You may have heard the term “Pyrrhic victory” before, but did you know that it is named for Pyrrhus of Epirus, a shrewd military strategist and benevolent king from 297-272 B.C.?
Maybe. Anyway, here’s me and Brian Bassett of TheJetsBlog.com talking about yesterday’s Jets win:
I made my opinions on a potential Yankees-Phillies matchup pretty clear last week.
You would think that Mets fans would know enough to blindly agree with what I say, but there’s still a shocking amount of Internet debate surrounding the existential dilemma we’re currently facing.
Paul at Section Five Twenty-Eight and James at Amazin’ Avenue, two gentlemen known to frequent these parts, made compelling cases for why we should root against the Phillies. I’m with them.
In fact, the main arguments against rooting against the Phillies boil down to these:
1) The Yankees buy their championships
First of all, Mets fans: Just because your glass house is falling apart doesn’t give you the right to throw stones. The Mets had the second-biggest payroll in baseball this year, and even if they didn’t spend like the Yanks did, they still tried pretty hard to buy a championship. They just did a poor job of it.
Second, there’s still nothing illegal about trying to buy a championship. The Yanks bring in a lot of cash, so they spend it on players. Would you prefer the Steinbrenners pocketed the loot? Would that be, in some way, more honorable?
The disparity in payrolls is Major League Baseball’s problem, not the Yankees. The Yankees are doing the best that they can do win. It is the league’s responsibility to regulate their spending. And if you believe that the league should do more to regulate that spending, then you should be rooting for the Yankees, because if the Yankees keep not winning World Series with the league’s highest payroll then there’s no evidence that they can actually “buy” a championship.
2) My friends are Yankee fans, and they’ll rub it in my face
Will they? Then I have a solid suggestion for you: Get some new friends.
I recognize that there’s an obnoxious sense of entitlement among some Yankee fans, but I’ve actually found it remarkably easy to filter those people out of my life. It turns out, people who are obnoxious and entitled about anything are just not too pleasant to be around. Nowadays, the Yankee fans I do interact with are mostly kind and reasonable people who recognize how lucky they are to root for a team with a $200 million payroll.
Beyond that, Mets fans: Are Yankee fans really rubbing it in your faces, or are they merely celebrating their team’s victory? Because I always sense a whole lot of Met-fan paranoia when they say, “oh, they’re taunting us,” or whatever. I often get the feeling Yankee fans couldn’t really care less about the Mets, and Mets fans simply harbor a good deal of Freudian envy toward their luckier neighbors.
3) I can’t root for A-Rod because he’s a (cheater/[expletive])
First of all: Let’s stop castigating specific people for the steroids thing. A-Rod failed a test on the condition of anonymity, then fessed up about it when the results were illegally leaked. That doesn’t make him right, but there were 103 other people on that list, and for all we know several of them are current Phillies. Lots and lots of baseball players did steroids, and so rooting against any team just because they have a player who we know for certain did steroids represents a woefully ignorant approach.
Second: Yankee fans barely even like A-Rod. If you’re a Yankee-fan-hating Mets fan, you should praise A-Rod just to tick them off. I guarantee those same entitled and obnoxious fans that threaten your sanity here in New York are the ones that have long scorned A-Rod’s unclutchiness and cancerous clubhouse presence.
Think of how he’s making them eat their words this year! And think of all the sportswriters who have been forced to question everything they thought they knew because of A-Rod’s postseason performance! That alone makes me root for the guy.
So yeah, I’m rooting for A-Rod and Yankees. Or, as Catsmeat suggested the last time I weighed in on this, some unprecedented tectonic event. Either is acceptable. Rooting for the Phillies is not.
So Mark McGwire’s going to coach the Cardinals’ hitters next year, and good for them. The dude could hit.
Good for him, too. For some reason, McGwire feels like the most tragic of the outed performance-enhancers, maybe because he managed — or at least tried — to maintain his dignity throughout everything.
Anyway, I bring it up because it allows me to rehash what I’ve always considered an interesting topic of baseball discussion, and one I’ve written about before. In 1998, after watching McGwire hit two home runs in a double-header at Shea, my friend Eric and I were chilling on his back porch discussing McGwire’s awesomeness.
We agreed that he was the best hitter imaginable, but I argued that his talents were mitigated at least a bit by the fact that he couldn’t even capably defend first base, at least not to the eye.
From there, we speculated on how a team would fare if you could somehow clone Mark McGwire and field an entire team of Mark McGwires. Would nine Mark McGwires score enough runs on offense to compensate for their awful defense and pitching?
It’s an interesting question, but one that can’t be answered. It does, in retrospect, seem oddly foreboding of the more recent sabermetric trend toward trying to better evaluate defense.
As the conversation progressed, I pointed out that if you could clone Mark McGwire, why stop at nine? Why not fill the stadium with Mark McGwires, or create a whole damn army of Mark McGwires, stomping into battle, bats on shoulders, chanting “McGwire!”?
That’d be badass, you must admit. The dude was pretty intimidating in his heyday.
I can’t believe that Mark Sanchez is dealing with even the tiniest bit of sanctimony over eating a hot dog during the fourth quarter yesterday.
I don’t get it at all. He apologized afterward. Why? Honestly: Why? Why should he be sorry for eating if he’s hungry? He said he was feeling a bit queasy, so he wanted to eat something.
I’m not sure a hot dog is the best way to cure an upset stomach, but if it’s what Mark Sanchez wanted, why does anyone care? He said he should have had an energy bar instead. Why? It’s all food, right? Don’t judge Mark Sanchez for the complexities of his palate. If you want a hot dog, Mark Sanchez, eat a hot dog.
He shouldn’t have even had to hide it! Poor guy had to go into stealth mode to put mustard on the thing. Stand up, Mark Sanchez, and proudly munch that frankfurter. Let the world know that when you eat a hot dog, it’s an extremely hot dog.
I happen to think it’s particularly awesome. What a stud. Here’s what it looks like when Mark Sanchez eats a hot dog:
Carlos Beltran has outlasted Steve Phillips. A rare victory for reason. Funny that Phillips was fired for dropping his pants when his worst offense was opening his mouth.
How did Reuters miss this hoax? Great investigative journalism by Bruce Watson, though I would have thought Abe Froman was a household name. Also, hilarious work by the American Mustache Institute again. What a wonderful gang of heroes. (Hat tip to my dad for the link.)
I’m with Cerrone here. This seems to be a hot topic among Mets fans right now, but I really just don’t see how anyone could root for the Phillies. Ever.
Leon Washington’s career could be over. Very sad.
Tedquarters 