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

But anyone likes sports knows that this is an impossible situation. Anyone who's been to a wedding in the middle of the playoffs (I can never understand why people do this--it's like scheduling a meeting during lunch)..and anyone's who been on a date when the game's on...you know the maddening feeling of not only having to be discreet about brandishing your phone, but also about tempering your reactions to the phone.

Last night was the office summer's end party, and it was a strong 9 out of 11 in terms of work outting. Beautiful night, good company..and then there was the Orioles game.

By the time we boarded and I had laid claim to a couch on the upper deck and guzzled some dramamine, it was the 3rd inning. And the Yankees were losing 4-0. Sigh. Part of me thought, "well, at least this will keep from having to check the score so frequently." A low scoring game or a tie would have had me just constantly refreshing the screen. 

But no, the Yankees don't win unless their opponent makes an error. Seriously. It's depressing but yet fascinating. It's like they're these amateur chess players who bring out their queens too earlier, and then have to spend the rest of the game hoping that GrandMaster sitting across the board, will have an uncharacteristic moment of weakness or get too cocky or something. 

We're on a boat, it's as real as it gets. Also, we found an app that automatically adds asshole captions to your pics. That kept us sailors busy for a while.

When the boat docked and I realized that wow, the hours fly by, good party, I checked the score again it was a different ball game. The Yankees had rallied and the were down by 2. WAHOOO, I'm thinking. This is the Yankees I know. The team that turns shit around in the 8th inning!

Rally started with A-Rod doubling. I gotta say, when everyone kept saying "WAHHHH where is AROD! He needs to come back and save us!" I was skeptical. I love Arod. but in the last year or 2 he hasn't exactly been the heart and soul of the team. His production and efforts haven't been crucial to the Yankees' structural integrity.

But, alas, he returns and does good things. And baseball fans everywhere narrow their eyes in vicious contempt. Or indignant dismissal. I hate everyone.

Anyways, the rally continues with Grandy singling and then Strop relieves Wolf, walks in a run. (Of course he does. Why would someone named Strop fare better than someone named Wolf? My logic is airclad and I stand by it.)

And I guess that's when I started watching on a tv and no longer had to follow the game via my PoS phone from Verizon.

That's part of the reason boat parties unnerve me. I'm always concerned to a certain degree that I'll have a moment of tourettes and just throw someone or something overboard. And factor in that I'm watching a critical series agains the f'n ORIOLES, one in which they're handing over, and my phone functions only slightly more than the aforementioned soup-can-string prototype...well, the fact that me, the phone, and/or a nearby coworker didn't end in the Hudson River.

Sneachiro ties the game and then at that point I'm thinking, EVERYTHING IS GOING RIGHT!

It's just like my dad once famously, non-ironically mused, "You know how when you're drinking, everything goes your way?" Not "you THINK everything's going your well." Just, everything goes your way when you drink. My dad wrote the book on ignorance is bliss.

Well, when Sneach drove in Grandy and R-Mart, who among us thought the game was going to end the way it did? If I had posed that question 3 years ago, it would have been almost propitious that the Yankees were down and then rallied. In 2009, a rally of any sort all but assured us the W.

But it's 2012 now, and when the Yankees came back to tie up the game, while there WAS a glistening excitement stirring about, I can't say that I was wholly surprised when the f'n ORIOLES came back in the bottom of the inning to take a 10-6 lead, thanks to 3 homeruns.

This is D-Rob's fault. Shame on you, D-Rob, for letting them hit the ball so hard. He got pulled only after giving up 2 bombs and letting the f'n ORIOLES take a 9-6 lead. Boone comes in for relief and promptly lets up another homerun. Then Derek Lowe mercifully gets us out of the inning.

Sweet Christ, I would've just stayed on the boat if I had known this is what I'd be witnessing. Blowing leads are a lot easier to stomach when you're only seeing it happen on a 3 square inches of phone screen. There's no wild homestands cheering and flabbergasted announcers underscoring the melodrama. Just tiny 8 pt font size words that give it to us straight (pause.) "Ball in play. Run(s) scored." Got it. Thanks, Gamecast. I respect your candor.

The Yankees of course go on to lose not only the game but also their short-lived 1 game lead atop the AL East. Last night coincidentally was the anniversary of when Cal Ripken broke Gehrig's consecutive game record. Asshole. GEHRIG HAD ALS, HE SHOULD BE SPOTTED ABOUT 1000 GAMES.

What kind of jerk franchise celebrates breaking the record of a disabled person?

Hmpf. And then they beat us, too. What are you gonna do next, challenge a bunch of blind kids to paintball?

So tonight, we got Hughes and Wei-Ye Chen on the mound. I remember this guy. Or rather, I remember how much it was emphasized that he was Taiwanese. I have no idea why, but they did it so much that I couldn't help but just start comparing him to Chien Ming Wang. Of course, as soon as I do that, then everyone's all up in arms because "JUST CUZ THEY'RE BOTH TAIWANESE DOESNT MEAN THEY'RE ALIKE."

Hughes and 2 Taiwanese pitchers

Whatever. I have it on good authority that they're going to tee off on the Taiwanese rookie tonight.

This is why: yesterday I found a wallet in the middle of the street and I opened it and it was packed with credit cards, cash, the works.

So I'm thinking, "man this chick is lucky I was the one who picked it up and not some amoral crook."

Her name is almost identical to the pitcher who is starting for the O's tonight. Seriously. The entire name, not just the last name. Since there isn't any phone number in the wallet (why would there be), I go back to my desk and start googling her name (there's about 2398423 of them, fanfuckingtastic). But because no one in the entire world is better at finding things on the internet than I am, I tracked down her blog and twitter and from there I tracked down her email.

And she got her wallet and all the contents safely returned to her.

If that doesn't demand some kind of karmic retribution from the Chen ancestry, then I don't know what does.

Looking forward to getting that retribution tonight.

CHEERS. And no worries, Yankee fans. We got the league exactly where we want them.