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

Text messages that punctuated the 2nd Greatest Day Ever (2GDE):

Kris to DC at 3:24pm (during the 6th inning when down 3-1)
"Let's go to Dorrian's after game and celebrate their comeback win in the 8th."

Iowa Jeff to Kris at 4:31pm
"Fyi, Ortiz just struck out swinging to end Sox game putting Yanks in first place. I'll bet you're just having a shitty day."

Nothing about the day made sense, I kept likening it to a dream sequence, but even that doesn't do the justice to the complete absurdity of my 2nd game at GNH.

But what a game. The kind of late inning comeback I like to see--not won on homers, but from small ball. From manufacturing runs. Or more aptly, from Tampa Bay giving them away like free paper cups of jam samples at Costco. I'll take it though. Both the runs and the jam.

And it's anything from a cheap way to scrape up some runs--if anything, it is almost more impressive than if they had bashed 3 dings back-to-back-to-back. Because when they're loading the bases with Garza and then a reliever on the mound, they're being verrrry patient.

I mean, when Cano stepped up with ducks on a pond (my parents LOVED this jumbotron delight), I felt about like Sean Connery in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indy's walking through the Holy Grail obstacle course--so nervous that there was going to be a rash, false step. Or in this case, so riddled with anxiety that Cano was going to revert to Can008, swinging away before the pitcher's even started his windup.

And then was phenomenally relieved when he walked.

Followed by being phenomenally shellshocked when the base-running of Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada delivered the Yanks the game. (Watching Matsui run it out to first on an infield grounder is like seeing a cell-phone salesman belt out Pavarotti.)

Decent outing from Joba, but the more I see this guy start, the more I'm convinced he belongs in the pen. As long relief, not just a set-up man. It just seems that we have a crop of pitchers who are good for 4-5 innings.

And what the hell is Hughes doing in the pen and Wang doing in the rotation? The ball is freaking popping outta GNH, and Wang's sinker is not even close to as consistent and reliable as it once was. At the very least, he needs more time in the pen to ensure his sinker will, indeed, sink. Otherwise the Yanks' offense is looking down the barrel of high-run games to compensate for.

Put Joba in the pen to set up Mo. Or to close out the game himself, he's clearly effective for more than a few innings. And why not throw Aceves in the rotation? The guy sparkles and gets nowhere near enough credit for his skills.

Fortunately, Mo got the job done on Sunday because he's awesome. My mom, the eternal alarmist, let out a groan of cinematic proportions when I informed her the significance of "Enter Sandman" blaring through the stadium speakers. "OH GREAT! THERE GOES THE GAME." That's the spirit, Mom!

Swisher's homerun was fantastic, not only because it was due, but because it demonstrated that he's more aggressively peeking his head out from his slump shell, like the way I peer out from under the comforter when I'm waking up for work at 8am on a sub-zero degree morning in January.

It was also awesome because I'm basically in love with him. We saw him out after the game, he said how before the game he met Sarah Palin who said she was "honored to meet him" and he was all excited because after he went yard, she was jumping up and down cheering, "SWIISSSHH!!" Sarah Palin better watch it.

And finally, it was awesome because it became the 100th ball hit in Yankee Stadium. That's just ridiculous to further comment on.

In terms of announcer gems:

(After Joba drilled Carlos Pena square in the back)

Kay: "You know what I never understood? Why pitchers look at their hand right after they hit a batter. As if their hand has a separate brain."
Cone: "I never looked at my hand."

Nor do I patronize bunny rabbits. (at 8:01)

Not only was the game a brilliant testament to the boys' resiliency--"It's the comeback kids," Swisher said. "In a sense it just feels like that. When we get in those situations we hunker down and really, really get after the guy--but it was also a perfectly outstanding day overall, if not flummoxing at times.

I was flying so low to the ground when I woke up on Sunday, after 3 hours of sleep (from absolutely no other reason than just staying up unnecessarily late and watching DVR-ed Family Guy and painting watercolors of Yankee Stadium. My Saturday night, ladies and gentlemen. Sigh.) And I was absolutely terrified when I went to bed at 5am that I'd wake up at like 1 and realize I was going to miss the game.

I mean, there have been day games where I missed the first inning or two on aping my college prime the night before, but this was a bigger deal:

• I was going with whole family


• It was only my 2nd game ever at GNH


• We were sitting in one of the cool boxes that I've only seen from tv
  

I'd only sat in one of those once before, in the old stadium, on June 29, 2004, and only for work/taking clients out purposes. (I had been working at that job for about a month, was the lowest writer in the food chain, and only got the invite because the rest of the people on my account team perceived baseball to be as enjoyable as a spinal tap. And someone actually asked if I'd go in his stead. To a Sox Yankee game. In June. In a suite. What the hell is wrong with people.)

And the game was wildly uncomfortable. I felt like I was at market research--surrounded by clients in an enclosed space sealed off by a glass window, where we could observe but not particpate...and stocked with an variety of unhealthy food at our fingertips. Not to mention I was there for 5 minutes before a higher-up coworker informed me that since the clients were all Boston fans, that I would be "well served to become a Sox fan for the night."

But yesterday? Nothing like that. At all. It was amazing. Unbelievable. And the day just got better and better, if not surrealer and surrealer.

More on 6/7/09 in bulleted points:

• David Cone is the coolest f-ing guy to ever take the field. I'm generally scared of ever meeting a Yankee for fear of discovering he's not the god I envision him to be, and hence won't be able to keep them on a pedestal anymore...and I think now I'm even more scared to meet any of them because Cone set the bar so high. When we got to the suite he was in there signing balls and taking pictures with everyone there, and just chatting it up with everyone like he's a normal person and not a freaking baseball legend. After I stopped sputtering out incoherent ramblings, I actually thought, "I get to be a fan of the team this guy was on." (And I feel that my insensitivities to most other things in the world gives me a bit of latitude in being 100% looney tunes for baseball.)

• The whole reason we even got to sit in a luxury suite? Wish You Were Here Productions and one Andrew Levy. I'd be egregiously remiss in not extoling the virtue of this organization. At one point in the afternoon, I thought I'm really gonna regret it if I don't call it a day right now, because if I'm awake for another second? It'll go downhill. It's can't get much better than the synthesis of the Yankees, my family, and a Yankee win... Then chinese food came into the picture. And it was like when Charlie (of the Chocolate Factory persuasion) raced home with his golden ticket thinking his life just peaked. And then his Grandpa defied the medical principles of muscle atrophy by shimmying outta bed to do a song and dance number. What, I just likened spring rolls to de-paralysis. No problem.
  
• Besides the obvious relief of not having to appease New England-based clients, the most discernible variation between the 2 box experiences was that in GNH, you have "external viewing," aka seats outside the room.


• Don Zimmer was in the box, too. My dad waited about 13 seconds before yelling, "Where's Pedro?!!"


• My parents went to explore the stadium and came back all in a tither because they met Sarah Palin, who my dad said was the 2nd most beautiful woman in the world, after my mom.

(I knew my mom was giddy because she reapplied lipstick.)