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

So after 2 nights of late finishes, we're treated to a nice little afternoon delight. And after all my annoying whining about west coast start times, I couldn't even stay awake long enough when I got home at 10 last night, to recap the game. My apologies. In my defense, it was for a good cause.

So the Yanks say goodbye to their 7-game streak in a game sprinkled with oddities. It was one of those games when a pretty good pitcher performs more than pretty good. Braden let up 6 hits, 2 dings, and struck out 2, so it wasn't really the outing of the century. The only reason the A's bested my boys was because of a 3-run homer Fatso let up in the 1st to Suzuki.

Which of course meant a bevy of the inevitable, ever-popular, "That 1st inning bomb is reallllly looming large now" comments from the booth.

Marcus Thames and Tex put the Yanks on the board with solo shots, but it wasn't enough to overcome the A's. (Thames? Really? The Yankees are so weird sometimes.)

Cervelli was actually the only one who had more than 1 hit, going 2 for 3 and continuing to look 12 years old while doing so.

Tubbo.com didn't really pitch badly at all, despite the L. The early game HR was the only one he let up, giving up only 4 hits throughout the 8 innings he pitched. 5Ks...(but also 6 BBs which was confusing.)

The real story of the game (well, one of 2 "real" stories of the game, anyway) was 1st triple play the Yanks turned since 1968.



Pretty f'n cool. Never seen one of those before (well, obviously, since I wasn't born til 13 years after the last one.)

So that's story #1 that A-Rod headlines of the day. Story #2 was a completely amusing "tiff" he got in with Braden after he crossed the pitcher's mound.

"I'm not really a speck on that guy's radar but he'll know after today that it might not be a good idea to run across the mound when I'm out there," Braden said. "It's not like I throw 95 [mph] and I'm going to hurt him. He'll know I was there, though.

"The guy was tasting himself too long to apologize," he said. "No, he didn't apologize. And it's a shame. I have a lot of respect for that guy, everything he's done in the game. It's just disappointing when you see the other side of things."

"He just told me to get off his mound," Rodriguez said. "I was a little surprised. I've never quite heard that, especially from a guy that has a handful of wins in his career. I've never even heard of that in my career and I still don't know. I thought it was pretty funny, actually."