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

May 8 and 9, 2012

More bad news from ESPN

Alright, so the Yankees won on Tuesday, and that was great, I followed the game on the radio while my dentist tried to kill me. Maybe he didn't try to kill me, but I figured out why people hate going so much. It's not because of the pain, because even though that's pretty bad, it's nothing compared to the feeling of being strapped down (which you're not at all, but I'm dramatic), while someone hovers over you with a bunch of sharp objects, casting judgement on your flossing lifestyle.

I have my phone in one hand playing the game (technology!) and this rubber suction thing over my nose which allegedly was feeding me laughing gas, but I kept asking, "what is this supposed to feel like?" And they kept saying, "You don't feel like you're floating? You don't feel a buzz?"

"No, I'm not even numb, either." Somehow I got shafted in the anesthesia gene department, and no matter how much novacaine you put in me, it won't ever numb me.

So finally I ask them to take off the rubber thing because I'm convinced this whole laughing gas thing is the world's biggest scam/Emperor's new clothes. And so the dentist goes to up the intake or something and says, "Oh! You know why you didn't feel anything? The tank was empty!"

Yeah, that would explain it.

The tank was empty. The Yanks won on Tuesday, but as far as last night goes, the tank was indeed empty across the boards.

We took a page from Philly's book and executed a hat trick of losses. (Of course, today my Metsies friends are quick to remind me that no, it was not a bad night altogether in NY sports, because the Mets swept Philly. I don't know whether to be happy for the Mets or sad because of how pathetic it is that NY is getting its sports kicks from a team that has all but patented the 3 men converging in the outfield over a can of corn play.)

My first priority last night was the Ranger game. Who played horribly, and are now playing what should be a very stress-free, cas game in the Garden on Saturday night. Yeah, that won't be a giant ball of anuerysm or anything. They'll win though. I feel like it was set up that way. I mean, it's kind of like when I had a Pfizer badge that swiped me into the building whenever I had a client meeting. I went 3 months without having to see the client and then when I finally went back there, the badge was demagnetized. MSG is on the verge of demagnetizing itself, because it's starting to feel like it exists for no reason other than to house dejection at the hands of the NYK.

(Oh yeah, the Knicks lost, but this is no surprise to anyone in the entire world. At least they didn't get swept. My interest in the Knicks is so non-existent that even a general sports fan like myself couldn't muster up even the slightest modicum of bandwagon investment in their playoff run.)

So the Rangers lose and that sucked. Then I guess the Knicks lost at some point, and I think it was probably around the time they took the court because more so than any other team, (including the Jets and Mets), the Knicks are fatally allergic to success. Maybe that's for the best. The Jets and Mets will really convince their fans it's for real this time. The Knicks on the other hand seem to always be reminding the world to not get toooo excited because they still fulling intend on playing like Leonardo DiCaprio on LSD in the Basketball Diaries.

Then, like one of those weird sea organisms that look like 1-eyed worms, all the eyes in the bar shifted abruptly to the tv with the Yankee game. And last we had all checked, it was 1-0. Now it was 1-1. Great. Fantastic.

But D-Rob was in, and what could possibly go wrong, right?? I mean, it's not like D-Rob EVER gives up runs. He's the new Mo! Pshh, we were all worried for nothing. It sucks Mo is gone, but we can handle it, our pen is super sweet!

Yeah, except as my buddy Hug noted with text message despondance: "LWM is f'n terrible."

(I got a little anxious when I had no idea who LWM is. I start to question my entire sports knowledge and get panicky that not only do I not know as much as I think I do, but that this is evident to the world and my admission of not knowing who LWM is expose me as a complete fraud.)

Luckily, I sidestepped that landmine when he clarified, "Life Without Mo."

Then Matt Joyce takes him deep and it's 4-1 and he sprains his ankle in the process and calls it the best and worst feeling in the world in the span of a second. Ok, let's slow your roll, Joyce. You can't talk about the worst feeling in the world over a sprained ankle.

Comparatively, you got off easy considering Mo's medical state. The Cloud of Gloom and Evil and Baseball Plagues struck Boston yesterday, with the untimely death of Carl Beane. Terrible tragedy, so a sprained ankle dovetailed with a long ball isn't the WORST feeling, Joyce.

Yeah, LWM is starting to sink in. And oh, Mo has a blood clot. Great. Fantastic. I still think he's coming back. I mean, if he had to get amputated like our poor cat Grey (R.I.P.) I still think he'd be back. Which means Hug is going to owe me a big NYC night on the town. We're going to Sizzla!

Hopefully. Not hopefully about the Sizzla, but about the Mo.

