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

Sneachiro is a beast. And by "beast" I mean that Sneast is like the American Rabbit.



I know he's not American, but when trying to think of some creature that seemed to have boundless powers (Bounders) but didn't effect the grizzly connotations of a "beast," I thought of the American Rabbit. Which was one of the weirdest cartoons I was obsessed with in my youth.

The others in that dubious list:

• Super Ted ("This is a story about an ordinary teddy bear. When he was made, they found something wrong with him and threw him away like a piece of rubbish, into an old dark store room. Then, from outer space, a spotty man brought him to life with his cosmic dust. He took him to a magic cloud where Mother Nature gave him super powers. that bear became SUPERTED!")
• Brave Little Toaster
• Unico
• The Chipmunk Adventure

Anyways, Sneach is the equivalent of a bunny who runs so fast that he turns into an American flag with roller skates and the ability to fly. Also, he plays the piano and saves the world from disaster. He wears glasses and spells his name "Robb."

I never understand why movies go out of their way to spell the names of their characters weirdly. Like in Clueless, Brittany Murphy is "Tai." I only know these things because of watching everything with captioning. There's a whole world of pretentious spellings out there that you don't even know about unless you're deaf.

Which brings me to the point that after the Yankees trailed 2-0 early (that's a switch, yeah?), Sneach takes matters into his own hands and plates 3 before the game's halfway mark even rolls around. Oh yeah, and one of those ribbies was a solo shot. Why not, ya know? Couldn't hurt.

The 4th inning was a lot of fun to listen to, so I can only imagine how much the stadium go-ers were loving it. Jeter drives in a run, so he probably broke a record. As my ex once said after Jeter tied Gehrig in 2009: "So basically every hit Jeter gets from now on is a record-breaker. He's breaking his own record, but it's still record breaking."

So Sneach the Beast or Flag Bunny starts the inning off with his ribbie double, and Swish finishes the rally with a grand slam, his 3rd of the year. Which means for the last 3 years the Yankees have had someone on the team hit 3 grand slams in a season.

I gotta give Elias Sports Bureau credit--if there's a streak, coincidence, pattern...they're gonna find it. I wonder if there's some kind of internal competition there, to find the holy grail of stats. If there's not, there should be.

The Jays leave the 4th inning with a 6-run deficit, but get 2 of those back in the top of the 5th, with a homer that scored Lind. Who stills play baseball.

The Jays didn't put up their best effort. Remember how this was the POWERHOUSE JUGGERNAUT OFFENSE TO BEAT?

(Not that I'm one to talk, since our own team was something of a force with which to be reckoned at one point in the season. Now we're living off the food stamps of baseball runs, which are errors, sac flies, and fielder's choice. Once in a while they'll win a scratch off ticket and take some pitcher deep, but right now the Yankees' scoring is living hand to mouth.

And you know what, they didn't play like that today. They played like a good team. Who had lots of talent. And of whom everyone should still be scared.

As if to punctuate this point, D-Rob struck out the side in the 9th.

That was exactly what he had to do. It really was worth a lot more than just 3 outs and a save. Seriously. I feel like my mom now, who wrote the book on mountain-making from molehills ("They were out of cinnamon raise bagels at the deli. You know what this means, don't you? We're all gonna die.") But seriously, those 3 strikeouts were so aggressive and forceful and borderline humiliating (to Toronto, to be clear).

D-Rob knocked them down like they were empty beer cans on a terrace. And you take them off the terrace and put them on the ground and stomp on them so purposefully that they flatten and you feel so great about it.

I assume it feels great anyway. Every time I try to do it, the can flies out from under my foot, like it's a tomato seed or something.

As for the starters, I was pleased to see that Laffey didn't make me Cry-y. (Mom genes.) Hughes wins his 3rd straight, striking out 9. Four of these strikeouts came in the 4th inning. There are only 3 outs in an inning, so this is unusual. Lawrie reached on a passed third strike. If you mix up the letters in his name, it spells We Bat til Err.

The bullpen mishmosh of the evening included D-Lo, Wade, Joba, D-Rob. D-Rob, as said, was brilliant. The rest were adequate which is the same as brilliant. All we need to do is get through the innings without losing.

The relievers did that, so they earned their paycheck. Maybe not Wade, but I still don't really consider him a Yankee. Sometimes I don't consider him a corporeal being. Cory Wade sounds like a fake alterego. His name mixed up is Ye Coward.

The Yanks still are hanging on to their 1st place spot. My Dad told me that this is the most the Yankees have been above .500 all year. Is that true? If it is, then that would mean the Orioles have just been playing really well, right?

And not that the Yankees have been playing really badly? I hate math, this is making my head spin thinking about it. Sometimes my Dad will say stuff like that because he knows I'll never be the wiser. When I was little he told me that there was a number between 6 and 7 called "Bleen."

And I believed him. I even asked my teacher when were going to learn about adding bleens. She probably thought I was eating gluesticks during recess.

Oh, then there's this from Sneach commenting on his adoring reception at Yankee Stadium (I'm sorry, I haven't been getting enough sleep lately, I'm all over the place): "You could say that I'm surprised, but maybe when I was with the Mariners in right field, I did try and communicate with those fans in right field, maybe make some friends."

Oooh, what a tangled web we weave! COMMUNICATE HOW?

I don't care, Sneach. You can be pretend uni-lingual as long as you're real multi-talented. You've been doing it all (except selling hotdogs, according to Sterling). Every just keep doing exactly what you're doing. No one move.

I feel like I used to feel in grade school, when the most stress-inducing element of my year was the morning of classtrips. When the bus seating would happen. I panicked about whether I wanted the inside or the aisle, whether I would sit next to Melissa or Danielle (this is exactly why you can't have "2 best friends.")

So anyways, everything would work out, and I'd spend the rest of the ride beaming about how the stress was over, since all the seating was peaches. Then the trip would be over, and panic would set in again, and I'd frantically be running to the bus flapping my arms wailing "SAME SEATS SAME SEATS!"

That's how I feel. SAME SEATS, YANKEES.



Everything looked good. Mutatis mutandi.

This is Yankee time.