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

The Yankees are playing like I feel. Maybe there's a connection. Like in The Neverending Story II, when Jonathan Brandis gets involved with this creepy woman who tells him that the Celtic-Snake charm he's styling brandishing (did you see what I did there?) enables him to make wishes. But JB stupidly doesn't heed the wise counsel of his boy Atreyu, who tells him the woman is up to no good.

(There was a like of psychological warfare and manipulation going on.)

Anyways, so JB goes on a wish binge, but unbeknownst to him, every time he makes a wish, he loses a memory, and he starts forgetting his mission to save Fantasia (yeah, I don't know. I just remember watching this one scene when I was a kid, and--being me--marveled at how there was a packrat apparatus I had never even thought of. A giant machine that saves and traps memories!)

A 4-3 loss to the Rays that went into extra innings, and I missed all of it because I was at work rubbing my eyes at my desk so hard I probably was starting to look like Geena Davis at the tail end of her accelerated-aging-in-the-wedding-gown scene in Beetlejuice.

The only thing I know about this game is that Teixiera hit a 3-run double to tie it in the bottom of the 8th. Yankee stadium must have been going crazy. Maybe it's better that I couldn't watch the game, because when your team can't score a run for 7.5 innings, then manage to tie up the game in one swing, you don't actually expect them to lose. ESPECIALLY when they're the home team. The thought never would have crossed my mind that the Yanks weren't winning that game.

So when I get a text message alert saying the game was lost in extra innings, I was too delirious to take it in. I haven't slept in 2 days, which may be good since the last time I went to bed, I decided I was enough of a big kid that I could sleep without the brace. Not too much of a big kid that I didn't sleep walk in the middle of the night for the Thin Mints in my freezer--although the actual desired endpoint is immaterial, since my leg gave out from under me about .4 seconds after I got out of bed.

So my latest theory is that if I start taking better care of myself (ie not seeing how fast I can necessitate a new ACL and sleeping and eating something that isn't coated in sour sugar), then maybe the Yankees will start playing better. And every time I have sour gummy bears for dinner, or stay awake either for work or--worse--because some movie like "Vice Versa" is on tv at 4am...I hurt my favorite team a little more.

Basically I just convinced myself of something that parents probably tell their kids who don't want to brush their teeth or something. Which makes me hopeful, or approximately 100% delusional.

I'll try anything at this point.

(That's what Manny said.)