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Everyone has their own way of dealing with grief.

So, after the headspinning sweep at the hand of the "low-budget As," Yankee fans were just kind of stupified. As coworker MVP Alex L. pointed out (maybe a little too excitedly): "That was the first time the Yankees got swept in a 4-game series, with each game decided by 1 run."

It was horrifying really. Nothing was making sense. Each game was more confusing than the last, so by time Sunday rolled around, we were fairly confident that there was no way they were gonna lose this. ESPECIALLY when they took a 4-run lead.

Suffice to say they lost. They blew it. I followed the game from Yankee Stadum, actually--as if to underscore the whole "wtf is going on here" mentality saturating baseball, I was watching a soccer game being played in Greatness' New Home. (Which was pretty f'n badass. Cheers to Alex R. for making that one happen.)

In a nutshell:

Grandy went yard in the 4th to bring the Yankees to a 4-0 lead. Then it went downhill, starting with Inge's bomb in the 5th. The Suzuki follows suit. (Suitzuki?) Inge plates Animal Phylum in the 6th. Seth Smith ties it up in the 9th. Cereal plated the go ahead run in the 12th. The A's completed a 4 game sweep with their 11th walk off.

And I think this pretty well sums it up, too:
 

And so we go to bed on Sunday trying to figure out what the hell just happened. Oddly enough, I made the comparison to someone about how it was like one of those jousting events on American Gladiators, where you use the padded rods to try and knock some weirdly named roid freak off a post. But most of the time, the average civilian gets whacked so hard and so fast that he may as well have cartoon stars floating around his head.

That's what the weekend felt like, metaphorically. Then I wake up on Monday and I physically felt like I had gotten punched in the stomach repeatedly, complete with a bruised bump on my abs. My guess is a hernia but I'm hoping the CT scan reveals it's an ulcer (do scans do that? they should) because then my official party line can be that the As' series gave me an ulcer. I know, I dream big.

So, yeah, thanks to the As, everything is terrible and the summer is ruined and there's no hope in dope and we might as well forget about the postseason.

But instead of diving head first into a vat of Bovinty Divinty, the Yankees decided to do something totally normal that everyone saw coming. Nope.

Welcome to the Bronx, Sneachiro.*

*What Lauren and I have always called that new guy on the Yankees. Because he's shady and sneaky.

Not sneaky enough to gank Bernie's number though, thankfully. He's #31 now. Welcome to the BX. Don't forget to shave.

Could it be more bizarre that they do it like 15 seconds before they start a series with Seattle? No. No, it could not.

Everyone's all fired up about this, and I think it's funny that we get someone like Ichiro who really is just to hold it down while Swisher's in recovery. The Yanks love acquiring last year's Cy Young winner/batting champ/etc...and then use their hired aces to warm the bullpen bench and bat 8th.

I gotta say though, while I was never a huge Sneachiro fan, I do think this quotes of his is pretty hilarious: "I'm going from a team having the most losses to a team with the most wins, so it's been hard to maintain my excitement."

Why not just ring a bell and wear a sandwich board that says, "Seattle who?"

Just as a further testament to how A-Rod unfair and perennial prosecution is so out-of-hand, Sneach gets a big warm ovation at Safeco when he steps up to bat. Something tells me the reaction wasn't as ambrosial when A-Rod had his first encounter with his ex-team's hometown fans.

(It should be noted here that there is one ONE Mariner's fan that I know. Thanks to him, I was a theater major. Thanks to his team, we have Ichiro.  So when something like this happens, after the whole self-involved Yankee fan thing subsides, then the natural inclination is to think, "oooh how did Ryan feel about all this?" I think mostly our only interactions are occur in the 10 days of the year where our worlds collide. Those are some great days of the year, though. Maybe we wouldn't concur on yesterday, but..well..Ichiro? THAT WAS JAY BUHNER. I'm sorry.)


Back to another Japan player: Kuroda pitches a gem, becoming the latest pitch to throw in the "How do we feel about him? Someone please tell us, because it's virtually impossible to formulate our own take on his performances" silo.

