Yankees Select Nestor Cortes Jr.

You’re making a virtue out of complacency when this team’s GM has had by far the most money to spend over the last 20 years and has one championship to show for it. Meanwhile, Boston, in the same time span, has four sets of rings to brag on, with less money spent in every one of their championship years except one, 2018.

“But there is really nothing we as fans can do about it, uh?”

How about not buying tickets to finance the failures of an incompetent GM, for a start?

If watching this garbage baseball from a misbegotten team is your idea of entertainment, the choice is yours, bro.

Yeah, you are: “Personally, I would rather get invited to the dance than stay home sulking.”

If that doesn’t mean you’re content with year after year of postseason failure, what does it mean?

And if Cashman isn’t to blame, who is? Is someone else assembling these rosters and putting his name on their work?

Lastly, whence comes that insinuation that my self-worth depends on the success or lack thereof of a bunch of millionaire athletes? Yours doesn’t? Good for you. Neither does mine, nor has it ever.

Now why don’t you brag some more about your hobby of murdering feral pigeons? With any luck you might orphan a nest of babies to die of starvation. What could be more fun and satisfying?

I used to shoot birds when I was a kid in the Midwest. Then I grew up and realized with deep regret what a shameful pastime it was. Now I share the following sentiments:

“When I was 12, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning?” – HOF NFL coach Marv Levy

“I just don’t want to kill anything anymore.” – Larry Bird

“Bagging a bird,” Eastwood said, “I was thinking, ‘The poor duck, what the hell did she do that for?’ I don’t go for hunting. I just don’t like killing creatures.” – Clint Eastwood

“Many years ago, I was fishing, and as I was reeling in the poor fish, I realized, ‘I am killing him–all for the passing pleasure it brings me.’ And something inside me clicked. I realized as I watched him fight for breath, that his life was as important to him as mine is to me.” – Paul McCartney

And, with some reservations, this one:

“You need to hunt something that can shoot back at you to really classify yourself as a hunter. You need to understand the feeling of what it’s like to go into the field and know your opposition can take you out. Not just go out there and shoot Bambi.” – Jesse Ventura

I don’t think murdering people is any worthier an enterprise than murdering other creatures, but his point about the phony machoism of hunting is well taken.

There’s no “sport” in killing beautiful creatures who only want to live. Their lives in the wild are hard enough without being targeted by humans who think killing is fun.

As for those farmers who allegedly think shooting the birds will help control their bird problem (it doesn’t), if they’d invest in some roosting deterrent methods as simple as blocking building openings, altering the angle of ledges, and screening the underside of rafters with wire mesh, they’d have much less of a problem than they’ll have by neglecting these fixes and relying on your “sport.”

But where’s the fun in that?

“But, unless you are growing all of your own food there is quite probably a bit of hypocrisy with a lot of the judgements I typically hear.”

You’re eating those pigeons you shoot?

I still can’t in good conscience countenance the killing of wild animals unless you’re so poor that you need the protein to survive. Their lives are sacred to me now, and the lives that they live in the wild are so much harder than ours that it seems to me needlessly cruel to hunt them unless it’s a matter of survival. And more than enough farmed animals are slaughtered to feed every meat eater in America who can afford to buy their meat.

But as long as you eat what you kill and you’re a sure enough marksman that you don’t leave wounded prey to die miserable lingering deaths, I’ll own that you’re not of that loathsome breed who just kill for kicks — like that chickenshit country singer who murdered a tame bear with a bow and arrows in a canned hunt; or Trump’s posturing brats who murder endangered species so they can indulge their Hemingway fantasies and pretend they’re he-men. You’ve probably seen the photo of Junior posing with the slashed-off tail of an elephant he murdered. And as if murdering an elephant weren’t bad enough, you can tell from the dimensions of the tail and of the elephant’s leg visible in the frame that it was far from a mature elephant, closer to a yearling than to an adult. What a hero.

When I was around 15, there was a rich slob in our neighborhood who hired a helicopter in Alaska so the coward could shoot bears from the air. I’m confident that you feel no kinship with that kind of creep.

