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

WELL, IT LOOKS LIKE YOU PICKED UP RIGHT WHERE YOU LEFT OFF, HUH, LARDASS??

Clearly, a few months away from the game has neither tempered my supreme contempt for Joba, nor has it tempered Joba's supreme affinity for hemorrhaging runs.

Well, I could barely even really follow this one since it was looney tunes at work today. All I know is I started "watching" it [read: refreshing MLB.com scoreboard] when it started, saw Hughes gave up a ding, immediately got defensive to the imaginary people in my head who were groaning and told them all to go kick rocks.

1-0 Tampa.

Then, work duties called. So did Cosi. And when I returned to my computer screen, it's 8-1. I was thinking, "This is cute. Just like old times. The Yankees getting slaughtered by the Devil Rays* inexplicably."

But if I thought THAT was like old times, it was even more Yankee-style when they started staging their big comeback in the 7th. (Actually, this isn't totally par for the course, as they usually commence scoring in the 8th.)

So when I see it's 8-1, and I don't know what to throw first, I look at the box score and see our boy Joba gave up 5 runs in like 14 seconds. I guess he didn't know what to throw first either.

Oh, wait. That's not true. Even though I didn't see a single second of actual game footage, I'd be willing to bet my nose that Mr. Joba Chamberlain threw about 710 sliders.

Which still sounds less disgusting than his stats on the day:

Chamberlain surrendered back-to-back RBI triples to Bartlett and Rodriguez in the third and was chased by a Ruggiano double in the fourth, allowing five runs on three hits with three walks and a strikeout. Chamberlain threw 33 pitches, 14 for strikes.

Wow.

Cervelli was once again sharp. He turned a double into a triple, and later singled to score Cano and put the Yanks on the board.

I'm not wholly interested in David Price's line for the day, since I really just wanted to SEE him pitch. I will concede that spring training is more important in its working-out-the-kinks implications, and it's tough to assess what kind of progress this kid made when all I'm getting is a delayed box score. And not like a 5-second delay. It's more like a I-could-macrame-a-blanket-for-the-Astrodome-in-the-time-it-takes-for-the-game-to-refresh delay.

Whoever this Jeremy Hellickson kid is, is f'n awesome. He's the Tampa answer to D-Rob, and struck out Jeter, Teixeira, and got Granderson to ground out to the mound. And even more impressive, he got all this done while in some kind of hole, whether he was behind in the count 3-0 or facing batters with RISP. Nice work, kid.

Joba, why can't you be more like Hellickson? You really disappointed me.

Ahhh, wow, haven't done that borderline cruel Joba rant in a while. Felt ok. Still need a few more to get loose though.

And with that, I'm off to celebrate the creation of Tube City!

(Yeah, I made Tube City for my Crazy Yankee Hamster. I have a completely sound grip on normal social conduct.)


*I refuse to acknowledge the abolition of the "Devil" part of their name. For no good reason other than the fact I think it's funny they dropped it in the first place.