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

WIN.

I didn't follow this game very well. Starting a game at 3:00 was weird enough. The downloaded the Yankees schedule onto my Outlook calendar at the beginning of the season, and the only good thing about games during work hours is that it blocks off 3 hours of my calendar. Except now everyone is wise to this, so there is officially nothing good about games during office hours.

I wish Outlook would also send me game updates.

As if the weird start time wasn't discombobulating enough, there was a 2 hour rain delay.

And if THAT wasn't enough, the tarp would come off, get rolled up, and then...nothing. (I know all this based on twitter. This type of information was not readily available refreshing mlb.com. Social media!)

By the time I leave work and get to a tv, the Yankees were walking off the field and high fiving. And to sum up, my knowledge of the game is 70% based on twitter feeds and Sports Center.

Here's what I know:

• Fatso was mad he didn't get to bat.
• Cano had a big day, 1500th hit and passed Paul O'Neil on Bomber's Bomb List
• Colorado's manager thinks Mo's 13th save in as many chances was facilitated by an expanded strike zone.

Those umps! They'll do anything to help the Yankees win when they're on the road, you know?

Oh, also: the Decoys are in first. Sort of. 60% of the division is in first right now, and I don't think there's anyone in the free world who doesn't know how I feel about multiple superlatives. "One of my best friends..." "These are both top priorities..." etc. I just flat out don't believe in ties, period.

With one exception. So, I flat out don't believe in ties, semicolon; I love my parents the same amount, and both my sisters the same amount. That's it.

So the idea of sharing first place is making me lightheaded. Hashtag Yankeefanproblems.

In that I didn't even listen to game on radio (on account of the afternoon meeting clusterf-word), I can't even ride the WCBS ridicule wave.

HOWEVAH, there is something on which I would like to expound. And that is David Americo Ortiz Arias. (How come no one ever sings the Banana Picking Beetlejuice song when he's up? Seriously. D.A.O.A= this, yeah?)

Ah, Daoa. Papi. F'n moron. You make it easy for people like me who already profoundly dislike you. People like me don't WANT to find out you're actually a really cool, great guy. So when you do these little soapbox things, it's just like throwing a half eaten bread slice to the hoard of seagulls menacingly surrounding your beach towel.

They're out for crust. We're out for blood.

For example...

2009 he announced that players who tested positive for steroids were such a sad pathetic disgrace and should die a death that is both fitting of such iniquity and also one that is rife with agony. Basically, that's what he said. Then a few years later he tested positive for steroids, and everyone was all "SMH"-ing everywhere (which apparently means "shaking my head" and not "so much hate").

Now in 2013, he has announced that his steroid allegations and suspicions cast on him are indicative of racism, and that everyone is just saying that because he's Dominican and a lot of steroid users hail from those parts.

To really fortify his argument, he gave about 97 comparative examples. You know I'm the last person to criticize analogies, but Ortiz's were devoid of supporting Family Guy clips.

His arguments were definitely NOT devoid, however, of a Ku Klux Klan reference. Yep. Yeah, he's not on steroids. He's actually totally in control of the situation and not at all like a freebasing walrus.

H/T to espn.com:

"Yesterday the guy came to see me and asked some questions about steroids, and when you see the writing, it basically focuses on the fact that I'm Dominican and that many Dominicans have been caught using steroids. And what about the Americans?" Ortiz said.

"If you're from the Middle East, because there are some people there who put bombs and terrorize civilians, I have to see you like that, as well? If you are a white American, I have to call you a racist because white Americans were in the Ku Klux Klan?

"The thing that stung me was his statement about Dominicans. You mean that in Dominican Republic there are no players who try to do things right? We are all in the same boat. And the people here who have been caught, does that put everyone here in the same boat?"

"I have spent many years in Boston and still do not know the right way to do things: Do it right or do it wrong," Ortiz said. "If you do it wrong, they'll finish you. If you're doing well, they'll finish you, too. There's no area where you feel safe."

Poor guy. He's just trying to do things the right way. And he can't win! If he takes steroids, he gets in real PR and legal hot water. If he doesn't take steroids, he doesn't play well and gets in real Beantown hot water. Talk about a Hobson's Choice.

I can totally relate. It's like I still do not know the right way to do things. Do I cheat at Wednesday Night Trivia and google shit serreptitiously [sic. Jesus. A lot of sic]? Or do I play by the rules? It's so unfair, if I do the former, I'm a cheater and I'm disqualified.