It was just a mess last night. The Yanks hemorrhaged runs in the last inning of the game and couldn't get them back. The look broken. O'Brien came out to watch the disaster, and I will say as soon as he walked in the Rangers scored. But then the dominos came crashing down in succession, and he asked "So how bad are the Yankees this year?"

Who knows? ARE they bad? It's impossible to make any kind of legitimate assessment of baseball standings right now because you have all these factors skewing the data. The Mets holding court. The O's leading the AL East. All these young players living up to their hype. Nothing makes sense.

There needs to be some kind of a control in this evaluation, and there isn't. Not a one.

Except, of course, for Jeter. He was the lone run, driven in by Cano. The Yanks left 8 men on base. What the hell is going on when, in a 9-hit game, you can only bring home 1 runner?

Most of the team got hits, except for Tex, Grandy, and Wise. That's ok, I think.

And I'm not worried about D-Rob. I think he's actually being way too hard on himself, which you may remember is kind of what I like when a pitcher blows the game. Beat yourself up. So he did. And he's forgiven.

"It's the worst feeling in the world. You watch when Mo does it, he comes back the next day and he's the same guy. He goes right back out there, takes the mound and does his thing. I'm going to have to do that tomorrow...Eventually, I'm not going to be able to get out of all my messes that I create. It was really tough, just a sad way to end the game. You're not always going to be perfect out there. I had a good stretch. It just stinks when you do give up the runs."

And when you go back to when Mo replaced the Yankees closer in '97, you'll find that even the great Mariano blew the first handful of save opportunities he had.

D-Rob is bank, his faltering isn't what makes me think LWM is f'n terrible. It's the general sense of emptiness that's evident even across a broadcast. Even when they're winning games, even when they're keeping it close, and playing baseball-without-incident. You can just tell. Something's off in the clubhouse. They're a bunch of misshapen beads strung together by an old woman in a senior citizen's home. Delicate and reticent and disjointed.

They still make a full necklace, but it's awkward and sad to think about how it came to be.

However, in all things, it is better to hope than despair. This, too, shall pass. And hopefully without any more casualties, player or standings-wise.

Come on, Yankees. We're counting on you like you've always counted on Mo.

Iam est vicis pro maiestas.

May 4 through May 6

It's hard to write about baseball when everything is so upside down. And by everything, I mean that I still haven't fully gotten past the Mo thing. Has anyone, really? I went out last night and saw the lion's share of my friends, all at the same place to celebrate the end of a different era: Kevin's last night working at Dorrian's.

A 7-year span hallmarked by highs and lows, all culiminating in last night, and the first thing anyone said to me when I saw him was, "I guess we should probably talk about Mo."

What is there to say really? It was a crazy weekend, and I don't think it was a coincidence that Kevin's last night at D's fell on the same day as a full moon. Not just any full moon, but the "fullest" in the history.

(PS, this is a little too similar to the idea of playing 100% vs 110%. By definition, doesn't "full" mean "at greatest possible capacity"? Then how can there be something that means more than that? It would suggest that all the other "full moons" weren't, in fact, full at all, but rather, close to being full. Again, why is this not confusing to any of the moon-naming-people? Their whole livelihood is based on moon stuff, and they still can't get this right? Like a snapper screwing up the snap.)

So the really full moon was out last night, and so were all the crazies. The Yankees lost terribly to the Royals--good grief--as the Rangers fell by one goal to the Caps, bringing the series to an even 2-2, and while some horse called "I'll Have Another" wins the Derby.

(Conversation last night: Me: "So was the derby winner the favorite or what. I didn't bet or even watch it this year." Ball: "Yeah, I've heard his name being thrown out a lot, so I'm guessing it was kind of the favorite." Me: "I thought the winning horse's name was I'll Have Another." Ball: "Yeah." Me: "If you're just basing this on how many times you've heard the phrase "I'll have another," then it's very possible he's not the favorite.")

The Knicks won I think, but honestly if I was a Knicks fan (or even a basketball fan), I don't know how much more of this I could take. To be invested in this series means that you have to hope for the Knicks to win 3 games in a row, after barely eeking out their first win in ELEVEN YEARS. By 2 points. Against a team that's infinitely better than them.

I guess stranger things have happened. Not a lot, but I guess technically stranger things have happened.

As for the Yankees, well they're just getting by. Not in a scraping together wins kind of a way, but in  a taking it one day at a time, kind of way. I think all future planning has gone out the window, in response to the "Mo Thing." You can't plan for everything. And when something like this happens, it makes you think you can't plan for ANYTHING.

