OMYACC

BY KEVIN KERNAN

Mo knows.

So does CC, you can cc: CC.

In this MLB era of launch angle swings, little situational hitting, and so few .300 hitters, the truth is out there if Major League Baseball wants to hear it.

Mariano Rivera and CC Sabathia dropped truth bombs on Saturday at Yankee Stadium III.

Just like the Jack Nicholson as Colonel Jessup character in the movie classic A Few Good Men said: “You can’t handle the truth!’’

Baseball cannot handle the truth. Those in charge of teams can’t handle the truth.

Sitting in the YES booth on Saturday with Michael Kay and Paul O’Neill, Sabathia was asked by O’Neill, in this era of launch angle baseball: “You wouldn’t have changed the way you pitched at all, right?’’

“No,’’ Sabathia immediately answered. “It’s way easier to get outs now in today’s game. Just because everybody is trying to get an ‘A’ swing off. I think, back in the day with hitters like you when I first came up, you know guys would cut that swing down to put a ball in play to, you know, situational hit, different things.

“You see guys now, no matter what the situation is, no matter what point in the game, they are trying to get an ‘A’ swing off and that makes it a lot easier for pitchers. I feel like the last couple of years we have been trying to do everything to provide more offense, but it is just the mentality that the hitters have, the mentality that these guys are teaching, ‘We just want you to get an ‘A’ swing off.’ For me, I find that a lot easier to move the ball around to get outs.’’

Hallelujah CC.

That’s what I’ve been saying for a long time and a legion of baseball men have backed me up, but we are just the “Old Men Yelling At Clouds Club.’’ The Nerds have destroyed the game from within and too many baseball people have looked the other way because they want to hold onto jobs.

More former players need to speak up, if for nothing else, to show club owners that the people who know baseball best, the people who played it at the major league level, have had it with the gaslighting that has been going on by front offices.

O’Neill, to his credit, totally agreed with Sabathia, so now they have joined my club, welcome to the Old Men Yelling At Clouds Club (OMYACC). Think of it as you would a yacht club.

For some reason, owners refuse to listen to what the baseball men are saying and instead listen to those in charge, many of whom, have never picked up a bat or a ball in the heat of battle.

That’s on the owners. The proof is right in front of them if they dare to look.

As I write this there are only eight hitters in all of baseball hitting over .300. Eight is not enough. And where would the game be without the two superstar hitters, Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani? Judge hit home runs No. 50 and 51 on Sunday in the Yankees’ 10-3 bludgeoning of the armless Rockies. He’s hitting .333. Ohtani owns 41 home runs and 40 stolen bases, in this time of the easy stolen base, and is batting .292.

Those two superstars are covering up for the overall lack of hitting and the plethora of strikeouts.

Instead of addressing the problem, though, the Nerds and their many sycophants conveniently moved the goalpost.

Batting average is no longer important, they say.

“The problem now is that everybody wants to throw 100 miles per hour. But they don’t know where the pitch is going. I’d rather throw 90 miles per hour and know exactly where the pitch is going.’’ – Mariano Rivera

The Sheep Owners nod their heads in agreement as they cash their immense gambling checks, all the while keeping Pete Rose out of the Hall of Fame.

They are such hypocrites.

The voice you heard at the beginning of The Story was not a voice in the wilderness.

This was the voice of the great CC Sabathia.

Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera was also asked by O’Neill about changing his style of pitching if he pitched today. And much like CC, Mo shot down what is going on in the game today not only from a hitting perspective but from a pitching perspective.

It was beautiful.

“I don’t have to change,’’ Rivera said of his cutter style of pitching. “Because that’s my bread and butter. I trusted my (stuff) and that is the difference between pitchers and throwers. I trust my abilities and I throw my pitch. Just go there and pitch. The problem now is that everybody wants to throw 100 miles per hour. But they don’t know where the pitch is going. I’d rather throw 90 miles per hour and know exactly where the pitch is going.’’

Hallelujah II!

Again, let’s listen to that Mo quote.

“The problem now is that everybody wants to throw 100 miles per hour. But they don’t know where the pitch is going. I’d rather throw 90 miles per hour and know exactly where the pitch is going.’’

Again, let’s listen to that CC quote.

“You see guys now, no matter what the situation is, no matter what point in the game, they are trying to get an ‘A’ swing off and that makes it a lot easier for pitchers.’’

That’s not just two Baseball Joes talking, that’s two Hall of Famers who know the game talking, and CC will be elected to the Hall of Fame in 2025.