If I do the latter, I don't get the free bar tab at end of night. THERE'S NO AREA WHERE I FEEL SAFE! (Except the sports and lit categories) There's really no other options, yeah?

Not to be an asshole, but a little bit to be an asshole, is Ortiz, um, not all there? Is he taking his cues from Schilling? I mean, most people know you don't just go on national tv and drop the F-bomb. But we gave him a pass because of Boston tragedy.

But then most people don't follow that up 2 weeks later with a lonngggg incensed rant that sounded kind of a like a less funny version of Nathan Lane in The Birdcage trying to sound like an informed political-savvy citizen. Or a lot less funny version of when Dwight gave his Salesman of the Year acceptance speech.

Thank you, DAOA for doing such a galactically terrible job of convincing the public you're an innocent victim in the social warzone that asphyxiates us with its oppressive racial profiling of PEOPLE WHO HAVE ALREADY BEEN CAUGHT DOING STEROIDS.

Sweet Christ. It's like saying we shouldn't profile child molesters as sexual deviants just because they're child molesters.

(Too far? I never compared anyone to the KKK though, which was my benchmark of aggression that DAOA himself set.)

I'm chalking this all up to the day game at 3:00 that didn't start til 5:15. I know. It's bad to profile day games like that just because they're played in the day.


Anyways. In other ridiculous baseball news, the umps screwed up a call in an Indians/As game and the tying homerun was a legit tying homerun but was called a double and the As lost. That really sucks, I'd be pretty upset if something similar happened to the Yankees. But the Yankees never have any calls go against them, ever.

Sweet Christ, they f'd up a call. I'm not being all blase about this to be all breezy and dismissive, (as much as I'd love to turn into one of those irresistibly nonchalant chicks like Jennifer Aniston in Along Came Polly, it'd probably have better luck trying to turn into potato salad.)

I'm being dismissive in this particular case because it's early May. There is PLENTY of time. (Oh my God, I love that phrase.)

TS Eliot put in best maybe, "There will be time, there will be time. Time for a million decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."

The Galarragga thing? That probably SHOULD have been made into literally a federal case. Wasn't crazy about the midge game, either. (Oh, hey. Yeah. The midge game. Guess Cleveland is really the charmed team of MLB.)

"All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is alike in its own way." -Tolstoy

Everyone except the Yankees hates their closer, my buddy Ollie once told me. And everyone thinks their experiences with ump missteps are the most unfair ever.

Now the damn replay machine is being called into question. I don't know HOW the umps didn't see the ball hit the rail, or maybe they did and just hate the replay machine, too, and think that continuing to blow calls will get MLB to say, "Well, these machines are clearly useless! Get rid of them, we gotta think of something else!"

But maybe we should put a cease and desist on trying to fix human error. It's pretty obvious the umps are just being targeted because of insidious conceptions and harbored discrimination. Screw the replay machine. If they screw up a lot, then get new umps who don't screw up.

It's kind of funny how players only have to be right 1 out of every 4 attempts, but an ump works with a no-tolerance-policy.

Ah well. It's May. This is the fun part of the season that we should enjoy before we're puking every day and losing weight and treating out bodies like unamusement parks (September/October/hopefully November)

I'm almost ALWAYS wrong whenever I say something bad is going to happen in baseball (ie the Grandy trade, the Pronk/Wells/Overbay aquisitions.)

But I knew this replay shit was going to cause problems. Wrote this in 2011, topic was something along lines of "What will have the biggest effect on baseball this season?"














So while instant replay may never see the light of day, its absence will be enough to make everyone take a closer look at our past time’s umpires--the living, breathing testaments to “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.” The question is, is this sheer act of scrutiny capable of changing the 2011 season?





Tomorrow's a night game in Kansas. How much mileage do pilots/stewards get out the "Not in Kansas anymore" thing? I would probably laugh because it's true. Once you leave Kansas, you're not there anymore.

Oh my God, I need to go to bed. Good series! See you tomorrow/today, Royals. (Pretty sure they were also a "sleeper pick" to win the 'ship this year. Show us what you got, KC.)

WIN.

The Yanks finally win in Coors, which is great news on many levels, not the least of which (actually, probably pretty close to the least of which) is that I don't have to add Coors Lights (or CL Smoothies, as the wonderful estranged Strange calls them) to the list* of innocuous everyday items that have been deemed satanic by virtue of baseball implications.