1 BB, 3 hits, 9 Ks. 4th win in a row. 7 out of the last 8. NBD. But, really, BD.

A-Rod went deep and you'd think it was a walk-off to win the game the way everyone was so fired up. Nobody more so than A-Rod, and someone needs to remind him that he's one of the best baseball players who ever lived, and he doesn't need to act like he's some rando who's throwing out the 1st pitch and gets super excited when the ball reaches the plate.

He's Alex F'n Rodriguez. You're supposed to homeruns. And you haven't been, which is why you're not a clean-up hitter anymore (shhh don't tell Girardi. Or tell him. I don't care.) But you're good. And so maybe all the negativity from, well, the free world, has made you a little insecure, but for my money, you're the best.

And more importantly, you've already proven as much.

On the other side of ex-Mariners, there's Sneach who singles and then promptly steals. Like, really promptly. As in, bullets have left guns slower. As if to say, "Oh hey, yeah, I don't know if you Yankee types know this yet about me, but I'm fast and good at swiping bags. Just giving you a heads up." Actually, in honor of Sneach being a Yank, here's an article I wrote years ago that's finally sort of apropos and not just weird.


Moving on, Sneach also catches the last out of the game, and the way Sterling was cavelling about this, you'd have thought the universe just completed it's circle of life. The cinematic symmetry! Crazy town! How WEIRD is it that the SAME DAY the Yankees get Sneach, that they PLAY SEATTLE and that SNEACH catches the final out?? You can't script stuff like this!

Ex-coworker MVP Joe: "Are you going to put up a pic of the
japanese guy from major league 2? Because that will be funny."
I mean, you could, but probably the only people who would marvel at it are people like my Mom, who thinks it's ironic when she was about to call me and I end up calling her first. "Do you know that I JUST picked up the phone to call you? Seriously. I was about to dial your number and you called. Can you believe that?"

Anyways, the Yankees beat the Mariners because Sneach was sneaking around the bases and because the Yankees were hitting on the screws and because A-Rod hit a homerun and because the Yankees out-hit the M's 11-3.

Actually, everyone on the team hit except for Grandy, and the 4 ribbies came from the heart of the lineup (which I love, because that's what they're supposed to do. It's like the cockamamie convention of the concept of "achieving expectations." How is that a quantifiable measure? I hate saying whether someone "achieves expectations" because my expectations are for people to go beyond what's expected. So if someone does go beyond, he or she is in fact, achieving my expectations. So I like when the real slugging bulk on the team "achieves expectations.")

D-Rob almost got hurt but didn't. R-So untucked his shirt. And all the Seattle pitchers hmpf-ed their way off the field. Not a great day for them, really.

Boston lost, so they are 11 games back. And they're not happy about seeing our new guy playing against them this weekend. They're 100% in "FAN-F'N-TASTIC. WHAT ELSE CAN GO WRONG. WHAT. ELSE." mode.

I mean, 11 runs, Lester? Sweet Christ, pull your shit together.

And Sneach? 動物園へようこそ。

7 Comments:

  1. Truax said...
    I'm disappointed here on so many levels. First, because I was SURE when you guys got Ichiro today, it would guarantee me a mention of some sort in the Crazy Yankee Chick blog. Fail #1.

    Fail #2 was this trade. I'm not so upset that the Mariners got rid of Ichiro - he's 38, and at this point, he was probably the third best player on a team full of bad players, making a crazy amount of money to sell tickets to Asians and remain comfortably in the cellar for yet another season. I'm upset because once again, the M's let another team make them their bitch in a trade. Seriously: we basically got one pitcher who couldn't make his way full-time into the vaunted Yankees bullpen (note the sarcasm), a second pitcher who the Yanks picked up off of waivers less than a month ago after he got waived by TWO other major league teams (and, incidentally, who the Yanks then waived themselves 3 days later....but no one wanted), and finally, the privilege of paying $4.5 mil of Ichiro's remaining $6.7 mil salary this year to watch him run around in pinstripes. The whole idea of getting rid of the guy was to "get something for him" before he became a free agent. To me, it looks like we traded the only guy in history to win ROY and MVP in the same season (although it looks like that guy with a fish name in Anaheim could make a run at it this year)...a guy with a record-setting 10-straight 200 hit seasons....a guy who ranks in the top 100 players of all-time in batting average, hits, and stolen bases....10-time all-star....we traded that guy for a career AAA ballplayer, a sandwich, and a $4.5 million kick in the nuts. That's something, alright.

