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

I don't remember the last night I've been this cranky. Granted my posts and recaps aren't exactly stripped of bias and emotional investment to begin with, but today particularly I may be infusing a little more bile than usual into my accounts. But I'm about 16 hours removed from last night's game now, so I've calmed a lot. Some.

So the Yanks lose 4-0 to the Atlanta Braves, or as my buddy Andy calls them, "the Triple A lineup."

Re: dirty souf

are you licking your chops to face our Triple A lineup? fortunately we scored the comically named chinaman for the series opener. kid is a horrowshow. good news for you, robin williams, and matthew broderick is that we are contractually obligated to lose games in which the other team scores more than 2 runs. out to an early lead...we'll see.

caught a game at fenway last weekend. dope.

PS. mccann is cashmoney. put him on your allstar ballot, young sports literati (don't know singular, forgive).

I'm not too thrilled about this. I can't throw Wang under the bus because he wasn't as abysmal as starts past, but since the kid still hasn't logged a W this year, I'm admittedly frustrated.

Text exchange with fellow die-hard:

"Odds of Wang bringing ERA to below 10."
"8-1"
"Your glassful outlook is admired."

Comments with Keith over tense beer:

"All he'd have to do is give up less than 9 runs over 4 innings to bring his ERA down."
"Really?"
"Around that. How hard is that?"

This is before I prematurely left my half full (or half empty?*) beer on the bar, leaving a note for Keith apologizing for early exit:

"Sorry, took off. I can't stomach watching this anymore, and I'm kinda off to begin with. -CYC"

From the AP:

New York managed just four hits and left 12 runners on base as Chien-Ming Wang (0-6) lost his sixth straight start.

"It's hard to win when you get only four hits," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "We're just not swinging the bats."

NOT SWINGING THE BATS? Were you watching the same game as me, Joe? From where I was sitting, the Yanks were swinging away like they were at the cages and wanted to get more bang for their tokens but going for every ball the machine spit out at them.

Jeter and Swisher especially decided they weren't really interested in sitting on pitches and found it much more exciting to ground into double plays and give the freaking Braves easy outs.

More lines from the game that make it possibly the most disconcerting game they've played to date:

• Wang gave up 6 hits, 3 runs, and a walk.
• His ERA DROPPED to 11.20.
• "It was one of the better starts he's had," Girardi said. "He just had one inning that cost him the game."
• Posada struck out 4 times, the first time he's done that since 2002.
• Tex and ARod both blanked at the plate
• ARod's average is among the worst in baseball.
• According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the last time the Braves pitched a shutout and allowed 10 hits but none for extra bases was in 1973 when Carl Morton had a 10-hit complete game.

All that being said, here's my reaction:

• Wang is done. It doesn't matter how much historically brilliant accomplishments on his resume, he hurt himself last year running the bases, and he's never going to be the same. It happens. People get injured and they never return to form, no how much training and medical competence is applied. It's the story of the game. You put yourself at risk every time you take the field in any sport, and it doesn't matter if you're so saturated with natural ability that you sometimes trip over it getting out bed in the morning. Wang's done.
• The sooner Girardi comes to terms with this, the sooner we can plug up his timebomb of a spot in the rotation. But unfortuantely, Girardi is acting like every single chick in the world who stays with a bad boyfriend despite being all too familiar with his faults. "But...but...he used to be so sweet! And everything was so perfect! I just want it to go back to that." It's not going to. We are who we are. People don't change. Cut your losses and start looking for the rebound pitcher, Joe.
• Posada's old, but he's good. I don't seem him being much of a liability to this team. And I think once the team as a whole gets out of their slump, he'll follow suit. Still, I don't think it would hurt to give Cervelli more play. He's playing sharper, quicker, and the pitchers have better outings when the Ital's behind the plate.
• ARod is one of the best players that ever lived. He's young, and just in a slump. Anyone who doubts that he's going to be back into slugfest form in the near future is just criminally insane. Seriously, it's unquestionable that this recent performance is an anomaly rather than the norm for someone like him. He isn't a pitcher who's lost his stuff. He's a batting struggling with the ubiquitous concern that forever plagues major leaguers--cooling down. If Pedroia was slumping like this, would anyone for a second consider the possibility that he's not inevitably going to bounce back?
• Hanson's got decent stuff. Reminds me of Kazmir. I'm not too ashamed of being shut down by this guy. It's just because it's against the snarky BRAVES, who, despite playing under .500, are cantankerous enough (or their organist is anyway) to play Madonna at ARod's at bat and "Mrs. Robinson" for Cano.
• By the way, the Yankees have the 3rd best record in baseball.
• And lead in the Wild Card.

I think I need to start following my own maxim of life and "run my own race," aka stop paying attention to what other fans are saying or what other teams are doing, and just watch the Yankees in their own right. Because a loss shouldn't throw me into this much of a mental crippling. It wouldn't if my mind wasn't spinning with all the asinine haters who are loving this.

It's That Guy who's so wretchedly pathetic and so laughably devoid of anything going for him, who bitterly has been wrestling with inferiority complexes in one form or another his whole existence, who lazily accepts his mediocrity in life and indifferently embraces complacency, whose priorities are a muddled mess of going through the motions, who leverages misery by using his energy delighting in a Yankees loss, who can't be happy unless Yankee fans are not...it's this ilk of negative haters who ruins baseball for Yankee fans. And they're all over the place!

And what kind of person or fan would I be if I assigned even a modicum of consequence to these Schaudenfraud-loving small fries?

Yankee fans are better than that.

"Vos es subter supter mihi. "

* * * *

Other notes from the day:

• Text message from Iowa Jeff, who's in hell for a conference: "I'm usually not one that notices this type of thing, but for the record, I'd like to state that Boston sure does have a lot of ugly people."


• MVP goes to Kevin who last night unwittingly dragged me outta hell† with this text: "American Psycho is on IFC right now." (Nothing dilutes the violent depression of a loss like watching a movie that makes you contemplate situations where you could use lines like, "Not if you want to keep your spleen." Seriously. At least, that's what my grandfather always said.)
  

*It occurs to me how this half empty-half full metaphor for pessimism/optimism doesn't seem to hold water, pun intended. I left my beer half full. Which meant I didn't get to drink all of it. Isn't that worse than looking at it as half empty, which would suggest that, on the plus side, I DID get to drink half my beer? Like the Silly Race in Marble Madness, everything you know is wrong.

†Saw this movie 2 nights ago, and it was scary but not terrifying. Entertaining, for certain. I texted my sister the highlights and wound up with this text exchange (I swear I talk to people in person too sometimes. Just not as much during baseball season.)
"There was a talking goat at the end of the movie. He was not cool with being possessed."
"That might be the weirdest text I've ever received. Congrats."