I Guess I Think Differently

I was away for three days. In that time, the New York Yankees managed to lose three more games. That’s 14 losses in 19 games. From a team which had been running away from the opposition.

The hitting has been anemic. Aaron Judge is no longer chasing Roger Maris’ 61 home runs mark. Instead of staying red hot, he has cooled to Ice Age proportions. He epitomizes the team’s struggles. 

The pitching has soured. Ever since trading Jordan Montgomery to St. Louis (where he is absolutely thriving), the starting pitching has been spotty. Moreover, the relief pitching manages to take winnable games and blow them up with shoddy performances. 

In essence, the team is playing like the worst team in the major leagues. Which would have been unfathomable to think before the All-Star break. 

Normally placid manager Aaron Boone has become increasingly frustrated. At a Saturday press conference, he banged on a table, expressing a belief in his team while knowing they are mired in a prolonged slump which seemingly has no end date. 

Who is to blame? The manager? The coaching staff? The players, who have not played with intensity or fire, according to Judge? 

Regardless of who is to blame, it is very disheartening for Yankees fans who had covetously eyed the 28th World Championship for their club. With good reason, until this slew of losses grew to epic proportions. 

Yankees fans are boisterous, especially ebullient when their team is winning. When the team is in the dumps, they are loud and nasty. Especially to those players who are woefully underperforming—like outfielder Aaron Hicks who is mired in a season-long slump. 

Those Yankees supporters knew that this team couldn’t really be as good as the championship teams of the 1990’s. So the expectation was that this group would come back to earth and play like mortals. Just not with such a resounding thud.

On Sunday, the Yanks managed not to be swept at home by Toronto, winning 4-2 and showing a bit of resilience. Nonetheless, this was the sixth straight series the team has lost, a debacle that hadn’t happened since 1990. 

The Yankees held their own today with Nestor Cortes on the mound. They didn’t overwhelm Blue Jays’ starter Alex Manoah, an All-Star like Cortes. Is this a sign that the Yankees are coming back to life? They’d better, as they are on tap to face the Mets, who roared back against the Phillies to win 10-9 and are playing as well as any team in baseball right now, for two games at Yankee Stadium on Monday and Tuesday. With the Mets throwing their pair of aces, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom in the two game set. 

After this, the Yankees head out to the West Coast. A long road trip can either heal this team or worsen the situation. Die hards like me are hoping that when the calendar reaches September the Yankees are back on track. 

Last week, the second Field of Dreams game was played between the Reds and Cubs. A low scoring affair, it still is magnificent to watch the players come out of the cornstalks or, for the opening, to watch Ken Griffey, Sr. and Ken Griffey, Jr. play catch. 

Because there will be renovations to the stadium site, there will be no third Field of Dreams game. Instead MLB is heading to London and Paris for the next round of special regular season contests. 

Which made me think of reasonable alternatives which might draw interest. How about having teams which left a city head back to their original locales and host a game there? For instance, the Orioles returning to St. Louis to become the Browns for one night and play the Cardinals as the home team. Or the A’s coming back to Philadelphia and meeting the Phillies. How about the Dodgers and Giants take over Citi Field for a four game series and wear the caps and uniforms of yesteryear? I came up with 10 types of matchups which would be a remembrance of baseball’s past.

Want some other neat ideas? How about games in baseball towns like Evansville or Memphis, with iconic minor league ballparks? Or at Hinchliffe Stadium in Paterson, a Negro League site? Maybe on a college campus—a military academy might work here—or Omaha, the home of the College World Series? Choose an exotic locale with baseball roots like Alaska and Cape Cod, both which host summer leagues for collegians? Try some of the expansion possibilities such as Las Vegas, Charlotte, Louisville and New Orleans? 

If the Field of Dreams, the London series between the Yankees and Red Sox and the MLB Little League Classic are such huge successes, baseball needs to take a cue from this and offer different ideas to stoke the interest of all sorts of fans. I encourage those in charge at MLB  think outside the box and make events like these more a staple of the schedule. Look at the NHL with their stadium games. The NFL in Europe and Mexico. Sounds logical to me. 

My wife and I traveled to New Orleans to drive our daughter’s car back to New Jersey. I couldn’t help but think of the sports and places I was passing through. 

In Newark Airport I saw plenty of kids headed back to Tulane. Wearing a ton of green for the Green Wave. A few others wore Saints merchandise. 

Traveling into Mississippi, we drove by Hattiesburg. Plenty of billboards promoting the University of Southern Mississippi. We saw a number of vehicles with Ole Miss or Mississippi State stickers of license plate holders adorning them. 

In Alabama, it wasn’t just the Crimson Tide of the University of Alabama. While in the vast majority, we did see signs for the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Go Blazers. Zilch for Auburn.

When you enter Tennessee, you are in UT-Chattanooga territory. For a while. The rest of the time, it was almost all Volunteers orange for the University of Tennessee. 

We did see signs for East Tennessee State in Johnson City. Tennessee Tech, too. 

Heading north, we passed by the twin cities of Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. Which always makes me think of that 1 mile oval at the Bristol Motor Speedway, a regular stop of NASCAR. Believe it or not, Santana and Earth, Wind and Fire were going to play there on Friday night when we passed by.

In Virginia, I could recall seeing signs for smaller colleges like Emory and Henry, Virginia Wesleyan, Roanoke, Bridgewater, Mary Baldwin and Lynchburg. The bigger boys were represented by Virginia Tech and UVA. We passed right by Radford, Shenandoah and through  James Madison University, a growing campus since I first set eyes on it heading down I-81 in 2006. 

In Pennsylvania, we saw signs for Shippensburg, Dickinson, Kutztown, Muhlenberg, Cedar Crest, Lebanon Valley, Lehigh and Lafayette. That’s along I-81 until it branches off to I-78. 

I saw t-shirts for LSU, Penn State. I saw signs for other locations like Lexington, Kentucky, home of those Kentucky Wildcats. Or Memphis, Nashville, Charlotte, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., all homes to pro sports teams and more colleges. 

Sure, the scenery was excellent. To a sports-saturated mind like mine, whether it is about the game I love—baseball—and the team I adore, or college and pro sports, I guess I  think differently.