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

It's probably better I missed most of this game.

Because with my short baseball fuse and unapologetic irrationality, I'd have been liable to legitimately kill someone. I mean, sweet Christ, I was apoplectic in the cab ride back uptown solely because of mild traffic on an exit ramp. I don't have a temper as a habit, but when it's ignited, it may as well be one of those spinning fire crackers thingys.



So who knows what kind of reaction I would have had had I actually seen Hairston's error?

Poor Mike is watching the whole game solo while I'm texting him "15 more minutes and I swear I'm leaving the office!" about once every, say, 15 minutes. And it's one of those days at work where I'm so busy that I wish I could ask someone to go to the bathroom FOR me. So I wasn't even listening to the game. Another blessing in disguise because I can only imagine what Sterling and Suzyn were doing to jinx this one.

In fairness, actually, those 2 are pretty good about it. It's Kay who's on a hellbent mission to ensure that no Yankee ever pitches a no-hitter ever again. It's amazing how powerful a jinx it. I'm quite certain that if you counted the number of times people said jinx-like claims, the amount of times that a jinx was enacted would far outnumber the times a jinz was overridden.

So I apologize to everyone and anything that came within my path of indiscriminate terror today. I felt very Latrell Sprewell/Frank Francisco at one point when I threw a stapler. (This could be attributed to frustration over missing the game. I don't want to think about what would have been thrown if I actually HADN'T missed the game.)

Sooo...Andy's perfection bid. Crazy stuff.

Some thoughts on Junior's bobble:

• It reminded me of Sanchez's perfect bid earlier this year, when Juan Uribe comes in as a defensive substitution and screws that whole thing up. My point is that is there a new level of guilt that comes from not only being That Guy who gets the stigma of fouling up the perfect game, but being That Guy who should've been someone else? ARod makes that play easy.

• Junior tells us that Andy couldn't have been nicer about it. (Is anyone surprised? No.) "He was kind of funny," Hairston said. "He was like, 'You took the pressure off me.' He goes, 'If I haven't thrown a no-hitter by now, then I'm not going to do it.' He was probably the best. He said he didn't want to throw nine innings anyway. That's what type of attitude he has."

• Ok, that would obviously make me feel worse. I think a true friend would carve you up from here to LA. Lay into you, screaming, fits, the whole 9.

• Because it's kind of like breaking up with someone in the sense that, if they're completely nice and honorable and classy post-breakup, it's hard to get past it. But if you break up with someone in the most asinine way possible, well then I'm really doing you a favor because now you feel no remorse or guilt. So... WAY TO BE A JERK, ANDY. GOD.

• Mike was devastated by the time I actually met up with him. (I just realized after typing that how poorly that reflects on me. 'When Kris showed up, Mike was devasted.' Sounds about right.) He noted that the only thing worse than this ruined perfecto was Moose's. Of course. While I disagree with Mike that this is a "meaningless game," it is obviously no where near as big as a playoff game as Fenway.

These are the stats I need:

• Number of games that were perfect up until 2 outs in the 9th
• Team with the most perfect games pitched against them
• Shortest Yankee-O's game

There's another stat I'd like to, but don't even know how to articulate it, let alone actually find it/compute it myself (like that would ever, ever happen. I'm good at math. Nope.) How many games were perfect barring a 1st or even 2nd inning blemish? Like gave up a hit or walk or someone had an error early on, when the idea of a perfect game wasn't even remotely a possibility.

(Unless you're Bernie Williams, who apparently starts thinking about 'em when he's lacing up his cleats--I remember after Lieber took at perfecto 6 innings against the Sox, Bernie said he had started thinking 'perfect' sometime in the 2nd inning. Normal. Ah, what a game. The one where I infamously tried to put electrical tape on Sox fans mouths at the stadium. Also the game where my sis showed up 2 hours late and still got there in the 2nd inning. And the game when we saw a Boston fan run up to a security guard at the stadium, tug on his sleeve, and then say in the most concerned, urgent, earnest, frantic voice: "Hey, yeah. Listen. The girl who looks like Curt Schilling is COMPLETELY out of control.")

As usual, I digress.

Matsui in the 4 spot blanked. I don't dare imply that he's streaky, but...
Do him and Swisher ever both do well at the same time? Or is it like the Conch Shell of talent with those 2? And only one can be hot at a time.

Was it REALLY necessary to bring Mo in? With a 4-lead? Outside of my cat, no one likes sleep more than Mo. (Which is adorable since my cat IS Mariano Rivera!)

I wonder who the Yankees want to win for. I know there's part of them (the biggest part) playing outta sheer competitive spirit. But it's also a job to them. And think about it, everyone wants a promotion, but few actually have a vested initerest in what their livelhood entails.

How did Girardi get them so motivated? Girardi works on automatic pilot, he's not doing anything beyond the occasional stomping out of the dug out to make a point and be all, yea take that and rewind it bacs. How ya like me now."

The Yankees are realky starting to resemble the Ameican Dreams of Nintendo Baseball Stars. They were like the stacked line up whoever was lucky enough to be Player 1, always picked to play with.

(Sometimes people would subscribe to the "I'm so good, it doesnt want team I play with" school of thought. Unless you do that secret code "What is a wren?" cheating thing, you're fated to lose if you're up against American Dreams. Or if your team is Lovely Ladies.)

I can't figure out what makes this team so good. Pitching? Hitting? I don't know if I'd say our hitting was drastically different than, say, 2003-2006. And pitching? CC, AJ, Andy= awesome. But what makes that trio different than having Moose, Clemens, Andy?

The funny part is, the reason they're playing so well is due in no small part to Jeter, Andy, Posada, and Mo. The good old boys. The "Real Yankees." The ones who were too old and too overrated to be of any value, right?

So maybe that's just it. Maybe all it took was the old machine to find some shiny new parts to help out the engine and get it to run a bit more smoothly, instead of continuing to tinker with it til it's completely useless. Maybe they just needed to find the parts that worked together instead of looking for the coolest pieces. (In Lego-playing circles, I was famous for collecting all the really cool pieces, like the gold coins or treasure chest or smooth pieces with the control panel prints...and then having no legit blocks to actually build something. Maybe that's REALLY where my affinity for the Yanks came from.)

There's really not a lot that can't be solved with Legos these days.

So to sum up:
--Andy is brilliant, and now is 3rd on all time Yankee wins

--Mo recorded his 37th save (33rd in a row--a career best)

--Yanks have won 21 of last 27 games

--Robbie continued to go to town on the RBI thing

--Ditto for Damon

--They're good.

Great game, Yanks. And cheers, Andy. Like Tom Cruise tell the quasi-convicted Marine: "You don't need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor."