Enemy Perspective

It was 12 straight wins, the longest winning streak the majors had seen in two years. The Red Sox dominated their National League opponents like Dom controlled Turtle and Drama on Entourage. Going into the All-Star break, the Red Sox were every so-called expert’s pick to run away with the AL East in the second half.

Meanwhile the Yankees were floundering. There were more injuries on the team than casualties in the final scene of X-Men 3. Randy Johnson was pitching with the same intensity as Jack Johnson when he recorded the Curious George soundtrack. The Yankees, by all accounts, were in for a long, arduous second half.

And yet, looking at the standings… there were no signs of it. When the Red Sox began their winning streak, the Yankees were one game ahead of the Sox. Twelve games later, the Red Sox were four games up on the Yankees.

(Not exactly buried, in my opinion.)

But certainly, the experts implied, the Yankees were in trouble. The Red Sox were looking like the best team in baseball. They took two of three from the White Sox (by all accounts the actual best team in baseball) right before the break.

But if you had read any second half preview from any major media outlet, you basically saw this:

Name: New York Yankees

Age: 9 year first-place AL East finish streak

Time of Death: June 29, 2006

The teams went to the break, where Ortiz and A-Rod chummed it up, much to everyone’s collective horror.

And then the second half started.

The Yanks beat the unbeatable Jose Contreras in the first game out of the break, a guy who hadn’t lost since he was, well, on the Yankees. The Sox? They encountered the start of the annual Oakland A’s second-half surge, and lost their first two.

I made yet another pilgrimage to The House that Ruth Built for the two remaining games of the White Sox series. As I sat in the sweltering summer sun of the upper tier of Yankee Stadium on Saturday, July 15, it was hard to concentrate on the game. A heat wave was crushing the Northeast, killing old dogs and stray women by the hundreds. (Or something like that.) It was so hot, my sweat was sweating. But as the Yanks pounded the World Series Champion White Sox en route to a 14-3 win, I couldn’t help but enjoy myself. Sure, I smelled like a goat lost in a tropical jungle, but I knew the Yankees weren’t as done as everyone believed.

They confirmed it the next day as I watched from the alcohol-free (sigh) bleachers in left field. (Was it as hot? Well, let’s just say a vendor was selling those misting fans for $20 a pop, and she didn’t even make it halfway up the bleachers before selling out. And then we wonder how the Yankees are worth $1 billion. Hey George, use some lube before slipping it in there!)

I didn’t know we were watching history when Mariano took the mound in the 8^th and walked off it in the 9^th with his 400^th save. I was more concerned about the present: the Yanks were only ½ game behind the Sox.

Not bad for a team that was pronounced dead a few weeks ago. The Yankees of the past few years are the undead, zombies from Resident Evil… you think you’ve killed them, you start to walk away, and then they reach out and start munching on your ankle until they take you down.

This has unfortunately become a theme of late. Sure, everyone knows about the annual Red Sox September Collapse. Ever since the Boston Massacre in ’78, this event has been almost as predictable as the leaves turning in New Hampshire. (Yes, there were a few years in between when the Sox avoided it. But not many.)

Over the past few seasons, the September Collapse is still intact. But the newest trend seems to be the Yankees getting a slow start to begin the season. Last year, the Yanks were seven out at the end of April. In 2004, they were four back at the end of April. This year, well, you know how it’s been.

I’m going to christen this trend “The Yankees Break Late,” like a race horse that is slow out of the gate. I just like the sound of it when you say it with a Rat Pack-esque accent, like how Saul in Ocean’s Eleven refers to his dog at the dog track: “The Yankees break late. Everyone knows this.”

It has that perfectly condescending tone that I require to retort when a giddy Sox fan craps on the Yankees for being three out at the end of April—like it matters at that time of the year.

Because the Yankees Break Late (which everyone knows), they have still come back to win the division both times, thanks to the longer trend of the two: the Sox September Collapse.

