"The Yankees still have money, and they still have talent, and they still have history. Derek Jeter will come back, so will some other stars, and others will be found. I have little doubt that the Yankees can still win. But they will never be the same. Rome has fallen."
This is what I don't get. The Yankees have won one championship in the last decade. That isn't a dynasty. That isn't Rome. Rome won the World Series every year, because they were Rome and that was the deal. There's no Rome in baseball. Only one team has won multiple championships in the last decade (Red Sox, with two). That's not "Roman Empire." That's "Congress of Vienna." Balance of power. Parity. I know that it's fun pretending the Yankees still have a "dynasty" so that we can pronounce it dead every year, but there's no such thing as a postseason dynasty in baseball anymore. The playoffs are too random.
"The Yankees aren't the Yankees anymore."
...no, by definition, they kind of are.
"Oh, they might win again. They might, like the Six Million Dollar Man, rebuild faster, stronger and more powerful. They have the money. They have the clout. But this is the point: It won't be this Yankees team."
...right, because this Yankees team...was just...eliminated? So, like, it physically can't be this Yankees team. Glad we're clear on how "sports" works.
"But it wasn't just a team going into a slump. It is a team at war with itself."
I love hyperbole just as much as the next cat but sheesh come on.
"I'm thinking the best the Yankees can hope for is that the U.S. Government will declare them too big to fail."
Hahahaha! Get it?! Financial pun! High-five!
"And now, for the first time in almost two decades, the New York Yankees have no idea what happens next. Just like the rest of us."
Here's the problem: I've read this article before, or some variant of it, every year. Every October that doesn't end in a Steinbrenner holding up the World Series trophy inevitably results in sportswriters pronouncing the Yankee dynasty dead, pining for the old days of Posada and Williams and Brosius and O'Neill and Torre. I'm tired of reading it. Either the Yankees dynasty IS gone, in which case there shouldn't be any more words wasted on the subject, or it's reborn every April only to die every October, which makes it a seasonal dynasty and I don't really know how those work.
Anyway: Posnanski's article gets written every single year, just with the words rearranged in a different order. The following excerpt is from an article in the New York Daily News on October 6, 2002:
Yankee Year Goes To Heck, Dynasty Reaches End Of Road As Angels Rejoice
-Anthony McCarron
"Some Yankees seemed stunned at the team's three-games-to-one loss in the AL division series. But others knew that the Yankees had been outhit, outfielded and, most importantly, outpitched in making their earliest playoff departure since 1997, the last year they didn't reach the World Series...This is certainly not the ending George Steinbrenner had envisioned when he and his lieutenants put together a team and paid $140 million for it."
Then the following year, October 26 2003, Los Angeles Times:
The Fish That Ate New York
-Bill Shaikin
"Beckett's five-hit shutout gives the Marlins a 2-0 Game 6 victory for their second title in seven years and may signal end of an aging Yankee dynasty...The Yankee Stadium ghosts are out of business."
Two years later, October 12 2005, New York Times:
Angels kill Yankees softly in playoff decider
-Tyler Kepner
"The Yankees spoiled themselves, their fans and their principal owner by winning four championships in five seasons through 2000. But the glory years are gone, fading deeper into memory each fall. Now, they have gone five years without one...All of the millions for all of the mercenaries could not wake the dynasty from the dead."
Two years after that, October 8 2007, ESPN.com:
Consider the Yankees dynasty officially over
-Howard Bryant
"The old dynasty finally fell, and for good Monday night in the Bronx...The dynasty is over in New York, giving way to age and time, and nothing could revive it...The dismantling of the dynasty will surely follow, and finally, but not without some degree of melancholy, the old building faces the wrecking ball...And perhaps it is time, for all dynasties ultimately crumble and decay, and losing to the Indians seemed as much a disappointment for the Yankees as it was the recognition that they have witnessed the end of something larger, something grander...In New York, even a dynasty needs to be told when to say goodbye."
A year later, September 24 2008, New York Daily News:
Dynasty's slow demise bottoms out with Yankees' September swan song
-Mike Lupica
"It had to happen eventually and now it has, because this Yankee team, even wounded, did not measure up in so many ways...Another Yankee team to go in with the first-round losers of the last three years...Alex Rodriguez, for all his gaudy numbers, did not have a good season, did not ever carry the team, was a bigger stick for the tabloids than he was for Girardi...Robinson Cano played an entire season looking as if his head were up in the clouds. Or somewhere. The Yankees say they don't want to move him. Think about something: Just think about how everything looks in the AL East if the Yankees had Dustin Pedroia playing second for them this season instead of Cano."
(side note: it's interesting that, four years later, the scapegoats are still the same: A-Rod (choker) and Cano (lazy) aren't True Yankees because they aren't as gritty and scrappy and gutsy as small white guys like Dustin Pedroia or Derek Jeter).
So Joe Posnanski isn't writing anything new. He's recycling the same old hackneyed garbage. How many times will the "Dynasty" have to die before we can stop hearing about it? I'm afraid of the answer.
Outstanding research ... Exposé of excess- nay, worse--meaningless hyperbole ...
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