Ah… a Yankees team most of us can finally stand.

Baseball’s perennial high-flyers haven’t just come down to earth, they’ve plowed a trench auguring in.

Losers of their last five in a row and currently wallowing in last place in the American League East, the Bronx Bombers are dropping duds wherever they play this season.

The biggest draw in baseball is now not just the team everyone wants to beat. They are the team everyone is depending on beating if they want to stay in the hunt.

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With a batting lineup that - top to bottom – should make any pitcher look like Cy Young, the Yankees just don’t have it this year. Injuries do have a lot to do with it – they set a major league record by starting “rookie” pitchers ten times in their first 30 games. But even that’s not enough to excuse losing as much as they have.

Their starting lineup reads like a fantasy team. Their payroll stands at $190-million, by far the biggest in baseball, yet they have to look up in the overall standings to see such baseball powers as the Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, Florida Marlins, Colorado Rockies and the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Yes, the Pirates!

While the majority of baseball fans are looking on with a wry grin and a satisfied chuckle, Yankees fans aren’t happy about it. They are begging George Steinbrenner to do something. They are looking for Joe Torre, if not to be fired, to at least consider a quiet retirement.

And they are praying that a 40-something Rocket is still the fireballer he was before he retired - for the third time. Clemens who has already won 348 games, along with seven Cy Young Awards, making him one of the best to ever play the game, and he says he is ready to go next Monday in Chicago.

So next week Yankees will get the much needed lift they so desperately need. Or they won’t. Roger is 44. He’ll be 45 in August. And paying him all the money in the world, which is what the Yankees are pretty much doing, won’t change that fact.

$4.5 million per month for four months work. That works out to about $9,000 per pitch regardless whether they are balls or strikes.

Yankees fans don’t balk at numbers like that because it’s pretty much what they are used to. It’s what they expect in fact because in all of sports, they are the fans that are by far the most spoiled.

Blessed with a crazy rich and just plain crazy owner like Steinbrenner in the #1 media market in the world, the fans of the pinstripes expect their team not only to compete every single years, the expect them to win.

Expect.

Can the folks in Kansas even imagine that? Yankees fans have it easy in comparison to most other fans. It’s not hard work to be a Yankees fan. It’s not like there is any sacrifice involved. No pain. George pays the way to team success and therefore the Yankees haven’t missed the postseason since 1993.

Until, perhaps, this season.

Steinbrenner put general manager Brian Cashman on warning. One of their coaches, Marty Miller, is out of a job. By the way, he was the team’s Director of Performance Enhancement, whose acronym is D-O-P-E. Is his demise and the team’s collapse a co-inky-dink? Let the conspiracy theories fly.

Right now Yankees fans are seeing what it’s like in the rest of baseball. Will it last?

History indicates - nope.

Going into June, the Yankees are 14.5 games behind the Red Sox. In 1978 Boston was 14 games ahead of the Yankees in late July - yet they lost the division title in the Bucky Dent game. Just last season the Red Sox were four games ahead of New York on July 4th – the halfway point of the season. In August, the Yankees swept them in five games. By September 9th, the Red Sox were 10 games out.

So, if you are a Yankees fans, hope for a Rocket launch and George’s money to make you happy again.

And for the rest of us, enjoy these Yankees while you can.

Cheers - Gavin McDougald - AKA Couch