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

Ok, yes, obviously I hate when anyone beats the Yankees. But you have to admit that some losses are more palatable than others. For example. An interleague game (other than the Mets) that ends in an L isn't devastating. Losing to the Twinkies. Or the White Sox. For some reason, I'm just like, ok, well you can't win 'em all, so if we have to have a few Ls up in this piece, let it be to the midwesterners.

But Oakland is different. Not always. Just this year. And the early 2000s. Because I hate HATE the whole delight the world gets over an alleged "Cinderella team" toppling the evil empire.

First of all, if I haven't already made it clear how I feel about "Cinderella teams," I'll take this moment to entrench myself firmly in opposition. The term makes no sense. Cinderella was NOT an underdog. She had a magical fairy godmother who whipped up a dress for her and then conjured up a mobile pumpkin. How could she have possibly been at a disadvantage?

It's like "oooohhh I'm so dirty yet beautiful underneath all this grime, I wish I had grown up with a silver spoon in my mouth like my ugly sisters. Guess I'll just have to settle for having a host of rats that do all my cleaning for me and a relative who can just make luxury items appear on a whim."

So there's that. Also, Oakland isn't a Moneyball team anymore. I get the concept of Moneyball and it was interesting and all, but it didn't work--they did no better with a bunch of baserunners than then did with bunch of sluggers. And any comparison to that team to this 2012 team is ludicrous.

Their OBP this year? Is the 3rd worst in the entire league. So yeah, go ahead and lionize the As for being a low-budget team. But unless they're playing well, the fact they have the 2nd lowest payroll in the league is meaningless. You can't have it both ways. Either money buys championships, as NYY haters will whine until they day I kill them, or payroll has no impact on success. Oakland playing well derails the former idea.

Anyways, the As are all acting like they just made it into the playoffs and the only team that that is acceptable for is the Orioles, because they did it in 2011, and it was hilarious and awesome.

I gotta hand it to Oakland, though, their pitching is filthy. (Not in a Cinderella way.) The Yankees had to resort to playing like the Moneyball team of 2002, and doing the unthinkable: manufacturing runs. (Which just goes to show you that it's better to hit a million homeruns than have a million baserunners!)

A-Rod was stealing (priceless), Ibanez was doing everything he was supposed to, Hughes was decent (only a few bad pitches, as the score indicates and how he is quick to remind us--relax, son. You're not going anywhere.)

Unfortunately, Cano's hitting streak went somewhere. As in it ended. I'm not really too broken up about it, because why would anyone even assign any importance to that aspiration anyway? No one's going to beat Dimaggio's streak ever, obviously, so if I was playing ball and it got to the point where I had hit in so many games that people were starting to keep track, I'd almost be like, "Ok, you can stop now. It's just going to be embarrassing when I eventually became one of the many Also-Rans."



Bartolo Colon looks like me right before anaphylaxis hits. (Sentence I never thought I'd say.)

Some pipsqueak named Doolittle was pitching like he was freaking Nolan Ryan last night, and I am shocked SHOCKED that no one(cough .. sterling .. cough) said anything like "well it looks like Doolittle is actually doing MUCH!" I mean, it wasn't beneath me to make this comment during a losing effort to the Tiggers.

So we're looking at avoiding the sweep this afternoon, and good grief if the ALLERGY holds the Yankees to less than 3 runs, I'm going to jump into a vat of dip.

I'll do it, I will.