Perhaps US citizens have some undeveloped, deep-dyed belief in John Wayne, or maybe most American citizens have seen too many trash-to-treasure real life shows, but one month into each latest baseball season the fan base of each team not competing for a playoff spot’s attention turns to what early Psychoanalyst psychological specialist Carl Jung referred to as a Ultimate Rescuer. Some nebulous, munificent entity somewhere out there in the cosmos that would swoop in at the very end and make everything better. In big league baseball that entity has a name.
The N. Y Yankees, which is an ironical embodiment of the Final Rescuer as the Yankees are also known as The Evil Empire. I’ll desist from drawing parallels to society at large. But every Spring the ritual is revisited. Your team comes out with a bad start and you suspect your playoff probabilities are gone, and you have three or four players you blame for it. They are not playing well, or they have an attitude problem, or they're not achieving their total potential, or they are a veteran who’s best days are behind him. Oh, I know precisely what we can do… Call the Yankees. Because they've got a custom of winning with bums.
the Yankees have won 27 World Series by making a nonstop effort to search the globe for each burnout, no talent, washout bum who makes a decision to put on a uniform. Hell, while you are at it, perhaps they will take that old sofa off your hands, as well.
Just because Yogi Berra was a Yankee doesn't suggest they've got some cockamamie scheme that turns garbage into diamonds. The Yankee plan has been rather consistent: wait for other teams to develop talent, then use the 20 or so top groups who never have a shot of being competitive as their minor league system. You draft them, develop them, coach them up, then when they blossom and you can no longer afford to keep them, there’s one team that will.
Throw in 1 or 2 players they develop themselves, and one starts to wonder why the Yankees don’t win each year. But back to the sports fans who seem to think the Yankees are the city dump of Big League baseball, or even more accurately a scrap iron dealer who not only takes your junk off your hands, but spits out cash in return… You're mad. You can “package” as much rubbish as you want in one box, but it's still rubbish. The Yankees probably will deal a lot at the trade cut off point this year, and maybe they'll even speculate on a veteran or a head case or a young player who’s career has stalled out, but they won't do it out of the goodness of their hearts, and they will not do it free. Desperateness smells. And begging raises the price of things. But there are 25 or so big league cities out there right now where the fans are dreaming about that trash-for-treasure trade where all their Problems magically vanish and John Wayne appears out of the mist to make everything right. Keep dreaming.
Zombie Logic is a blog by poet Thomas L. Vaultonburg containing poetry, sports, baseball, politics, the New York Yankees, and art.