Guest SF First Post: Forgive Us Our Trespasses

Last week, when friends and acquaintances kept asking, "You enjoying this?" I'm pretty sure they were not referring to the Celtics playoff run.

I was, of course, enjoying the goings-on in Yankeeland a great deal. But I was keeping my mouth shut.

"Enjoying what?"

Then last Thursday, a die-hard Yanks friend forwarded a Joe Sheehan piece from Baseball Prospectus (which, it seems, our resident YF was reading too). Choice bit:

One thing is certain: the Yankees have earned this moment. By watching as their position players got older and more immobile, but misidentifying the problem as a shortage of pitching, rather than defense, and by investing in arms this winter rather than picking up the true center fielder they desperately needed, they made this happen.

And from Sheehan, a YF himself, at that! Against all my better judgment, I replied back, "I'd be lying if I didn't admit to enjoying this just a little."

Big mistake. But I wasn't the only one. On the members-only Pinsetting & Gutterballs section of Sons of Sam Horn,posters were having a field day in a thread called Lose It For (a play on the seminal SoSH thread, now a book, Win It For):

Lose it for....Jerome From Manhattan who should be closely trailed by the Secret Service now that the Yankees are off to such a poor start.

Lose it for....that horrid animated elevated train competiton they show on the Jumbotron in centerfield. Both the A and D trains suck.

Lose it for....Suzyn Waldman who must cringe every time she says, "The World Champion Boston Red Sox."

Lose it for....every cocky Yankee fan who has ever shouted "1918" at me at The Toilet over the years. As I said to one recently, "1918 is just another year that the Red Sox won the World Series."

There were, by the way, about 800 of these. Which made for a particularly gratifying Saturday morning of reading.

Shoulda known better. As I told Shep later in the day, "The second I start allowing myself to enjoy it, the Yanks will rip off a 14 game win streak."

Naturally, they're three in. One only has oneself to blame.

Comments

[YF]

Forgive? We always forgive, Man of Steele. And let us take this opportunity to happily point out our dear Yankees seem to be headed for consecutive victory quatro—so only 10 more to reach your milestone. Totally within range!

A most gracious welcome to the fray.

[Joe]

I beg to correct Mr. Steele.

We are now 4 games in.

[Newcomer]

Being a Yank fan, of course I'm happy to see them winning, and more than happy to see TinoBambino hitting the ball to the porch - I'll hold the heavy applause for the wins that actually show me something. Four wins against two of the worst teams in the AL does not, and should not excite any of us yet.

[Cliff]

The A doesn't go to Yankee Stadium. It's the B, D and the 4. And yes it is horrid, but that's the fault of technology and sponsorship. Once it was the only between-inning game on the scoreboard and it was just three colored lines moving up the screen.

[Simon Sez]

What of our generation? The poles are melting, and brilliant guys like you are verbally masturbating on computer screens in the major metropolita of our nation. The world may truly appear borderless to a cosmocratic, connected (and trust-funded?) elite, but five sixths of humanity is simply desperate. Write a check. Get on an airplane. Do something. And finally, write about something that matters, not the beer-stained memories of a multi-million-dollar swing of an overpaid baseball player's bat.... (Oh, by the way, do you have tickets for Sox/Yanks at Fenway on July 14th?)