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

WIN. Loss.

EPISODE V

It was a good weekend.

And I'm exhausted now. Also, a little delirious still.

Not sure how well I'm going to be able to capture the last two days, so I'll resort to bullet points, which I believe absolves me of any obligations to cohesive thought/full sentences/structure/etc:

Game Observations/Highlights

• Hughes was absolutely filthy on Saturday. Unreal. Was sitting in first row of LF bleachers, so had zero idea that he won this game on 8 innings of a fastball. Against one of the best offenses in the league, Hughes whiffed 9 and allowed only 4 hits/2 runs. Basically by just throwing a fastball for nearly all of his 118 pitches.

67% of pitches were fastballs. 3 out of every 4 of these were strikes. Math!

• I love pretty much all the seats in Yankee Stadium (I could be happy on a lawn chair on 161st street if I could still see the game live), but I particularly loved the seats on Saturday. Not just because of the view/the company, but because it meant the outstanding day at the park could not be sullied by seeing the Allergy's face in any real detail.

• I did love the Allergy when he was Yankee, but that was then. On Saturday, I was delighted to see him get his first loss of 2013. Which is not to say the Yanks exactly destroyed him, but he got tagged for 2 bombs (hope that phrase doesn't flag this site for FBI), and everyone on team got at least one hit, save Sneach and whoever the hell Chris Nelson is.

• Eduardo "Don't Even Try to Make Sense of Me Because It Will Invariably Make Your Head Spin" Nunez had a triple (or, as Lauren non-ironically called it, "An inside-the-park triple." Those are pretty rare.) (EDITOR'S NOTE: Just received this text from Lauren: "Krista was the one who it an inside the park triple! All stupid things are attributed to me. Not just by you, either.")

• Sunday's game was an anomaly, and not just because they lost, but because that is exactly the type of game that a betting man says the Yankees win--and not every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but just twice on Sunday.

• They always win weekend day games, especially home ones where they like to set us all up for a dramatic walk off. And this year, they're pros at winning these little deficit games. Moreover, we had Pettitte on the mound, and the numbers for basically every situation indicated the Yankees should have had the upperhand.

• But Cano had an error at 2nd that allowed a run in. Andy gave up dings in back to back innings to Luke Montz and Yoenis "Scrabble Tile Rack" Cespedes.

• The Yanks came back because of more things that didn't make sense. Oakland's starter got pulled after on like 2 pitches basically, so Blevin could come in off the bench to face Sneach and Overbay. This seemed like a weird decision, but I swear this whole Maddon-Mentality thing is becoming an unwelcome epidemic.

• It doesn't work out for the As, when Sneach doubles in a run, followed by Overbay's 2-run single that tied the game in the 6th.

• Melvin also makes the weirdo decision to intentionally walk Cano to get to Wells, who is basically playing like Roy Hobbs as of late. And who Galfour is terrified of, despite his claims otherwise. Methinks the closer doth protest too much.

• It didn't work out for the Yankees because B-Lo ruins the game by allowing Josh Donaldson to knock one out, giving the A's a 5-4 lead. Still, though, I thought this was allll just laddering up to a typical Yankee Sunday feel-good thriller.

• I wasn't the only one who was surprised by loss, since apparently Girardi is having some kind of midlife managerial crisis or sorts based on his subtle yet discernible attitude change.

"We had chances in the eighth and the ninth. I assumed we might get it done." Assumed you MIGHT get it done? That's quite a lofty claim, Joe. Are you awake?

• Nunez has rib injury, by the way, in case anyone was just starting to warm up to the guy. At this point, we'd all appreciate it if the Yankees could just keep up posted on which players are not injured each day, as opposed to the other way around.

• Who the hell is Preston Claiborne? He's gold. First major league start. And it's in Yankee Stadium against a pretty f'n stacked roster. And he's all D-Robbing it out, aka Whatmenervousnever. I like this kid. 2 IP. No hits, no runs, no shoes, no service. Not the last 2, though.

Weekend Observations/Highlights

• This morning I woke up at 8am and went into my bedroom to frantically ask Krista "where am I??" To which she responded, "You're in your apartment." To which I responded, "where am I supposed to be??" There are few things in this life that are better than the realizing it's a weekEND after the panick that ensues when waking up and mistakenly thinking it's a weekDAY.

• Krista scored the high score on Pop-A-Shot, then beat it. 74.

• Amy scored the high score on Skeeball, then got all mad when some barely-walking toddler beat her score by sticking his hands under the glass to place the ball in the holes.

• My sister asked, right after the Kentucky Derby finished, when the real Kentucky Derby was going to start. Amy! Weirdo. There's no basement in the Alamo!

• Lauren laughed so hard for so long that after 16 hours of hanging out, it was a point of contention when someone would say something funny/sarcastic, because her face was legitimitely sore from laughing. I'm not kidding. By 2am, the conversations were starting to sound like, "Hey, this is like that time when I tripped pretending to be a bear!" "KRISTEN. I'm NOT KIDDING. Stop making me think of funny things, this isn't funny."

• I hit myself with a cue ball when I tried to "break" without using a pool stick. It ricocheted off the edge of pool table and came flying back at me. That didn't go according to plan.

• The bucket of beers tradition is still very much in tact. This year, we even had a security guard tell us we were clever, as opposed to them usually looking judgementally at the situation trying to determine what rules we're breaking.

So, Episode V weekend was yet again a rousing success, and somehow yet again managed to trump the prior year, which we always fear is impossible. Weekend MVP of course goes to Krista for being the weekend point person every year, and every year handling her duties with spectacular awesomeness.

The Decoys continue to delight me to no end, the weather was approximately perfect this weekend, I played and won beirut, and it's a great way to stay in shape.

Yanks were 1 for 3 on the weekend, and are 1.5 games behind the Red Socks, along with the O's. Rangers lost to the Capitals twice (in other NY sports news), as they are want to do. And now it's Monday, and time to start a new week. No game tonight, as the Yanks are travelling out to Colorado.

Looking forward to watching the Decoys marvel at the gravity situation out in Coors Field.