ON THE USES AND ABUSES OF BASEBALL ANALOGIES FOR LIFE

Baseball is probably the only area of life in which I am somewhat superstitious. In this, of course, I am not unique. Perhaps it is something about the unbearable contingency of baseball multiplied by the length of the game -- and combined with years of watching the Sox.

So, with all that said, and with the appropriately modest and humble statements concerning the Sox's chances directed at the gods, let me say: Robert Kagan should be eating some of his words right now. In a recent syndicated column comparing criticism of the Yankees with criticism of American foreign policy, Kagan argued that even experts like WaPo writer Thomas Boswell find it impossible to transcend their own "rooting interest." Quoth Kagan (here):

Boswell, being human, fell prey to the availability heuristic, partly because of something I'll call its "rooting interest" corollary. Boswell hates the Yankees. Or rather, he hates George Steinbrenner's fat wallet (and who doesn't, other than me and a few million other Yankee fans?) He was rooting for the Yankees to fall flat on their big, overpaid faces. This affected his normally perfect judgment and led him to imagine that the bad news of spring could be extrapolated through the end of the season. But the key Yankees hit close to their lifetime averages, which is sort of the point about lifetime averages, and the team took its $180 million payroll to the playoffs for the 10th straight year. And, by the way, hasn't Boswell seen the typical Gary Sheffield home run? No park can hold him.

Now Kagan uses a lot of fancy words to make the point that when you want to see something, you tend to see it, especially when immediately available events seem to point in the direction that you find amenable to your prejudices.

The problem this year, of course, is that the critics of the Yankees were right. They may have made it to the playoffs, but they weren't even close to good enough to avoid the worst playoff choke in baseball history. And if individual events matter, then from this point forward, it is less interesting to note that the Yankees have been successful than to note that they are now wiling away their time in a bar somewhere watching someone else compete for the championship.

On the plane of historical baseball writing, it might be important to note that the Yankees have been extraordinarily successful over the past few decades. The folks who produce historical baseball writing do not hold very much sway in the world, though, and they certainly aren't going to win a World Series ring for anyone.

I'll leave it to you to draw out the parallels with Kagan's argument about "the Bush doctrine." After all, it's game time.

PS: by the way, that's Doctor Steven Tyler to you, buddy.