A Conversation with Tali

My friend Tali is a crazy Yankees fan. All he thinks about are the Yankees. When he is at work, he thinks about the Yankees. When he is not working, he concentrates on the Yankees completely, since he does not have the distraction of a job to disrupt his thought about the Yankees. When he is asleep, Tali dreams about the Yankees and writes down notes on a pad he keeps on a table near his bed. He sends the notes to Joe Torre, hoping to help the Yankees manager. Tali is the twenty sixth Yankee. He and I are alike in that way. I am the twenty seventh Yankee but I am more realistic than Tali.

Today is May 26. The Yankees are in second place, 2 games behind the Boston Red Sox, and to the surprise of many, two games ahead of the Angels for that abomination created to provide a playoff series in October, the Wild Card. This year has been, and will continue to be, a struggle for the Yankees even though Tali says the team is about to take off.

Baseball fans and writers never learn. They give lip service to the reality that no one knows what is going to happen and then boldly predict events that will not occur for months. With that in mind, it is forecast that the Red Sox and Yankees will make the playoffs. Seattle should win the West, and Chicago should win the Central, but that really does not matter. What does matter is that the Yankees and Red Sox will play each other for the American League pennant if each wins the first round of the playoffs, since teams in the same division cannot play each other in the first round. It will be a best of seven series.

Beating Boston in the playoffs will not be easy. The Yankees are a vastly overrated team with glaring weaknesses that home runs and weak opponents camouflage. The Yankees' offense is built on the Earl Weaver concept that a three run home run is the best offense. It is not. The best offense is one that scores runs consistently, making use of singles, bases on balls, sacrifices, and strategic hitting depending of the game situation. The best offense is one that does not give up unproductive outs by striking out at a near-record pace.

At the end of games played through May 25, the Yankees had played 50 games, struck out 393 times and led the league with 374 runners left on base. At that rate, the team will strike out

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