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

Last night I was reminded of that scene in one of my favorite all time movies, White Men Can't Jump. Not because there was an egregious absence of Caucasian-oriented hops last night. But mostly because this scene came to mind, when Gloria Clemente waxing philosophical on winning and losing:

"Sometimes when you win, you really lose. And sometimes when you lose, you really win. And sometimes when you win or lose, you actually tie and sometimes when you tie, you actually win or lose. Winning or losing is all one organic globule, from which one extracts what one needs."

I've seen that movie about 50612 times, and every time I'm thinking that I'm tracking with good ol' Gloria Clemente...until she gets to the last line about the organic globule.

Anyways, the point is that the Yankees don't even look good winning. It's like how those gymnasts do the inane dance-skipping moves just to "sneakily" manuveur to the corner of the blue mat, so they can begin their tumbling. They don't look good doing so. They look weird. Why can't they just scurry over to the corner of the mat? You're not fooling anyway. It's not like, "Oh, well look at that! I seem to be right at the precipice of a hypoteneuse! Let's do some running flips then. shall we!"

I had another MRI last night, and it was the same receptionist at Lenox Hill, and based on my reactions to the game both Tuesday and Wednesday night, I'm nearly 100% positive that she had a whole litany of jokes running through her mind, of the "well, I can see why she needs her head examined!" nature.

I had stopped by Dorrian's to say hi to Keith, and when I had arrived there, it was a 7-1 game and we exchanged the standard "now that's more like it!" hearty comments. One glass of wine later (what, I can be classy) and it's an 8-4 game and I'm reluctantly leaving my bar stool to go to the radiologist.

"God help me if when I get out of the cab, I see it's 11-8 or something."

"Don't even f'n joke."

Turns out I wasn't too far off.

8 to f'n 7. I almost vomited on myself. (Then the receptionist probably would have stopped her mental list of jokes about me and commenced making a physical list of ways to execute me via overmagnetizing.) That is the 2nd sentence in this post that, upon rereading, I realized is a sentence I have never said before and will most likely never say again.)

Fortunately, (to put it lightly), the Yanks eeked out a win. Sweet Christ, though, should they really be "eeking" things when they had such a robust lead? I had when that happens. When your excitement over the W is wildly tempered (oxymoron city!) by the fact the game should never have been that close to begin with.

It'd be one thing if the game was nip and tuck the whole time. Then we'd all be like, "YEAH! A HARD FOUGHT WIN!"

Instead, we're like, go kick rocks, Yankees. Stop making us want to spoon out our eyeballs.

It's this phenomenon, explained exquisitely in Scorecasting. (That book made a meteoric rise to the top of a my list of all time favorite books. It's mind blowing. Read it. Then read Franny and Zooey.)

Anyways. Round Boy was dealing at first, then he just looked like he was dealing with internal demons or something. He got taken out. In a fat-like manner. His line leaving the game: 5 runs, 3 earned, 8 hits, 7Ks, in almost 7 IP. It was pretty good magic.

Grandy redeemed himself with a bunch of ribbies (way to finally show up this series!) He was working in the 6-spot, which is such an odd decision, and frankly a little Maddon-esque. And it worked. Also very Maddon-esque. He notched his 30th ding of the season, and plated 4 runners, which helped because that's exactly how many the Yankees ended up winning by. Every run counts!

He's never bat 6th? Weird, and yet not that surprising. But sort of is surprising. I have no idea where I stand on this issue, clearly. I just think that it's not that big a deal for it to assign much weight to it. I also think he should not be batting 6th on purpose.


He is better than that, and the 6th hole should be reserved for the person at the wedding you're not sure where to sit, but since he's sort of friends with a bunch of peripheral groups, you stick him in the 6th-spot. Because all the other guests have specific needs that require specific seat locations.

Not Endy Z-Packer has been doing good things, which is nice of him to pick up the slack while the rest of the Yankees are, as any 3rd grade teacher worth her salt would say, "off in la la land." He brought in a couple of runs early in the game.

Anibal Sanchez wasn't that great, but he wasn't that bad either. (Apparently, I have zero interest in placing my stake in the ground in ANYTHING today. Sorry.) 7 runs. 7 hits. 2 BB. 2 HPB. Unnotable, really. Except I just noted it, so there goes that.

So, yeah, looking back on the game (as opposed to looking forward? I hate myself today) I think that the late inning dramatics masked the true unremarkabiliy of the overall performances (barring Grandy.) Tex had a sac fly. D-Rob gave up a homerun. P-Fat's ribbie wasn't of the bomb persuasion, just a grounder.

(THAT's an appropriate time to say "weakly grounded." Lauren and I hate when announcers go out of their way to point out the terribleness of an infield out. Like, ease up. An out's an out. No point in making anyone feel bad about it. But if P-Fat is grounding in runners instead of doing so with moonshots? Weakly grounded.)

Seriously, think about it. Every second of the game except for like 8 were just punctuated with "reached on a single." Everything just barely reached.

Whatever, they won. So no real complaints, yeah? But going back to my original WMCJ reference, did anyone else think that watching them win this was almost like watching them lose? Except without the losing part? It was a little painful to be confronted with the fact that this is what a Yankee win looks like.

Kind of like a salt and vinegar potato chip. I'll make a yech face and scrunch up my nose and half stick out my tongue, but when it comes down to it, fine I'll eat it. But it doesn't taste as good as I want it, too. In fact, it kind of leaves a pretty aggravating taste in my mouth.

Hopefully today's afternoon delight will be the equivalent of a stick of Big Red. Wakes me the f up. And then I'm excited about the great expanse of mintiness in my mouth that'll have me coasting through my day like it's nothing.

So cheers to a Big Red Gum afternoon. And here's hoping it's not one of these afternoons:



OH! PS, there's this. More "head examined" jokes! I love continuity so much.