Well, the Yankees are amidst one of their annual pre All Star Break funks and ESPN, leading the masses of masses of bandwagon fans, is, as usual, talking about how horrible this team is and how there is no way they could possible be a World Series contender in 2008. Girardi's a terrible manager, the offense is overpaid and overrated, the pitching's too old, the bullpen's the worst in baseball, etc, etc...
Pardon me for yawning here, but didn't we hear similar things about the World Champion New York Giants and Boston Celtics from ESPN? The Giants were completely disrespected throughout the playoffs while ESPN and its endless message board following spoke of the Patriots invincibility and how they were the best ever. Then in the NBA, ESPN hyped up the Lakers with Kobe/MJ comparisons and how the offense was too explosive to slow down and dismissed the Celtics as a team that could barely get by the Hawks. ESPN and all of you who worship them don't have such a good track record, do you?
Sports are about streaks, about teams getting hot and cold at the right time, about matchups, and about luck. The playoffs begin and everything that everyone overhyped in the regular season becomes absolutely meaningless. Welcome to sports. When a team looks exciting at the moment, ESPN and its following hypes them up, when they slump, ESPN and its following talks about how horrible they are.
Here's the thing though: ESPN and its bandwagon following (and that includes many people here) are usually wrong. Fans listen to them, because ESPN "experts" speak as though they know what they are talking about, but I'd sooner have a moneky with a dart board pick a champion than let ESPN's experts do it.
Which is a big positive for Yankee fans right now. If ESPN and the bandwagon hates are team, that means we are probably pretty good. If ESPN and the bandwagon gives our team no chance to do anything, that means we probably have a pretty good chance of succeeding this year. After all, ESPN and the bandwagon gave the Giants and the Celtics no chance of doing anything either....different sport, but same basic idea...
|