When it comes to history forming the present, I’m very much a juggernaut. I don’t move my position on something that has been a standard until I see it change officially. It makes me a very bad predictor of things like the Internet boom and the stock market, for example. (I made my first investment on an internet company the very week the market crashed in ’01. I even convinced my mother to jump on board with me. Every year, she sends me the annual reports of the company we invested in. The stock of the unnamed company is worth about a fourth of what we paid, even after climbing for a couple years. I think she’s a little bitter about it.)

In baseball, my stubbornness serves me quite well. Essentially, I follow three rules:

1. If a team was good last year, they will be good again this year.
2. If a team was bad last year, they will be bad again this year.
3. There is one—and only one—exception to those rules every year.

Simple, right?

Sure, teams go on free agent signing binges, or work out trades everyone says will put them into the race. But it never really happens, does it? Take the Blue Jays for example. J.P. Ricciardi spent ownership’s money like Paris Hilton snorting away the family fortune, and to almost as much avail. Glaus, Ryan, Burnett and Overbay currently have the Jays… in third place.

MLB is not the NFL. There is no salary cap, and therefore absolutely no parity. The teams that can afford to dominate on a regular basis will dominate. The teams that can’t afford top-tier rosters may compete, but with very few exceptions over the past few years, they will not make the playoffs consistently year after year. To continue with the Blue Jays example: they may have upped their spending, but they’re still way behind the Yanks and Sox on that front ($50M behind the Sox) and therefore behind both teams in the standings.

Last year, for example, the Washington Nationals were in first place at the All-Star break, as were the Chicago White Sox. Personally, I doubted both teams. Washington proved me right; Chicago proved me wrong. In 2004, out of the surprise teams in contention in June (there were actually five) only one (Anaheim, who had had a losing record in ’03) actually ended up making the postseason.

One exception to the rule. And only one.

This year, the Mets are dominating, and the Tigers are in first place.

One of those teams will not finish in first place. My money is on the Tigers to fall back, given the size of the Mets lead and the fact the White Sox own the Tigers this year.

If only there was a way to make money on things like, “The Tigers will NOT win the World Series” in Vegas. Sure, you could probably bet that, but I’m guessing those odds won’t add up.

My rules are also why, in last issue’s predictions column, I stated the White Sox were the best team in baseball, and the Yankees will win the AL East.

Over the course of the past couple years—and following my rules—I haven’t seen anything to make me believe otherwise.

Sure, the experts like to be the bandwagon guys. They like to be the first to say, “I called that.” But most of the time they act like the fat-tastic John Kruk during the Home Run Derby and flip-flop their picks as the season goes on. (I like Kruk most of the time. He’s funny to the point of being mean, but also insightful. Plus I can’t help picturing Chris Farley singing “Fat man in a little coat” every time he comes on my TV.) I don’t blame Kruk for flip-flopping, though he should be less obvious about it. Analysts are forced to roll with the season to keep their jobs—no one wants to listen to an expert who is wrong all the time.

What they always forget is that Baseball is more reliant on history than any other sport. “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.” It is the slowest to change, the last to adapt. Trends don’t extend across a year or two—they extend across a decade. From adding lights for night games to drug testing, Baseball is always behind the times. It’s a beautiful thing, sometimes. I love the serenity in knowing there’s a game at least six days a week, and they start at 7:00 or 1:00 if my team is at home, with the occasional 8:00 Sunday Night Game. (Though that beautiful feeling is more of a Julia Roberts classic beauty than an Angelina Jolie “I want to fuck your brains out” beauty.)

Other times, as we wait for Barry to get run up the flagpole, Baseball is ugly, like that portly chick you met after those Jagermeister shots who was a body double for Gwyneth in a fat suit in Shallow Hal.

The Yankees are going to win the AL East. Whether you think that’s fat Gwyneth or classic Julia depends on who you root for.

For a Yankees fan living in Boston, that would be almost Angelina-esque.