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

I said in my last post that if the baseball gods were going to play Robin Hood with karma, and start taking from the Yankees' rich supply of it, then the Yankees weren't just going to lay down and die for them. They were going to take it back, forcefully if necessary.

And that's exactly what they did today.

Along the same lines of assigning significance to the BS CALL OF THE SEASON, some sagacious thoughts from Jeff K: "Last night, while painful, will be the catalyst to take us deep into October. Karma always works for our benefit, we just don't always see it that way. Karma didn't screw it up, despite a retarded ump. It energized the Yanks, and we'll all see the results very soon. Today was step one."

Hear, hear. You heard it here first.

I feel like I've spent wayyyy too much time this weekend typing, whether it was for ohyob or my mom or work or blogging. But my fingers are so f'n cramped up right now, they feel like they're going to snap off. Also, I didn't exactly take it easy this weekend. I hate sleep.

That said, I'm going to plow through the pain. Because the Yankees won 13-3, and they retain sole possession of first place again. And they played a different game. They took a 2-0 lead early and didn't blow it. This is not typical.

I'm a little bit fired up right now, on account of the fact it's Sunday and I have to work tomorrow and I've just spent the last 72 hours writing copy and have little to show for it beyond a less-than-sunny-dispostion and a 1 game lead in the division. So I shall resume this tomorrow morning... til then.



FAT FROG!

Okay, I'm back. A little bit more awake, courtesy a 4-shot carame machiatto from Starbucks. and a 1-hour nap on thed LIRR this morning. I love getting into work and talking about the Yankees with my coworkers. I know, it's lame. But it's the little things that get you through a Monday morning. Just like it was the little things that got me through last night, aka the ice cream man coming down the street and having FAT FROGS!! I haven't seen one of them (either an ice cream man or a fat frog) in about 20 years.

I swear, if he had a Bubble O'Bill (best part about this by far was the weirdo BULLET HOLE in his hat) or a Bubble Play, I might have hopped on the back of his ice cream bicycle cart thing, and run away with him.

So yesterday's game:

Granderson had a huuuuuuge game off the bench, which incensed my sister to no end, seeing as she in fact had him on her bench. "Why'd you bench Grandy?" "BECAUSE HE HAD A LITTLE X NEXT TO HIS NAME AND BECAUSE HE'S BEEN BATTING .136 SINCE I PICKED HIM UP." I feel like my sister's emotional reactions to fantasy baseball underscore why boys don't like to let girls play with them.

This is how great Grandy was yesterday: not only was he 3 for 3 with 5 ribbies and his 35th homerun of the year, but he did so on 5 PITCHES. That's nearly impossible. (Yesterday my dad was talking about the poker tournament he played in last week and said that he played from 11am to 4pm and at no point during that span did he get pocket kings, queens, or aces. "Geez, that's like almost statistically impossible." "No no no, it IS statistically impossible." "Well, obviously not, Dad. Since it happened." "Kristen, it's impossible." "Oh. Ok.")

Sweaty Freddy couldn't even get past the 4th, as he continues to be the most unpredictable pitcher in the history of baseball. If he pitched a perfect game in his next start, I wouldn't be any more surprised than if he let up 91 runs on 3 pitches.

Joba came in for relief, and that sentence never relieves anyone, really. Joba doesn't come in for relief. He comes in to uncomfortably throw the ball and hope he's pitching against players who were born yesterday and haven't caught on to the fact he only throws one pitch. Shhhh! SPOILER ALERT. It's a slider.

But alas, in the theme of unpredictability, Joba is effective. Effective at something other than storing fat for the winter, that is. Almost 2 innings of hitless ball. Kudos, Chubster!

More unpredictability from the O's pitching staff:Orioles starter Zach Britton allowed five runs, five hits and five walks in 3 1/3 innings. The left-hander was 4-0 with a 0.94 ERA in his previous four starts. Sense. Makes none of it.

A lot of walks in the game. By the end of the 4th, the Yankees were up 5-0. Os stage a little bit of a comeback, but the Yankees are AN-GRYYY after what they did to poor Mark Teixeira. After Betemit (of "If I Had a Betemit" fame) and Weiters drive in 2 runs in the bottom of the 4th, the Yanks answer with about 1000 more runs.

Ultimately the Yankees had 14 hits on nearly 200 pitches, compared to the Os' 4 hits. The Os also had 2 errors, which I like to think is a result of them being so shellshocked by the Yankees actually fighting back. YEAH, TAKE THAT.

Anyways, the Yankees are off today, and then it's Boston time. Ugh. I don't need anymore drama in this season. My coworker Glenn said last week, "I kind of like the drama, I like the Yankees keeping it interesting."

I was soooo close to cutting out his tongue. So close.

I'm starting to feel like I'm watching the Giants (of the NY persuasion) and not the Yankees, in that allll last season, me and the NYSportsJerk and the rest of the Giants crew would be watching the games at the Giants table at Dorrians and screaming at the tv and whatever hapless fans happened to be sitting near us. And the Giants would somehow manage to pull off a win, but by the end of the game, we'd be breathless, angry, white-knuckled, etc.

And we'd say, "Can't the Giants just have ONE game where they blow out their opponents? One game where we aren't spending our Sunday battling off an impending cardiac arrest?"

And that's what I want for the Yankees. More games like yesterdays. Which I don't see happening within the next week, anyway. Obviuosly after the much needed day off today, we're gonna be facing a week of 12 inning games and nail biters.

Which means I'm gonna be eating tuna fish and bananas all week. (In my heart, if I eat nothing by tuna and bananas, my stress levels stay healthy and blood pressure stays down. I don't know if this is true to the extent that I think it is. But it doesn't matter, because perception is reality, yo.)

Cheers to the day of rest today!