Here's how Joe Posnanski ended his post about Derek Jeter's injury the other day:

To see him on the ground Saturday night, stretched out, not writhing in pain but instead barely moving at all, it was as if a box of memories opened up, and at the same time that the announcers wondered aloud how the Yankees might go on without Jeter, I tried to imagine how a Yankees team would even LOOK without Derek Jeter at shortstop. It's been so long, I cannot even remember.

Obviously too much attention gets paid to the Yankees because they're the Yankees, so both successes and failures are exaggerated, but this is what the Yankees looked like without Derek Jeter in the lineup:

They averaged a hit about every third inning. They only got four extra-base hits: Teixeira's double in the first inning of Game 2, Nunez's homerun in the 9th inning of Game 3, and Nunez's triple and Swisher's double in the 6th inning of Game 4. They scored two runs: both Nunez, Jeter's replacement, who drove himself in and then put himself on third with no one out. They never had a lead.

Meanwhile, Yankees fans, those spoiled shits, are getting screwed over by Yankees management in the new stadium. Here's a snippet from Jonathan Mahler's excellent piece in Bloomberg News:

For years, I shared a package of season tickets with a group of friends. I eventually bailed out, but they still had their tickets when the new stadium opened. In order to keep the same seats — which went from $45 a ticket to $100, in large part because they gave ticket holders access to a cheesy stadium bar called the Jim Beam Suite Lounge — they had to sign a two- year contract. My friends initially balked, but eventually relented after being assured they would have no trouble reselling tickets on the secondary market.

As it turned out, the Jim Beam Suite Lounge wasn’t such a big draw. People weren’t willing to pay a premium for the tickets, and my friends had to sell their extras at a discount. At the end of the season they informed the Yankees that they wanted to move to cheaper seats. They were told they couldn’t, and the Yankees threatened them with litigation if they didn’t pay up...

The Yankees can buy all of the players they want, but they can’t make them hit. If they don’t hit, the team will lose, and Yankees fans — having emptied their wallets to see a winning team — will lash out, or simply stop buying tickets and merchandise altogether.

Last weekend, we witnessed the first rumblings of a mutiny. If things continue at this rate, the new Yankee Stadium may ultimately become just another symbol of an empire in decline.

I'd love to visit that ruin someday.

“Five more years! Five more years!”

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