*Other notorious entries on this list include anything ANYTHING red, ie red lighters; anything ANYTHING from Boston, ie New England Clam Chowder...etc. You get the idea.

So everything in right in the world again since Coors is back to making me happy instead of sad. Good God that outfield is something else, by the way. Can't imagine stadium tours there being too enjoyable. There's probably territory out there that still hasn't been discovered or claimed. I'm a little jealous of Colorado fans that get to inevitably have a game interrupted by some regime of guerilla radicals aggressively staking ownership of some random nook in left field. That's happening.

This was not a boring game to watch. I enjoyed it a lot, and it was compounded by the exciting stress of flipping between YES and the Rangers/Capitals game. 631-634-631-etc. The PREV has rubbed off the remote button.

The scoring started (and nearly ended) in the early innings, with Wells taking Whoever the Hell Nicasia Is deep, putting the Yanks up 2-0 in the 1st. Helton responded in kind in the 2nd. Except it wasn't kind to people who wanted the Good Guys to win. Basically Helton responded in dissent, which means a tying ding  2-2 game.

And that was it pretty much for the rest of the game. the meat portion of the game†: (as opposed to the bookend innings) was a lot of "ball weakly hit to______"' 's.

† Some might be inclined to call this a "sandwich." I'd like this "methophor" to stop being used if no one is going to use it like a normal person. Like if someone's taking a pic of me and my sister and some random dude, the dude says, approximately 100% of the times "Ahh look! It's a Pollina sandwich!" Unless you characterize your sandiwchs the type of bread it's being housed in, then the whole "sandwich" thing is stupid.

Oh, and before I forget about this, what is Coors' lionization of Helton? I mean, every so often I feel like the camera woujld randomly zoom in on some big #17 TODD HELTON signable (whether of  the stadium persuasion or the fan with a cardboard sign persuation.)

It just so happens that this week he pleaded guilty to a DWAI which is a like a baby-DUI. And apparently he was RORed. Ribbied on his own recognizance. After blowing a .102 on account of "2 glasses of wine." Guy has to pay a $400 fine.

Would not have been a happy camper if his 2-run shot a day after he gets the laughable sentencing, ended up being the proverbial "one mistake" Phelps made en route to the Rockies' win.

FORTUNATELY, the pedestrian/commuter menace didn't get a chance to go out and celebrate, thanks to Bosh [sic].

This is why you always run out hits. Because it meant the difference in a game for the Yankees. And in a race in the AL East with Boston/Orioles only 1 game up on NYY, running a hard 90 can never, ever be underestimated.



Ahh, so Bosh drives in a run, forgets to have a D in his name, and triggers the call to Mo. It will never, ever cease to amaze me and awe me and just mostly blow me away every time Mo does what he does. (His "thang.")

1 pitch. 1 speed. No one can hit it. And first the first time ever in the history of life, a one-trick pony is unquestionably superior. 11th save of the season. Yankees win, break the curse of Coors. D-Rob gets the W, even though he was pitching like Nuke LaLoosh.

(Kind of funny hearing Coors boo over the hit batter. Yes, D-Rob and all his newfound AJ Burnett-ness was gunning for some rando during interleague play. Nailed it. Actually speaking of Coors field fans, it was kind of difficult to discern who was rooting for whom. I had to mute the tv because it was getting too confusing. I like delineations, and this was weirding me out. Felt a little like Seth Rogen in this scene.)

Oh, and of course it wouldn't be a game without Girardi demonstrating some kind of "well, hey why not! Not sure who anyone on team is anymore, so let's roll the dice. Again." behavior:

Girardi employed a different type of strategy on Wednesday, inserting pitcher David Phelps into the No. 8 spot in the batting order and moving catcher Austin Romine to ninth. Girardi borrowed the idea from former St. Louis skipper from Tony La Russa.

Annd, it wouldn't be a game without the requisite "Well, you couldn't ask for a better hit than that!" assessment, right after a player fails to execute despite best efforts and best intentions. Like when Austin Romine didn't catch Young stealing in the 8th. Not that it mattered. Because the Yankees won.

WAHOO!

It's time for this.

Loss.

I was kind of hoping that the Decoys would have a bit of a different experience at Coors than the Real Yanks, but it appears that the whole Home Field Advantage thing is not a myth in Colorado.

