Good Teams Go Home, Great Teams Move Forward

Feel that nip in the air?  That’s fall without Yankee baseball and it’s making today colder than the weather app reveals.  It’s a bitter cold Sunday for Yankee fans and there’s not much warmth ahead of us, until spring training. As the Yankees head home, there is a lot of time for reflection, for should haves, could haves and wishes.  But at the end of the day, one thing remains constant: good teams go home and great teams move forward.

A review of the BYB posts this week says it all:  THE WORST GAME EVER PLAYED, IT’S ALL OR NOTHING, YANKS GOT 99 PROBLEMS & BOONE IS 1, SURGERY STUFF FOR DIDI & CC, & ADJUSTMENTS ARE NOT JUST MADE BY FLIPPING A SWITCH to name just a few. It’s a discouraging time right now for fans particularly as the Astros play the Red Sox in Fenway, just days after the Sox celebrated their victory over the Yankees in the ALDS at the Stadium.  I ran three miles Saturday evening, and as I passed a fellow Yankee fan cutting the lawn, he yelled out to me, “Tough loss this week. Should be a good series with the Sox and Astros.”  I called back, “Nah, I’m not interested.  I am rooting for the National League this year.”  And as I galloped away up an incline, I thought to myself, “This really stinks.”  And I did not mean the run.

Just last Sunday I stood at the start line at the Chicago Marathon among 40,000 other runners and I adorned Yankee running gear.  The shirt I picked up at the Stadium at the Ron Guidry Bobble Head give-away with my son.  The hat, I got at the Under Armour outlet with my daughter toward the beginning of this summer.  They withstood a number of long runs, sweaty summer afternoons and yes, rainy Chicago, one day before the two worst days of the season for Yankee fans.

ESPN said it best and reflects my sentiments here exactly, “The Yankees’ record-breaking season that was high on hype and even higher on expectation was over. No trophies will be hoisted. No more champagne sprays will be toasted. Only plane tickets will be bought and vacation plans set. Offseason, here the Yankees come.”

I listen to the banter on WFAN as the guys try and make us all feel better by saying, the Yankees won a hundred games, they broke the MLB season home run record, Miguel Andujar put up Rookie of the Year numbers, but all I see is the bright red sweat shirts worn by the Red Sox that say, “Do Damage.”  And they did damage in Yankee Stadium knocking the Yankees right out of contention for #28 in what appeared to be seconds.

“I didn’t expect to come here and lose two in a row. I expected to come here and win two in a row,” Gardner said. “Our crowd was unbelievable, all the way down to the last pitch. All the support that they gave us all year, and the atmosphere that they create in big games and the postseason,” reported ESPN.

There will be a lot of reflection, with some of it coming from GM Brian Cashman and Skipper Aaron Boone in a closing press conference earlier this week.  “We tried to be the best team in baseball again, but I think Brett Gardner said it best ‘good teams go home, great teams move forward’… unfortunately we’re defined as a good team,” said Cashman as reported by CBS News.

If I could find one glimmer of hope from this week’s activities, there is this one.  “I think we’ll enter the winter, unfortunately, open minded to a relocation (for Sonny Gray)…To maximize his ability it’ll most likely be best somewhere else,” Cashman explained multiple times during his 40 minutes at the podium. Oh thank you!  And Boone will likely need to take some managing lessons from the best baseball brains in the game…and maybe he will get less “greedy with Sevy“ and the rest of the pitching staff and learn something from this post season nightmare.

We here at BYB will not go radio silent during the Yankee off season.  We may not root for the American League this year, but we will be around to provide you interesting nuggets to chew on and controversial banters to engage you in.  Good teams do go home and great teams do earn the right to move forward and next year, the Yankees will be one of those great teams.

–Suzie Pinstripe
BYB Managing Editor
Twitter: @suzieprof