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Yankees Ten Games Out

23:50 Fri 18 May 2007. Updated: 01:21 19 May 2007
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Following today’s loss to the Mets, the Yankees are now ten games behind the first-place Red Sox.

It wasn’t fun to type that.

Obviously, the Yankees are struggling. This is the furthest back from the AL East lead they’ve been since Joe Torre took over as their manager in 1996. The Torre era, which includes four World Series wins (three straight 1998-2000) and 10 first-place AL East finishes (nine straight, 1998-2006), may be over.

I haven’t been watching their game, but I’ve read reports on most of their games. I’m not sure what it is they lack, but a piece (or maybe a lot of pieces) are missing. They have one of the most formidable offensive lineups in the game, at least on paper, and yet they’re not producing runs. At the start of the year I was really worried about their pitching. I still am, but now they seem to have lost their ability to score, and that’s crazy.

In other words, rather than just having bad pitching, now they seem to alternate between having strong offense but losing due to bad pitching and having strong pitching but losing due to poor offense (as was the case tonight, when Pettitte gave up only three but still lost).

I’m not as emotionally invested in the Yankees as I have been in the past, which is a good thing, but there’s still a strong irrational desire to see them win. My attachment, ironically enough, was strongest between 2001 and 2004, so I got to experience the horrible pain of seeing the Diamondbacks win on a bloop against Mariano Rivera, seeing the Marlins gut out a Series win, and seeing the Yankees nightmarishly fall apart entirely and give up a three-zero series lead (the only time any team has done so in baseball history) in the ALCS against the Red Sox.

I should figure out how to stop caring about things that I have no control over whatsoever… a lesson I might be able to use in other areas of life. Until I learn it, though, I’m stuck fervently wishing that they make a comeback for the ages and get another AL East title.

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