juney, get out of my brain
12.27.2004
during the usual morning rounds i read this christopher derosa book review at bronx banter and was so delighted, made a mental note to repost it here. a blog or two later, i saw miss june had the same idea. :D
Allen Barra, Brushbacks and Knockdowns: The Greatest Baseball Debates of Two Centuries (2004)
Purchased for one chapter in which Barra takes aim at baseball’s big lie (that the Yankees have ruined the sport). A few writers have questioned this dogma – once apiece, for variety’s sake. There are some bloggers who see it my way, but Barra is, I believe, the only professional sportswriter to advocate my position on this consistently, and who really understands what a drag the big lie really is:
…you read about a Kansas City Royals fan in a restaurant yelling at Derek Jeter “You’re what’s wrong with baseball!” Derek Jeter is what’s wrong with baseball? That’s enough to make any reasonable person hop on a plane to Kansas City, find that guy, grab him by the collar and yell something like “You ungrateful jerk, you ought to feel privileged to be able to buy a ticket and see him play!”
[this chapter is] first about how the press bought into the line put out by Bud Selig in preparation for … negotiation with the players, and second, how the perception of Yankee dominance that resulted from that propaganda has unfairly tainted perhaps the greatest run of clutch play in baseball history.
Barra then goes on to detail all the “gutsy calls, clutch plays, and thrilling endings” against tough opponents that went into the Yankees’ odds-defying string of championships, and says, in response to the big lie:
… those of us who followed those seasons carefully and now remember them vividly will always know different…. [The Yankees] gave baseball a legacy of heart, grit, and professionalism that baseball could have pointed to with pride, much as the NBA did with the Michael Jordan-era Chicago Bulls.
Exactly – what should have been celebrated and has to be respected was instead shat upon by envious fans and their various enablers.
