming from Pulitzer Prize winner to indignant minister, preaching a fiery sermon denouncing blogs.

Categories
General Sports

The American Game

Picture this. You’re twenty three years old, a third round draft pick, skipped school to grab that bonus, nothing to fall back on. This competition is fierce, and you’ve been left behind, lapped in fact. In an idyllic youth, a minor celebrity in a small town, you were the special one. Gifted. Bigger, stronger, faster, beloved by all, took pride in the popularity, destined for greatness.

Categories
Satire

RANKLED RICE FINDING FEAR FINAL RESORT

The North Pole- The latest controversy over Baseball’s Hall of Fame voting took a bizarre turn last night, as Jim Rice, former American League MVP, intentionally petrified five to ten sportswriters in an apparent attempt to scare up some votes… the good old fashioned way.

Categories
New York Jets

Five telltale signs that your NFL team sucks this year

As a Jet fan, I’ve been through enough down seasons to recognize certain enduring characteristics of losing, echoing through the smelly, lonely halls of defeat. I present my data. Feel free to compare and contrast your experiences:

Categories
New York Yankees

The Gift and the Curse

“I like songs about drifters – books about the same.
They both seem to make me feel a little less insane.
Walked on off to another spot.
I still haven’t gotten anywhere that I want.”

-Modest Mouse, The World at Large

OK, quiet down for just a second, cease and desist with the anger and indignation. Because I love telling this story, never get tired of it.

It was an unbearably hot afternoon at Yankee Stadium. We’re playing Texas, Juan Dominguez on the mound. Alex Rodriguez is at the plate, in the midst of a phenomenal 2005 season, carrying the team.

Categories
New York Yankees

Flashes of Night

There was Carl Pavano, the supposed anchor turned albatross, battling on Opening Day of the 2007 season, searching futility for a strikeout pitch. He appears out of place in Yankee pinstripes, assuming a secondary skin, awkwardly wrenching arm overhead, seeking the pristine mechanics and precise command that bought him to the doorstep of stardom. Yes, seems too long ago, when Pavano, young, healthy, and fearless, owned the consensus as the top pitcher within 05’s hot stove menu. Matt Clement was deemed erratic, Pedro Martinez dubbed weathered. He was the one.