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

That's Super Mario dying.

Another way to look at it would be if you imagined Cervelli striking out on a cheap check swing with runners on 1st and 3rd, to end the horrendous loss to the Mutts.

I have spent the last few hours engaged in every conceivable form of "channeling aggression" activity. Some more productive and effective than others. First it was making drinking games to the likes of McCarvers penchant for supreme idiocy. (A chug of Stella for every time my ears had to suffers the slings and arrows of another f'n "In MY view...")

Then painting, to ease the stress of seeing my beloved Yanks be inexplicably rendered useless against Mike Pelfrey OF ALL F'N PEOPLE.

Then it was banging on the piano to release the unmitigated fury of seeing the Yanks refusing to close the scoring gap, despite multiple opportunties. (It seemed fitting, somehow, that my anger song of choice was the uncomfortably depressing chords of Requiem for a Dream.)

And lastly, it was the old standby. (I don't know, I just like the simplicity of it. Don't judge. Losing to the Mutts can make you do crazy things. I don't even know what I'll end up doing if I have to go to work on Monday and see the Empire State building in the Wrong Colors.)

So the Yanks lose to the New York B-Team, 5-3, and their quasi (and predictable) comeback in the 9th was less than valiant. Normally, I'd say, "Well, you tried! You almost came back, you didn't give up!"

But not tonight. Though technically I guess they didn't give up, but only because by design you can only give up when at some point you were trying. I didn't see anyone trying at any point in this game, with the exception of Phil Hughes. Even though he was the one who had to stomach the L, I can't wholly fault him. It's probably not easy to pitch when you're backed by a bunch of guys who played like they had been drinking too much of the CitiField water.

There were a few plays that made that this painfully obvious. Nothing big, really. I just noticed that base hits that were knocked to the the right of players were reaching the outfield when normally I'd see these same infielders dive for the ball like it was the Holy Grail about to be swallowed up by a crumbling temple.

But today, they acted like they were playing pepper in Central Park.

I am not amused.

Arod, Cano, Swish, and Cervelli had great games--thank you, guys--but the rest of the order was somehow stifled by the overpowering Mike Pelfrey. I can't even write that without wanting to chew off my own tongue. They went a combined 9 for 19 while the rest of the team went 2 for 18. Those 2 hits, btw, came from Kevin Russo and Randy Winn.

I would say no game will ever be won when you have to utter that sentence, but alas, yesterday Russo proved me wrong.

Winn, however, continued to not prove me wrong in my contention that he is the anti-Christ.

Actually, the anti-Christ probably has special powers, so perhaps he's not that at all, since only a light schmear of talent was necessary to field the fly ball he missed in the bottom of the 6th.

This also was immediately after he grounded out in the top of the inning, with runners on 1st and 3rd. If it wasn't midnight and I didn't have an early double header tomorrow, I'd do some research on the exact numbers of how many runs he alone has cost us, and how many actual losses those runs caused. My guess is upwards of infinite.

The Yanks stranded 13 runners today, and went 3 for 14 with RISP on the day. This is going to be an issue if it continues. Is Kevin Long on scholarship these days? That's what my dad always says to me and my sisters when we're being lazy. I don't really understand it, but since my dad said it, it's bible.

Hughes whiffed 7, most of those Ks coming in extremely important spots. Unfortunately, he also let up 8 hits and even more unfortunately had to hand the game over to Chan Ho Park, who managed to not give up a homerun but made up for it by giving up a run instead.

The Yanks absolutely should have won this game. If they had worked just a little bit harder, they would have. I mean, look at it this way. The Yanks only had one less hit than the Mutts (11-12) and saw 30 MORE PITCHES (178) than them (and 40 more pitches than yesterday).

Pelfrey is Pelfrey. More specifically, he's a Met. He shouldn't be the game winner here. We hit off him. The problem with this game was that they couldn't bring the runners in (obviously), which means Girardi needs to claw his way out of the insidious trap of complacency.

Now is not the time to get lazy. Especially with the rest of the league on our heels. It's such a dangerous habit. Because once you've given in to even a touch of equanimity, you're in deep shit. It's so hard to get out of it.

It's really Parenting 101.

LET THEM KNOW THIS ISN'T ACCEPTABLE AND CHANGE THE STATUS QUO.

Otherwise nothing on God's green earth will induce the wrong-doers to reform.

In closing, I offer up this bit of advice for tomorrow's game, from the enthused cries of this young lassie.