All posts by Matthew Callan

Decrees for My All Encompassing Dictatorship

Decrees for My All Encompassing Dictatorship: No More Mystique

yankee_stadiums.jpgThis morning, my day was immediately dampened (as it often is) by WCBS Radio. The first words I consciously heard–seriously, the first words–came from the sports update. The announcer (whose name escapes me, but I know it wasn’t the usual guy, Jared Max) says, “I guess the aura and mystique followed the Yankees over to the new stadium.” That’s when I ran off to the bathroom to vomit.

What mystique are we talking about? The mystique of being able to blow everyone else out of the water with their deals for CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira? Or the mystique of making a new stadium with short porches and wind streams, so high pop ups by Derek Jeter plop into the left field stands for home runs? Or the mystique of playing against an emotionally and physically drained opponent with less than 1/3 your payroll and who’s also missing their second best slugger?

Look, I don’t hate the Yankees. Honestly, I don’t. Not the team. It’s pointless to hate them. Living in New York, hating the Yankees is like hating pigeons. They’re everywhere and they ain’t going away, so deal with it or move.

What I do hate is the holier-than-thou bullshit the team wraps itself in–or which writers/commentators wrap them in when they can’t think of anything else to write about. As if spiritual superiority and unflagging patriotism is the key to their success, and having more cash than God squared has nothing to do with it.

I don’t begrudge the Yankees having so much dough. I do begrudge them perpetuating the myth that their success comes from The Land of The Great Baseball Beyond on a chariot led by Babe Ruth and Joltin’ Joe. And that they have their own channel which propagates this myth 24/7.

The fact that the Yankees are able to buy any free agent they want, and the fact that there’s not a true level playing field in baseball the way there is in other sports–that’s Bud Selig’s fault, not the Yankees’. They’re just taking advantage of a dysfunctional system. I have no right to bitch about that when the Mets have benefited from the same system (at least in the “signing players” department, if not the whole “winning games” thing).

So just own it. Yankees fans won’t care, and everyone else is going to dislike you anyway. And sportswriters, stop bending over backwards to shoehorn this mystical nonsense into your dumb pieces. Just say, “They’ve got a shitload of money and they spent it on awesome players.”

The “mystique” angle is especially galling when you consider that the Yankees just built a billion dollar monument to themselves and left The House that Ruth Built to rot across the street. You can’t have it both ways. Either you stay in the old Yankee Stadium and revel in history and tradition, or you move to the new one and get padded seats and your own steakhouse. Sorry, but you don’t get to invoke ghosts when you abandoned the place they used to play in. Unless you’re talking about the ghosts of the Hard Rock Cafe.

My decree is that any sportswriter who now mentions “ghosts”, “aura”, “mystique”, or any other variant thereof in connection with the new Yankee Stadium will be sentenced to covering the Washington Nationals from July through September.

I have spoken.

1999 Project

1999 Project: NLDS Game 2

Click here for an intro/manifesto on The 1999 Project.

October 6, 1999: Diamondbacks 7, Mets 1

99_nldsgm2_ticket.jpgEver since the month of October began, the Mets had been on a roll, sustained by luck, determination, and at times pure adrenaline. Such a run had to end some time, and that time came in game two of the NLDS. The breaks that had been going their way suddenly did not for one night.

Coincidentally or not, this reversal of fortune happened with Kenny Rogers on the mound. The lefty was all but run out of New York for his postseason struggles with the Yankees, which is why so many people were surprised the Mets traded for him in the first place. Some of Rogers’ starts with the Mets following the trade dispelled the notion that he couldn’t win in a big spot. This one did not.
Continue reading 1999 Project: NLDS Game 2 →

Football

Strange Anomaly Renders Monday Night Football Speechless

mnf.jpgMINNEAPOLIS–Football fans tuning in to Monday night’s battle between the Green Bay Packers and the Minnesota Vikings, which featured Brett Favre’s first start against his former team, were treated to long stretches of silence. The culprit, according to scientists, was a psycho-energetic anomaly known as a “word squall” that rendered ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast team incapable of speaking the phrase, “He’s just having fun out there!”

“We’re still not sure what causes the word squall phenomenon,” said University of Minnesota physicist Jeff Gunderson. “Our theory is, sometimes the atmosphere is so filled with a certain series of words that it literally becomes saturated with them. In the leadup to the Packers/Vikings game, so many people had spoken that particular phrase that the air could not handle it any more.”

Unable to physically utter those words proved trying for the play-by-play men. During the second quarter, Mike Tirico stammered, “Favre…looks…looks like…it kinda seems as if he’s…enjoying himself…on the field.”

As the teams headed to the locker rooms for halftime, Jon Gruden had similar difficulty. Each time he attempted to say the word “fun”, it came out as “funicular”. “I have no idea what that word means,” he said. “Jaws, I’m scared.” Ron Jaworski attempted to calm down Gruden by mentioning how much game film of Favre he’d watched over the years.

The situation came to a head in the game’s waning minutes, as Favre aired out a pass to a receiver deep down field that fell incomplete. Unable to explain such a play by means other than a phrase they could not say, the broadcast trio began foaming at the mouth, then collapsed in a heap. All three were rushed to nearby hospitals and are listed in stable condition.

Gunderson said that the word squall seemed to have passed sometime last night, sufficiently enough for Dick Vitale to use the phrase 742 times on Mike and Mike in the Morning. But this remains one of the worst incidents he’s ever seen. “Almost as bad as last year, when we had one involving the phrase ‘oh what a play by Jeter!’, and Michael Kay had an aneurysm.”