In my junior year of college, my roommate had gone out and met a dude at a bar ("the" bar, as it were, since there was only 1 bar in my college town). And she liked him a lot, and he gave her his number and said to call.

I swear to God, I don't know how guys do this all the time, because when the tables were turned and the onus was on the chick to call the dude, we're paralyzed.

So all the roommates assembled in the living room and made an elaborate algorithm to map out the conversation. What to do if he says this, what to do if the conversation goes this way, etc. It was detailed and perfect, and she was all ready to make the call:

"Hi, is Matt there?...Oh, um, I don't know, actually...Bye."

We looked at her baffled. She explained:

"Whoever picked up said, 'Which Matt?' There are 2 Matts that live in that household."

Granted, she could've fielded the unexpected query a little differently than just hanging up, but the point is that we think we can plan for everything, and no matter what, without fail, the one thing we DIDN'T plan for, is what will happen. And you can try to plan for the Thing You Didn't Plan For, but you can't, because by design, it's unplanned for, obviously.

So the Yankees are playing like they've come to this conclusion.

After losing 3 straight, they came back on Friday and bested the Royals 6-2. Thank God. I watched this game with my company softball team, until I realized that it was indeed a 2-2 game and that if the Yanks end up falling to KC, I wasn't sure I wanted my coworkers seeing the fallout from this, in terms of my reaction. Better to safely make my way home.

(That last sentence, by the way, is a sentiment that the Yanks seem to be demonstrating somewhat of an aversion to, lately.)

The runners in scoring position thing. That's not too stellar. It's irritating and frustrating beyond the telling of it when I come back from the bathroom or something, expecting to see the game busted open--how could it not, with a runner on third and only 1 out??--and instead we're well into the 2nd half of the inning.

Fortunately the Yankees patched together 4 runs in the later innings and got the W, making my wildly superstitious self sure of the fact that I can no longer watch games with my softball team. Or rather, that I can only do EXACTLY what I did on Friday which was take in the first half of the game with them, then bolt. I'm a lot of fun in a social capacity.

Kuroda loses the game on Saturday, and KC manager acts like this was the watershed moment for his team. Ned Yost's name, for the record, is one of those names that looks less like a proper noun and more like a scrabble rack. He's all super excited about the BLOWOUT 5 runs the Royals put up against the Yanks on Saturday:

"We're getting back to playing our style of baseball now. We had that little rough patch and we're starting to swing the bats a little better now."

The Royals have a "style of baseball"? That "little rough patch"? I'm very curious to know what this little rough patch that he speaks of entails. At first blush, it would appear he's referring to the last decade, and if that's the case, then awesome. If he's talking about the season, then still kind of awesome, because I'm struggling to figure out what kind of "rough patch" of any scope, could be mollified by a 5-1 win.

Whatever it was, I think it was neutralized by the 10-4 loss KC suffered today when Cano's grand slam powered the Yanks to break even in the series.

Also, does this headline not make sense to anyone else?

Subject: Cano's grand slam. Objec: Yankees' rout. Where my verb at?

That's not really important though, not as important as the fact that Hughes got a win, Arod also went deep (3-run shot), and Nick Swisher returns in one of those PHEW-he-doesnt-need-a-big-swing-of-DL-recovery-time moments, to blast a solo shot. I'm more than a little impressed by Swish this season. Married life becomes him, apparently.

Girardi was really excited to see this kind of production from the middle of the order, for some reason. It's like being really excited to learn that your nanny didn't kidnap your baby. Grandy and Ibanez chipped in some ribbies, because apparently they're like ATMs for ribbies. They can't always give you enough, but they're generally good to help out when you're in a pinch.

The Royals were moderately useless against Hughes, who managed to go his SECOND game all season where he kept it up under 4 runs. Geez, Phil. Pull it together. Billy Butler, Humberto Quintero, Alex Gordon, and Jarrod Dyson all got some run-scoring hits for KC, but not enough (obviously.) All those names sound like classmates of Ramona Quimby, age 8, except for Humberto who for some reason hasn't marketed his own breed of tango music.

Apparently, there ARE different ways to tango, as O'Brien and I learned when this was the first search result for googling "tango."

So, it was a good day for the Yankees but mainly because they won, and not because they're turning the corner of their rough patch. I think I'd like to see a little more than an offensive blow-out against Hochevar before I make some kind of Ned Yost-esque assessment.

But hey, they won. Which is what they are supposed to do. And they hit the ball well. And they were 4-11 with RISP.

And you know what IS something I can take from this? The similarities to 2009. If we do everything exactly like it was done 3 years ago, then everything will be fine.

It's just hard to keep a straight head when the Orioles are in first place. Must be the fullest mooon BS.

It's also hard to keep a straight face when the Socks lose the O's in 17 innings to give 1B Chris Davis the win.

I mean, at least the Yanks aren't going hitless against position players. Geez, Socks.

Monday's an off day, then it's 6 games at home (TB and Seattle). I think they'll win all 6.

May 3, 2012

The Day the Muscles Died.

At 7:36pm last night, the texts started coming in.

In droves.

I didn't know what was going on, but I could feel my phone going into conniption fits, seizuring violently in my bag, and I knew it wasn't good. The odds of everyone trying to contact me at once because there was an APB that Kris Pollina had just won the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes, were not very high.

On the other hand, the odds that something terrible happened, were galactically probable.

Mariano Rivera the cat weirdly reenacts the moment when disaster struck.

I didn't want to look at my phone. Did my apartment crumble to ground? Work? A viral video of me on the internet?

Worse.

"I got some bad news for you. Well, bad depending on who you ask." That was from Ollie, and it was the first thing I saw.

Then the next one I looked at: "Rivera blew out his knee."

They just kept getting worse as more information came out.

"ACL tear."

"ACL tear and meniscus tear."

"ACL tear and meniscus tear and out for the season."

"ACL tear and meniscus tear and out for the season and possible career ender."

It was like that camp game you play when rain cancels instructional swim and other outdoor activities and you're forced to sit in the lodge and go around in a circle saying, "I'm going on a picnic and I'm bringing..."

How could this happen?? Shagging fly balls. One of the finest specimens of athletic prowess in the game and that's how it neutralized him.

"This is how the world ends. Not with a bang, but with a whimper." -T.S. Eliot

This is how the world ends. Not with a retirement, but with an ACL tear.

I don't really think, however, that we've seen the last of Mariano Rivera. There is not a Link-with-wooden-sword's chance in a labyrinth that Mo is ending his legendary career like this.

I mean, part of me is a tiny bit concerned that it may be like the end of "A League of Their Own" when Geena Davis' character just kind of checks out and loses the game for them because she's already mentally halfway back to canoodling with her back-from-war husband.

No sword. No chance.

What if Mo is like, "I've had a great run, but this is a sign from God. I'm done. I have a family that I want to be with, and there's no reason to force the issue."

THIS ISN'T A SIGN, MO. THIS IS JUST A BUMP IN THE ROAD. PLEASE DON'T LEAVE US. PLEASE.

One time I was trying to sleep (weird, I know) but I couldn't because there was some chick on 83rd street keeping me awake. Five flights up and I could still hear her bawling to some dude about how this wasn't the end, how she loved him, and she needed him, and please let's make it work because she knows that they're meant for each other! This went on for about 2 hours before angrier heads prevailed and a chorus of shutthefuckup's started pouring down from the buildings. (Or, as one irritated dude put it, "Go get some ice cream and get over it, cow!")

Anyways, now I know how that chick felt.

I'm wearing my Mo jersey today. It's horrible. Every Yankee fan in NY is walking around in a daze today, there's a lot of hands being put on shoulders, coupled with sympathetic head shakings, and punctuated with the "I..I..there are no words. I can't talk about it."

Anyways, do we really need to recap the game here? Let's put things in perspective. The Yankees have much bigger fish to fry than the fact they've just dropped 3 straight to the worst teams in the world.

They have bigger fish to fry than the fact they are roughly 1 for 239 with RISP.

Than the fact their clutch hitting is as formidable as a French poodle.

Than the fact every day a new injury falls upon them.

Bigger fish than their pitching staff that mirrors a reality show where one person gets the boot every week.

Bigger fish than their vague yet discernible deflation and discouragement.

Mariano Rivera, the best closer in baseball, is down for the count. Predictably, there are those fans who are rejoicing (as if THAT was why your team sucks, because once a month a fraction of your lineup has to face him). They're not rejoicing because this gives them the chance to finally ascend in the standings. They're rejoicing because the Yankees are hurt.

"Only cowards insult injured majesty." -Aesop

They'll get through this. I don't know how, but at this point, our only recourse is to think of that singular line in the Old Man and the Sea. The only thing I got out of that book, really. (Sad, but true.)

Mo would've wanted it that way.

\

May 2, 2012

So I'm starting to think that the same "blackout restrictions" that have rendered the MLB.tv subscription a complete waste of money, are also being applied to things like dual NY sports team victories.
Like the Yankees will go ahead and beat Boston in the most f'n unbelievable way possible, and then NY sports fans try to change the channel to watch a Rangers playoff win, but a pop-up box fills the screen, saying, "We're sorry. It's been determined that your location has blacked out (blocked out) another win for the city."

