twilightdawning

A writer's thoughts – mainly about music, sport and theatre. Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, live shows, New York Yankees

The New York Yankees – The Batters in September (2018)

Posted on October 8, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees seemed rather to take their eye off the ball, metaphorically speaking, in September. They finished the month with a 15-12 record which was enough to seal their wildcard spot and even to give them home-field advantage in the forthcoming playoffs, but along the way the management made some peculiar and bewildering decisions in terms of who was on the field of play. Let’s look in this first article at the batters who exploded and those who really struggled.

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New York Yankees: Last days of the season

Posted on September 26, 2018 by twilightdawning

Baltimore are the worst team in Major League Baseball but the Yankees are hardly the best.

Who: New York Yankees

What: Baltimore Orioles @ New York Yankees

Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York

When: 21 to 23 September 2018

So, the end is near, as some singer or other once said. The last three home games of the regular season and Yankee Stadium is certainly filling up slowly. In fact, in a worst case scenario, these could be the last home games for the Yankees until next year. If they continued to struggle until the end of the season, they could lose home-field advantage to the Oakland A’s for the wild card playoff. And that is only a one game match-up…

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Red Sox Take American League East – at Yankee Stadium

Posted on September 22, 2018 by twilightdawning

Who: New York Yankees

What: versus Boston Red Sox

Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York

When: 18 to 20 September 2018

Well, surely the Yankees – after their disappointing series loss against Toronto – couldn’t bounce back and manage to win the series against Boston — and still allow the Red Sox to clinch the AL East in the Bronx? Well, if anyone could, these contrary Yankees could. Read on…

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Toronto Trip Up the Yankees

Posted on September 19, 2018 by twilightdawning

Who: New York Yankees

What: versus Toronto Blue Jays

Where: Yankee Stadium, Bronx, New York

When: 14 to 16 September 2018

The plan must have been fairly simple as the Yankees returned to the Bronx for a nine-game home-stand – take 2 or 3 from Toronto, beat Boston 2-1 and blast past Buck Showalter’s weaker-than-ever Baltimore Orioles where a sweep seemed more than possible. What could go wrong?

Well, first of all, the Yankees evidently didn’t reckon on a gutsy, scrappy Blue Jays’ performance and their own all too apparent second half failings.

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The New York Yankees – The Pitchers in August (2018)

Posted on September 14, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees used 8 starters in August. The bullpen was more consistent than the rotation but even there the Yankees lost Aroldis Chapman to the disabled list in the second half of the month. The Yankees had hoped to solve some of their pitching problems by the moves they made at the no-waiver trading deadline but whilst J.A. Happ exceeded expectations, Lance Lynn looked less and less reliable as the month went along.

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The New York Yankees – The Batters in August (2018)

Posted on September 13, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees form had taken a dip by the time the season reached August and the dog days. From a .281 batting average (BA) in the month of July, they fell to a team .240 in the eighth month and a 17-13 win/loss record. Part of this was due to under-performance (let’s all say Greg Bird together and shake our heads sadly). Part of this was due to injury (Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez, although whether in Sanchez’s case that’s a blessing or a curse remains to be seen) but mostly it is down to over-performers coming down to earth. However, that tandem of wonder-rookies, Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar are still playing everyday and still showing great ability (at least offensively). Read on…

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New York Yankees – The Pitchers in July (2018)

Posted on August 6, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees had a difficult month on the pitching front with some of the stalwarts they had depended on all year suddenly losing form. Let’s see who came to the forefront and who was added to the corps to keep the machine a-running:

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New York Yankees – The Batters in July (2018)

Posted on August 3, 2018 by twilightdawning

The Yankees weren’t great in July but they weren’t that bad either. They won exactly three-fifths (15-10) of their games. They suffered a fall of form from lead pitcher Luis Severino and most of the bullpen which meant the batters needed to turn it up a notch. Let’s see who did:

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Dylan in concert and a non-Jungian synchronicity that makes me smile

Posted on July 28, 2018 by twilightdawning

Last night was the first night of Bob Dylan’s tour of the Far East and Australasia.

On Friday, here and elsewhere, I published an article which argued that more care and consideration should be shown in our critiques of Dylan’s art when we considered his albums and his live performances and argued that at a very minimum we should use his written lyrics as a lexicon to try analyse who he is and what he is speaking about:

If you haven’t read it already you can see it here:

https://twilightdawning.com/2018/07/26/bob-dylan-sloppy-analysis-and-hearing-what-we-want-to-hear/

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Bob Dylan, sloppy analysis and hearing what we want to hear

Posted on July 26, 2018 by twilightdawning

Literary criticism, musical criticism and theological criticism are notoriously difficult. The reason that they are so hard is the question of subjectivity. In the early years of the 20th century, a noted conservative theologian said the following of a liberal scholar:

“The Christ that he sees, looking back through nineteen centuries of Catholic darkness, is only the reflection of a Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well.”

It is a very clever idea but could the equal statement also be said of the more conservative thinker. We want our God to be like our theology says he should be. Otherwise we are wrong and that is hard to bear. We want our heroes to be like us. Otherwise that is burdensome.

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