What ails us all

The Futility Infielder's Jay Jaffe is not well. But fear not - he's not been struck down by some horrible virus: what is ailing him, in fact, are the New York Yankees.

Now all baseball fans rant at some time or another about the Yankees (too wealthy, too smug, too successful), but Jay's piece - "I'll Tell You About the Damn Yankees" - is a rarer species, since it's a rant about the Yankees by a Yankee fan. You may or may not agree with what he says, but you have to like that he rants not only with style, but also with stats.

There's a long list of things that Jay is not happy with as regards the Yankee team and organisation, but it isn't until the final paragraph that we learn what the real root cause is:

And finally, I'm sick of temperatures in the single digits and low teens, and the increasingly graying snow still piled on New York City's curbs. I want to see players bathed in sunlight as they run around on green grass wearing their batting-practice jerseys and tossing the ball lackadaisically. I want the next three weeks before Pitchers and Catchers to pass overnight so we can get on with a baseball season that will inevitably take more twists and turns than we can possibly predict. Bring it on.

Regardless of where your allegiances lie, you'd be hard-pressed to find fault with that.