So while the Rangers were down in our nation's capital, playing in the 4 hour and 34  minute long foray into hell, the Yankees were in the Bronx getting worked by the Orioles.

Unfortunately, in light of the triple overtime playoff game, the Yankees are getting the short straw in terms of game recapping, This will be a bit on the brief side, which I don't think will make anyone TOO made since I'm not sure I really want to spend 100 column inches discussing a shut out.

Here's we go:

Ivan Nova loses his bid for the longest streak of starts without a loss. Like I always say, you gotta roll a 7 sometime. Either he was bad or the O's were good, I can't tell which. But the ball was popping off their bats.

Offensively, the Yankees couldn't do diddly poo.

The O's, however, did do diddly poo on offensive: Wieters homered, Andino's infield single drove in a run, Markakis homered, Wieters doubled in Jones, Nick Johnson plated Wieters. A real team effort.

Speaking of team effort, I think the Yankees are going to see if they can not only cut their rotation down to 3, but also see if they can get away with fielding only 5 players. Generally, the Yanks are like one of those riddles where you have to take a lion, a goat, and a bale of hay across the river in a 2 person canoe.

Meaning, there's only going to be a handful of bats being productive on any given day, then rest of the team is chilling on the other side of the river waiting for someone to figure out how to make it work so that everyone can get to the other side.

To be fair, the top of the line up are the people who are supposed to be getting on base and thats what they did. Grandy, Arod, Cano, Ibanez were the hits. Let's be honest, anything that comes out of the Z-Pak minus Ibanez, Jones, or R-Mart, well we consider that house money.

In more optimistic news, the bullpen didn't let up any runs! Also, welcome to the pen, Sweaty Freddy. Try not to trash the place, please.

I hope Ivan Nova doesn't get discouraged. Outside of his weirdly good performance, what do we know about the guy? He's been like the sleeper in American Idol who never got any air time during the audition process so when all of a sudden he shows up in the final round, it's like, who dis?

I think hanging out with Ollie too much has made me paranoid; his obsession with Oliver Perez has finally rubbed off, in a way. Now I'm just scared that Ivan Nova (or any young promising pitcher) is going to go the route of this former-Met loony tune.

Chavez left the game with whiplash.Two weeks ago, the Yanks were finding new and exciting ways to decimate Boston. Now they're finding new and exciting unsettling ways of getting injured. Whiplash? That's one of those conditions that is so overused in hyperboles/cliches, that I barely even recognize it as a real health afflication. Kind of like "the flu." And "migraines."

Jered Weaver pitched a no hitter. Which is not only the 2nd time this season a no-no was tossed, but it's also the 2nd time this season that there was another game on that managed to be more exciting than the no-no.

And, by the way, Jered Weaver? Seriously? How the hell is he the only pitcher who somehow manages to significantly improve (and consequently, significantly hack away at his ERA) with every year that he gets older? I like it. I'm not even suggesting this is a steroid thing, not at all. I actually think maybe he's just a weirdo Cali guy who does shit back-ass-wards.

And lastly, there's this,,,(Arrieta's reaction to the game):

"After I make my pitch don't get too far from the mound. Make a quality pitch, get the ball back and get right back to work, When things are going well, tempo is a positive part of your outing."

Maybe someone needs to pony up and get him a translater. Not because he needs one, but because this quote wouldn't have given me pause like it did, if the phrase "as told through a translator" was tacked on to the end of it.

On to Kansas City now, where we'll play ESPN's favorite to win the World Series. I'm not kidding.

Cheers!

Any time I see the words "Yankee Stadium" and "cancer research" in the same subject line, I open that email.

Actually, I open email either way because I hate having a smattering of bolded unreads and the ( ) next to "Inbox." But if either or both of those phrases are involved, it's important.

Running on the warning track? Yes.

It was in 2009 that I learned of the Damon Runyon 5K held INSIDE Yankee Stadium, to support cancer research. I was, however, just coming off ACL surgery and I was also a devout disciple of the "I'll Run When I Get Fat, Slash, Get Chased by Weapon-Bearing Felons" school of thought.

But this year? I'm doing it.

I'm all empowered in my ability to run more than 16 feet without wheezing, on account of doing the Warrior Dash last summer. Running's not bad if you do it in costume. That applies to pretty much everything in life, actually. Not just running.

