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

The good news is that the Devil Rays also lost so our ginormous 3.5 game lead in the AL East is still in tact. The bad news is that the O's have somehow crawled into that spot. Great. A cinderella team. Underdogs in the Yankees' radar are like non-NYY's favorite things in the world.

Yeah, and also, that 3.5 lead means almost nothing to me, really, since you know what this time of the year is like. It's like the Month of Momentum. 

(Month, incidentally, is what my autocorrect insists on making Mo. It's more than a little aggravating when I'm texting something about either my cat or the closer and my phone keeps saying, no no no. Allow us to make things easier for you. MONTH.

They're insistent on it, too. I don't even know why this macro is programmed into the phone, given the universal premium placed on economic character usage. The autocorrect I DO think would be kind of funny is if advertisers got into the mix, and started changing words to brand names. For example, "Yo this cracker got all up in my grill" would be "Yo this Ritz got all up in my George Foreman." That wouldn't be condusing at all.)

So, the Yankees lose in extra innings, and the seesawing continues, the Yankees firmly sticking to their No Streak policy, while maintaining a stranglehold on their Win Some Lose Some modus operandi. 

And speaking of consistency, Jeter hit another homerun today, and I feel like I might be the only one who is finding this absolutely ridiculous. Yeah, it's awesome, and I love it like I love Bagel Mondays, calla lilies, and wild tea vodka. But as I've mentioned in another post, the players on the Yankees are sort of reminding me of the Fire Gang in that movie "The Labyrinth." Those weird muppets who remove their heads and swap them with one another. (That's the second detachable head reference I've made today. I don't know what that means. I'm actually hoping there is no significance whatsoever to this.)

Just when you think you got someone all figured out, he starts doing something pretty out of character. Like Grandy disappearing as of late. Or Jeter being our homerun king as of late. Kuroda being an ace. Ichiro being slow. Swish being All Around Player of the Season. 

Everything's weird.

Tex got hurt. He's out for at least a week. Arod is taking his sweet time on the DL. I feel like it's similar to when I ask someone "I'm here. Where are you?" and if I get "En route" it means "Almost done getting ready." "Getting in cab" means "About to leave apartment." And "On my way!" means "In 10 minutes I will start thinking about getting into the shower and starting to get ready." Similarly, Arod was "cleared to take batting practice on Tuesday" which means "in 2 weeks, talk will shift to the potential value Arod's return stands to provide during this critical time for the Yankees."

And speaking of injuries, this game was like that scene in Billy Madison when they're playing dodgeball. All of a sudden, the Yankees weere like, "Now you're all going to die." And commenced roping hard shot after after shot right at the shins of anyone in their way. Alvarez got hit twice, then Loup and Laffey. Chavez was the gunman behind 2 of these, and really these hard hit shots had mostly zero bearing on the game since the Yankees ended up losing and all. 

The only things I do think are notable and worth assigning some importance to, are Cano's 2-bomb game (welcome back, kid), and Jeter's tying homerun in the 9th. Lowe screwed up with a horrendous pickoff throw and I guess that's what Red Socks Nation might refer to as the "Derek Lowe face." I think everything Red Socks Nation does is a testament to imbecility, so I'm not even going to look for an alleged hint of a Derek Lowe face. He got an error. Who cares what he looked like. Porbably sad. 

There were a bunch of homeruns and comebacks. Also, according to TV captions, Darren Oliver was throwing 776 mph breaking balls. That's really fast!

So tomorrow is another day. Hughes vs Romero. I don't see this being a Master Class of Pitching Lessons. But who knows. Maybe Hughes and Kuroda switched heads. Only after Hughes tried to switch heads with Tubbo and realized that that particular head may be better off used for medicine balll purposes.