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

Brett Anderson makes me think of the beginning of the season. You know how there's a song that makes you think of a really broad era of time? Like "Lovefool" or "Clint Eastwood"... period music, really...? Well, Brett Anderson brings me back to March.

Fantasy draft time.

Because he was my "I'm going to beat this 'sleeper' pick to death, til my league finally pools money together as an offering to shut me up" pick.

He spent a good chunk of the season on the DL.

He spent another chunk of the season pitching like a better than good, less than great, sleeper pick.

And another chunk of the season being completely irrelevant.

Basically he's like the embodiment of the entire 2010 Oakland team.

Tonight, I started him, and despite losing, he didn't post horrendous numbers. No one did in this game, really.

Everyone wins!

Except the A's didn't really win, but semantics. It was a game only a mother and a Yankee fan could love, I suppose.

Now onto AJ Burnett.

After A.J. Burnett had a tough outing last week, he found pitching coach Dave Eiland.

"He said, 'That's it. No more of these,'" Eiland said. "I said, 'Let's get to work.'"

Sounds like the character arch of a book you'd find in the "Ages 5-8" section of Barnes and Noble.

A bootleg version of the "I think I can I think I can" classic motif, if you will.

Whatever, AJ's f'n awesome. 8Ks in 6 innings. 3 runs. Only 2 BBs! Well, good for you, AJ. Good. For. You.

I watched the game on my Blueberry tonight, while enjoying the night at Morandi's and actually finding a baseball fan to talk to. (Hey, it's slim pickings for sports conversation in the West Village! But indeed there were 2 there. A semi-sane Sux fan and his World Series Champion Yankee fan friend. And aside from a "buy their team" accusation, he was amicable enough to become maybe the 6th Sux fan I don't want to throw red ants and honey on.)

Additionally, it was so bizarre, seeing MVP Kev behind a bar that wasn't Dorrians. And drinking at a bar that didn't have a tv. In fairness, it was a restaurant. One with exposed brick and really good pasta.

But there's something kind of cool about Gamecast. Obviously you wanna see the game and hear the raucous cheers and inhale the excitement. But when you can't, there's something to be said for seeing "run(s) scored."

Like, how many runs was it? A homerun? How did they score? And you don't know any of these things in the 3 seconds before your Blueberry screen refreshes. It's a pregnant 3 seconds.

So the scoring starts in the 1st with Tex's ribbie double that brings in Jeter. Jeter, as you may have heard, is in the throes of tumult that obviously will never come to be. It's ridiculous. Yeah, he's slumping and all. But good God, he's DEREK JETER.

It's like someone saying, "Mo's Hall of Fame entry may not be done deal after all, after 3 consecutive blown saves."

Jeter "drove" in a run when Brett Anderson makes what the A's pitcher termed "kind of a typical play with me being unathletic," and one that I file in the silo of So Ugly and Cringe-Inducing That No One Could Fault Him If He Let It Get To His Head For The Rest Of The Game.

(I guess his manager agreed...)

"The error definitely cost him. It was the third out of the inning." A's manager Bob Geren said. "Then he couldn't recover after that, walked Swisher after that, ball just squeaked through the infield after that and we're down 4-0.

Tex's 2-run single in the 2nd inning was the last scoring for the Yanks, and the best the As could do was a 2-run blast off Kouzmanoff's bat in the 4th, and Coco Crisp's ribbie ground out in the 5th.

So here's what we're reminded of in the Day of Reminders:

AJ has it. He's just a bull in a china shop sometimes.



Tex slumped at some point? Man, that seems so long ago.

Posada is still crazy. Maybe that triple yesterday deluded him into thinking he was in some of a consequence-free, lawless dream sequence, since tonight he decided to outline the strike zone for the home plate ump by sketching it out in the dirt with his bat. You can imagine how well-received this was. If you can't, well, suffice to say he was ejected.

(I never understand why people do that. I mean, I just did it. But they always say "suffice to say" after they've greatly expounded on a subject. Or "to make a long story short." Same thing. They tell the whole story, then end with that phrase. "Needless to say," etc. I'm sorry. I won't do it anymore.)

And lastly, it was a reminder that you should never trust a pre-season sleeper pick against the Yankees. cough...brett anderson...cough

We begin September. Which means football is on our heels, as well as the hysterical but rare moments that you can still catch a frantic fan of a fringe team utter the words, "Well, it's still early."

Seriously. That happens.