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

Loss.

I'm going to have to get a restraining order against every sports site that sends me e-mail blasts keeping me posted in real time on approximately everything. And this whole Jeter Return Countdown Timeline thing is getting ridiculous, even by my obsessive standards.



Would have posted recap earlier if I hadn't spend 3 hours making this. Been really killing it lately in terms of "good use of time."

It feels like the days leading up to Sandy when every. single. channel. just gave the same "we'll keep you posted if we find out anything!" assurances, for 72 straight hours, as flash animated FRANKENSTORM logos menancingly zoomed onto the screen to remind us exactly what the central theme was behind all the media hype.

Anyways, so it has been a long f'n past two weeks, and though the Yankees lost in 12 last night, it was a good night. I eventually left work, under the auspices of the whole "Okay, I'll stay for just one drink."

Which, to be clear, I never condone because it's just setting you up for disappointment either way. Either you have one beer and stick to your guns and then you're mad you had to go back to the office. Or you never make it back to the office because you have more than one beer, and then you're mad you can't even stick a simple plan.

But who's going to leave the bar when you're drinking with coworkers on a balmy Thursday in early spring when the Yankees(?)* are making comebacks and stretching out the game into extras? Well, no one, really.
*This looney tunes Yankees roster will stop giving me pause in approximately never.

And so we all watched, and the Yankees were losing. Someone on Arizona whose name sounds more like it should be listed among rare grasshopper classification or phylum or something, hit a homerun on the first pitch he saw.

And the game as well as the night just got weirder and weirder from there. And despite the fact the Yankees night ended in a loss, and my night ended in inexplicably planting peas and sunflowers at 4:30am, I can't say† that I wasn't entertained.

†I don't not judge myself for that double negative. H/T to Alex and his "I don't disagree with that"'s.

Alright, it was exciting to see the 3rd game in a row where the Yankees were staging a bit of a comeback. And I'll admit it, that as much I love watching the Actual Yankees, as opposed to the Decoy Yankees, doing their thang, and being all 4-6 double-play-y, and eliciting the "damn, that line-up is unfair"'s from the booth, and the chemistry, etc.. as much I love inwardly and often outwardly smirking at the fact the Yankees' roster looks like the Steinbrenners discovered some kind of updownupdwonBABAleftrightleftrightselectstart of tricks to get the players they have.. as much as I love that..

..last night I got just as much out of, if not more, a game were the Decoys did their best impressions of the Yankees, in a losing effort.

Also, the game was really f'n weird. Seriously. Some dude in the stands caught like every ball, because he is a nut who is apparently a career homerun ball chaser downer. He wrote a book about it and everything.

(You know what, if you have the committment and patience to sit down and write a book about whatever crazy vocation you've decided was legit, then I think that validates you. Like the chick who claimed she was non-stop hiccuping for a year, who clearly was faking it. And my sister said, "Well, if she has the dedication to keep up fake hiccuping every day, all day, then maybe we shouldn't begrudge her this unconventional side interest.")

Fine, Jack Hemble, or Kemball, whatever your name is, you can be the guy who is good as grabbing baseballs.

2-0 game by the time the 6th rolls around, and still alot of baseball left to play. Though Glenn would always be quick to remind me that the Yankees were running out of tmie. No, that would be impossibe. Unles you're referring to some Yankee who could go at any time.

(Based on the amounf of medical upstates and clinical status involved in ankle PR, maybe the Yankees ARE running out of time. On their life clocks. Broken ankles are serious.)

One thing that has NOT been in short supply, however, is the egregious overestimation of the impact Jeter's return will make. Can't I just watch the Decoys for a while, and when they lose like 10 games in a row, I'll be right there on board with everyone who is doing dramatic falling-to-knees-and-shaking-fists-at-the-sky pantamimes. But until then, then I'd like to try to get on board with the Excitables.

And by excitables I mean Super Mario, who managed to jack another siren into the stands, barehanded. (I love that. Everything Super Mario does--on the field, anyway--he can say, "I did ___ with my BARE HANDS." I think this probably is an asset during Italian-type interactions.)




Super Mario also managed to get calls on catcher interference twice. I sympathize, guy. Sometimes when I'm waiting for the bus, I get impatient so I just start walking to the next street and the bus will ultimately always beat me to the train station, but at least I feel like I'm taking an active, aggressive role in point A to point B transits.

Since the Yanks end up losing imploding in a dud-firecracker-kind-of-way in the last inning, the Cano HBP-turned-K didn't get the whole "AND NOW THAT CALL IN THE 8th IS REALLY LOOMING LARGE!" posits from the booth.

Oh, but here's a good example of this Jeterian Lionization and Illusory Corrollary that's taking the headlines by storm:

From espn, of course:

"New York failed to complete a three-game sweep after learning captain Derek Jeter again fractured his left ankle and will be sidelined until after the All-Star break."

Horribly written sentence, yet still manages to sort of get a point across, which is nearly as torpid as the language itself. The Yankees in all likelihood did not lose on account of a pre-game chat with the captain that made them aware of his extended vacation.

So either the writer believes that actually IS the case, or he just doesn't know fundamental rules governing English grammar. Both are dumb. Neither are going to make me lose sleep. But I will indeed start twitching if someone tries to engage me in a "Shit, man, we NEED Jeter back if we want to hold it together this season. This ain't good." commiseration.

Hi, I! Kobe. Look at you.

And seriously, when you think about it, has there ever been a movie when a sports team, faced with the horrifying nightmare of having to push on when their star player is sidelined for the season, after being the heart and soul of every success for the team?

No. No movie has ever been made where a locker room speech from superstar emerirus doesn't inspire the rifrafs to go out there and give it all they got Nor does a movie exist where, despite giving it all they got, a team still comes up short, forced to accept the reality that they are useless without their star. That, contrary to the maxim, there IS an I in Team.

Alright, let's move on to tonight's game. Which begins shortly. There wasn't much of a dramatic deflation to cap off the game, since it was more a slow oh. "Hm. Yeah, this will be not easy to do." Phelps a little rusty. Rest of pen going smoothly.

Someone MAY want to brush up on the errors-making. Or not-making. Yankees have already punched in 10 errors. Highest this season is 14. In Washington, of course. Whatever, I like this team. I like seeing Vernon Wells in pinstripes, and seeing how awkward the dugout is without their BMOCs setting the tone.

Time for the weekend! "New York Yankees" has no U or I, in terms of vowel inventory. Which sounds like the makings of a missed-the-mark greeting card shoved in the "Romance-Funny" sections of drug stores.

Go Yankees--the Sometimes "Y" team who is not a registered "Permanent Y" class, as that has been largely run and owned by fanbases

Ok, giddy up. Let's go Pettitte. (Pretend I said something about Brendan Morow that was cleverly crafted into some kind of silvery parallel to any quote with the world "Tomorrow" in it.) Thank you..and finallly it's go time/game time.

Quae enim non sanare cum baseball potest nox, non est remedium.