Over man Cliff with a good piece over at SB Nation–The Conscience of a Lapsed Yankee Fan:

My favorite baseball books are about losers, oddballs, and failures, and what draws me back to every new baseball season isn’t whether or not the Yankees are going to win 95 or 100 games (they’ve won fewer than 94 just twice in the last 16 seasons), it’s seeing how the teams on the fringes perform. Is that rebuild working? Will this be the year that talented young team coalesces into a contender? Will that big trade acquisition or free agent signing take his new team to the next level? Can his previous team compensate for his loss? Can that talented but star-crossed team can stay healthy enough to contend? Did that perennial playoff loser miss its window for a championship? With that managerial change have any impact? How will that new stadium play? How ugly will those new uniforms really be? How will the new playoff or scheduling format impact the pennant races?

As for the Yankees, I don’t worry about them, and that’s what worries me. I want my daughter to love baseball, in part because I’ve dedicated part of my life to it and don’t want her to feel shut out of that. Baseball is a novel that unfolds over years, individual teams are puzzles that take years to solve. The Yankees, however, are more of a long-running television procedural. They hit all the same beats and catch phrases, the credits roll, and then they do it all over again. I spent my childhood hoping I’d see the Yankees win the World Series during my lifetime (yes, really). I suspect I’m now going to spend my daughter’s childhood hoping she’ll see them have a losing season.