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

"I've seen your curveball. I can hit it now." -Adrian Monk

They figured him out. At least, they did tonight, anyway.

It's weird, after the game, no one pitching the usual crap like, "Yeah he's a great pitcher and we just got some good ones to take advantage of." Instead, there were comments specifically explaining the strategy.

"We've faced him a good bit. We know what to expect," Gardner said. "He pounds the zone and tonight he left some pitches over the middle of the plate and we were able to take advantage of it."

"We had a great approach," Swisher said. "We did a good job of getting him up in the zone and getting him on the plate."

The Yankees knew what was coming. And they figured out how to get Roy Halladay and his arsenal of 10,000 pitches, to lay some in there.

Swisher, Grandy, and Tex all went to town. As for the rest of the lineup, they weren't too mesmerized by the ace, either. 10 hits on the day, which allowed Fatso to get his win against the Phils, improving his record to 7-3. He's 9-0 at home since last year's ASG.

GNH is MYSTICAL. (I say that half because it's true, half because I know how much it incenses haters when Yankee fans talk about mystique. They're just jealous because they know you can't have that kind of aura when it's sponsored by some giant corporate conglomerate.)

Speaking of assclowns, this line from the box score amused me:

What, I'm mature. Tex and Jorge got hit by pitches from a bastard. Hehe.

Tubby whiffed 7 and let up 5 hits in a marked improvement from his more recent showings, but it's somewhat odd how we're not really seeing the psychotically sharp devil lefty from last year who seemed to toy with no-no's with every start. Everything is batty, all our power is coming from all over the lineup, any place by the heart, really. And all our pitching dominance is coming from the bottom.

But like I said last year, you can never discount those things. Trouble from the bottom. It kills every time.

Grandy, Swish, and GGBG all banked 2 hits a piece, with Cervelli chipping in a pair of ribbies. D-Rob and C-Park combined for 2 innings of 0-hit, 0-run ball, closing out the game at 8-3.

It looked a little dicey for a bit, when CC loads the bases in the 4th with no outs. I swear, every time I looked up at the someone was loading the bases. I'm really surprised there wasn't like a combined 109 runners stranded, instead of a somewhat more modest number of 16. In fact, both teams were roughly hitting 30% with RISP.

The Phils capitalized on their loaded bases situation a bit, by chipping away at the Yanks' 5-0 lead, making it 3-5 by inning's end.

Ok, now for the confusing non sequitor moment of the evening:

.....Swisher followed with his 11th home run on a 2-0 pitch, making it 5-0 before a rowdy crowd of 47,135.

"I saw a lot of people leaving in handcuffs today," Granderson said.

Philadelphia scored three times in the fourth, then left the bases loaded in the fifth. In the bottom half, Teixeira hit a high fly that landed just beyond the 314-foot sign in the right-field corner for a solo shot.....

Hey, Curtis? Uh..story?

I mean, not that it surprises me. Yankee fans are looney tunes. It's the Bronx. And they're playing a team whose fanbase seems to be on a hellbent mission to keep pace with Eagles loyalists in terms of terrifying fan behavior.

And I don't know what it's like at other stadiums, but as for GNH, I can tell you that a Yankee fan would have to brandish weapons for a cop to intervene, whereas an opposing fan just has to linger in the aisles too long to not only induce a raucuous "ASSSSSSSSHOLE" chant, but also invoke the stern reprimanding of the police officers.

The cops look out for us. Like having your older brother drive you to school to scare off the bullies.

So the Phillies' bats continue to evaporate, and Charlie Manual--as usual--isn't exactly mum on the subject. You ever actively dislike someone with a very specific degree of ire, but can't remember what it is that drove this? You just knew you didn't like him or her for some very particular reason, but just don't know what.

I never really liked the guy, but I realized I was scowling at him and had to rack my brains to remember the origin of this grudge. (I'm either getting older or more ridiculous. I used to be able to memerize entire anything on command, and now I can't even recall why I want to throw medicine balls at someone.)

For the record, I DID pinpoint it.

And also for the record, his postgame comments didn't do anything for my impressions of him:

"Winning is hard -- way harder than people think it is."

Shit, Chuck. No one said it's easy.

"It's supposed to be hard! If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard... is what makes it great!"--Jimmy Dugan

And as hard as it may be, without fail, one team always manages to do it.

Well, almost without fail. Stupid soccer ruining my generalizations.

Tomorrow we got AJ against Moyer. Moyer still exists. Wow. I love how this guy 100% replaced Julio Franco in the announcer's list of commentary quota. Like, in one month you have to mentioned at least twice, a.) something about Jaime Moyer's age and relative history, b.) that Casey Blake is one of the nicest guys in all of baseball, and c.) how Jeter rarely argues with the umps.

One day I'll write out a more comprehensive list of the stock sound bytes. Oh, also, Yanks, nice work on the economic playing time. Under 3 hours! Excellent. Coincided nicely with the 2nd quarter of the Lakers game.

Speaking of juggernauts that everyone hates and wishes was a lot more overrated instead of actually perfectly, Arod was out of the lineup again. I'm getting nervous. So nervous that I'm kind of starting to come around on the whole demonizing of Bud Kilmer in Varsity Blues. So he injected something into his RB's leg? His team needed him!

Ok, on that note, bedtime for Bonzo. Feel better Arod. In your downtime, maybe you could use this opportunity to find the 2010 Kate Hudson? If Alex Rodriguez can't lasso a girlfriend by leveraging the Florence Nightingale angle, well, then...I don't know WHAT'S up.