The Good, the Bad, and the Yankees
Happy November. This is the twenty-third issue of Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit — it’s just like all those other email newsletters, except have you tried texting STOP to end it?
The spooky season has ended, and with the election just days away, the season of pure dread has begun. But the Yankees lost the World Series, so all is right with the world for now.
2016/2020 vibes
As on previous Election Days, I’m planning to avoid the horse-race TV coverage of exit polls, talking heads, and red-and-blue electoral maps, hopefully sparing myself from minute-to-minute hot takes and anxiety attacks as much as possible.
On election night in 2016, I went to the movies. By the time I exited the theater, it was already pretty clear from the mood on Twitter that the race was over and our long, national nightmare just begun. When I got home, I continued to stay off the news sites and away from the TV. Instead of clicking around or flipping channels looking for answers, I finished off that evening drinking a lot of whisky and listening to Thin Lizzy on repeat.
As disjointed as that experience was, I don’t think my time would have been better spent watching jittery election needles and half-baked postmortems.
In 2020, as the mail-in votes were slowly getting tallied, most people were refreshing the NYTimes every few minutes or letting those cable-TV news tickers become a permanent fixture in their homes and psyche. But again, I stuck my head in the sand. I was able to stay away from the news sites for the most part, with only the occasional peek at Twitter.
The uncertainty dragged on.
But, as it turned out, I didn’t need a breaking news segment or a push notification to alert me to the results. The sudden burst of hooping and hollering outside my window let me know who the winner was as soon as the election was called.
So that’s my plan again this time around, when even more is at stake than those two elections before: a self-imposed, half-assed media blackout, as much as a blackout is possible these days. (Twitter and the other Twitter-like social media platforms have become mostly useless for news now — I don’t know if that will help or hurt my cause.)
Though, thinking back to when the 2020 election was finally called and the city erupted in sudden joy, I wonder what the sounds would have been if the results in Pennsylvania had pointed the other way. A collective shriek or groan? Or maybe nothing. Maybe just more silence.
In that case — in the absence of hoots, hollers, pot-banging, and impromptu trumpet solos out my window, with the relief and hoopla replaced by voices caught in throats and a wall of hushed dread — it might be that I’ll be the last to know if the election was lost and the future has become as bleak as it’s ever been. But really, is that so bad, either?
2004 vibes
I grew up in Los Angeles (and have now lived even longer in Brooklyn, three and a half miles from the former site of Ebbets Field and even closer to Washington Park), so I retain a fondness for the boys in blue. But I never really followed any sports teams as a kid, even though it was the heyday of the Dodgers, Lakers, and Raiders in LA.
I didn’t fall in love with baseball until after I moved to Boston (the second time) and was radicalized by a Red Sox–Yankees game that revealed to me that (1) baseball is fun, and (2) Fenway Park is the greatest place on Earth.
So: congratulations to the Los Angeles Dodgers on becoming the 2024 World Champions — but even more importantly — hallelujah on humiliating those insufferable goobers, the New York Yankees.
This year is the twentieth anniversary of the end of the curse and “The Greatest Comeback in History”. With Roberts and Boone in the dugouts — along with Jeter, A-Rod, and Ortiz behind the desk — the 2004 vibes were very present.
Before this year’s series began, there was some consternation among baseball fans — performative handwringing and superficial outrage that two of the richest teams in baseball spent their way to the top. Yankees East versus Yankees West. But who doesn’t want to watch a World Series with the game’s two best teams, including its two best players?
And while Ohtani and Judge scuffled more than raked, for the most part, the series did not disappoint. The first and last games had moments that were about as good as baseball gets. And you could not ask for more than a multi-boner performance by the Yankees to blow it. A-Rod called the Yankees’ farcical fifth inning in Game 5 “one of the biggest meltdowns I’ve ever seen” — which, LOL, he should know!
So, while the Red Sox didn’t even make the postseason, the fans were there in spirit. Let’s keep the good vibes going, and make sure the evil empire has no choice but to accept the results.
Other rabbit holes
Listen to the Terminator. If you haven’t voted already, vote. If you don’t know who to vote for, I can’t help you. Arnie and Bernie, however, have attempted to sway those on the right and left who still harbor misgivings about voting against party or conscience.
Eat the rich. I feel like this article about “What It’s Like Being a Billionaire’s Personal Assistant” sums up our nation’s current predicament just as well as any discussion about electoral politics. The world’s rich have the power — and they are completely delusional.
Speaking of goobers. The only thing worst than the Yankees are their fans.
And that’s it for this month’s edition. Have a good one.
jf