Responses, an Apology, and GBA

Usually, I try not to write while upset. I make a habit of setting the post aside, and not pressing the "publish" button until I've had some time to think about it calmly. I didn't do that the other day when ranting about Scott Raab's douchetastic playoff blog post at Esquire.

Nonetheless, the only words from that last post that I regret writing were the final three: stay classy, Cleveland. It was a jab directed at the author of the Esquire blog (proclaimed by Esquire to be an Indians fan, and self-identified in the blog entry I quoted as a Clevelander) that maligned the whole city for the words of one of its supporters. There was no good reason to drag the city of Cleveland into the conversation--for all I know, they're the nicest people on earth--and I apologize for doing so.

As for the rest: look, I understand that many reasonable people have objections to patriotic displays of any sort. They consider flag-waving to be jingoistic and anti-intellectual; some object to anything that puts the words "God" and "America" in the same sentence; many also consider that patriotic displays are an overt endorsement of the current administration's actions in Iraq and elsewhere. There's also the phenomenon of Yankee Stadium security not letting attendees leave their seats during God Bless America (although I've never experienced this phenomenon myself, it's been reported so widely that I believe it to be true), which is a practice that I can't defend, in any way.

While I understand and respect those objections, I'll admit that I like the God Bless America break. Everywhere else in American public life, it feels like every effort is being made to make us forget that there is a war going on, and that Americans are killing and dying on our behalf. I like that when you go to Yankee Stadium, the war is acknowledged, and they take a moment to pay tribute. Having watched a few games with servicemen, they don't seem to consider the "patriotic ritual" cynical or dishonest. It also isn't a bit of window dressing for the playoffs or national broadcasts--they consistently do this every home game of the season.

As much as I respect the political reasons to oppose the seventh inning ritual at Yankee Stadium, the idea that it's some sort of hardship--a premeditated hardship--to visiting pitchers is bunk. Even though Tynan started singing GBA at Yankee Stadium in 2001, the whining didn't start until 2003, when the Yanks scored three runs against the Twins in the bottom of the seventh inning of Game 2 of the Division Series. In that game, we're supposed to believe that the long layoff caused Brad Radke to hit Nick Johnson with a pitch to lead off the inning. After that, the Yanks got a couple of singles and an error against LaTroy Hawkins--also, somehow, Dr. Tynan's fault, even though Hawkins was in the bullpen during the seventh inning stretch.

Now, no one had complained about the deleterious effect of GBA prior to 2003, because the Yanks didn't score any bottom-of-the-seventh runs in 2001 and 2002. And the cause has been resurrected as an excuse whenever the Yankees score a run in the bottom of the seventh of a playoff game. In Cleveland's Game 4 win this year, the Yanks scored in the seventh--an Alex Rodriguez homer, not like that ever happens--and on cue, Mr. Raab started crying about how it's a horrifying shame that the Yankees are allowed to compromise the game by putting on the GBA show, yadda yadda yadda.

But is there really any negative effect? I sat down with BB-Reference and did some back-of-the-envelope calculations (literally--they're scribbled on my Time Warner cable bill). Since 2001, the Yankees have scored 140 runs in 283 innings at home--0.495 runs per inning. In the 7th inning of those 32 games, guess how many runs the Yankees have scored? Fifteen (or 0.469 per inning)--a hair less than you'd expect from the overall numbers. It's a small sample, but you'd think that we'd see some run-scoring boost from the supposedly intentional, pitcher-freezing delay.

Unless, of course, the delay is irrelevant. As I mentioned before, baseball isn't a game of fixed time limits. It's not like the pitchers take the field every 10 minutes on the dot, and a six minute delay will throw off that rhythm. In an AL ballpark, there's nothing for the pitcher to do but sit from the time he ends an inning until he's called upon to warm up again. That could be five minutes, or it could be twenty--it all depends on the team's bats and there's just no telling. So it kind of makes sense that pitchers would be no more or less effective after listening to three minutes of Ronan Tynan than they would in any other inning. They're just that resilient.

A number of the respondents to my rant, both here and elsewhere, called me a sore loser. Mind you, I've stated (before any of this) that Cleveland was the superior team, and that the midges weren't any kind of excuse for losing a playoff game. While conspiracy theories abound on this last point, I think they're BS. It's one of those things that happens--like rain and bad umpiring--and you just have to deal with it.

But if I'm a sore loser for mentioning the bugs in passing, how is it not poor sportsmanship to whine about GBA at Yankee Stadium, when there's no indication that it negatively impacts play on the field? How sporting is it to imply that GBA, as sung by Tynan, is gamesmanship rather than a sincere tribute?

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So, now that that is out of the way, how's the whole rooting-for-the-Red-Sox thing going? I'll admit, it's pretty tough. As a Dominican, I find it easy to pull for David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez--just like in 2004, that's just a brutal hill to get over in the lineup--but it's a little harder to wish good things for Chipmunk Face Beckett and ol' 38 Pitches.com. It'll probably be easier to cheer Matsuzaka on the mound on Monday, when the series resumes.

