Who else but the Yankees would release a statement about Henry Kissinger dying?

There is probably a long treatise on how a crumbling empire of a baseball team wants to honor Henry Kissinger, the architect of American exceptionalism being an excuse to do whatever that country wants around the world that only led to this crumbling empire, but quite frankly I’m too tired and incapable in half a dozen other ways.

Had to be them:

The Cowboys may claim to be America’s Team, but that’s just a bumper sticker to put on the back of a pickup and some kind of soma to blind those who’d have it to how the country screws them over. The Yankees have always been the team of the sneering, ruling class, with their corporate rules on appearance and the fact that no one has ever looked like they’ve ever had any fun being a Yankee until they actually won. Which they don’t do a lot of anymore either. Sounds like America’s team to me.

Baseball’s winter meetings get underway this weekend, and while it’s a weak free-agent class, the intrigue will be at its highest simply due to the most unique player in baseball history being available to the highest bidder or wherever he deems he wants to go. Not since LeBron James has a player in any sport with the ability to lord over a particular league so heavily been on the open market like Shohei Ohtani. Perhaps in baseball history no one since Barry Bonds moved across the country.

Go on the socials and you’ll see fans of a host of teams who have already worked themselves into a lather that they are the ones who will see Ohtani hold up a 17 in their colors at a press conference to be held in the next two weeks. You can find a myriad of reporters saying that what they’re hearing corroborates all those fans’ hopes and dreams. Toronto, Chicago (north side), LA, San Francisco, maybe both sides of New York, they’ll all be draining their phones all weekend waiting to hear the news from Nashville.

Some team will sign Cody Bellinger. Another will get Jordan Montgomery. A few others along with those will make a real difference to their new employers come the spring. But only one team gets to laugh all winter and all spring training, and even harder when the first crushed hanging curve is lost by the eyes over a right field wall somewhere. Everyone wants that. It sure is nice to have a proper hot stove back again.

Al Michaels was doing that thing again last night:

Most people have criticized Michaels for sounding completely checked out on most Thursday night games. But as Homer Simpson said, “If you don’t like your job...you just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.” There’s something to be admired about Amazon chucking all this money at the NFL and at Michaels to give their Thursday night games the gravitas they never had, and then watching Michaels make it clear he couldn’t care less while dumping on the product the whole time. American dream, that.