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First: I started blogging for Pinstripealley.com, so I'll link to my game recaps there. Today's game round-up is here.


More irrelevant insights on game are here:


Eden is that old-fashioned House
We dwell in every day
Without suspecting our abode
Until we drive away.
How fair on looking back, the Day
We sauntered from the Door —
Unconscious our returning,But discover it no more.
--Emily Dickinson


Which means that I initially was dozing in and out of REM while listening to Sterling and Suzyn narrate this game for me. There's a fine line between rubber-match/nail biter, and snoozer where you start to get a little delirious and forget how many innings a baseball game actually lasts and holy shit, it's 3-1??! When did that happen? Are the Yankees playing today? Oh.

And today Sterling and Suzyn sounded like they were chain smokers who had been locked in a room sans smokes for 40 hours. They jumped on things, criticized, sounded impatient, sounded a little insane (more so than usual) and I have about 4 pages of yellow notepad paper filled with indecipherable chicken scratch notes to prove it.

The point is, in September, I will be at a point where I would gladly exchange my head (everything from my neck up) for a day like today. When it's a close game, tight defense, sealed with an ARod homerun, yet didn't raise my blood pressure even a little. If anything, it relaxed me. Because from May-July, baseball makes me happy. In August -September, baseball makes me physically ill.


How fair on looking back, the day
I dozed when ARod went deep.
Gone are games of "Who Cares, It's May,"
Now they just make me weep.

Additional thoughts on today in baseball:

  • The 2 fan-umps behind home plate were confusing. I mean, there's jackass topless chest painters. And there's people who get tickets to the most expensive seats in the stadium and come in full ump gear with baseballs, count tickers, the ump apron thingy, face masks, etc. And act like people who aren't in fan-ump gear are the weird ones. That must be cool to think like that.

  • Manny Ramirez is back. And he gets Obama-like treatment. Jayson Stark just became my new favorite ESPN writer. I didn't even know people like this were allowed on their payroll:

So instead, the reaction to Manny, from Albuquerque to Ensenada, has been
--what else? --downright hero worship. You'd think the guy had spent the past 57
days curing cancer, dousing tensions in Iran and smoothing out plot glitches for
the final season of "Lost."

But why? That's the question we've been struggling with since Manny-mania busted out in Albuquerque last week.

Why is America so ready to forgive this guy, of all guys? Because he has fun hair? Because he has a lovable smile? Because he has a long, not necessarily proud, history is baseball's foremost goofball?

  • Well, played, Stark. Excellent piece. I don't understand this, what makes one person's sins more excusable than another person's identical sin. This phenomenon will never, ever cease to amaze me. The double standard of Manny getting warm embraces, whereas ARod walked into a den of "You ruined the game!" guilt. Obama spends $170mil on his inauguration and it's a small price to pay. Bush spent $45mil and he's Satan for abusing the nation's funds for a glorified tea party. Donte Stallworth kills a man because he was drunk driving and gets 4 months in jail. Michael Phelps smokes pot and becomes the subject of a national inquiry into his moral worth. Just pointing this out..

  • Kevin Long's tutelage is showing, particularly in Melky, Gardner, and Cano. Get to the rooks while they're still blobs of clay and fix the kinks when they're malleable. Melky's swing is beyond different, Gardner is swinging at appropriate pitches and can actually see where the ball's moving, and Cano is (save today) not swinging at everything that's throw in his vicinity.

  • 100 pitches into the game, Sterling notes "Well, now's about the time you gotta think about getting AJ out and putting in someone else. And you HAVE to go with the hot hands. Coke and Hughes. Or, well, actually I guess you have to see what batters are coming up before you make a decision." I don't know who Sterling's been talking to, but under the Girardi Manifesto, you don't base bullpen decisions on ANYTHING. Period.

  • I'm a little exhausted of hearing about how Branyan's HR hit the Mohegan Sun restaurant. Is this a big deal? He didn't hit it out of the stadium. We're making him out to be Paul Bunyon or something.
Just as a reminder: Wang goes up against Halladay tomorrow.
I've been racking my brains for a comparable sports movie analogy but every one I think of doesn't even come close to doing it justice. Not even the Cobra Kai's vs Daniel LaRusso. I think the closest may be that 80s movie Lucas, with Corey Haim.



Corey Haim/Lucas = Wang



Charlie Sheen/Cappie = Halladay



Or maybe it's as simple as Wang= Little Joe. Halladay = Tyson. I never could beat that game. Hence, it sucked.

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