Stay Positive: This Year Is Different

These past three days have been torture.  No question.  For those of us that live and die with each Yankee victory or defeat, a crushing postseason loss followed by an off-day followed by a rainout followed by another day of waiting can seem cruel and unusual.  I’ve found myself constantly plagued by harrowing visions of another early October exit, imagining all the ways this season that looked so promising on Tuesday night could be quickly and violently ended with two more losses.

When CC Sabathia finished his utter domination of the Angels on Tuesday night, the Yankees held firmly to a 3-1 series lead and the banter officially began between Yankees and Phillies fans, supporters of the two teams that seemed destined to collide on baseball’s biggest stage.

Then Thursday night happened.

Trailing 4-0 in the 7th inning to a heretofore dominant John Lackey, the Yankees loaded the bases with 2 outs.  Mike Scioscia improbably and inadvisedly went to his bullpen and the Yanks responded by putting 6 two-out runs on the board.  The fans went silent.  The Angels looked defeated.  They weren’t.

They went to work in the bottom half of the inning against AJ Burnett, who remained in the game for reasons that continue to defy logic, and eventually against Damaso Marte and Phil Hughes, scoring 3 runs and taking a 7-6 lead they would not relinquish despite another shaky 9th inning from their closer in name only, Brian Fuentes.

Now, this is where we stand: a 3-2 series lead, with games 6 and 7 to be played at home, and our two most reliable starters, Andy Pettitte and CC Sabathia, rested and ready to take the ball.

So why doesn’t this feel like it should?  Why are the silver linings so hard to find?  We, as Yankees fans, find ourselves in a position that fans of 14 other American League teams would love to be in.  Can you imagine the elation of a Kansas City Royals fan, waking as if from a long and disturbing nightmare to find his team one win away from competing in the World Series?  They lost 98 games in Baltimore and there’s no end in sight – you think those long-suffering fans wouldn’t kill for the opportunity to be up 3 to 2 in the ALCS, with 2 games upcoming in Camden Yards?

Still, it’s different for the Yankees.  It’s different for their fans.  When people make this claim, it often comes across as self-centered, arrogant, obnoxious entitlement.  Of course it’s different, those that delight in Yankee pain will counter – you root for a team that spends $200 million on the best and the brightest and goes into each season with high hopes of running another pennant atop their brand new, $1.5 billion, state-of-the-art facility.  That is different.

It’s different in other ways, too.

I don’t expect any non-Yankee fans to quite understand this, but because of the burden of expectation, because of the media scrutiny, because of the money and the notoriety and the recent history of crushing, abject pain and misery, the Yankees are often quite miserable to watch.  Because victory is not a possibility but an expected outcome, it often lacks joy.  When the Yankees roll into Cleveland in mid-August and take 3 straight games, it’s because that’s what they should have done.  If they take 2 of 3, they’ve missed an opportunity.  If they lose 2 of 3, they’re struggling and changes should be made.  If they lose all three, it’s a miserable failure on par with taking a shotgun to a barrel and managing to miss the fish.

Does that sound fun?

It can be.  It can be a ton of fun when they’re winning every series, beating the teams they need to, getting solid starting pitching and timely hitting, and winning 103 games.  That’s what this 2009 season was in a nutshell – a ton of fun.  With a few brief and minor exceptions, the Yankees played well all season and had their division essentially locked up in August.  Winning is fun.

I can compare this to my experience with rooting for one truly awful team: the New York Islanders.  I’ve been a lifelong fan – not with the fervor and the passion that I follow the Yankees, but close enough that I attend several games a year, I watch the games on television all winter, and I’m always (painfully) aware of where they stand in the league.

Once upon a time, the Islanders were a model franchise.  They had a crazy passionate fanbase, sellouts, star players, a dynasty that won 4 consecutive Stanley Cups.  Then I was born.  One year after the Islanders won their 4th, I wandered into this world.  Ever since then, it’s been a seemingly endless series of pratfalls, historically bad teams, logos that look like advertisements for fish sticks, and comically unprepared players.  Yet, I continue to watch because I love hockey and I love the Islanders.  It’s as simple as that.  Once in a while comes the rare season where, despite a lack of knock-you-down talent, the Islanders put together a thrilling season and find themselves in the playoffs (usually as the 8th seed).  The sheer joy I get from those seasons is almost unmatched.  I watch those series, in which they are usually saddled with the joyless task of taking on the top seed, with a sort of pleased detachment.  It’s surreal for me to see the Islanders in nationally televised games, to see the Coliseum packed to the rafters and loud as hell instead of empty, ugly, dreary, depressing.

It’s because the Islanders do not bear the burden of expectation.

If anything, they’re expected to lose every game.  That’s the attitude I assume from October to April, so when I turn on an Isles/Penguins tilt on a lazy Sunday afternoon and my hometown team takes it to the defending champions, for one day I feel like we’ve won a Stanley Cup.

Not so much for the Yankees.  They have hurt me deeply.  The 2004 season is one that I will never forget.  Any mention of it stings, and stings deep.  That season brought me to tears, made me violently unhappy, caused a deep depression that lasted for over a year and in many ways is still there.  When FOX runs that Dave Roberts stolen base, as they are wont to do on seemingly every telecast, I leave the room.  If I come across an article referencing that season, I skip ahead or move on.  My Red Sox fan friends, of which I have many, are generally respectful enough not to mention it to me.   I’ve never actually written anything about it, and doing so now is a deeply uncomfortable experience.

Which brings us to 2009, a different, much happier time.  We are back where we want to be – one victory away from the World Series, dominant starting pitching from our ace putting us on the brink.  So why is it so difficult for me to embrace this team at this moment?  It’s akin to walking into an animal shelter; you tell yourself over and over, “I will not get emotionally attached to these animals.”  Their impending death is too much to think about.  Don’t fall in love.  You’ll only get hurt.

I think about the hurt I felt in 2004 and I never want to be in that place again.  But finally, I feel different.  Maybe the rain-out gave me an extra, needed day away from the nerves and the sick-to-my-stomach feeling.  But I have had so much fun watching this team all season, writing about them, podcasting about them with a friend as passionate as I am.  Everything that failed them in previous seasons worked with an astounding level of success this year.  Big money free agent stars earned their paychecks and then some.  Wild cards like Nick Swisher played above and beyond expectation, the Gardner/Cabrera tandem was a moderate success, Phil Hughes moved to the bullpen and dominated.  Everything clicked.  They did stuff like this, this, and this.  They were a lovable bunch.

So why not now?  This is a wonderful baseball team.  It may have taken me until now to realize it, but that’s what they are – a wonderful team of talented players, competing in 2 crucial games with their best starters on the mound and in front of an adoring home crowd at a stadium in which they went an ML best 57-24.  If they fail – which they may – it won’t be because they aren’t great, and it won’t diminish their myriad accomplishments in 2009.  This is still a team to be proud of, a team to have fun watching.  I’m gonna give that a shot tonight.

I’m going to stop pinning my hopes for personal happiness on the Yankees pursuit of a world championship.  Maybe this will be a burden off their shoulders as they take the field tonight.

Now let’s see if this feeling carries over to 8:20 pm EST.  Until then, Stay Positive, Yankees fans.