Mike's Mets - Damn (Yawn) Yankees

 

By Mike Steffanos November 27, 2020

If someone can decipher the purpose behind Mike Vaccaro's piece in the New York Post yesterday, I would be grateful if you could share it with me. Vaccaro shared a story from the 1934 season, when Giants manager Bill Terry made a dismissive comment about the Dodgers, then in Brooklyn, and it came back to bite the Giants at the end of the season when Brooklyn knocked them out of a pennant chance. Fast forward to today. Apparently there is some parallel to this because everyone is excited about the Mets, and nobody is talking about the Yankees.

Of course, Vaccaro admits that no one involved with the Mets — Cohen, Alderson, any of the players — have been talking down the Yankees. The offense seems to be Mets fans being really excited about their team for the first time in forever and not enough genuflecting towards the all-encompassing greatness of the Yankees and all the glory that entails.

Seriously, Mike, you wrote this one for clicks, didn't you? You set up this straw man argument so Yankees fans can shout out "Hell, yeah, bitches!" and we Mets fans could get put in our place for being so presumptuous as to to not really give a flying f*** what the Yankees are doing this winter. Mike Vaccaro wants to scold us all for our audaciousness and let us know what the truth really is:

It’s worth remembering the Yankees are still the Yankees. They are two years removed from 103 victories, three years removed from 100 wins, they started 2020 like they planned on figuring a way to 50 wins before injuries and the Rays got in their way, but they still won a round of playoffs, still took the eventual league champs to the last inning of the ALDS.

Also, they have apparently announced that they are surrendering New York to the Mets.

Now, that last line is sarcasm, in case you're not as smart as a great newspaper columnist and didn't pick up on that. Don't worry, Vaccaro set you straight with his conclusion:

...But the Yankees are still the Establishment. They are still the gold standard around here, until proven otherwise. They are, indeed, very much still in the league. They’re just a little quiet about all of that. For now.

And, there it is. I hope all of you out there feel properly chastened for your hubris in being excited about your own team finally waking up from a decades-long slumber and preparing to finally act like what they are: a baseball team in the largest market of the country ready to build a strong infrastructure and spend some money in the luxury aisle.

The goal is to be where the Yankees are now: a perennial contender that mostly gets both the big and little things right. But most definitely not an exact copy of them, not at all. That wouldn't be any fun, and I don't love everything the Yankees do. Because, Mike Vaccaro, you might not have noticed this, but the Yankees and their fans could often be more than a little pompous and quite insufferable at times.

Continue reading by clicking here.