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

A weird game for the Yanks. Not exactly sure what happened here, but they didn't look like themselves. Oh, no! A-Rod is a clubhouse cancer! Yikes!

Yeah, no. It looked more like they were all just phoning it in. Like the penultimate skating scene in "The Cutting Edge" (3:16) when DB Sweeney and Moira Kelly were in some kind of tiff so their routine was a bit...without.

"Seemed very cold, as if they were 2 strangers. They just didn't look like they were having fun out there."

Well, it stands to reason that if the Yankees follow the course of events outlined by the hit 1992 movie, then their next performance will be all-time. They just have to realize their love for each other and have a revealing moment when they discover that all this time, they didn't hate each other. In fact, it was just sexual tension masked by witty barbs!

Dare to dream...

If the Yankees have a bell-curve type range of losses, yesterday's was absolutely the ilk that's comfortably housed in the middle portion of the graph.

They always do this, and I think Yankee fans are almost getting used to the team's practice of getting useless solo shots in the 7th inning to bring the score closer only for either the bullpen to replenish the opponent's lead in a matter of pitches, or for 70% of the team to decide they're not really into finishing out the game, which amounts to stranded runners and just general lackluster play.

Nothing, however, explains the absolutely embarrassing showing by pretty much the whole team during the 23,923 hour long 2nd inning. Phil Hughes was abysmal. Really, really awful. I could've hit off hit yesterday. I don't even know what kind of pitches he was trying to throw because they weren't breaking or curving anywhere. Even his fastball was atrocious. He doesn't have the speed to rely on a fastball, but when your breaking ball is basically hanging over the plate for about the same amount of time it would take me to repaint Lincoln Center, then I guess a fastball is all you got left to give them.

Putting Hughes alarmingly bad outing aside, the rest of the team was just inexcusably off their game.

We have one of the best defensive 1B in the league who's missing plays that even Giambi would have made.

Our catcher is new, granted, but pick up the pace, little buddy. If for nothing else, even if there's no runners on, passed balls drive me crazy. I used to pitch (ie, high school softball but in my head it may as well have been the Olympic team) and I acted like the poor catcher committed one of the 7 deadly sins if she let one of my pitches get away from her (despite the fact it was generally because it was sailing only 7 inches lower than the backstop). I'm a lot of fun to play with.

As if Hughes' meatballs weren't bad enough, his fielding was just as angering. I'm trying to put myself in his shoes, because I keep thinking of him as a little kid (which is admittedly, how I think of myself, and hence I'm trying to empathize), and maybe he got so shaken up by the horror of his pitches, that he did the whole, "What's the use! I suck at life!" mess-up-o-rama. But then I realize he's not a kid, he's a Yankee. One time I was stressing over this work issue and my buddy emailed me, "Again, don't worry, it's like worrying about an error you made in the 1st inning and it's now the 7th. It's done. Get over it. And move on." Great advice. So, P.H., either get your shit together, or--more preferrably--throw strikes. Unhittable ones.

Even though Swisher and his cannon-arm launched a throw that landed somewhere around the Key Bridge, he later his a homerun and also continued to be awesome.

The box score would suggest that only 4 players showed up for this game: Damon, Melky, Swisher, and Teixiera. They were the players who effected any kind of offensive production. Since Melky and Damon have so consistently been dunking in hits and runs, and are possibly the only 2 that can be relied on to do so, I'm wondering if they go out for drinks afterward, (with Cano, too) and bitch about how no one is trying and it's up to them to bring the team back up to snuff. Or maybe Damon's trying to have that talk, but Melky and Cano are too engrossed in the Buck Hunter game.

So the game was another of the Type II losses. You can almost see them coming from a mile away (circa the 3rd inning). And for some reason, you can just know whether it's gonna be a Type II loss or a Type I win (huge comeback). And I don't think anyone expected the latter yesterday.

Here's to closing out Baltimore with a W on Sunday...