COLUMN: Where has the fat lady gone?
A lot of questions surrounded a lot of different baseball clubs heading into the playoffs this season.
Could the Mariners be just as good in the postseason as they were in the regular season? Would Randy Johnson and Curt Shilling be all the pitching the Diamondbacks would need to get to the World Series? Did the Braves deserve to be in the playoffs? Were the Athletics really the best team in the American League West? Are the Cardinals a better team without Mark McGwire in the lineup? Can Houston’s Killer B’s hit in playoff games?
With so many uncertainties, I was sure of just one thing: The New York Yankees were finally going home early this season.
When Oakland took a commanding 2-0 series lead back to California, I considered it a done deal. Not only was the nail in the coffin, but the coffin had five feet of topsoil on it and the tombstone was on the way.
The Yankees were a Fat Lady away from playoff disappointment.
The Fat Lady, however, was no where to be found.
Oakland had three chances to upend the defending champs but couldn’t finish them off.
I knew New York was only postponing the inevitable. They might have sneaked by Oakland, but they’d never defeat Seattle – not this season. After all, the Mariners were destined to win the whole thing this season, just like the Yankees were destined to win it all in 1998.
A strange thing has happened during the ALCS, however.
The Seattle team that won 116 games this season all but disappeared. We’ve seen glimpses of the team, but for the most part, Seattle has not put up the fight many Yankee-haters had hoped it would.
This was puzzling to me, and I’m beginning to fear the Fat Lady will never show up.
When the Fat Lady didn’t make the show in Oakland, I figured she was just taking her sweet time – or she was just a little under the weather and planned on catching New York in the next series.
Now, however, I fear she’s missing in action.
There has to be some reason no one can ever beat the Yankees in October. New York had a horrible September last season, coasting into the playoffs playing some of the worst baseball of manager Joe Torre’s five-year tenure. Yet they turned it around in October, and the Fat Lady – the Grim Reaper of the sporting world – steered clear.
Why?
Maybe this is the price of expansion. Maybe the wild card format has introduced so many teams into the playoff picture that the Fat Lady simply doesn’t have the time to make the rounds anymore.
She never gets to the Yankees because they’re always at the bottom of her alphabetical list of playoff teams.
Then again, maybe she’s bashful. After all, even the most confident performers sometimes choke under the pressure of a New York crowd. Maybe she’s just afraid to sing in front of the battery-chuckers in Yankee Stadium. It’s possible she could be on George Steinbrenner’s payroll and doesn’t want to jeopardize her chances of getting a raise.
Maybe she just doesn’t want to make waves with her employer.
It’s also possible she’s lost some weight and no longer meets the standard measurements of a singing fat lady. She could be singing like a canary right now, but if she’s no longer fat, the Yankees will never lose. When was the last time a skinny woman decided the outcome of a game, or a playoff series for that matter? It’s never happened – ever. No baseball game has ever ended because a skinny woman sang. It’s always the Fat Lady who decides when the game is over. Skinny ladies don’t have that authority.
We can debate the motives for the Fat Lady’s silence as much as we want, but it’s not going to do us any good.
Time is running out. The Yankees are about to slide into their fourth straight World Series – and if we don’t stop them soon, they could walk away with their fifth World Series championship in the last six years.
It is vital that we find her as soon as possible and get her vocal chords in shape. If we have to fatten her up, we will. If it’s Steinbrenner she’s afraid of, then we’ll offer her a spot in the witness protection program – whatever it takes.
The important thing is that she sings and sings soon because this is the year the Yankees are supposed to come up short.
Besides, Derek Jeter is running out of fingers for his World Series rings, so something’s got to be done.
Casey Hobson is a senior majoring in journalism. Comments can be
sent to him at
hobsonhut@hotmail.com