As I was Saying

A couple of posts ago I noted that Bernie in right would cost them a couple of games this season. I had no idea I would be proves correct this quickly, this dramatically and this farcically. With the Sox failing again and again to play their grind it out game, leaving men on base, failing to press the baserunning advantage, the Yankees coul and should have won this game and all but had it sealed with the very pop fly that cost them the game. If Bernie catches the seventh inning fly you'd expect a little leaguer to snag, the Yanks would have had two down in the seventh with a man on first, with Farnsworth and Rivera coming in the last 2 innings. Instead Bernie plays the ball into a ground rule double, he overruns a pop-up, and when Cairo fails to make a play at first he should have made, they were done.

What was most dpressing about this game, besides the loss of Matsui for the foreseeable future, was the numbing predictability of how they came to lose yet again to the Sox. Let's see. They batted 140 with men in scoring position (2-14), they made the crucial misplays in the late innings for which they have become infamous (I swear to God I'd rather have the Royals players in the field late); they failed to manufacture runs when they had the oppurtunity. Bubba--with Jeter the only exception to this litany of futility--hits a triple with one out and a 2-0 lead. Squeeze bunt for Christ's sake because that's a run you absolutely need. No squeeze, no run, and as a result, no win. Or more egregiously, after Bernie blows the play in right, he hits a double. Nobody out, man on second, down 4-3 in the bottom of the seventh at home. Everybody knows (say it with me now, except Joe) that you sacrifice bunt in that situation, get Bernie to 3rd with one out and try to push a run home with a hit, a ground out to the right side, a sac fly, a squeeze, whatever). Instead Joe lets Jorge swing away and strikeout. Cano grounds to the right side and moves bernie to third (instead of home) where he dies. If Posada can't lay down a bunt in that situation, bring in someone who can, but back in spring training, lazy ol' Joe should having been making damn sure everybody could lay down the requisite bunt on occasion. No small ball, no run, no win.

The inning before that Jeter singles steals second with one out and neither Giambi nor AROD, the Yankees big guns, so much as put the ball in play. Yes AROD it is mathematically possible to deliver 130 rbis and fail continually in the clutch, and you are the living proof of this, the Alex Algorithm.

The Yankees lost this game so badly they didn't even make the Red Sox win it. I wonder if there has ever been a team this talented that was so woefully unabvle to master the fundamentals of the game. That's the weird part of watching Bubba play, watching Bubba haul back a homer from over the left field wall, watchiong Bubba run out a triple, watching Bubba score from on a hit from, who else, Jeter, watching Bubba track down a tricky fly in left center, what's weird is that other than the captain nand maybe Cano, he is the most, no the only, fundamentally sound ballplayer on the team, the only guy who plays like an illustration in the Spalding Guide. And yet he is the guy in whom Joe has no confidence and no time for, he's slow Joe's abject, which only goes to show,fter all the hype about 1000 wins, how little grasp Torre has on the basics of the game, how slow Joe really is. Bubba's one of the only guys on the team who plays the right way and Joe would rather play, for sentimental reasons, broken down Bernie Williams, who runs after fly balls like a 12 year old girl just learning the game. Sad--not the spectacle Torre is making of Bernie, but that we Yankee fans are being forced to witness it.