Buried news item from Friday: the Baltimore Orioles, in a typical bit of crackerjack management, fired pitching coach Leo Mazzone. I guess it must have been awkward for O's manager Dave Trembley to have a guy on his coaching staff who came to Baltimore specifically to work with Trembley's predecessor, Sam Perlozzo. Regardless of the circumstances--and Leo's poor results with the O's pitching staff--you have to think that Mazzone might factor in to all of the managerial intrigue surrounding the Yanks this week. Mazzone was coveted for the job as Joe Torre's pitching coach when he left the Braves two years ago, and could still fit in there (no offense to Ron Guidry) if the Yanks decide they still want to retain Torre's services. If the Yankees wanted to hire Mattingly as the new manager, the decision might be easier if the Yanks had a veteran pitching coach to pair with the newby manager, such as Mazzone. Any way you cut it, I'd be surprised if Mazzone isn't getting a lot of phone calls from the 813 area code this week.

For Special Accomplishment in the Field of Douchebaggery

I knew that, in light of the Yankees' elimination, some folks would get to have a bit too much fun with it. This profanity-laced playoff blog from Esquire Magazine (Hat Tip to Repoz at Primer) gets points for being extra classy:

Scott Raab: Why Bud Selig lets the Yankees turn the 7th-inning stretch into a faux-patriotic ritual -- not so incidentally forcing the opposing pitcher to wait an extra five or so minutes while the microcephalic Ronan Tynan quavers his meandering way through "God Bless America" -- is a mystery. No other team or town pulls this sort of crap. It's no tribute to America -- it's a tribute to George Steinbrenner's sense of entitlement and his monomania, and it's a disgrace to the game.

If another team pulled this on the Yankees, Steinbrenner would raise hell, and he'd be absolutely right to do so. And if the Yanks' pitchers could miss bats the way Tynan misses notes, the Yanks might've had a prayer against the Tribe.

And that's all the gloating I intend to do. There are Clevelanders like Steinbrenner -- whose idea of manhood is bullyragging, boasting, and buying respect -- but most of us know that sportsmanship means winning and losing with as much dignity, perspective, and grace as one can muster.

In other words, f**k the motherf**king Yankees. In their house. With Paul Byrd. With Joe Borowski. With Rudy Giuliani in his precious little VIP box. With Rocket pouting, feet up in the trainer's table's stirrups, as the team gynecologist pries apart his Hall of Fame labia. With the d**kweed Michael Kay babbling about how the Yankees are the better team.

Right. It was the gnats. It was A-Rod. It was Bruce Froemming. It simply isn't possible that the better team wasn't the Yankees, because that simply can't be true in Bombersworld. Just count the ringzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Bye-bye, you sorry bastards. Oh, and God bless America.

You know, we Yankee fans can get to taking ourselves too seriously, so we're fair game (more on this in a second, though). Rudy Giuliani is running for president as a New York Republican, which in this day and age, is like hanging a "kick me" sign on your back. He can take the heat. Michael Kay and Roger Clemens can also defend themselves. George Steinbrenner? Not so much so, anymore, but he's got a mountain of money, and I'm sure he can have Howard Rubenstein write you a stinging press release as a rebuke.

It's when you decide to disrespect Ronan Tynan that I get riled up.

Since Tynan's a physician as well as a world-renowned singer, I'm sure he has a better idea what "microcephalic" means than Scott Raab does. I'm also sure that despite those accomplishments, and the fact that Dr. Tynan was a paralympian (as a double amputee) whose world records from the 1980s still stand, Scott Raab is really well-placed to denigrate him, since Raab wrote "that Alex Rodriguez article"--six freakin' years ago--and is still bragging about it.

I get that fans of every other team in baseball feel this air of superiority over us Yankee fans. After all, they're all people of high character, built by rooting for teams who sometimes--heck, often--don't have any chance of making the playoffs. Meanwhile, we fans of the Bronx Bombers are all entitled, rude, profane front-runners--universally guilty of poor sportsmanship--who consider World Series rings to be our birthright.

I mean, we must be lousy people. We support a "faux patriotic ritual"--which obviously can't be sincere, since we're all cold blooded bastards with no conscience--that is slyly calculated to make "the opposing pitcher wait an extra five or so minutes," for the nefarious purpose of ... what, exactly? I mean, it's not like baseball innings have fixed time limits, or like the Yanks scored a ton of runs in the 7th inning this year, preying on "cold" pitchers. So what's the unsportsmanlike advantage the Yankees are taking, exactly?

It's funny how some of these "superior" sports fans--nope, no sense of entitlement or unsporting attitudes there!--show their superiority over us through displays of mean, vicious name-calling and cursing. Oh, and insulting a guy who's suffered more adversity in his life than a 59-year World Series championship drought, yet nonetheless has managed greater accomplishments than simply "inspired a hissy fit between two pro athletes (six years ago)."

In yesterday's blog I said I was rooting for an Indian-Rockies World Series. The Indians--midges aside--seemed like a quality team, whose winning would make a great story, and I had absolutely no reason to wish them anything but the best after they vanquished the Yankees. But now--even though it hurts my heart to say it--I'm pulling for the Red Sox in the ALCS, and after that, for whoever wins the National League.

You see, the Cleveland Indians haven't won in Scott Raab's lifetime--and suddenly that seems like a grand idea. A fine tradition, one that should remain unbroken, at least for the remainder of his lifetime. Stay classy, Cleveland!