This was the 2nd time in a week where I thought a 2-0 loss was boring to watch. And it shouldn't be! I mean, I get excited at pretty much anything. My blood pressure raises if I so much as see there are Dark Chocolate Milky Ways in the basket at reception on Candy Wednesdays.

So a low scoring game like this one should have been sending me into fits of coronaries. Kuroda pitched pretty well, (as evidenced by the relatively small amount of runs on the Rockies' end), but I think this was one of those times when the score belied the outing.

After Gonzalez' 2-run ding broke the 0-0 tie in the 6th, it was like breaking the seal. I missed the final out of the inning, but I remember thinking when I saw that the top of the 7th had finally arrived after a rapid succession of hard hits, "Wait. No one scored after the homerun?"

I was sure the score would have somehow become 5-0 in the minutes it took me to clean my paintbrush.

It didn't really matter, of course, since the Yankees were pretty anemic in the offense category. 4 hits all game (2 from Nix, then 1 apiece from Sneach and Stewart.)

Speaking of Stewart, I have to say that his offensive production hasn't been as OFFENSIVE as his preseason caveat claimed it would be. I think Kay took note of this, as well.

(Making this #110 in the list of ways that the Decoys are making baseball a whole new experience for me--talking about the storied Yankee line-up that inspires sheer terror, has been replced with little bubbles of pleasant surprise from the YES booth over a replacement player's better-than-terrible BA.)

Since it was the Yanks who lost and not the Rockies, the former is the team whose long-term hitting capabilities are called into question. HOWEVAH, it should be noted that the paltry 0-5 with RISP/5 LOB was only really slightly worse than 0-3 with RISP/5 LOB posted by the latter team.

And you know why else this game was kinda lackluster? Where's all the POP BANG ALAKAZAM magic of gravity-defying ball-traveling? I know this problem was allegedly solved by storing the balls in the humidor, but I feel like this is the same thing as those Pfiten bracelets. It's like "oooh ok, THAT was the problem! I just didn't have whatever aqua-metal is! Problem solved, ill-defined physical benefits and indirectly implied athleticism here I come!"

Similarly, I feel like that humidor thing is just one of those things that theoretically should solve a problem based on what we know about basic laws of physics and science. But that doesn't always end up working, as evidenced by the fact my Piften necklace AND bracelet have failed to cure my goofy grace.

(The supporting research for Pfiten was conducted by the Society for Aqua Metal Research, and the humidor data was provided by the American Association of Hitter's Ballparks.)

It was overall kind of an awkard game, punctuated by the announcement in the 4th exiling everyone in the upper deck. "All fans in the upper deck, please leave the seating area, move under cover due to lightning in the area." So you see all these people in ponchos shuffling to hang out near any viable cover that would allow them to comfortably continue watching the game.

(Kay: "Well, I'm not meterologist, but when you gotta leave the upper deck because of lightning, it's probably not a good sign, weather-wise." This was met with, "We do actually have a meterologist, Michael. Yes, we have one at the YES network--a great one!" Well, then. Thanks for answering all the questions I didn't ask.)

That was awkward, but "talk-amongst-yourselves" filler that went on on the field was even more so. I'm referring to when they had to fix the pitcher's mound that was getting wrecked by pounding rain. And a grounds crew comes running on the field (in funny shorts that made it look like he was just called away from a golf course in South Hampton), carrying a bag of dirt 

While he was doing whatever repairs needed to be done, the camera hilariously paused on Cano and the umpire standing next to him, and they looked like a blend between a first date and an elevator ride of eye-contact avoidance and facing forward and shifting. (Still doesn't beat this moment from Cano, though, in terms of awkward behavior on the field when game isn't going on. Comment from Jay was pure gold.)

And in final awkward behavior, there's De La Rosa who awkardly held the Yanks to no runs and who awkwardly expressed concern in the post-game that he was admittedly scared during the game of getting knocked unconscious by a hit in the head with a line-drive. Life's a scary journey, Jorge. It's very brave of you to take the mound and face such risks with every start.

(Yeah, I get it. Happ, etc. Sweet Christ, the fans had to leave the game because of the rampant electrcitiy flying through the sky and striking down. Let's agree that the only thing that anyone legitimately has a reason to fear in life is the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. That, and accidentally typing someone's name in the "status" field instead of the "search" field when doing some light internet/facebook stalking.)

