"It's great to be young and a Yankee."

...appropriate amount of time passes post Ranger-loss...

Texts come in.

My sisters are one of the few people who have mastered the art of post-loss call timing. This may be one of the most underrated skills in any relationship with a sports fan. It's not a stat that will necessarily show up on fantasy tracker, but it's invaluable. Take the requisite talent of switching back to games just as commercial is ending--which is useful but commonplace. If that's the equivalent of OBP, then post-game-call timing is the equivalent of a SHO. My ex was actually pretty solid in that area, until he once had a no-hitter going, texting me post-Giants/Eagles something extremely endearing, only to let up a walk-off grandslam when he couldn't bite his tongue any longer and exploded into a rant about how happy he was the Giants lost. Haters are like Roger Rabbit when he hears Shave and a Haircut.)

Exchange starting with a subtly consoling text from my sis:

10:00pm At least Yanks can poss win this one?

10:01pm Well it's ok. I made a deal with God and said he could pass on Rangers win if he gives me the WS. And God said ok!

10:04pm Good deal. It's kinda funny that the Yanks score 10 in the 7th and none in the other innings. Prob a great analogy for that but I'll let you find it.

Phil Hughes came back from the same place that kid in Flight of the Navigator went where everyone else aged, but he didn't and no one knew where the f he was or what he was doing all that time.

And then he came back and looked nothing short of stunning. His pitches were so crisp and sharp it was bordering on flabbergasting. They were cornering like they were on rails. Posada apparently now how one leg in the lineup, one leg out. Which makes sense because my fantasy team is teflon for catchers. So far this year alone I've had Mauer, McCann, Doumit, Posada, and now I'm sure Laird will get sick of being healthy and join the rest of the Cs on the frustrating slab of iffy/day-to-day players. I would pick up Molina, but after today's salami, I'm scared nothing good reality-wise can come from putting him on my jinxed catcher spot fantasy-wise.

I get more excited every day for A-Rod's return. I have visions of our lineup dancing in my head, most often whenever Teix steps up. How many more days until Swisher becomes a fantasy pick-up that doesn't scare owners? I love the guy, and I still even view him as the equivalent of picking up Chipper Jones.

Melky is starting to command attention too, now that Gardner's bloom has fallen from the rose (it's been, what, 3 games without a hit? Baseball fans have the attention span of a fruit fly, ironically.) The profoundly ugly mess that is Matsui's swing seems to be inversely proportional to his hits. The less I want to see him pirouette at the plate like he's blindfolded with a wiffle bat at a Cinco de Mayo party, the more likely he is to actually connect.

So, to sum up, the Yanks continue to baffle me. And to address my sister's allusion to a 10-run 7th analogy...

You can blank for the whole first part of the game, you can get off to a terrifyingly muted start, but the only square in the box score that counts is the final.

Never discount the Yankees. In the words of Michael Scott, "You have no idea how high I can fly."