SANSA: “It can’t be any worse.”
THEON/REEK: “It can. It can always be worse.”
Of course, if we’re going to talk about the baseball and football seasons we’ve been enjoying since late March, here on the eve of the return of hockey and basketball — and trust me, we are — a far different “Game of Thrones” reference point is probably more appropriate.
Officially the ninth episode of Season 3 was titled “The Rains of Castamere.” But we all know it by another name.
The Red Wedding.
And oh, my, has the blood flowed around here since March 30, a day in which the Yankees blanked the Giants, 5-0, at the Stadium, and the Mets clubbed the Marlins, 5-3 in Miami, a pleasant-enough start to this extended tour through sporting Hell that just keeps getting better and better, hotter and hotter.
In times of equal suffering, there is a cross-pollination of sorts that occurs among the truest of the true believers in our quaint sporting burg, a narrow dollop of light that as much as you may be suffering with your team, at least the other guys are, too. It’s a lousy way to spend a season, but sometimes it’s all you have.
YANKEES FAN: “It could be worse. The Mets are dumping all of their good players.”
METS FAN: “It could be worse. The Yankees kept all of their good players, and they still barely escaped last place.”
METS FAN: “I can’t believe we fired our GM and our manager again.”
YANKEES FAN: “I can’t believe we’re keeping our GM and our manager again.”
It went like that a lot this summer, Yankees fans and Mets fans taking whatever solace they could by noting that the grass was always a little browner on the other side of the fence. The Mets were eliminated from postseason with 10 days left in the season, the Yankees with seven days, but from the middle of August on it was “Game of Thrones” mashed up with “The Deer Hunter” a wedding that went on and on and on … splattered in carnage.
Thank goodness for football season …
Yeah. About that …
GIANTS FAN: “At least our quarterback stayed upright longer than four minutes.”
JETS FAN: “Well, for now.”
JETS FAN: “Two-and-three ain’t great but at least we’re not 1-4!”
GIANTS FAN: “When do we get to play a semi-pro team like the Broncos?”
And really, if you think about it, this football season is still only a quarter of the way through. So theoretically, things can get better.
But do you think they’re going to get better?
There’s more. The celestial marionettes who control such things have been especially cruel because so much of what we’ve seen so far in the autumn has been a bad — and bloody — callback to what we saw in spring and summer.
1. We saw Aaron Rodgers disappear four snaps into the season, crashing to the ground at MetLife Stadium, which is only four snaps more than Edwin Diaz got after he crumpled to the turf at Miami’s loanDepot Park during the WBC.
2. We saw Buck Showalter’s supply of pixie dust, which yielded 101 wins and a Manager of the Year plaque in 2022, evaporate in a hail of miserable, unwatchable baseball. And we have seen the same thing happen to Brian Daboll’s bag of elixirs, which pushed the Giants to nine wins, a playoff victory, and a Coach of the Year trophy, and crumble under some of the most blightful football you’ve ever seen. Daboll must hope the eerie connection ends there.
3. We spent much of the Yankees season wondering when they were getting on a hot streak, even as the injuries began to pile up and logic insisted the earliest available hot streak wouldn’t be until 2024. So far the Giants have gone looking for that streak with Saquon Barkley and Andrew Thomas in civvies, and the Jets will see Alijah Vera-Tucker do his best blocking the rest of the way protecting Rodgers from the hungry hordes at the luxury-suite buffet line.
That’s it, for now, but there’s still a lot of season left in this season, and a lot of time for those sinister celestial marionettes to do their baleful business. Sure, it can get better. Still … at the quarter pole of baseball season the Mets were only 19-21, the Yankees actually 22-18.
So it can also get worse.
Much, much worse.
NEWS CREDIT
