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

So you may or may not have noticed that I don't think I've ever posted a recap without referencing my sister. To use a word from the AJ lexicon, she makes every game funner to watch. Also, you may have noticed, I've been running on fumes in light of the first at the new job. That said, my sister/best friend/partner in fan crime, Laur, has come in from the bullpen for relief.

PRESENTING...LAUREN...POLLINA! Live from Long Beach. I heart her.

Fine. I’m not CYC. But I do have a lot of feelings.

The psychologist Robert Plutchik said there are 8 basic feelings. Today I felt all of them.

1. Sadness.

A Yankee game without ARod is like a day without sunshine. B/c the day still happens, it can even be an awesome day. But it would obv be better with sunshine.

2. Joy!

The Yankees won by being on 9. well, by crossing home plate 9 times. Jorge got out of being stupid by slamming a glorious grand slam. I love Jorge. I think one of the main reasons I love Jorge is that my mom and her sister LOOOOVE Jorge, like teeny-boppers love Justin Beiber. (I actually am not sure know who that is. But I hear he’s hunky. CYC would google him and have a link to a picture here. I don’t even go to this school I just have a lot of feelings.)

Anyway….my mom enters a new level of euphoria when we’re at the stadium and they chant “HIP HIP….JORGE!” Sometimes she says it when Jorge isn’t at bat. Sometimes when we’re at dinner, and it’s the offseason. Anyway, Aunt Barbara loves Jorge because he’s a “real man” as evidenced by the fact that he doesn’t wear batting gloves. Neither does Cervelli, I noticed today. But Cervelli is more like a real boy. Kind of like Pinocchio.

I felt joy when the Yankees won. YAY for NINE!

3. Trust.

Leading off with a homerun is a unique feeling, at least for me. For some reason I kind of assume every subsequent hitter is going to do the same thing. (I may have some working memory problems.) So when DJ hits a first-thing ding, I exhaled and knew we’d win. No matter how irrational, “you gotta have faith in the Yankees.”

4. Disgust

I don’t consider myself a superficial person, so don’t judge me on this. But watching Wandy Rodriguez was like looking directly at a solar eclipse. I don’t even know if it’s that he’s so unattractive…it’s this uneasiness and sourness emanating from him. It may have been that he was on tilt after the lead-off HR. or that his parents named him Wandy.

5. FEAR.

As assuring as it is to start with a first-inning HR, that’s how deflating it is to give one up in the next half-inning.

6. anger.

I actually don’t think I felt anger today. But I experienced it by watching the Astros for the last 2 days. They just seem like such an angry group of guys. When Berkman struck out last night, he wasn’t just frustrated with the call. He was outright angry. Like Incredible Hulk/red-eyed Pennywise angry. Scary angry.

Even when they were doing fine they seemed angry to me.

Speaking of anger, the announcers were all sorts of excited about how Posada was angry that he was DHing. Especially because it mirrored Paul O’Neill’s attitudes about playing that role. Two awersome things came out of these discussions: 1. a montage of Paul O’Neill being nuts, one of my all-time favorite Yankee montage subjects. Yea. I have several. 2. They were talking about how Paul O’Neill was pretty much excused from DHing just because he made such a stink about it, and O’Neill comes back with this gem [I may be a little off, but this is the gist]: You throw a few tantrums and then you get what you want.

7. SURPRISE!

I love Javy. Or I hate him. They say the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. That there’s a fine line between love and hate. Well yea. That. About Javy. But whether he’s awesome or he’s horrendous, I’m always surprised.

8. Anticipation.

I can’t wait for a-rod to be back, I can’t wait for the next game, I can’t wait for the world series, I can’t wait for the pie in the face, I can’t wait. Again paraphrasing, this time Lord Byron: The best of life is but anticipation.

Those are my feelings. Now I’ll go home.

-LP