Cellar Dwellers?

While the 2008 Major League Baseball season is still in it's infancy stage, we may be getting a real time preview of what Yankee fans with gloom and Yankee haters with glee have to look forward to this season. Thirteen games into the young season the Yankees are sitting in the cellar looking up at their AL East rivals. Although they are only a game and a half out of first place, the early results do not bode well for the infantile and aging Yankees.

With the Yankee elder statesmen like Jorge Posada and Derrick Jeter sitting due to nagging injuries and back-up catcher Jose Melina going down to another hamstring pull on Sunday it is eerily similar to how the Yankees started last season. Factor in the hitting woes of young stars like Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano while having youthful pitchers Ian Kennedy and Phillip Hughes getting roughed up and you have a recipe for disaster. Just when you thought it couldn't get worse, dessert for this horrendous dinner party arrived with news that phenom Joba Chamberlain's father (diagnosed with polio as a child) had fallen gravely ill and Chaberlain was leaving the team to be with his father in the hospital. No word to date on how long he'll be away from the team.

The question I pose 13 games into a very young 2008 season is this, are the Yankees cellar dwellers to stay or are they the team that stormed back from the edge last year to secure a wild card spot? More importantly, if they can come back from the earthen floored stone walled wine cellar of the American League East, can they with this hodgepodge cast of aging veterans hobbling into the sunsets of their careers and the fresh faced youngsters staring into the uncertain sunrise of their own careers make it out of the first round for the first time in years?