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

I SAW MOST OF THIS GAME!!! AND BY MOST I MEAN I SAW FROM THE 6th INNING ON!!!

But I LISTENED to the parts I didn't see!

For the first time in WEEKS, work didn't inhibit me from my boys (neither the Yankee boys nor my buddies).

I listened to the first half of game, (and it's miracle my attention was captivated as long as it was.. Sterling and Waldman spent the entire time reiterating it was "like watching paint dry.") Apparently it wasn't much different on the YES broadcast. My buddy texted me: "Singleton just told me to stick around cuz the game's not over. It's 1-1 in the 3rd. Where was I gonna go??"

Geez it wasn't THAT boring. I mean, it's a 1-1 game in the 3rd, after Arod ties up Kearn's sac fly with his own fly of the sac persuasion.

Dum de dum de dum. After 2 hours of listening to the WCBS duo remind us repeatedly how molasses-like the game was (thanks, guys, your infectious enthusiasm was so appreciated in my dark office. Nope), I left to go uptown and meet up with Strange et al.

Ah, Strange. It's been too long since I made a Strange reference. And it was great because he was in his element, KATN-ing at the beirut table etc, and it was SO NICE to be in the land of the living, even if I was relegated to craning my neck to the tv while my buddies played pong.

Oh, and also..by the time I had gotten out of the cab from 42nd and 2nd to 76th and 2nd, the game was 9-1. Normal.

Rather than go through the run hemorrhaging, I'll just make it easy and post the scoring summary.

As has been the case for the last week or so, the whole focus of the game has more or less been on Arod and his pursuit for 600.

As one of my readers astutely noted, it IS becoming kind of sad how we're almost instinctively DISAPPOINTED when all the scrub comes up with is ribbie after ribbie, and not by virtue of the long ball.

So true. The guy has been plating runners faster than the scoreboard can keep up and the only things his ABs are boiling down to are "Argh, he whiffed!" or "Argh, he didn't go deep!"

Hey, Arod? It'll come. It's like marriage. Like how my mom is always telling me she wants grandkids etc and why aren't I dating anyone etc.

I'll know it when I see it.

It'll probably happen at some point, but until then, I'm not going to discount anything I do. It's not like 600 or marriage is the culmination of a career or a person. It's just one element of it, and it'll most likely happen eventually. But in the meantime, everyone needs to stop looking at anything that ISN'T that element, as an immaterial failure.

I don't care if either comes along, so long as the Yankees keep winning.

And last night they did, despite the most valiant efforts of Chan Ho Park.

He let up 3 runs in the 9th, which is pretty terrible, because cmon, we're not always gonna be up by 10 runs in the 9th.

So, that's that. The Yankees win and now are in TB for a HUGE series. And I'm off from work for the first time in weeks. My first day off in what feels like forever. I'm gonna relish every pitch as if it was my last.

And the recaps will once again retain some kind of level of analytic, coherent thought. As much as they ever have, anyway.

HAPPY FRIDAY, AND GO YANKEES!