13 hours ago
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Until I'm back on board entirely with the pitching abilities of Yankee #62, I'm calling him by his birth name: Justin.
And I think technically he legally changed it to Joba, so Justin is probably just completely inaccurate (technically) but, semantics.
Am I being too hard on him? I mean, looking at his last 2 starts, yes I am. I'm being too cynical and harsh on a guy who pitched exactly the way he was supposed to.
I went to the game yesterday with Sam, the first time I've gone to a game with just one other chick since me and Rebekah went September 17, 2007. I am socially awkward so whenever I go to a game with just 1 other person, half of me is worried that will be the last time I ever see the person.
Being socially awkward is manageable at, say, an office happy hour, because I can always try to play it off as "just being profesh."
But at a baseball game? It's hard to justify anything when I'm screaming at people/crossing my arms over my chest and glaring/alternating focused intent with manic jumping up and down.
Sam didn't seem to notice. I was very conscious of not throwing my arms up to abruptly though, after the bloody shit show that went down when Tex hit the 3-run ding last Friday.
Although, I think if I was responsible for another girl's fat lip, I'd probably have a clear path in crowded UES bars. Like instead of bumbling and weaving through shoulder to shoulder packed crowds, I could be like Lois in Family Guy when all the NY-ers invade Boston, and she scares them away.
"I have just returned from Boston..it's the only sane thing to do if you find yourself up there." --Fred Allen in letter to Groucho Marx
We didn't get to the game til the 4th inning, which was half my fault, half Justin's fault for pitching too efficiently when I was banking on him moving the game along with the same speed and agility as one of the Knick fan tools that gets picked from the stands at MSG to do the halftime layup intermissions contest.
And of course, despite getting all my stuff ready to go at 4:30 (I started doing the pushing things around my desk and putting them into piles and shutting down the computer at 4..), the second I start to head out of the office to meet Sam, everything goes to hell. I hate the whole Murphy's Law theory that everyone seems to weirdly adore. I really just don't like to subscribe to the "UGH! One more thing! Nothing's going right!" mentality.
Because then it starts getting the point where you start identifying not-that-terrible things as really burdensome and apocolyptic. If you spill coffee on yourself, then miss the train, then step in a puddle....and then get to work and your pen runs out of ink, then pens running out of ink become the absolute worst inconvenience and misery-inducing fate in the history of the world. But it's really not that bad.
But yesterday, I was being exactly like that, and everything was the worst possible thing ever, and just as think it's done with, I get an email saying, "Oh, I thought you were going to do the game thread today.." Misunderstanding at another site, and I have to write a preview in 20 minutes.
It was a good exercise, actually, since I get distracted by dust normally and even writing a 3 paragraph preview takes me 2 hours because I tend to click on every single link I see on a web page, which often makes me forget where I was going or what I was doing in the first place. Like Alice in Wonderland, maybe. Without the pinafore.
My preview:
So says Aristotle, anyway. Joba Chamberlain (5-2, 4.05) must have been aware that, for many, the bloom has fallen from the rose, and last Sunday he performed like a guy who was pitching for his life. Good timing, Joba. And now a new wrinkle in his ever-ballooning debate pool enters the scene, with Brian Cashman casually throwing it out there that Joba MAYBE is only 40 innings away from reaching his predeterminnd season limit. Is that so, Bri...
Tonight the loose cannon (file that alongside "July 31 Deadline" in the "Greatest MLB Misnomers" bucket), goes against the Athletics' searing rookie Brett Anderson (5-7, 4.25) who becomes the latest pitcher to try and find the hole in New York's game. It gets tougher and tougher for the Yanks' opponents, since it seems that Mark Teixeira somehow improves with every at-bat, and Alex Rodriguez's value to the team (even when he goes 0-5) is more and more prominent.
What's more, the Yankees look confident. They don't flail about in jams, make rash baserunning decisions (cough, Nick Swisher, cough), jump on the first pitch, or otherwise implode. They'll need every ounce of that tenacity and mental fortitude tonight against Anderson, who pitches like a choppier Hughes with AJ's ability to claw out of trouble. While the Yanks did knock him around at their last meeting, Anderson took a perfecto into 7 in his last start. I'm not impressed, nor should the Yanks. I predict they tee off on the southpaw like he's serving up 60 mph Skybounces.
The game was good, a nice comeback, the Yanks looked identical to every other game they've played since the ASB. Sam matched CYC's intensity in her own right, by sometime around the 6th or 7th inning, turning into a Recycho (ree-CY-ko) aka getting scary eyes and angrily texting and basically terrorizing the concession stand woman, which I kinda enjoyed since 99% of those ladies are unnecessarily bitchy or short with me.
They met their match when Sam marches up to them and asks for refills in her souveneir cups and they won't do it. "I'M GONNA PAY THE $10 FOR EACH OTHER THEM, I JUST DON'T WANT MORE PLASTIC CUPS."
Someone had to come over and everything and 15 minutes later, Sam had lost the argument and we were proud owners of 2 additional souveneir cups, which I think brings my Yankee plastic cup count to around 89. And that's 87 that I don't use. (2 hold pens on my desk)
It was nice to see our "sort of fatso" not "sort of struggle" and actually pitch so well, especially since the radar gun had his clocked at 97. He got a standing O when he came out, and tipped his hat to us.
Just make sure it happens again, Justin.
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