According to Dave Anderson in the NYT, ("Sometimes it's over even when it ain't", 5/28/2007), Joe Torre put the Yankees' performance so far this season (won 21, lost 27; 12 1/2 games behind Boston) into historical perspective by observing:
We’ve been bad early in other years, but not this late.
If you think about it, you'll see that this is perfectly logical, though in a different way from Yogi Berra's equally logical comment on afternoon shadows in Yankee Stadium's left field: "It gets late early out there."
Posted by Mark Liberman at May 28, 2007 08:38 AM