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

I am flying pretty low to the ground today after a outstanding night at the Manny's. I love black tie affairs. I managed to keep my hat off for the entirety of the ceremony, but when it was over, I had my calling card right back atop my head.

Not only was I in formal gear all night (a CYC rarity), but I also sang karaoke. A lot. Which is almost a CYC impossibility. And when I realized that watching the dvr-ed game was not going to be in the cards, I checked the score of the game.

And saw with pleasure the drubbing.

(Ha, I just realized how bizarre that sentence just sounded.)

Yanks won 15-3 last night and the best about checking the scores on the blackberry was the bluntness and unbiased directness of seeing Ohman finish off the interminable 5th inning.

Ohman. If your name is going to be OH MAN, then you have to work damn hard to make sure you stay off the grid, and out of negative limelight. Like what this guy did.

So after what seems like a 230-game series with the Southsiders comprised of run tallies that you could easily tick off on one hand, the Yanks basically exploded in the 5th inning. Actually, I thought initially I was just bleary eyed from crazy lighting design of the banquet hall, because all of a sudden the game went from 2-0 to 8-0.

And how did this all happen? It began with a homerun from Gardner.

I'm sorry, but why is no one making a bigger deal out of this??? Brett Gardner has hit like .02 homeruns in his life, and in the past week he's hit about 49. I guess this exercise in weirdness (can I even call it weird anymore? It's the norm now?) sparked the Yanks into some kind of "Well, if GGBG is going yard, it'll basically just be embarrassing if we don't" mentality.

So there's your 5th inning. NINE Yanks batted before anyone even recorded an out. (Awkward for the 1st out batter. But since it was GGBG, who had hit a bomb 8 batters ago, it was ok. But it wasn't ok for Swish, who said he was getting teased on account of even the small fry knocking one out.)

Swisher broke his 75-AB homerun drought. I don't know why this stat bothers me, but it does for some reason.

It's like, when ARod is chasing a milestone, it's normal for him to salivate over the idea of taking the pitcher deep. He's our clean-up guy. It's expected.

When Jeter is in a slump, it's natural for him to long for just any kind of base hit. He's our lead off guy. It's expected.

But Swish getting his panties in an uproar over not going yard? Come on. I don't necessarily want bombs from him. I just want him to get on base. It would've made more sense if Swish was pissed about an 0-for-75 no base-on-balls slump.

I feel like Swish overswings when he's frustrated, so all the more reason for him to pay no mind to keeping the ball in the park. I like you, Swish. You're the fine the way you are, you don't need a homerun.

But, immaterial, since, well, he got one in the 7th inning! Hurray for you, boy!

Other game points:

2 days after Sterling confidently asserted that Konerko doesn't make any mistakes, there's this:

"It's been a bad couple of weeks. It's been bad up to this point as a whole this season, but that doesn't mean tomorrow has to be [the same way]. It's way too early to get discouraged or to say, 'OK, this is the team for the season.'"

Ouch. How'd your team feel about that one, a-hole?? That was a mistake.

Jeter got a planned day off, and his replacement got confused about things. In other words, Nunez had 2 errors. That sucks, I feel bad for him. A nice a fielding mistake to start the game--good work--and then just when we were all forgetting about that little snafu, he goes and throws to God knows who, sailing one to like the right field bleachers or something, and then this leads to 3 unearned runs.

That was sloppy. But the sloptasticity reached its pinnacle when Fatso balked. I love Tubbo so much that he literally cannot do any wrong by me. I even love his balks! He dropped the ball. I mean, he actually just dropped the ball.

You know why? Because his hands were greasy from MickeyD's. No, I don't know why. But that's what would make sense. Explains why he's CONSTANTLY wiping his palms down like a porker killing a bags of Lays. Yeah. I don't know.

It was such a weird game. Despite the 5th inning where time ceased to move, the game wrapped up in 3 hours. Errors, homeruns, low scoring game, high scoring one. This game had everything!

Except an Ozzie ejection. Sigh.

(Thanks to Strange for waking me up this morning with this facebook post: Guillen has been ejected 26 times, including three times at Yankee Stadium since 2007. ‘‘I get kicked out of the game a lot here in New York. I got to check that record. ‘‘I wonder why.’’ On the plus side, Guillen joked, he has a nice office at Yankee Stadium and the food is good.)

Great game Yanks! Terrific, even!

AND I'LL SEE YOU ON SATURDAY AT THE STADIUM FOR PART III OF THE KEITH, KRISTA, POLLINAS FESTIVAL OF BANANAS!

PART I
PART II