View From
The Middle
By Charles Rogers

A Big, Bad Weekend Off For "Esteemed" Yankees

The last time I wrote about our esteemed New York Yankees, I suppose, was when they triumphantly trounced the Boston Red Sox last year in Yankee Stadium. Aaron Boone’s dramatic home run brought the American League pennant to us and fans (yeah, that’s me) were ecstatic. My Yankees had done it again and, I thought, were on their way to once again winning the World Series.

Well, they didn’t finalize the job and lost the Series, but I was comparatively satisfied for the season. Hey, defeating Boston, their historic enemy, was enough in itself. Great satisfaction there.

What a difference a season makes.

I’ve almost begun to disown my formerly-esteem-ed Yankees.

Didja ever?

In case you need to be informed on why, as a pure Yankee fan, I want to go into a tirade, all you have to do is look at the back pages of any daily newspaper or listen to the end of any local newscast.

The Yankees stink!

Of course, it’s all relative. If you’re paying $500,000 for a team, you almost expect them to play like Little Leaguers. If you’re paying hundreds of millions of dollars for a team, you expect them to play like they deserve it. Not these Yankees. Maybe the ones that were around in 1998 or ’99, but not the 2004 money guys.

Seems as though Superstar A-Rod — Alex Rodriguez — is finally coming around, having hit a few homers and making himself respectable last weekend, although it didn’t look like it Friday night when he struck out three times and, in the field, literally threw away a lob to second base in the third inning, allowing the Red Sox to get in position to score.

The Red Sox took the last six out of seven games from the Yankees. They didn’t steal them, however. They were presented with the games on a platter. Easy pickin’s, as far as anyone could see. Six neatly wrapped gifts. Derek Jeter, the captain, a player’s player, had been trying so hard that he hadn’t had a hit in 25 at-bats. Bernie Williams, that stalwart Quiet Man who could always be depended upon to come up with the right stuff in a clutch, struck out miserably at crucial moments throughout the series of games.

Oh, in the long run, they’ll come out of it. Seems that they always do. A-Rod will continue to do better by the day; Jeter will start a hitting streak; and the team will, no doubt, follow suit. The esteemed Yankees will again show their stuff and that the money was — is — well spent, alleviating George Steinbrenner’s apoplexy and allowing him to once again drift into sentimental tears.

Hey. I’m strictly a Monday morning quarterback (All right, I know it’s a different game, but that’s the cliché. As Mayor Bloomberg says, "Get over it!"), but that’s my right as a Yankees fan. I must admit, though, that I’ve never heard the Yankees "booed" by their own fans. Oh, now and then they would voice their disapproval of a certain play or player — but that was just a sometime thing. It should be noted, however, that as Derek Jeter ended the game Sunday with a feeble grounder to the infield and heard the crowd boo him.

The Yankees have played horribly within these first weeks of the season and we can be grateful — at this time, anyway — that the season is long. There will indeed be strings of games as bad (not worse) as those we’ve seen recently. Life is like that. Members of the team were probably grateful they were off last Monday, although it seems as if they were off all weekend!

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