So, fellow Yankee fans, I encourage you to join me for this extremely good cause. Sometimes when you hear "supporting cancer research" it seems like something too abstract to understand the implications. But I've seen them, and they're profound.

I work on a cancer drug at my job, and when I started on the account, I had no idea that it was the same drug that my dad took when he had cancer 7 ago. My dad wasn't poster child for healthy living, so we expected his battle with lymphoma to be tortuous. But it wasn't. It wasn't easy, but after 7 months of treatment, it was gone. And now every day I go into work, I can't help but be incalculably grateful for the researchers and scientists who developed this treatment.

I don't know many people who's life hasn't been affected by cancer in one way or another, and I can't think of any better way to help further important research than by getting some exercise on the same grass that greatness plays on. Maybe August 12 is our own "dare to be great moment."

I hope I see you there!

If you are interested in participating, the full press release and details are below.

NEW YORK, MAY 1, 2012 — While the New York Yankees take on the Blue Jays in Toronto on August 12, thousands of baseball fans, runners, cancer survivors, and supporters will gather at Yankee Stadium for the fourth annual Damon Runyon 5K at Yankee Stadium.  Since 2009, the run/walk has raised more than $1.4 million for the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, which funds groundbreaking cancer research conducted by today’s most innovative young scientists. Registration for the 2012 Runyon 5K opened today at 12:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

The first heat of the 5K will launch at 9:30 a.m. from inside Gate 4 before winding through the legendary ballpark’s concourses and ramps. Participants will climb stairs between levels and appear on the center field video board as they take two laps around the warning track that circles the field. Over the past four years, the Runyon 5K has become one of New York’s most unique summer events and the only charitable run/walk to use the iconic stadium as its course.

Registration for individuals and teams opened today at www.damonrunyon.org/yankeestadium and is limited to the first 4,000 registrants.  Participants pay a $40 registration fee and must fundraise at least $60. On July 12, the registration fee will increase to $50. Family and friends will have the opportunity to meet Damon Runyon scientists and watch the event from the Delta SKY360° Suite overlooking home plate.

100% of all funds raised by participants will go directly to Damon Runyon cancer researchers. “We're so grateful to the New York Yankees and all of our sponsors for helping make this possible year after year,” said Lorraine W. Egan, President and CEO of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. "And we couldn't ask for better supporters. They really enjoy the incredible Stadium views and work so hard every summer to raise money for cancer research.”

The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, established in 1946 and based in New York City, has a long history with the Yankees.  Joe DiMaggio was on its Board of Directors and Mickey Mantle was an active fundraiser.  Damon Runyon himself was a New York writer who began his career as a baseball journalist, revolutionizing how the game was covered and often reporting on Yankees games.

Last year’s event raised more than $730,000 and drew a capacity crowd of 4,000 participants – from 5 to 76 years-old and traveling from 30 states.  Click to see videos and photos of the 2011 Runyon 5K.

In addition to the New York Yankees’ support, other event sponsors include the MetLife Foundation, White Rose/Unilever, 24 Hour Fitness, NBC4 New York, the New York Daily News, and SiriusXM Radio.

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ABOUT THE FOUNDATION

To accelerate breakthroughs, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation provides today’s best young scientists with funding to pursue innovative cancer research.  Damon Runyon is currently funding more than 100 scientists at leading medical centers and research institutions worldwide.

The Foundation was created in 1946 in memory of Damon Runyon, a New York writer who began his career as a baseball journalist and revolutionized coverage of the game.  Over the past 66 years, Damon Runyon has invested more than $245 million and funded more than 3,300 young scientists. Eleven of them have earned the Nobel Prize.

May 1, 2012

Oh, Phil. There are few things more confusing, more frustrating, and more depressing than realizing that something that was once there is gone. And by "something," I mean a skill. Any skill. Discovering that what once came easily, and made life smoother, is now inexplicably challenging beyond the telling of it.


I mean, this past weekend I was trying to teach myself this song Rondo Capriciosso, a song I played in piano recitals probably 20 years ago. I was so young that I still measured a song's impressiveness by virtue of how many pages it was, not unlike how the measure of a book's sophistication was how many chapters it had.

And I couldn't do it. I thought my fingers would have remembered everything once they got going, and they did actually. They knew where they were supposed to go and the keys they were supposed to play. The problem was that they just couldn't physically do it. I'm not arthritic. I'm only 31. And my hands presumably should be covering more ground, now that they've outgrown their 10 year stubbiness.

But for whatever reason, I couldn't do it. Yeah, I''m not giving up on it. I think I can probably have it all down by the end of the month. But the point of this allegory is that I'm just as fascinated by people's inability to do things as I am their ability to do things.

