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

After an impromptu client meeting at 5:30, I ended up not getting home til after 8. My phone was dead, and I know it's cliched, but good God, you really just don't know exactly how chemically dependent you are on our freaking cells until we have to walk for like 15 minutes without having any default activity to do.

And today it was particularly excrutiating not having the slightest idea of what was going on in the game. Kinda like a few years ago when Giambi was playing first and whenever there was a play there, I kind of had to close my eyes and cringe and just wonder where in God's name the play was gonna end up.

Unfortunately, I couldn't even remotely hazard a guess as to what I'd be walking into when I turned on UPN 9. Nova vs Garza. Talk about complete question marks, man. I tell ya.

I was DELIGHTED to see the score was a nice, comfortable 5-0. (Sadly, I actually looked at that like 120 times before I fully believed and accepted that the Yanks were up. What the hell is wrong with me? In fairness, my eyes are for crap. I've imagined much worse than scores.)

My sister comes over, we split the NFL Sunday Pasta leftovers, and I mumble through bites of bolognese sauce, "5-run lead. I swear to God, if the Yanks lose this, then....then...I don't know. I mean, I'd just-- Yeah. I'D TOSS IN THE TOWEL. I'd die. I'd actually die."

"No you wouldn't, don't say that."

"I wouldn't actually die. Fine."

"You wouldn't toss in the towel either. It doesn't matter anyways, the Yankees aren't gonna lose."

"Yeah. Cool."

These are how annoying sitcoms are set up. We might as well have had said, "What could possibly go wrong?"

Grumble grumble.

A short trip outside to get a box of cat food, a bar of soap, and Pepsi, and then we're back in my apartment. 10 minutes later.

"Oh, God. Oh, God. Don't come over here. Stay over there. You don't want to look at this. Oh, God. Please don't look."

My sister sounded like Morgan Freeman at the end of Seven when he was trying to convince Brad Pitt not to look in the box, in an effort to keep him from discovering his wife's severed head.

In this case, the severed head was a 7-6 score.

The Yanks had given up a 6 run lead. And were now losing with less than half the game left to play.

You know what sucks about that? Not just that they gave up the chunky lead, but that even if they do come back and end up winning it, it's just almost like bringing you to baseline. Like winning $500 on a scratch off ticket but then having to use the whole thing to pay for a chipped tooth or something.

Additionally, all the great offense that occurred prior to the blown lead becomes almost somewhat negated. The moon shots from Arod and Cano that reminded me of the way things used to be... the working-the-count-walk-in-a-runner...the run-manufacturing ribbies from the heart of the lineup...

Everything that happened before the 5th inning was just a bright reaffirmation of what makes the Yankees championship material.

It was the best of times.

Soon it was the worst of times.

Since I was somewhere in the vicinity of the bodega on 88th and York, I didn't actually SEE what happened to make the score 7-6. I didn't particularly have any interest in rewinding the DVR, either.

But I started going through the "stages." The stages I talked about after the 0-0 11 inning fiasco on Monday.

I seamlessly slipped into the "muting the tv in the bottom of the inning" stage and very quickly entered the "hanging out on the roof and checking the score on my Blueberry" stage.

At one point I had said to Laur, "Last year the Yanks kept finding new and different ways to establish their domination. This year, they're being very crafty about unveiling different ways to lose."

"Ugh, God. I know."

But they didn't lose. And I can't even begin to imagine the hell that would have been unleashed if they had. With one swing, Posada put the Yanks back in 1st place. A bomb in the 10th that went nearly 450 feet.

FOUR HUNDRED AND FORTY FIVE FEET!

Sweet Christ.

Garza and Nova both had about equal outings, the game was handed over to the bullpen, and for some reason, the Yanks just weirdly seem to always come out on top in this area. Realllly didn't think I'd ever be saying that.

Between both teams, 12 relievers came in, 7 from Tampa.

It's always nice to see relievers get us out of jams. More so than seeing starters do it. My sister's friends once all collectively burst with joy when someone walked into their apartment and said, "Is this delivery?" and they hence had the opportunity to say, "NO IT'S DIGIORNIOS!"

Similarly, I love watching effective relief outings because it's like, "Neat! The reliever position IS an actual position. It's doing its job! And our relievers are performing exactly how we wanted! It's perfect!"

After Logan gave up a 3-run bomb to Aybar in the 5th, the relievers were flawless. No hits for the rest of the game, including the heart-jumping-into-throat warning track shot in the 9th off the bat of Longoria.

The play of the game? The throw Golson made after he caught Matt Joyce's fly out to right. Laur and I both agreed it was perhaps the best throw we'd ever seen. It beat Crawford to third, who was tagging up, on one bounce.

Game over.

Thank you Cano, Jorge, Arod, and Golson.

Thanks for not losing, Yankees. Part of me thinks, yeah it would have been easy to give up after blowing that big lead.

But you came back. You won.

PLEASE KEEP IT UP!

You're the YANKEES. This is TAMPA. They play in the Trop. Yech. You're filet mignon and they're Friday's chili bowl.

Never forget who's boss.