Like I said before, I have blood on my hands from my past killing, so I’m not feigning moral superiority. I’m acutely aware of my past cruelty and present guilt. But, somewhat like McCartney, I experienced a change in perception about violence towards other creatures and I can’t unsee what I’ve seen, so I feel obligated to advocate for animals to be left in peace when the topic arises.

And, for the record, I’m not a member of PETA, who, I’ve read, murder thousands of animals routinely in their “shelter,” deceiving people into thinking that the animals they’re handing over to them are being “rescued.” Most are killed within 24 hours of them getting their hands on them; healthy animals, contrary to PETA propaganda. They’ve even allegedly stolen people’s pets and killed them. I think the founder is a weirdo.

Neither am I a Buddhist, but I think Siddhartha Gautama was on the money when he said: “All beings tremble before violence. All fear death. All love life. See yourself in others, then whom can you hurt?”

This world is designed in such a way that survival through violence is built-in. Predators and prey. It’s a tough reality to be reconciled to; at least for me it is. I guess I can say my bottom line is that it’s worthwhile to eliminate as much of the violence as one can, to lessen the sum of suffering on the planet.

I acknowledge that it’s a thorny issue. Not that my opinion is any concern of yours, but I appreciate that you’re thoughtful about the subject.

I don’t know where you get that notion about wild turkeys. They’re as worthy of life as other creatures the Lord made and as worthy of protection from needless harm.

You shoot bears. Can it possibly be that you don’t know that the species you remarked that are prone to overpopulation are so prone because hunters have killed off their natural predators — like bears?

You can tell yourself there’s no bloodlust or machoism involved. But what you can’t tell me is that you have respect or regard for the animal you’re killing. To you, the taking of a bear’s life is a “sport.”

You don’t believe — perhaps because you don’t want to — that a bear has a mind and heart capable of feelings as significant as your own. A bear will fight to the death to protect her young, as will most creatures whose feelings you think worthless. Animals show undeniable affection for their young. Even more telling, there are countless instances of animals showing profound affection for humans.

Lions raised domestically and returned to the wild have, years later, run to and embraced the humans who raised them when they came to the African wildlife preserves where they’d been relocated.

A pet pig named Lulu injured herself badly squeezing through a dog’s pet door to save a woman, Jo Ann, who’d had a heart attack in the house. Jo Ann was pet-sitting for her daughter when she collapsed. The pig bloodied its sides squeezing through the pet door and then lay down in the street to stop a car. A motorist got out of his car and followed the pig to the house after watching the pig run back and forth to the front door, The man went inside, found Jo Ann lying on the floor and called 911, saving her life. Lulu was honored with the ASPCA‘s Trooper Award for bravery.
“I’m extremely lucky to be alive,” Jo Ann said. “Lulu saved my life.”

Do your dogs show affection? Or are they the same as the supposedly mindless, heartless creatures you shoot? There are, again, countless instances of dogs risking their own lives to save their human companions. I’ve been blessed with the affectionate companionship of many animals.

When I was a boy in the Midwest, a neighbor’s dog was chasing a rabbit around our house. A wild rabbit. I raised the door to our garage enough for the rabbit to run in and then closed it against the dog. Of course the rabbit was terrified and hid behind a stack of bicycles against the rear wall. I spoke to it as soothingly as I could and then went inside; we had a door opening into the garage from the den. I had a large box in which my electric train set came. I fitted it with some soft cloths (with my mother’s permission) and set it in front of the bicycles with a bowl of water and some food (probably carrots; I don’t remember now). Long story a bit shorter, the rabbit came to trust me, let me pet it, and then let me carry it around the house. we left the garage door slightly open for him to leave, but he never did. But what he did do was hop down our driveway, despite the obvious danger, to meet me when I got off the bus from grade school at the bus stop across the street. The other kids were amazed.

Until one day, he didn’t. My mother was standing at the front door when I got off the bus, looking forlorn. She met me and said she had sad news. A gang of workman for the city had been digging a trench through the yards in our neighborhood to lay pipes, and one of the bastards saw my rabbit hopping around the bushes around our back yard, My mother saw him throw a shovel. The rabbit had managed to get back into his bed in the garage, where he died.

