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

Win.

When I got home from work, I turned on the game and the bases were loaded, Tubbo was mopping his brow and the Yanks were up 4-3.

Tubbo has been mopping his brow a lot this year. I mean, I'm gonna give him a little latitude (fatitude hehe) because it's been like 234 degrees out all summer, but then again, I seem to remember all these comments being made about Fausto Carmona et al when they were pitching against us in the infamous Midge Game and all the announcers being like, "Well, CC probably would be fine if he was pitching in this kind of situation because he's used to it."

I don't know where they get their information from sometimes. It's like I'm imagining the Elias Sports Bureau interns sitting there frantically trying to shove post-it notes with legit stats on them in front of the booth, and then Paul O'Neill is just like waving them off like, "Shh..I got this one, bro."

Then there was a controversy and it was the scorekeeper's turn to have a shit-what-do-I-do-here-please-let-this-not-get-back-to-my-boss moment. Chris Nelson left the bag earlier on a liner to left, and Fatso mercifully got out of the inning. Except it didn't look that way at first.

4-4. 2 outs.

4-3. 3 outs.

Wait. Here comes Sciosa.

Bahhh. 4-4. 4-3. Things were confusing. I swear, Mike Sciosa is like constantly on this hell-bent campaign to ensure that his epitaph reads "I SENT 'EM RUNNING." I can't count how many times his whole flying-around-the-basepath-with-wild-abandon tactic has been a source of a "live-and-die-by-the-sword" type of commentary.

He wasn't happy. I was relieved. Inning ends with the Yanks still on top, RoundBoy still sweating.

Then it's the bottom of the inning, and I heard Michael Kay say something I don't think I've heard all season. Honestly, I got goosebumps.

"AND THE YANKEES ARE JUST PILING IT ON!"

He said this in reference to runs being scored. I just realized that there's a good chance this phrase was uttered at another point in the season, but "it" being something like "errors" or something.

Not that there was any shortage of errors here. The Yankees had a season-high 19 hits on the day, but with a season-low (jk) of 3 errors, but I think we've all just come to kind of accept this type of heavyset last column in the box score as a zeitgeist of the Eduardo Nunez Era, really.

Get it?

Jayson Nix, although I love the guy, didn't have his bestest game today. Caught stealing, an error, and picked off.

See, that's the type of game Nunez used to consistently give up, but then I think Nunez basically told Girardi, "Listen. You'd be better served trying to develop my offensive game good enough to the point where it will compensate for my errors. Because the errors are gonna happen. That's just how it is. I ain't changing for no one. You know why? Because..."

To that end, SeeingEyeChart ended up doing pretty well for himself on the day. 2 for 6, 2 runs, 4 ribbies (2 of which were 2-out ribbies).Oh and 2 E's. But see how little the E's matter when you play an offensive game like that?

Similarly, I was beside myself to see A-Rod drill one into left field in the bottom of the 6th to bring 2 runs in. I mean, the guy is such an asshole though because if he had any semblance of a soul he'd have waited til it was the bottom of the 12 when the Yanks were down by 6 with no one on, and he'd hit a 7-run homerun to win the game.

If A-Rod ever hopes to waddle his way back into the public's favor, this is the type of STEPPING UP TO THE PLATE that needs to happen. Not this 2-run double in the 6th mumbo jumbo. C'MON, GUY. WORK WITH ME, HERE.

Everyone on the Yanks got a hit today. Some more than others, ie A-So, who tacked on more dings to his burgeoning case of "Aren't you glad I'm back?" 3 for 6, with 6 ribbies. I love how cynics/haters don't really know what to make of this guy.

He's 37, but you can't really get start bitching about the Yankees refusal to cultivate young players since technically he IS one of their cultivated young players. Or he was at one point. He's kind of like the rom-com stock character, boy next door that girl falls in love with when she's 10 and then years later they reunite.

In other "old man, new tricks" news, Lyle OverTheHillBay goes 3 for 4. Wells goes deep against his former team, which was good because if he had done anything less, I'd have been all up in arms about GGBG not batting clean-up. WHEN IS THIS GOING TO HAPPEN? I refuse to believe that the season will pass without seeing our plucky secret weapon in the 4 spot. You KNOW that Joe Maddon would be all. over. this.

I mean, I bet he feels the same way an intern feels at a tactical brainstorm session at work, and he/she has an idea but never speaks up because there's nothing more demeaning than throwing out an idea during a brainstorm and then the Person In Charge of Writing Things Down On the Giant Post-It Pad doesn't even deign to write your idea down.

But THEN someone else speaks up with that idea, and it's met with showers of oohs and ahhs. And then the intern's like, "I THOUGHT OF THAT! I DID!" Yeah, so that's Maddon right now. Maybe. Either that, or he's ironing out negotiations with this thing, for his next team-building meeting of minds.

Not that I want this to degenerate into a Joe Maddon riff, but the next time anyone says he's brilliant, I'd like to point that person to this comment that he made about his rental penguins:

"Shelly was cool, but Cliff was a very gregarious penguin. I found out they like to go to the bathroom every 15 minutes. Cliff actually demonstrated his allegiance for the Rays by going right on top of our logo on the carpeting."

Oh, Maddon and your progressive views on symbolic gestures of loyalty!

Anyways, so yeah, GGBG in 4-spot. That.

Joba managed to not blow the game, Dellin Betances (who sounds like either some kind of Latin declension or an acrylic paint tube brand) gave up about 98 hits/runs over the course of the 12 seconds he was in the game. He didn't really get the same lavish praise that Shawn Kelley did.

Kelley did well, but the way Kay talked about him, you'd have thought the Yankees had managed to swindle King Felix away from Seattle. Whatever, I'm not complaining.

I will say that it seems as though the Yankees as a whole are throwing an awfully high number of pitches out per game. This either comes from the fact 70% of Lard's starts are devoted to shots of him wringing his stomach of sweat...or it comes from the fact that Phil Hughes is inflating the worldwide pitch per capita. (I was at Saturday's game, he managed to toss 100 pitches in 4 innings. It's not Pop-A-Shot, Phil. Sweet Christ)

Anyways, so here we are. The Yankees are 9.5 games back. Nova takes on Weaver on Wednesday. Highes [sic] takes on Wilson Thursday. (To be clear, that's a 4-11 record up against a 12-6 record. Which means P-Hu is due.)

After that? The Yanks take on the Red Socks in Boston. 9.5 games back. If years of YES broadcasts have taught me anything. it's this: