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

"If winning was easy, losers would do it." --Work All-Star Matt in Finance



Minnesota may make it look easy sometimes, but now is not the time to get comfortable.

1.5 is such a dangerous number.

One is solid. Singular. Definitive.

The .5 after it dilutes the strength of one, the numerical augement belies the actual decrease in power.

One sounds resolute. One and a half sounds suspect.

I don't trust one and a half.

Among other things.

So, while my inclination is to be fired up because the Yankees are up 1.5 games, the cooler mind in me tells me to reign it in.

I'll reign it in tomorrow, right now let's focus on the fact the Yankees won and the Orioles split the Toronto double header.

I gotta keep this a short one tonight. I need to get some sleep tonight. I'm trying to keep superfluous stress at a minimum so that I have a little bit of a cushion when it comes to baseball, but I know in my heart of heart that it's fruitless. For the last 2 years, DDMAC comments have come right before the playoffs started. This year, work poses little threat to my well-being, which means I gotta worry about the Trampoline Effect. Trouble from places you never expect. Here we go.

Listened to most of this game at work, watched a few innings in a bar over sangria, then watched them close it out on Gamecast.

It was a classic Twinkies game, barring the marked absence of a walk off. Even when the Yankees are in Minnesota, I still expect them to somehow pull off a walk-off. And I'm always surprised when this doesn't happen.

Andy Pettitte pitches very Pettitte-in-September-y. 6 scoreless innings. Unbelievable. No one forget how amazing this is. It's like when my buddy Pablo was having the beer pong run of his life, I made him sign the ping pong ball, so he wouldn't forget how unstoppable he was. Similarly, do not take Pettitte's quiet but immeasurable value for granted.

Almost everyone got a hit today, except for Cano and R-Mart. It's actually kind of interesting, since the Twinks and Yanks had nearly identical line scores:

MIN: 34 AB, 10 hits, 2 BB, 5 Ks, 141 pitches
NYY: 36 AB, 10 hits, 3 BB, 5 Ks, 144 pitches

But the Twinks couldn't crunch their numbers as well, I guess.

Oh wait, you know what it probably was? The fact the Yankess hit 4 bombs. As the Yankees are want to do. Swish, Grandy, and 2 of the ZPack (guess which ZPacker did NOT hit a long ball? It rhymes with Ruin Pez. He didn't play today, which explains the big fat shiny donut in the E column.)

The pen was decent enough. The relievers that count, anyway. Joba and D-Rob did the right thing. Cory Wade (firstnamelastname insignificance) and Justin Thomas (ditto) did, as my dad would say, try to do the right thing but forgot.

In other words, gave up runs when they weren't aposed to.

Chris Parmalee hit a triple in the ninth, scoring Morneau and Doumit. He also has the distinction of sounding like a muppet name, or something a chorus would sing to the tune of scales when warming up before a concert.

Pedro Florimon homers in the 8th, and he also has the distinction of sounding like a humorous upporting role in a romantic comedy about hijinx that occur at a caribbean resort.

It was a quick game, so the brevity of the recap is written in kind. Not even 3 hours. And just like that, the Yankees have a 1.5 game lead over Baltimore.

But no one exhale yet. The week's just getting started. Never look back, they're gaining on you.

Magica numerus est octo. Magna! Celebrare!