Shouldn't everything be mind over matter? How can Phil Hughes go from being Old Reliable/Lights Out...to being completely useless on the mound without even so much as a post-DL recovery curve as an excuse?

To be clear, Phil Hughes lost on Tuesday night to a team that hasn't beat the Yankees since the Reagan administration. Showalter was happy, all 1000th win and everything. But in that kind of annoying, kind of endearing way where he acts like it's not a big deal so he can perpetuate this whole Coach Norman Dale "Nuttin' but bidness, I'm old school" mentality.

It's a little funny actually since he's all "Yeah, I'm grateful for the fans, I'm just an old goat." And then he's fielding text messages galore (as he should) but dexterity with texting is my litmus test of middle age vs old.

Old people can't text. Middled aged people can. Parents fall into neither category, because parents as a rule will never understand texting, whether it's how to technically send a text, or whether it's what constitutes appropriate text content.

And, oh yeah, he's 55.

Old goat my ass.Though he could just be referring to how he sees himself. Literally.

I can see it, sort of.

So, in all seriousness though, Congrats to Buck. 1 love milestones. And even more than that, I love watching players mob their coach (in a celebratory way, though I don't know if I've actually ever seen them mob in a gang-related-crime way.)

Anyways, I think seeing people genuinely happy for one another is one of the greatest sights in the world. And I love LOVE how Baltimore embraces every opportunity they can to act like they just hit a walkoff in game 7 of the world series.

Ha, I have a place in my heart for the O's because of that day, the day that every baseball fan knows as the greatest 15 minutes of baseball ever. Except for Boston and Atlanta, who probably have other ideas.

So I think the Yankees should look long and hard (pause) at Hughes, because I don't think it's a coincidence that the day he pitches against our safety school, that every one who was in some kind of streak of badness...snapped out of it.

To be fair, it wasn't a HORRIBLE outing if you just look at the number of hits he let up. But if you look at where the hits landed, then yeah, pretty horrible.

It's like in "The Natural" when the coach is telling Roy Hobbes about Memo Paris:

"I'd better tell you something. You're a grown man. What you do with your personal time is your own business. I got it in the back of my mind, that girl's bad luck. I love her. But I believe that bad luck has a way of rubbing itself off on other people."

Here's what I mean:

• Buck gets his 1000th win against a team he hasn't been able to beat in any of the 5 meetings this season.
• Matusz ended his 11-month losing streak. He had been 0-12 with a 10.47 ERA in 14 starts since, the longest active losing streak in the majors. Nick "I look like a hamster and am roughly as mobile as one" Johnson doubled to end an 0-for-29 skid at the start of the season.
• Nunez, after being Bugs Bunny in the outfield yesterday, misplayed a ball in semi-retarded Poppel fashion.
• The Yanks loaded the bases for Arod, who fouled out to the catcher on the first pitch.'

And now there's what Hughes had to say about it:

(Wait for it.)

"Overall, tonight was the best stuff I had all year."

Is this something they learn from their PR reps? What's with the AJ Burnett-esque penchant for being all chipper after getting shelled?

Seriously, I feel like pitchers post-mortem interviews always fall into one of a couple of buckets:

1) "The Mike Mussina"--Blaming the umps for a bad call that somehow was so disruptive it made pitcher incapable of performing effectively.

2) "The Idle Hands"--Acknowledging the ineffectiveness but implying that he thought he was doing everything right so he is just as perplexed as everyone else as to why his pitches weren't going where he wanted them to.

3) "The AJ Burnett" --The insistence that he was great and everything went exactly as planned.

4) "The Adrian Gonzalez" --Divine intervention. God's plan.

5) "The Mo"--Reminder that he's not a machine and he is in fact human and will give up runs.

6) "The Yankee Excuse" --How is anyone expected to really even pitch against a line up that stacked?


See, but none of those are what I want to hear. Ok, maybe the God's plan one is kind of hysterical. It's not that I want an apology, but I want to see the pitcher beating himself up over it. Big time.

I mean, not in a Donnie Moore way of course, God no. But in a Scottie Smalls kind of way.

I'd be a lot my sympathetic if a pitcher said, "There's nothing that can be said about what I did here today, that is any worse than what I already think myself. What happened on the field today makes me feel like less of a man. I hold myself in contempt and encourage you all to do the same."

But really what I'd like to see is Andy Pettitte back in the rotation. Hughes is not going to regain his stuff. It is in fact a little like human relationships, in the sense that once there are chinks in the armour, there's no going back.

