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

Win.

So my coworker changed his profile picture on facebook yesterday, and everyone "liked" it. (I "liked" it.)

And we're sitting around talking about the events and mindsets leading up to this unprecedented deviation, and we notice Amy isn't contributing to the dialogue. "You're awfully quiet," we accused.

"Um. Well..."

I respect that, Amy. Sort of. It was a good picture. But when it comes to sports, life, work, etc, I think everything should try really to avoid change that conflicts with reason. Basically, everything should work out the way logic suggests it should.

(The picture doesn't fall into this arena of change though, so Amy probably should have just "liked" the picture like everyone else.)

Over the years of blogging, I think I've entrenched myself pretty firmly in opposition to departures from the norm, "upsets" as they are called.

The "previews" and scouting reports for this game were essentially uniform: Kuroda always wins against the Astros. Humber tends runs into trouble when pitching against batters.

Kuroda makes his own luck,whereas Humber already cashed in his favors exactly a year and 9 days ago. The Yankees score runs. The Astros rely on their manager to spin tales of offensive delusions in the post-game.

And still, there are people who think one anomaly, a plausability makes. I can't really talk, I guess, since I'm almost 100% sure that I will win the NY lottery won day. I'm so sure that sometimes I fantasize about how to share the news with my parents in a way that won't compromise my dad's heart. That "HEY you never know" tag was copywriting gold.

But, sometimes you do know. And this game was an example of things working out the way the should, which is--in most basic terms--a Yankee W.

I will concede that there were some "Hey you never know" moments:

• Like Nunez going 3 for 4 after spending the last month thinking this before every game.

• Or D-Rob giving up a bomb. (That's not really weird enough to be grouped in with Nunez zipping around the basepaths with such crazed gusto that I could get on board with the argument that he wasn't 100% sure what he was running towards or from. But, GOOD FOR YOU FOR RUNNING A HARD 90. Even if it was fueled by a mistaken impression that the goal was to break down the front door of a castle with a running start.)

But aside from that, there's the "Now" Normal category, comprising the offensive production of Pronk (3-4, 3 ribbies) and Overbay (1-4, 1 ribbie).

The "Not Normal" category:

• Humber saying "I think the whole thing was the leadoff walk in the first inning. I feel like I threw the ball well." For some reason the "lead off walk" is basically like the "sleeping with a guy on the first date" of baseball. Everyone thinks it completely precludes any hope of anything good happening after that. But if it turns out to be irrelevant, everyone dismisses it ever having significance at all.

• And speaking of He's Just Not That In The Game: "He did a great job of giving us an opportunity to win this game and that's what you want from your starter," Houston manager Bo Porter said. I don't know who he is talking about here. Humber, who gave up 9 hits, 4 runs, 21928 wild pitches. That does give SOMEONE a good opportunity to win, I guess.

Then there's the Back to Normal category: Sneach breaking out of slump, going 3 for 5, 2 runs, and a couple of stolen bags.

And then there's the Back to the Game category, which includes the pitching bookends:

• Kuroda starts out wild, ends strong, and this dialectic is apparently all but rote. Alllll I kept hearing from the booth for the first hour of game was repeating SHOCK over how wild Kuroda was pitching. Then it subsided, and our boy gave up only 4 hits, retiring 14 of his last 15 batters.

And this is normal, based on a stat I just read: "opponents are batting .318 against Kuroda in the first three innings and .092 after that." Huh. Maybe he's taking a page from the Tex book of "getting carte blanch to suck at first so long as you're good later."

• And then there's Mo who got the ok to head home for the night (like getting "cut" when waitressing), only to be called back to the pen when D-Rob and Shawn Kelley let the game go from 7-2 to 7-4 real quick.

"Hey, Mo? Yeah, where are you? Are you still by the stadium? Yeah, we just heard back from the Astros, and they're add 2 runs to the timing, so the timing on this game is gonna be a little tight. Glad I caught you before you got on the subway, right?? Ok, we'll see you soon. We'll wait to put in Seamless dinner order until you get here."

Mo comes back to the office and puts out the fires in minutes, Yankees win 7-4, inch up a half game in the standings.

Tomorrow features Bedard v Phelps. WHO KNOWS!

Til then.

OH! and ps there will be a special guest blogger for tomorrow's game. It is my sister, you may remember her work from this or this, which are both fantastically clever and economic in word choice and candid and funny.

(PS I love the fact there's a dude in MLB named Peacock.)