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

Seriously. They do. Words, I mean. In the failing sense. I just spent the last 10 minutes trying to think of a pithy post title to encapsulate what we just witnessed. But, again, words fail me.

Generally my recaps tend to err on the side of long (pause), but tonight, of all nights, I'm gonna have to be brief. Or try to be anyway, as I have to wake up at 5am to get to NYU at 8. Not only does this mean I can't really stay up all night finding links etc, but it meant I couldn't eat or drink anything after midnight.

I think I'm going to adhere to to the hospital instructions ALDS-style. Which is to say that I'm going to go with the best out of 5. All I have to do is 3 of the above, and I'm golden.

You know what else is golden?

RAUL F'N IBANEZ. Otherwise known (to me) as ZPAK#1.

If you want to know what happened in the game, well, then you're a weirdo because that meant you didn't watch it. I was just telling my coworker today that it never ceases to amaze me how I'll be walking down the street during the playoffs, all tense and agitated and loaded for bear...and there will be people just walking around and they have no idea what's going on.

They're like completely oblivious to the fact there are baseball games being played that are so important that they pretty much govern my emotions.

So, yeah, if you're a weirdo, here's the game in a nutshell:

• Gonzalez was a stunningly effective combination of Martin Short and unhittability.
• The O's 2 runs were scored with solo shots from their 8th and 9th batters. "Baseball's a funny game, Suzyn." Yeah, I wasn't laughing.
• The O's started laughing and hugging too soon. Like 7th inning time frame, when they pulled Gonzalez. I'm not sure why they did this since the guy was showing no signs of letting up. I guess, when in Rome, etc.
• HOWEVAH, Girardi leaves his boy Kuroda in. Much to my confusion since he WAS actually starting to let up.

But you know what tonight was, secondary to the ZPAK#1 Show?

It was a demonstration of why we're not all managers, and why Joe Girardi is.

• He pulls Arod in the 9th, which I thought was kind of BS and bad karma, despite the fact the guy couldn't hit water if he fell off a boat.
• Puts in Ibanez, who ties the game.
• He keeps in Kuroda, and the game goes into extras, which meant we had a fresh pen.
• He keeps in R-So, then D-Rob, no overmanaging.
• He pulls Jeter when he's hurt.

He did a good job.

So did Kuroda, R-So, and D-Rob. Really, the pitching in this game was one for the books. Books about how the Yankees are awesome. 18 Ks between the 2 teams.

So, yeah, the defense was great, and who doesn't like a nice defensive game where everything is really impressive and neat?

The funny thing about those pitching duels that everyone loves so much is that it just elevates the pitching performance without condemning the offense. Yeah, Gonzalez is good, but cmon he's not freakin Roy Halladay. He hit all his pitches (a point that my dad underscored about 249 times before I started getting irritatable. Dad likes to repeat observations when he's right, which makes him very vulnerable to getting a "Dad, how come you say this pitcher is wild? He looks pretty accurate to me.")

As I was saying, he hit all his pitches with paralyzing precision, but we're the Yankees, dammit. The fact that the only hits of the game came from Raul, Swisher, R-Mart, and Jeter.. is disturbing.

But that's a sentiment that I'm not going to harp on because it's bedtime for Bonzo and the Yankees are 1 win away from taking the division.

This game was huge. What Ibanez did for the Yankees is bigger than this game.

Technically it was Arod's spot that Ibanez was filling in, so maybe those clutch long balls can be partially attributed to Arod? No?

Ok, can we at least stop booing him though? That's not helping anyone. Karma is fragile, and you know I'll kill anyone and not bat an eye, if I discover reckless endangerment of superstitious corrollaries.

Time for Round Boy to close shit out for us.

Congratulations, Yankees. And by Yankees, I mean Raul, Jeter, and the pitchers. The rest of you need to do what Sneach does and bring your bat home to cement the rapport. Alright, you know what? I'm starting to sound like Smoltz in the booth, whose pitching analysis was starting to sound like a college drama professor describing how to find your character within yourself. Or stage blocking.

Yeah, my wine-and-tired-induced delirium is starting to sound very much like that. Cheers, Yankees! Til tomorrow...

Reperio solidum cum accelerare vespertilio caput.

(That's what Arod's life coach told him to repeat at the plate over and over and over. Well, in English anyway. Maybe he should go old-school Mass style, and recite in Latin for more effect? Where is Kevin Long, btw?)

PS, apparently the debates are on tomorrow. I'm already preemptively planning ways to eviscerate the "can we turn the debates on?" ilk. When I say eviscerate, I mean real Hostel II-esque violence. Does eviscerate mean that? It's a pretty word, it should mean something nice. Not this week, though.