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

I can't really watch away games when they go into extras. There are few things in this life more devastating than the sound of a stadium erupting into cheers when your favorite team just lost.

With the possible exception of the "ding" elevator button indicating you're stopping on another floor when you're in a huge rush. Everything's relative.

It's a stepwise process, really. In the bottom of the 9th, I'll watch the game, but mute the tv. In the bottom of the 10th, I'll look away but put the sound a littttttle bit up. In the 11th, I'll shut the tv off and "watch" on Gamecast. And if the game goes to 12, then I'm just maniacally flipping through channels and pacing and pretending not to be interested in the game, hoping I can fool the baseball gods into thinking that they don't need to snap my attention back into place, that the game can still go on. I'm playing hard to get with imaginary deities.

Sooo that's where my life's at.

(Kind of reminds me of when I was little and trying to get Nintendo to work. When the age-old blowing on cartridge technique inevitably failed--how did every kid in the world know this trick btw??--then I'd pretend to ignore the Nintendo. "Whatever, I don't even care. I'm walking away from you, NES. Loser." Then 5 minutes later I'd nonchalantly roll back up to the game system and be like, "Oh, look. Nintendo. Hm. Maybe I'll play, whatever." I swear, it was the most effective way of getting the red reset button to stop flashing.)

It was a good game. My dad LOVES pitchers' duels. And he called at 9:34 to tell me as much than angrily hung up telling him not to call in the middle of the inning.

No one should ever question from where exactly the "crazy" in CYC is inherited.

"This is a good game! I gotta go, why are you calling me during the inning. Tell your sister to call me. Oh God, she's calling on call waiting now. MARY! How do I answer the phone? Oh, shit. Ok, you know what? Tell your sister to call me when you get off the phone. That's the plan now."

My dad's penchant for efficiency and calm is roughly hovering around where the Yankees are about now.

I'll say it again, because it bears repeating: if Swish hadn't knocked out that walkoff against the O's, we'd be drowning in an 8 GAME LOSING STREAK.

So here's how the game went, more or less:

Zeros zeros zeros zeros...etc etc ad absurdum ad infinitum.

If "ad infinitum" means "ad bottom of 11th-um" anyway.

Fatso and Fatso Jr matched each other pitch for pitch. Each went 8 innings. The latter gave up 2 hits, the former 3 hits.

The latter whiffed 9, the former 4.

Really quite stunning. So stunning that I watched it alll over again (save the end part) on Encore.

The announcers were sooo pleased with themselves. They had the little Price-Sabathia comparison to latch onto and latch on they did.

I guess they're similar, but Tubbo's wayy better. Price= Diet CC.

Alright when you think about it, although it was a terrible loss, and one that not only was an unmitigated stomach punch for fundamental reasons but also a significant one since it knocked us out of first for the first time since August 3...when you think about it, it could have been worse.

We held the Rays to 1 run.

Our bullpen and starter worked together well.

We neutralized the base running threats.

We got out of jams and didn't lose our cool. (Gaudin struck out Hawpe to end the breathless 10th inning bases loaded situation.)

And I guess you can't complain about stranding all our baserunners, since we didn't exactly have that many to begin with. (0-4)

I do have ONE thing to complain about.

Take more pitches, guys.

I have this suspicion that their slumping is getting everyone a little anxious. Which becomes overanxious at the plate. Which means everyone is trying to end the game with one swing, with the possible exception of GGBG who knows that will never happen, but who tries to end the game on steals. Just as lethal.

He got caught stealing 3rd, and this was a REALLY odd move in my head. We had barely ANY baserunners all night, and that's a huge risk to take in a tied extra inning game.

It didn't pay off.

But as much as this sucked, and as annoying as it is to hear my dad grumble grumbling about how the Yankees are dead to him and he's gonna become a Mets fan, at least it was a nice human interest story for Brignac.

The rookie got called in when the Beast That is Carl Crawford (my favorite non-Yankee player by far) got ejected arguing strikes.

Brignac ended the game on a walk-off solo shot. Eh good for him. I guess. Better him than some annoying player like Pena, who only goes yard when it doesn't benefit my fantasy team.

So another day, another game, another chance. Let's not dwell on this crap. I'm trying not too. I'm trying to be positive.