    And obviously, though Yankees fans will chirp about how old he is and how he's going to warm the bench and blah blah blah, you KNOW he's gonna have a monster second half. Part (dare I say all) of the reason his numbers have declined over the last couple of seasons is that he's been playing on a team that can't hit. THEY. CAN'T. HIT. Now that he doesn't have to be "THE guy," watch his average shoot up. Watch his SB, R, and RBI totals skyrocket. Watch him help the Yankees win another effing title. And watch him re-sign with your boys in the offseason.

    I'm happy for him. I really am. For most of the last decade, he's been one of the few reasons (other than blind, obsessive love) to watch my pitiful Mariners trot out their sorry squad every night. I hope he gets a shot at a ring. And I hope he contributes in a big way to winning that ring, so I don't have to listen to my New York friends tell me how insignificant he was.

    I'm happy we traded him to a contender. But good god, the Mariners suck at trades.

    Oh...wait. At least we came out ahead in that Jesus Montero deal. Yeah... a .257 average, 9 dings and 36 ribbies a week after the break....pretty impressive shit.

    That may have been a little long for the "comment" section. I guess Fail #3 is on me.
    Professor Longnose said...
    Bring back the Seattle Pilots!

    Go, Steve Hovley!
    Infantry_169 said...
    Well the I Ching Row may not be the player he once was, but the Yankees are great at squeezing the last bit out of every lemon. And maybe there is some magic in the New Yankee field, a dream, a field of dreams. A field where the once great I Ching is reborn and we gain our 28th Championship. Then after the parade we kick him to the curb.
    Professor Longnose said...
    Hey, Chick. I'm going to make a concerted effort to root the Yanks to a win tonight over at YankeeAnalysts.com. I expect to stay awake until at least 10:30. Drop by if you can.
    Anonymous said...
    Cody Epply sucks and ruined two games that the Yanks could have won by giving up walk off hits. Can someone send him back to triple A?
    Crazy Yankee Chick said...
    Infantry 169, you got a way with words. You got a blog I could check out? Or..any interest in writing? And Anon--Cody Eppley I think has a name that sounds so much like the rest of the bullpen of the last 4 years, that I'm starting to think the coaches cant tell them apart. Chad Qualls, Cody Eppley, Clay Rapada, Cory Wade... It's like some bit from Sesame Street, which was brought to you today by the letter C and the number INF.
    Infantry_169 said...
    Thanks Crazy Yankee Chick. I don't have a blog. I go to work (civilian job) where I endlessly torment my Mets coworker, go to the gym, come home and watch the Yankees. I do like to write so in the hope that I have more time to do this I'm planning to win the lottery. When I have free time, the US Army National Guard (69th Infantry 'Fighting Irish') is always there to suck it up like Dexeria (Dexter + Texeria)does a ball coming within two miles of first base. The only two things I feel passionately about are: 1) The NY Yankees and 2)My world view as influenced by my combat tours. As to the first, at the moment I am more than happy to serve at your pleasure as an occasional commentator. As to the second, well at the moment I am reading Niccolò Machiavelli's "The Prince" and a book on Vlad the Impaler (regarding his fight with the Ottoman Empire). Any blog would consist of my combining the two methodologies into a philosophical challenge to the current Army COIN (Counter-Insurgency)dogma. However, I fear that my followers would make the Hitler youth look as timid as Mets fans and would label me as insanely mad or madly insane. And I like not wearing a straight jacket and not having to bust big rocks into little rocks. Scuba diving and the NY Yankees are my best PTSD treatments. Now, having said all that, I love that guy who said that the Yankees got I CHING ROW for a AAA ballplayer, a sandwich and a $4.5 million kick in the nuts. It make me laugh. Now WTF happened to AROD? For the love of everything Holy, this is going to be the first thing I lead off when I talk to my psychiatrist. I want to walk up to the baseball gods (little g there big guy note the little 'g') and ask really? But not to worry, we've called up Ganja aka (Ramiro Pena Gauna). At least it wasn't Nunez, my liver couldn't handle that. And Hernandez, three players? Ok hermano, it's on like Donkey Kong. So if the Yankees don't win tonight, my Mets co-worker is going to endure torment that will be legendary, even in Hell. Have a nice night CYC.

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