There's no ignoring them, and there's no way to repair them. All you can do is decide whether or not you're going to work extra hard to make it work despite the pitfalls. Or whether it's time to admit defeat.

Let's hope Nova keeps his own streak going today. And if possible, let's focus on the positive. We didn't get shut out. Granderson hit a home run. Two of the O's runs came off the bats of ex-Yankees* (I don't know how this is a positive, exactly). And no one died.

*Nick Johnson and Betemit. Chris Davis has another (C. Davis. Would have been cooler if it were Chili.

April 30, 2012

I know I'm going to be eating my words any day now, but that's ok, because my words generally taste like sour gummy bears, but the O's are like the dude that a lonely chick rings up whenever she's feeling undesirable.

It's the dude that she knows will be more than happy to provide a much needed self-esteem boost. And it doesn't make the dude feel too good, but yet there he is. Always fighting the good fight and hoping this time it will be different.

The Yanks are now 4-0 against Baltimore. Of course, a 2-1 game isn't exactly like the Yanks stormed in there like a Mel Gibson character, waving their swords and asserting their alpha dominance. They just marched in with quiet intimidation and superiority like a Christopher Walken character.

Then Kuroda once again pitched a good game. (That, by the way, is how I know my words taste like sour gummy bears. Because I've been dining on them every since I lambasted the guy after 1 bad start.)

Chavez knocked in 2 runs early with a long ball, and that was all the Yanks needed.

(Do you think that maybe they realized this, and decided to just wait and see if any additional runs were even necessary? Maybe the Yankees hate the expression "insurance runs" as much as I do. Insurance runs=ridiculous. All runs are insurance runs because you want to ensure you win the game.)

Catching Zs.

Regarding Chavez's pair of ribbies..um..is there anyone else out there who sometimes mixes up the Z-pak subgroup of the Yankees? Not the Z-pak as in "all-purpose-antibiotics-that-miraculously-haven't-cultivated-resistance" but the Z-pak as in the ChaveZ-NuneZ-IbaneZ trio who always seem to randomly have extremely key hits for us.

Seriously, please tell me I'm not the only person who gets confused.

Basically this game was set up perfectly for those of us that had most of our attention on the heartbreaking Rangers (NY) game. Because the offensive "show" came in the 1st with the 2-run ding. And then nothing for the rest of the game. And the defensive "gem" came in the end, the 7th, when the O's were all thinking the scoring was jusssst within reach.

It was, technically. The tying run was 90 feet away. And Kuroda threw the ball in the dirt, and the O's watched it spit over to their dugout and THIS WAS IT! Their BIG MOMENT!

Markakis makes a run for it!

And then the 19,102,631,823 replays of Jeter's Flip (you may have heard of it before) finally had some utility beyond beyond inducing Yankee haters to irrationally insist Jeter is overrated. R-Mart FLIPS the ball to Kuroda, he tags out Markakis and pfffffft, there goes the O's fleeting chance at victory.

You gotta love watching the battery chit chat on the mound. You don't gotta love the constant reminders about how they were once teammates, as if this is akin to some rare biochemical anomaly where 2 molecules find their way into the same realm against all scientific principles and learnings.

But I mean, any time a non-English speaking pitcher has a mound meeting with his catcher, you think, "Why in God's name isn't the translator up there?" How amazing would that be? And more importantly, shouldn't that be necessary? It sort of makes me suspect of all the post-game interviews where all of a sudden they're back to No English, All the Time.

It's kind of like how my ex was "lactose intolerant" whenever he was lamenting the trials and tribulations of this "condition," to the point where I expected a Handicap ticket to appear on his rear view mirror any day now...but when a chocolate mousse was on the dessert cart, his "condition" went on sabatical.

Anyways, as for the rest of the game:

D-Rob strikes out the side in the 8th, Mo gets the save, Showalter gets denied his 1000th win. Weirdly, his first came at Yankee Stadium. And we've seen how Yankees manhandle teams who are in the throes of celebrating a milestone...

"food."

Chavez got approximately 70 thousand balls hit his way, after apparently getting none during Spring Training ("none" as in none baseballs to field, not "getting none" as in getting no play with the ladies, just to be clear.)

I love this line:

Nunez, who had four different gloves stuffed in his locker, called it a "fun" experience.

It reads like a Zagat entry. Nunez called his experience "fun" and that the "homerun" he hit was "enjoyable." He's glad to "help the team" and finds the ambiance in the clubhouse "fun."

Tonight we got Hughes vs Matusz. I don't know who I dislike more here: Hughes for his inability to get a quality start, and Matusz for his inability to not have a random z stuck at the end of his name.

Splitting hairs, really.