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

Nice editing, jerks. Or should I say, "Nice editing jerks"?

You couldn't even spring for a competent copy editor, Ms. Blume? Maybe I'm a little snarky because of the Yankees' palpable descent into phoning-it-in behavior. But I'll tell you one thing, the egregious punctuation free-for-all going on on the cover of the original edition of the Lisa Frank Sticker Collecting Generation's cult classic? It's not helping.

(I do find it a little suspect that in the 7 times this book has been reprinted, there was one version--the penultimate one--that at least partially paid respects to the basic rules of comma usage. It also prominently features a bra. I don't know where I'm going with this. But it's somewhat topical given this hilarioud development in the world of marketing hail marys. I shouldn't joke, though, considering the longstanding unmet need for a "Ventilated cap compliant with ISO 11540 / BS 7272-1 standard" has finally been addressed.)

What, the Yankees are the only ones allowed to forget what they're supposed to be doing? Yeah, I said it. But maybe it's like the words of Schmitt's sage father: "Do as I say, not as I do."

In other words, just because I'm incapable of focusing on anything for more than 22 seconds, it doesn't mean I have to give the Yankees carte blanche to exercise the same kind of flightiness.

Tough love shit.

It was a beautiful day outside today, and all the people at Yankee Stadium who took off on Wednesday to preemptively kick off the Farewell to Summer Weekend, were probably expecting all the stars to align. For some reason, a flawless blue sky above a baseball stadium instills a kind of bright certainty in the home team's fans.

It's like how my mom can't wrap her head around it when a "good looking guy from a good family" is arrested for stabbing his girlfriend to death or something. Similarly, baseball fans can't wrap their heads around it when their team loses in an otherwise perfect day.

You know what else is making this hard to fully digest? This:

Good work maintaining decimal point usage consistency.

The Yanks have won ZERO games when trailing in the ninth? It's true. Our boys are 0-46 when they're down after 8 innings.

They are virtually unrecognizable from the guys of 2009 glory. I'm sorry, I know they didn't get anywhere in terms of the 'ship in the past few years, but even those teams have more fire in them than this one.

I can't put my finger on it. Because Jeter certainly seems to have the fire of 10,000 suns. Ditto for Swish. But as for the rest of the offense, even the great ones are starting to look like paled versions of themselves.

Anyways, to briefly review the afternoon delight that wasn't a delight (Afternoon dedark. Afternoon disgust? Options from which to choose.):

Yanks take early 2-0 lead, what else is new, thanks to Jones' ribbie single and Grandy's fielder's choice groundout. I think if you look at the runs scored in the last month, it'll be some kind of well curve graph:

Math!

I have no idea if the above is accurate (which of course didn't dissuade me from going to the trouble of creating a graph to "validate" my hyperboles/hypotheses). But it's immaterial, sort of, since the main take-away is that win or lose, we don't walk away from the game convinced the Yankees were the dominant team.

Jays come back to score 3 in the third, with that annoying ass Escobar, Encarnacion, Lind stuff. 3-2 game. The Grandy puts the Yankees on top with a double that scored Swish and Jones. 4-3! Wahoo! We're in business!

No. Escobar homers, like a little bitch. 2 innings later, Mathis sac flies, like an even littler bitch. And the Yanks find themselves in a 6-4 hole going into the 8th.

Fortunately, they're not allergic to regaining leads in the 8th, it's a localized ailment that only afflicts the 9th inning so far. But who knows? Disease spreads. Especially during seasonal changes.

R-Mart doubles in Ibanez, and a 1-run game should absolutely smell like an f'n dramatic walk-off. It should be emblazoned on our psyches. Yankees come from behind. Have faith.

No magic. None. Fans at the game didn't get much of a chance to get their hopes up too stratospherically high, seeing as the promising little 6-5 game quickly became a deflating 8-5 game in the top of the 9th. Escobar, shame on you for hitting the bal so hard that it shattered our optimism.

Oh, also, you know what? Fatso was the starter. Yeah. Tubbo.com got Clubbo'ed.com.

And by "Clubbo'ed" I mean, he let up 9 hits over 7 innings. 5 runs. Here's the part that started to make this game feel like this:

Round Boy left the game having gave up 5 runs.

Only 3 of which should have been real. Jeter, Nix, and a Z-Packer all had errors.

If the offense wasn't being so shady, I'd throw Nix under the bus. But since the fat guy has compassion (either that or the self-deprecating guilt-prone esteem of devout biblical characters), he had this to say:

"It's all my fault, obviously."

Oh, Big Guy. Stop it.



3 f'n errors. 66% of those names just don't make mistakes in the field. But today they did. What could have been a 6-2 game just fell out of our grasps.

The bullpen tried to patch together a win, aka Girardi was acting like he was doing laundry on a Sunday and there's only 1 washing machine left that isn't being used, so he tries to fit all 592 loads of laundry into one machine.

Lard pitched til the top of the 8th. In the span of those 2 remaining innings, Girardi shoved in the following laundry:

Lowe. Logan. Eppley. Color Swatch. Justin/Joba. 6 pitchers. One for each out? This isn't CYO basketball, Joe. You don't HAVE to give all the players fair playing time, you know.

Nothing good comes from force fitting things into a washing machine. Alex Hug and my broken rib will attest to this.

So, yeah, great. Sarcasm. Frustration. Huffing and puffing. Frantically trying to calculate W-L scenarios for the rest of the league.

The Yankees look like Braden Looper's baseline expression. This look of confidence that acutely melted into sheepish dejection.
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Any time you're comparing the state of play of an entire team, to the remarkable failures of a former Met...then we've arrived at a time when this doesn't seem too farcical.

Et cessare faciam ens amara, quando desinis vocans illud fefellitus.