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

Loss.

I usually love low scoring games like this (provided the Yankees have the higher of the 2 low scores), but given a choice between a Yankee win in 14-13 softball beer league-esque hit parade, and a fast-paced pitching duel, I'll pick the latter 90% of the time. (The other 10% of the time applies to games like this, which I wouldn't miss for all the condiments in a diner takeout order.)

HOWEVAH, a game like this goes down, and I kind of just can't make heads or tails out of it, in the sense that I can't figure out whether this was a GOOD baseball game or a BORING one. Were the As/AJ Griffin so exceptional that the Yankees were just reduced to little jello clumps?

Or were both teams just not overpowering enough to get runs in?

It's hard to call this one, since Fatso wasn't looking as nasty/filthy/sharp as normal, so the 2 runs for which he was tagged--are they indicators of the As' skill? Or is it indicative of that Fatty was just a litttttle off, but still dominant enough to limit them to just 2 runs?

And on the other end, there's AJ Griffin, along with many of the same questions. And some new ones, like why was he playing the guitar and serenading his teammates in different languages before the game, like he was some special guest on Sesame Street?

I'm not making this up, by the way. Apparently, no one believes in mental preparation unless it involves some kind of outward physical manifestion of such, particularly if it falls in the Big Book of Bar Mitzvah Elements. Over in Tampa, Maddon brought it a magacian and penguins and a DJ and a cockatoo to "keep the the team loose." Now, there's this going on in the As team dynamic:



THAT EVEN LOOKS LIKE AJ GRIFFIN. Douchebag city! $50 says he auditioned for the Real World at some point in his life.

So, what it is. This isn't a rhetorical question. Was this a good, tight, impressive baseball game? Or just a slow, lackluster one?

For those of you who base these decisions on statistical evidence, numerical proof, here's what it looked like on paper:

• Yanks had 6 hits, 2 from GGBG, 2 from Nix, 1 from Sneach, and 1 from Cano
• Oakland had 10 hits, the first of which was off the first pitch of the game, and it was a homerun. Which is what some might call "not an auspicious start." Some might call it that. I said, "are you kidding me?"
• Can't really remember seeing 2 men on base at the same time during the game?
• Yanks saw 114 pitches, compared to the 175 pitches seen by Oakland
• 0-6 with RISP, 6 LOB (vs Oakland's 2-7; 11, respectively)

Argh. I hate grey areas so, so much. I don't even believe in them, normally. The Yanks' bats looked silly. The Oaklands' bats looked less so, but not by much. The only thing that WAS impressive about this game was the infield defense.

Yeah, that's not a grey area. That was decidely outstanding. And aggravating.

Before I sign off to begin preparations for Episode V*, I'll leave you with this, the inclusion of I can justify by the fact that, like the Yankee game, it raises many questions with no clear answers:

I got nothing.

* Episode I, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4