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

Loss.



Ollie's Tamales at Yankee Stadium

Some people might call the above picture a Yankee Fan sandwich, based on the bookending Yankee Fans. This would be more accurately identifed as a Tamale sandwich, because the 2 innards of the line-up are the President and Vice President of the Ollie Perez fan club known as Ollie's Tamales.

No one calls a PB&J a "bread sandwich." So, this would be a tamale sandwich. Just wanted to get that out of the way so we're all on the same page. (LOLZ! We'd have to be on the same page because otherwise this wouldn't be being read! ROTFL.)

Just kidding, I'm not ROTFLing at all, because the Yankees lost 12-2 tonight, althought I'll go ahead and put this in the Fun Despite Losses silo. I actually can put this in the Top 5 category, since I did tally up the list almost 5 years ago to the day. 375 days actually:

I can probably count on 1 hand the number of times I've really enjoyed myself at a Yankee game where the Yanks ended up losing.

1.) May 17, 2008: 7-4 (Mets)
2.) April 27, 2007: 11-4 (Boston)
3.) April 17, 2008, 7-5 (Boston)
4.) July 9, 2005: 7-8 (Cleveland)

(In that order. I think.)

I have no idea what significance 3 and 4 have, so I'm taking those out and replacing one with this game. (May 2, 2009 and April 28, 2012 go up there, too.)

Ahh, but this was a real drubbing, you know? I mean, I was like 15 minutes late to the game because Yankee Stadium security is one conveyor belt away from mirroring that of JFK.

(In other words, I had to go check my laptop before I could get in. I swear to God, I'm always expecting the ticket checker to ask me to remove my shoes and keep my boarding pass on me. I respect the due diligence. Not crazy about the 1 beer per person rule, but cheers for the due diligence nonetheless.)

Anyways, so I was late, and I sat down and saw Hughes give up a few hits, and it wasn't until they team was congregating on the mound that I even looked at the score.

"SEVEN?"

Two-thirds of an inning. He's become the more mild-mannered Burnett. Except what he lacks in nipple rings and tats he makes up for in unpredictability, variability, etc. AJ was really good or not so great. There was a neatness to his starts. Even though we'd say, "You never know what you're gonna get with AJ!" we still kind of knew what we were up against.

Not with Hughes. It's like mutual flirting with an ambiguously gay person. You can't really figure out whether he/she is gay or not, and it's frustrating because if it's true, then there's no explanation for what's going on. If it's not true, then you start to wonder if the other shoe will ever drop.

Hughes is battered around like a half dead mouse my parents' cat would drag into the house (weirdly, he'd only do so on Mother's Day and Christmas. I swear to God. Every year.)

Ibanez goes yard twice in this game, one of which was a salami. (I got to my seat jusssst in time to see that one fly over the short porch.) Ibanez has one of those names that can double as a BOO or a cheer.

• Youk
• Hughes
• Raul
• Moose
• Yu

Imagine women in the league, women with an "oooo" name? It wouldn't matter if I batted in 23 runs, I'd still get a complex about why an entire stadium was booing me.

Unlike Ra-oool, Hoooghes probably warranted boos, but I don't really believe in booing your own player. Did it once ever, for Alan Embree in August of 2005, for absolutely no other reason other than the fact he had just come from Boston.

Sorry, I'm digressing more than usual. It's been a few days of not-blogging so I'm still scratching the sleep booger rocks out of my metaphorical blog eyes.

Ok, that actually was an unintentional good segue into this point: Why do you bat Grandy as cleanup when he's been on the DL since Reebok pumps were all the rage? Is this what we have to look forward to as the Real Yankees slowly return back to the lineup? All the "scabs" get shooed away in favor of the big guys taking 2 months to approach pre-DL form?

I don't care if it works out, I don't understand it. He has had one hit, which isn't terrible since he hasn't played a professional ball game in about 66 years. But why can't he just work into the lineup organically> What the hell did he do in the steam stub or the batting cage that was SOO impressive that Girardi thought, ah to hell with it! I got a hunch he's going to be FINE. Just FINE."

Overall, the Yankees managed just 2 runs in this game, off 2 solo shots (Vernon "The New Old Carl Crawford" Wells amd Chris "Ok, maybe I'm not as bad on offensive as I' believed" Stewart.)

The Ms had the most productive outing all season. Most offensive. On multiple levels. Everyone got a hit.

The bright spot of the Yankee performance came from reliever Claiborne (again) who pitched a couple more innings of shutout ball, after his last getting-done-of-the-job outing last week. I like this kid. Good poise. D-Rob Part Deux.

Not as crazy about Marshall, who Girardi left in for 108 pitches to perserve the pen. 5 runs on 9 hits. He may be Quantrill Part Deux. Or Proctor. Both of which are still cowering in fear of being called in from the pen at any given moment. As if Girardi had pulled a "Ransom" on them:

We do what you say, and we let you leave the club. Anything goes wrong, you're gonna turn around and I'll be gone. Okay. And if that happens, from this day on, any time you take the field at another stadium, or go to the locker room, go play, see a friend, to buy a fuckin' comic book, you're gonna have to ask yourself: Is today... Joe Torre day?

Another pitching performance that wasn't too hot was that of Iwakuma. Well, not hot for the Yanks, who only scraped up 1 run. 8 hits wasn't too bad (for the Yankees), so I think the starter is going to get a lot of people jumping at the chance to be the one to identify him as a sleeper pick. His ERA is admittedly pretty nasty, but I don't think he's Yu.

(Ha, I just realized how that sounded, and now I'm thinking of all the fun he could have with break-ups, that could quickly spiral into a Who's on First edition: "It's not Yu. It's me.")

I'd be remiss in not calling out the real reason for even going to the game, which was one Oliver Perez. Cheers to my buddy Ollie for getting the tickets and allowing me and another Yankee fan to roll with the Ollie's Tamales Founders.

I'm not even going to begin to try to make heads or tails of this, so suffice to say that Oliver Perez came in for relief, the tamales raced to the other side of the stadium to get a better view (with their sombreros on), Oliver Perez pitched a perfect 8th, the tamales celebrated in earnest as if though they'd caught the winning homerun walkoff ball that sent their Mets into the playoffs, and then it really became near impossible to assign much import to a bludgeoning 12-2 loss when you're with 2 lunatics in sombreros stalking a middle reliever. (As the old saying goes.)

Way to go, Ms and Perez and Raooool. And cheers to my buddy Ryan, the only Ms fan I know. (This is really my only recourse in the face of losses. "Ok, so and so is a _____ fan, so at least I can try to take solace in the fact he's happy." If I'm being honest with myself, it rarely works. But I always try anyway, just like I always try to see if I've acquired the taste for pickles.)

Yanks have a 2-game lead in the division, as the Decoys manage to hold their shit together despite ranking a consistent #14 out of 26 in pretty much all league batting categories. They're like my fantasy team every year that leads the league in nothing except ties.

But, like Ollie's Tamales, there are some things in life (most things, actually) that cannot be understood or explained.

I usually don't like things devoid of reason, but the Decoys and the Tamales are two very notable exceptions.