Animals love.

“Praise the Lord from the earth,
You great sea creatures and all the depths;
Fire and hail, snow and clouds;
Stormy wind, fulfilling His word;
Mountains and all hills;
Fruitful trees and all cedars;
Beasts and all cattle;
Creeping things and flying fowl;
Kings of the earth and all peoples;
Princes and all judges of the earth;
Both young men and maidens;
Old men and children.

“Let them praise the name of the Lord,
For His name alone is exalted;
His glory is above the earth and heaven.”

I don’t eat Big Macs. The only meat I’ve eaten in many years is fish. I sense that I shouldn’t be doing that either and maybe I’ll finally give that up too.

I know too well the misery of animals on factory farms and I prefer not to subsidize their misery by buying their flesh. My father grew up on a small subsistence farm where the animals weren’t treated like insensitive machines.

But many of my pets through the years have been carnivores, so I’ve had to make allowances to feed them. There’s no getting away from it.

The idea that people wouldn’t be able to hike or camp unless you hunt bears is nonsense. I’ve spent days on the trail in the Green Mountains in Vermont, the Sierras in California and the Rockies in Montana. There were bears around, and when you’re in their territory you take precautions, wearing bells so they know you’re coming and hanging food in airtight containers away from where you bed down.

As for their diet, bears are omnivorous, and besides eating mostly plant matter, they supplement their diet with young and sometimes mature deer, elk, moose and caribou, as well as beavers, bobcats, coyotes, ground squirrels, mice, foxes, voles, gophers, fish, ducks, geese, grouse, eggs, insects and worms … among other things.

And frankly, I don’t think it would be a loss if the yahoos disturbing animals in the wild with their ATVs and boom boxes and spreading beer cans and other trash in their wake, and sometimes igniting forest and brush fires, never went into the wilderness again. We’ve already encroached more than enough on the habitat of America’s wildlife. I don’t buy into that Manifest Destiny crap. That’s just human arrogance and conceit transplanted here from “Enlightened” Europe. Humans who don’t respect the creatures who were here first are just trespassers. When humans can figure out how to stop murdering each other and fouling the planet, then they can talk about being the equals of other creatures who don’t, let alone their superiors.

I don’t know how fancy the quotation from the Psalm is; but it reflects the awareness of the author that all creatures have a relationship with their creator.

And, as I also noted: animals love.

Ducks, for instance, mate for life. Orcas are known to mourn a dead calf and carry it sometimes for weeks before letting it go. And there are many instances of dogs traveling thousands of miles to be with their beloved human families, and cases of dogs camping on the graves of beloved owners to mourn them.

But humans blind themselves to the intelligence and feelings of animals because it’s convenient to do so. Ghouls in lab coats pour caustic chemicals into the eyes of pinioned animals in phony “tests” of cosmetics so they can post a bullsht label attesting to the product’s safety while creating contrived careers for themselves with their degrees in chemistry. And they tell themselves that producing concoctions to exploit the vanity of vacuous customers is a higher purpose that justifies their torturing helpless creatures needlessly.

Of course I can see this is going nowhere, bro, and I had no illusions that I’d make a dent in your philosophical edifice. But, like I said a ways back there: I feel an obligation to advocate for innocent, suffering animals when the subject arises. I don’t parade around with a sandwich board; you’re the one who brought it up by repeatedly remarking on your guns and hunting.

There are ways of communing with nature other than shooting at it. Other ways of shooting too — with a camera.

If I thought you could be persuaded, I’d encourage you to think, next time you’re about to shoot something: “This creature loves its own and is loved and will be mourned.” But I know you won’t.

Life is a mystery that we all have to confront and come to terms with as best we can. I’m acutely aware that I’m not a wise man. But I do pray, and I pray often that God will protect innocent animals from suffering inflicted by humans. Their suffering pains me.

I hope God will shield you and your loved ones from suffering too.

I think we’re done now. Adios.

There sure are.

That’s an awful lot of anger from a guy who’s confident that he’s right.