That’s not a writer who has been covering the game forever and knows the game talking. That’s not a player who had some success in the majors bitching.

That’s two Hall of Famers telling it like it is and I thought for sure, both of those quotes would wind up in stories on Sunday in various posts and all over the internet. They did not – and that is why I am writing this today. I do not want those quotes to be glossed over.

I didn’t see them anywhere, but here at BallNine we make sure to get the word out when ballplayers of a certain stature get the word out. We owe that to the fans.

And speaking of BallNine, let me tell you of a great line Chris Vitali, Mr. BallNine, texted me. Talking about the brainwashed Nerds throughout the game he made a relevant grassroots statement about baseball overcome by metrics.

“I don’t get it,’’ Vitali wrote, speaking for his generation of fans. “When I was a kid sitting in math class I was thinking about baseball. When these (people) watch baseball they’re thinking about math.’’

So true.

Just like the true comments of Mo and CC.

This is why I always enjoyed talking baseball with Mo and CC. I even flew to California one off-season to go to a Raiders game with CC and his friends just to talk off-season baseball with him. It was a delightful trip.

But what do I know?

What do CC and Mo know? I guess we are just part of OMYACC.

Mo and CC didn’t go to some Ivy League school and take a course in analytics, read Moneyball, and then breathlessly watch the movie Moneyball with the same intensity I watched Cybill Shepherd in The Last Picture Show. They did not swear by the numbers on how baseball should be played.

No, they only lived baseball day in and day out. For 19 seasons each. Mo lasted from 1995 to 2013. CC pitched from 2001 to 2019 – and don’t forget CC was a pretty good hitting pitcher.

The baseball gaslighting of this era though is incredible.

These are the greatest hitters of all-time, the Baseball Bros tell us of today’s hitters who can’t sniff a .300 batting average and strike out way too much. It’s just that the pitching is so much harder to hit today than it was back in the day, and, by the way, back in the day was not too long ago; a blink of the eye in baseball years.

And while they are telling the world this, they will mock anyone who thinks or says differently. “Old Men Yelling At Clouds Club’’ or “OK Boomer’’ will scream the Baseball Bros who don’t know baseball as it was once played in all its athletic and strategic glory. Credit to my friend Sal Marinello for coining the phrase Baseball Bros.

Yes, the Baseball Bros are not very creative but they are consistent … lol, ifykyk.

The rich sheep that are MLB owners all shake their heads in agreement and go on to hire their own front office armies devoted to numbers and not baseball and the owners continue to pay as more and more velocity-first, spin is king pitchers wind up on the injured list. They continue to pay as more “A swing’’ hitters continue to strike out in key situations or pop-up, my favorite is the foul pop up with a man on third and less than two outs.

“He just missed it.’’

Meanwhile, talk to any hitter – and I have Baseball Bros, for decades – and they will all lament the foul popup as the worst outcome in baseball. They hate it.

Every once in a while, though, the truth comes out and thank God for former Yankees Mariano Rivera and CC Sabathia. I have had hundreds of baseball conversations with Mo and CC so I am not surprised they told the truth and did not hold back while speaking on YES.

On Saturday both pitchers were at Yankee Stadium for what used to be a fan favorite: Old-Timers’ Day. But pretty much like everything this generation of people in charge of baseball have done, they have ruined another tradition. They still have the Old-Timers’ around Yankee Stadium but there is no game. I grew up in the era where Old-Timers’ Day was truly Old-Timers’ Day and there was a game. You played if you wanted to play and you had fun, especially players like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford.

No one expected the Old-Timers to be young again, but it was so nice to see that glorious No. 7 back on the field at Yankee Stadium, and all the other Old-Timers.

Perhaps it made the fans feel young again – and that was a good thing.

But not much is done for the fans anymore. Maybe the Yankees can come up with a City-Disconnect uniform for Old-Timers’ Day and have former players wear those jerseys as they play an inning or two to try to keep memories alive.

Anything is possible.

There are all kinds of marketing ideas that might suit Hal Steinbrenner.

I covered many of a Yankees Old-Timers’ Day and it was always a joy to see the Yankee heroes up close and talk to them. When they stepped on the field all you had to do was look not only into their eyes to see the magic of baseball but if you looked into a fan’s eyes, there was magic and sometimes even a tear as they remembered the good times of yesteryear.

Former players have lived the life, they have walked the talk and now when they talk – more than ever – baseball needs to listen.