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

Weirdly, I missed the first 4 innings of this game on account of softball. And not just normal softball, but softball with the guys who work for the Mets. Sometimes I hate meeting cool Mets fans. It's like discovering something you never thought existed and were perfectly comfortable in your established belief set. It's like how angry my guy friends get when they find out about the physically artful process a girl goes through to get ready before she goes out.

So that was the good half of the night. The bad half came when I left Burger Joint after the game upon seeing the score on my "Blueberry." Not only was it 4-2..that part didn't bother me..but Hughes had let up 8 hits already, and the Yanks had only recorded 2.

And they couldn't even use the "Oooh well we suck in Anaheim, anyway" excuse because, well, for obvious reasons.

Also, the Angels are pretty terrible. Why do the Yanks ALWAYS do this? They beat up on the good teams, get teed off on against the scrubs. I don't understand it. And I feel like there are a LOT of bad teams in the AL this year. (Yeah, I gotta hand it to the NL, they look pretty good. Although, I can't get too fired up about them, because I still think the talent they're working with is questionable sometimes.)

It would ALMOST behoove the Yanks for the rest of the league to not be such offensive nightmares in general, because it's like the worse a team does against the rest of the world, the more than excel against NY. How delightful. As if we needed another sect of whiners doing backflips upon dismantling the oh so evil empire of NY.

You know, here's the thing:

"The envi0us man thinks that if a neighbor breaks his leg, he will be able to walk better himself." --Helmut Schoek

Just saying...

Anyways, so I watched the Encore presentation of the innings I missed, and it's probably better I didn't watch until the Yanks were losing, because there are few things worse that watching your team give up a lead. (Few things worse in sports, anyway. Stepping in dog shit is the worst overall.)

Swish homered to right to put the Yanks on the board at 1, and you know how everyone is always telling Obama he's allowed to stop campaigning now because he's pretty much locked up the Presidency? Well, no one tell Swish that, because I don't think he knows the All-Star game voting is over. (You're a sure thing..)

Posada's ground-out scored Tex and the Yanks are up by 2 before anyone had time to bat an eye. That's also about as quickly as it took for the Angels to tie it up in the following innings...and then blow open in the game in pretty much every inning thereafter.

Three 2-run homers hurt the score a lot. Izturis, Napoli, Matsui...the usual suspects.

This would be a good time to commence ranting about how the f*&! Izturis is a constant explosive beast against us. Seriously. WHO THE HELL IS THIS GUY AND WHY IS ALWAYS DRIVING US BATTY???

The Yankees are making bottom of the lineup guys fantasy giants. Maybe that's why everyone hates them so much. They're like me at a blackjack table.

Dealer shows a 2, and I ask for a hit on a 17.

What? I don't care what the rest of the table is doing, I want to get 21, screw the whole "messing up the deck/flow" thing.

Similarly, the Yanks are screwing with the whole natural order of fantasy. Izturis is not supposed to be having games where he goes 2 for 4 with 3 ribbies. But the Yanks made it possible. ROAR.

Speaking of roar, Girardi got kicked out of the game again. He spit out his gum in defiance as he stormed off the field. It always kills me the gestures that managers make to demonstrate their frustration, with the limited amount of legal recourse they have.

They can't punch shit or kick dirt on the umps. So they have to do the equivalent of a chick slamming the phone when she gets into a fight with her boyfriend..a move that gets increasingly less satisfying with every cell phone upgrade. How pissed is the girl who has to settle for brusquely tapping her end call button on the touch screen?

Tex was safe at first, he got called out. Whatever, I get what you're trying to do, Joe, but c'mon pick your battles. The Yanks hadn't scored since the 1st inning. They were barely getting on base at all. A little spark and fire under their asses is useful when they're in a 3-1 game and battling, but down by 4 in the 6th when they're showing zero life? It's a waste of a tantrum.

The Yanks bullpen was a murderer's row of "Seriously? They're still here?" arms. Abagljaskjs whatever his name is came in, gave up a run on 2 hits. Thanks for coming out. Chan Ho Park outdid him, as Chan Ho Park is want to do and gave up a bomb, but Gaudin topped them all and handed Anaheim their final 2 runs of the game.

All in all, an unmitigated pitching disaster.

The Cy Young candidate we could only scrape together 2 runs off of...Sean O'Sullivan. His first Major League win in 2010 in his first start. It took 85 pitches for him to retire 18 batters.

Apparently, the Yanks are not only making stars out of bats, but out of baby hurlers.

Argh.

What else is there to really say about this? Hughes was terrible, the bats were bored, and the Angels were elated.

But Baltimore somehow scored 11 runs to beat TB (thanks!), and the As have taken down the Sox in the 10th.

So, if everyone loses then no one loses, right?

Tomorrow there's Javy vs Piniero. Something actually tells me this is going to be a pitcher's duel.

I don't know if this has more to do with the lack of offensive consistency from these teams, or the strength of the pitchers. Either way, the Yanks' got this one.