This column isn't anti-Yankee so much ...

... it's just anti-baseball-knowledge.

Lupica simply does not know what he's talking about:

"Start in Detroit, a couple of days before the Red Sox come to town, the beginning of the last act of what has been the most compelling and dramatic Yankee regular-season in 30 years:"

This season has been the most compelling and dramatic Yankee season in thirty years?

Has Lupica been watching the same season I've been watching?

The Yankees are just an underachieving team, mostly, spurred to mediocrity by a lame duck manager.


"If the Yankees had won a game against the Tigers that started late Friday night and ended at 3:30 Saturday morning, nobody would have been blaming Major League Baseball because of when it started and when it finished, or looking to point fingers as soon as Carlos Guillen's 3-run dinger cleared the fence.

Nobody would have been mad at anybody and Joe Torre wouldn't have been at a loss for words when it was over. Are you kidding? It would have been a brand new episode of 'Yankeeography'!"

Four-hour rain delay seems a bit much, but I don't think the Yankees got too angry about it. Losing tends to be worse than winning.

Though it was odd that the Yankees got mad "props" for playing baseball on Saturday, against the same team that played until 3:30 am the night before. If the Yankees were tired, so were the Tigers.


"Oh sure. If a Yankee had hit the home run Guillen hit for the Tigers, the whole thing would have been classified as an instant pinstriped classic."

Sure.

Point being?


"Give them all props for coming back the way they have, getting up the way they did when they were 14 behind the Red Sox and after some of the dreariest losing streaks of the entire Joe Torre era. Give them all props for the character they've shown getting themselves back into things in the American League East and into the thick of the whole wild-card deal."

I'll give them mad props, homes. Thanks for the 411. What's the dilly with that O.G. from the UNL, yo? You know who I'm talkin' 'bout?

I'm talkin' 'bout Joba.

J to the izz-O, B to the izz-A.


As for the team's character, that's quite an astonishing statement. I don't know how many "props" a team gets for sleepwalking for the first three months of a professional sports schedule.

"The reality of this Yankee team is that if it doesn't make it to the postseason, which would mean the first Yankee team since 1993 not to make it to the postseason, then it underperformed in September the way it did over the first three months of the season."

I don't remember much about the 1994 season, but I can guarantee the Yankees didn't make the postseason in 1994. Though I suppose they would have.


The Yankees could play .650 ball in September and still miss the playoffs. It depends on Boston, Seattle, Cleveland, Detroit, and Anaheim.

Most likely, the Yankees will miss the playoffs AND perform much better than the first three months of the season.

So, Lupica's if-then construct is the opposite of true.


"This is a team that has more firepower in baseball now that Abreu is back hitting the ball again, and Matsui, and Cano and even Giambi. And Melky is having his own career year the way Alex Rodriguez is."

Melky is having a career year in the second year of his career. He had to break the 7 hr, 50 rbi mark, and he somehow did it.


"Have they had to overcome a lot? They have. You think the Mets haven't? The Mets haven't had Pedro Martinez since last summer. What comparable long-term pitching loss have the Yankees had since then?"

Nobody is arguing with you, man. But it doesn't matter, anyway. The standings tell you how good your team played. There's not category for "injuries" or "luck."

"You bet the Yankees suffered early because of all the bad pitchers they had to run out there. But it was a lot more than kid pitchers that put them into that hole, and everybody who has watched the season knows that."

Well, sure. It was everybody not named Rodriguez, Jeter, Posada, Wang, and Rivera.

But let's say it was 100% the fault of kid pitchers.

Who cares?

The Red Sox are 7.5 games up and you care about why? This is compelling and dramatic to you for some reason?

What's your point? If the Yankees miss the playoffs, then they stink? Thanks for the update. I think the rest of us knew this sometime last October.