He is the real deal. He looks like he is 15 years old. An astonishing game.
And to all you Yankee fans who have gloated in my face over the years:
I feel no sympathy with your pain right now. You gotta eat that pain, just like everybody else has had to.
Oh, and a funny thing:
I was walking home from the bar, walking cross town. There was a strange chastened quiet through the streets – there was none of the drunken yahoo-ness on display like in weeks past. People huddled together on corners, and I heard phrases like, “DAMMit” and “Fuckin’ Allan Boone! He SUCKS!”
A homeless man, lying on the sidewalk, back up against a building, called up to me, “Who won tonight?”
I said, “The Marlins.”
He took this information in for a second and then nodded like a wise sage. “The Marlins are a TEAM. The Yankees are just a collection of individuals.”
The man obviously doesn’t even have a television, but he knows the truth.
Well, less than an hour after the defeat, I saw a bunch of Yankees fans chanting “Marlins suck” at some bar where channel 5 cameras were present.
I do confess to enjoying the callers to ESPN radio today calling for the head of Joe Torre. I guess winning four championships isn’t enough for some people.
Joe Torre is a great manager.
The bumbling idiots who took over the field last night, in place of the actual Yankees, are at fault – not Joe Torre.
I think they maybe thought they had it in the bag, once they came back to NYC. Why else did they play so … awkwardly? Like minor leaguers?
I was at my cousins’house for the first four innings of the game (my cousin Troy is a die-hard Red Sox fan, still fuming over the Playoff loss) and only saw from inning 6 onward. Troy refused to watch the game, claiming that watching the Yankees pissed him off. They get so much exposure, and the mere idea of them in the series (whether or not they won) just.. irked him.
So no World Series watching in his house (although I got to spend time with his daughter, my ADORABLE 5 month old cousin, Kara.)
Nevertheless, I told him, “You should watch. You’ll wish you had when the Marlins beat the Yankees on their own soil.”
My reasoning? The Yankees have a reputation for being a sort of unrealistic entity beyond baseball. They have, what? A 70 million dollar budget to spend on salaries? They do commercials. Derek Jeter, team captain, is so overexposed by the media that I’m surprised his head hasn’t exploded going through doorways.
In short, they’re cocky. They’re way beyond overconfident. They seem to be under the impression they can –and will– win, simply because they are the Yankees. Many of their fans seem to have this attitude as well. Or no — I take that back. Sometimes, their fans are worse. I witnessed this while walking through the city at night, when the game was on. So many fans watched game 2 and game 3, and said, “the Yankees? Of COURSE the Yankees are going to win. They’re the Yankees.”
No, not exactly. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t win a ballgame simply because you feel the game OWES you something for being so universally famous. You have to play like you want it. Like you love it. Like you mean it.
That is how the Marlins played the series; they were hungry. Hungry enough to play their hearts out on Yankee turf. (Also, I found it ironic and funny that all the Yankees fans seemed to have forgotten, once the series hit, that the Marlins already sported the best record this year in baseball — of both American and National leagues.)
Needless to say, I was very pleased when the Marlins emerged victorious. GO MARLINS! And damn, GO BECKETT! Pitching an entire game like that, in Yankee Stadium.
One of the things that bothered me most about the Yankees and the World Series was the fact that many Yankees fans kept saying it would be anti-climatic. I think that may have affected the players. The media also kind of pissed me off as the exposure to the Yankees was overwhelming as compared to that of the Marlins.
Fact of the matter is that the Marlins lived a fairy tale season. 10 games behind .500 when Mc Keon was hired and their star pitcher goes out for a year. He picks up a rookie here and there and not only puts together a pretty good team, but a cohesive one. Conine stated a few times that when he came in to replace Loweel late in the year, he flet as if he was in a little league team because of the atmosphere in the dugout. Heckling, hey batter batters…stuff that makes baseball memorable and fun.
What a dream season, what a manager, the oldest in baseball, and what an incredible team. No one expected they make it as far and that just adds to the sweetness of it all. I have just regained my voice from all the celebrating.