Come back kids

My Yankees! They just don't know how to lose. They refuse to even when there are only two innings left and four runs to make up, when the game is over and nine innings have been played, they go on. Because the drama must build to this climax. Face off with the nemesis. Armies of arch-rivals deface one another's signs. Boston thinks this is the year the spell will be broken. Yankees vs. Sox. Again. But unlike Plath, one year in every ten, the Sox don't manage it. Reassuring that there are predictable patterns of outcomes. College students consume six too many beers and leave with the wrong person. Rational actors will not cooperate unless they stand to gain says game theory. And at the end of the game John Sterling's voice thundering "thhhhhee Yankees win!" The Sox Red in the face Guildensterns, each season battling the Yankees to be heads of the American League, flipping coins for eternity and watching it come down 85 times against them. The laws of probability don't hold. Some syllogism says there are super-, sub-, or unnatural forces at work here. Characters with a written course, double play's fated outcome, a divinity that shapes our ends rough hew them how we bootless will. Perhaps it's the curse of the bambino. Or the force of the team that refuses to lose, to lie down, let go. They are hopelessly devoted to winning. And so am I. I refuse to be beaten by drunkenness or immaturity or choosing the wrong side, tails. I will not crawl into the dugout and hang and hide. I'm an Austen, Dawson's determined, devoted romantic devout in my Yankee religion, hoping I'll win at least before the Sox do.