State of a Yankee fan, feeling my age at last

  

 As a lifelong Yankee fan, there's a temptation to see me as a silver spooned baseball fan, however my life began in 1979, the year after the Yankees won a World Series.  They didn't win another until I was a Senior in high school.  When you're in grade school, it's the easiest time to change sports alliances but I didn't do so with the Yankees even though some regional teams, such as the Mets and Pirates had some strong runs and a solid youth fanbase throughout the 1980's.  Over those years I left the Cowboys to become a Raiders fan, left the Flyers to become a Capitals fan and Georgetown basketball for Indiana.....but never the Yankees.

  From around 1993 forward it's been a blessing to be a Yankees fan.  Sure all the huge money is spent but it had been spent properly.  Look no further than recent spending sprees by Boston, Anaheim, Miami, Toronto, etc... in recent year that have lead to disastrous results.  I always credited that Yankee core of home grown players and the right mix of veterans to keep the ship right.  When people would hit me with the "you bought the championship" argument, I could always counter with Posada, Jeter, Bernie, Andy, Mariano, and further down.... Rickey Ledee, El Duque, Shane Spencer and other guys they were lucky enough to hit on.

  There's a whole new kind of feeling now with the last piece of the mid-90's resurrection leaving us this season.  It feels like the team identity is leaving, when in reality it's been in flux for years.  Paul, Bernie, Jorge, Andy, Mo......each one took a little bit of that "it factor" along with them.  Only now that the final and biggest piece is coming to an end, do we realize how many years we've been fortunate to see this kind of run and just like our own best years, how quickly they seem to have passed by.

  Certainly to look around the team now, there are players that will be in line to succeed and carry the team through the next several years.  McCann, Ellsbury, Tanaka, Gardner......newer high ceiling guys like Solarte, Nova and Pineda.  Sadly, of that list, only Gardner and Nova are "home grown" and it's hard to say now how that group will pan out over the years.  If nothing else, I take solace that in the modern age of the game with the network revenue and the Yankee "global brand", there's no way we should expect much more than a down year or two, if any.  Still, it's an empty solace....seeing a team that will most likely be built on free agency instead of the organic way a crop of draft picks and international signings rose through the minor leagues to go on to win 4 championships in 5 years.

  So now we Yankee fans who grew up in the 80's, were showered in success through high school and college are now home owners, parents, bosses, a little more gray, a few pounds heavier and just to remind us of what our mid-late 30's feel like.....the guys we grew up watching are all just about out of the game.  But hey, what a ride it was!  Let's see our kids have a team that goes on a run that we can't throw the Yankees from 1994-2014 up against and knock them down to size.  Now I know where my dad was coming from with his Mantle/Maris talk when I was a kid watching Mattingly.

Introduction II - Just the tip (TWSS)

  Decided to start a blog just to let the thoughts out of my head that don't allow me to sleep at night.  Too often my head hits the pillow and my mind starts going overtime with ideas and hypothetical scenarios, I dive into them and think them the whole way thorough only to find most of it gone in the morning.  I don't expect a lot of consistency in what I write or frequency but at the very minimum, my thoughts are getting out and I'm putting them somewhere for safe keeping.

  Simplest definitions for an introduction: I'm a father of three boys who, after roughly a decade in HR and office management, became a stay home father in May of 2013.  I'll get more into that on it's own merit but this is just for introduction purposes.  I am, like many like me, very big into sports and my dream job would have been as a sports writer or broadcaster.  For the record, the teams are: New York Yankees, Oakland Raiders, Washington Capitals, New York Knicks, Indiana men's basketball, Notre Dame football and Bayern Munich fussball.  I've not only lived my entire life in the same town, I've managed to maintain the same mailing address for all of my 25 years (again, more on that later).  Many of my interests are limited to my surroundings...I spend most of every day with twin toddlers, so my time is their time.  I'm content with that.  It's a life of pop up books, play grounds, sidewalk chalk and cartoons.  Personally, by the time I have time for myself, it's usually late and I'm tired so my interests are set to sports on TV, music, movies, etc... Big fan of The Blacklist, Walking Dead, Fargo, The Goldbergs, Archer, WWE.....on the opposite end, I loathe reality TV and the talent shows that take themselves too seriously as if they're more than glorified versions of the Gong Show.  I'm sure all of this has a lot to do with my my head won't shut off at night....most of my thoughts through the day aren't thoughts for myself.  I have always had an active mind and imagination so I can only assume that when I finally realize I can catch up with myself, I have a lot of catching up to do.

  So here it goes, totally free form......I never know what's going to be in my head but if the idea won't let me be, odds are it will be put here for safe keeping.


                                          BEAR CONDITIONING

Introduction I - Stupid Politics

                                POLITICS

  We can get the ridiculous right out of the way but as a way to introduce the kind of person I am, I suppose this is a wide enough topic to start with.  When it comes to political affiliation, I've quit.  I no longer vote and I'm content to live for my family, operating withing the rules they put on us.  Because to fight it or to care too much about it is pure insanity.   I suppose the most honest way I view the political system is this:  Imagine a huge machine that keeps your daily life running and every once in a while there's a time when some gears need to be changed out as part of routine maintenance.  To make it fun for everyone and to make them feel as if they can somehow have a say in how this big machine works to run their lives, they allow us to choose the gear we use.  We're presented with two gears, one blue, one red.  We're told this is a huge decision and we must consider the value of each gear and decide what one we think will make the machine work to benefit us most.  There are preconceived ideas that either the blue or red gear will interact with other parts and obviously give us a certain result, all the benefits of each gear are spelled out on the box label and we all get charged up with vigor when we decide on what gear we want.  We fight over it, we try to sway our loved ones to see it our way.....that the other gear just cannot work.  What I decided to do one day was take each gear out of the box and look them over.  I held them in my hands, they weighed the same.  I put them against each other, all the cogs lined up and they were the same diameter and thickness.  I looked at the stamp on each product to see they were made at the same facility.  Then, I decided to wash off the paint to discover two identical silver gears.  They are simply packaged and sold to us, making us believe we're making some kind of educated choice in the matter.  They can paint the gears any color they like, once the're put in the machine, they're a stainless steel, factory made, generic part that is designed to keep a machine running.  A machine that has been running longer than anyone I know can remember and that was designed by people who died generations ago.  Yet somehow the factory is still making these gears and we keep on buying them up, expecting that somehow this machine will change its course.  I stopped buying it.