OH, THE TRAGEDY OF THE THOUGHT, NO PLAYOFFS FOR YOU!

A student of mine said to me in class the other day, “what will you do if the Yankees don’t make the playoffs?”  I thought about his inquiry long and hard and answered him confidently, “there’s always next year.”  And fans, I am not writing us off completely but facts are facts and stats are stats and we fall short in both categories.  But, we have lived through times like this before and we survived and prospered.

August 2nd was the 34th anniversary of Thurman Munson’s death.  This was the beginning of some hard times for the Yankees that would last until 1996, the year of Derek Jeter, his first full year in the majors and the Yankees comeback after almost a 20 year drought between World Series wins (1978-1996).  Guess what, we survived then, even when we mathematically were not the best.

Those 80s years were tough and we had good teams but we were not good enough to win the series or make the playoffs.  We had Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly and Ricky Henderson but we did not have enough wins to (except in 1980-1981) even make the playoffs.  Boss George fought hard to get us what we needed and the managing position was a rotation much like a pitching staff in those days, but fans still came to games, the Yankees’ merchandise was still moving and the Red Sox weren’t winning either, so that made things easier. 

So, what happens if we don’t make the playoffs?  I mean no one picked us to be there this year.  I figured we hold onto third place at the end of this season, but that might not be a reality.  These days, I just don’t want to come in last- we are closer to the bottom than we are to the top.  It’s definitely an uncomfortable feeling, hanging onto fourth place, or second to last place, but it means nothing.  It means that this was a tough year and this is what a tough year looks like to a team like the Yankees.  Let’s face it, we had to endure days and weeks of injuries- broken ankles, broken fingers, strained calves, quads and backs, wrist problems, back spasms and the list goes on.  We also had to endure PEDs, ARod drama, Jeter comebacks and pitching woes.  It has not been easy.  It has not been fun.  But, guess what, we are still here and we are not going anywhere. 

Rita Pierson was a veteran teacher who recently gave a TED Talk in NYC entitled “Every kid needs a champion.”  The talk centered just on that- that every child, poor or rich, bad or good, sad or happy deserves to have a connection to someone that can help him or her be successful.  She had a knack for spinning things from negative to positive.  One such example was when she scored a student’s paper with a grade of +2 when in reality it was a -18 (the child got two correct out of 20 questions).  Her reasoning was that “-18 sucks the life out of you, but +2 says you are on the road.”  So the Yankees aren’t 11.5 games out of first, they are fourth from the top.  And we are always on the road, we are always pushing, never giving up because next time, as Pierson says, “you will do better. “

There’s always next year, folks and although we have the rest of August and all of September to improve, there is only finite number of days left in the 2013 season and not only do we need to improve but the others have to fall.  Can’t say that all this will happen this time, fans- but it’s not a tragedy, it’s a beginning and there is no tragedy in beginning, anyway you spin it.

--Suzie Pinstripe, BYB Opinion Columnist
Twitter: @suzieprof




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