So it's back to Coors Canaveral today, with Phelps pitching against Nicasio, which is a name I have never heard of before in my life. So..I can't even hazard a guess in terms of a game preview. I will predict the Yankees win, though. Because they are the Yankees.

(Which is a fact that I think has been slowly but surely escaping Girardi. Seriously. Every day his postgame interview is more like, "I have NO idea what is going on. I'm not kidding.")

Well, um, just don't lose and no one cares how concussed you may or may not be acting.

WIN. Loss.

EPISODE V

It was a good weekend.

And I'm exhausted now. Also, a little delirious still.

Not sure how well I'm going to be able to capture the last two days, so I'll resort to bullet points, which I believe absolves me of any obligations to cohesive thought/full sentences/structure/etc:

Game Observations/Highlights

• Hughes was absolutely filthy on Saturday. Unreal. Was sitting in first row of LF bleachers, so had zero idea that he won this game on 8 innings of a fastball. Against one of the best offenses in the league, Hughes whiffed 9 and allowed only 4 hits/2 runs. Basically by just throwing a fastball for nearly all of his 118 pitches.

67% of pitches were fastballs. 3 out of every 4 of these were strikes. Math!

• I love pretty much all the seats in Yankee Stadium (I could be happy on a lawn chair on 161st street if I could still see the game live), but I particularly loved the seats on Saturday. Not just because of the view/the company, but because it meant the outstanding day at the park could not be sullied by seeing the Allergy's face in any real detail.

• I did love the Allergy when he was Yankee, but that was then. On Saturday, I was delighted to see him get his first loss of 2013. Which is not to say the Yanks exactly destroyed him, but he got tagged for 2 bombs (hope that phrase doesn't flag this site for FBI), and everyone on team got at least one hit, save Sneach and whoever the hell Chris Nelson is.

• Eduardo "Don't Even Try to Make Sense of Me Because It Will Invariably Make Your Head Spin" Nunez had a triple (or, as Lauren non-ironically called it, "An inside-the-park triple." Those are pretty rare.) (EDITOR'S NOTE: Just received this text from Lauren: "Krista was the one who it an inside the park triple! All stupid things are attributed to me. Not just by you, either.")

• Sunday's game was an anomaly, and not just because they lost, but because that is exactly the type of game that a betting man says the Yankees win--and not every day of the week and twice on Sunday, but just twice on Sunday.

• They always win weekend day games, especially home ones where they like to set us all up for a dramatic walk off. And this year, they're pros at winning these little deficit games. Moreover, we had Pettitte on the mound, and the numbers for basically every situation indicated the Yankees should have had the upperhand.

• But Cano had an error at 2nd that allowed a run in. Andy gave up dings in back to back innings to Luke Montz and Yoenis "Scrabble Tile Rack" Cespedes.

• The Yanks came back because of more things that didn't make sense. Oakland's starter got pulled after on like 2 pitches basically, so Blevin could come in off the bench to face Sneach and Overbay. This seemed like a weird decision, but I swear this whole Maddon-Mentality thing is becoming an unwelcome epidemic.

• It doesn't work out for the As, when Sneach doubles in a run, followed by Overbay's 2-run single that tied the game in the 6th.

• Melvin also makes the weirdo decision to intentionally walk Cano to get to Wells, who is basically playing like Roy Hobbs as of late. And who Galfour is terrified of, despite his claims otherwise. Methinks the closer doth protest too much.

• It didn't work out for the Yankees because B-Lo ruins the game by allowing Josh Donaldson to knock one out, giving the A's a 5-4 lead. Still, though, I thought this was allll just laddering up to a typical Yankee Sunday feel-good thriller.

• I wasn't the only one who was surprised by loss, since apparently Girardi is having some kind of midlife managerial crisis or sorts based on his subtle yet discernible attitude change.

"We had chances in the eighth and the ninth. I assumed we might get it done." Assumed you MIGHT get it done? That's quite a lofty claim, Joe. Are you awake?

• Nunez has rib injury, by the way, in case anyone was just starting to warm up to the guy. At this point, we'd all appreciate it if the Yankees could just keep up posted on which players are not injured each day, as opposed to the other way around.

• Who the hell is Preston Claiborne? He's gold. First major league start. And it's in Yankee Stadium against a pretty f'n stacked roster. And he's all D-Robbing it out, aka Whatmenervousnever. I like this kid. 2 IP. No hits, no runs, no shoes, no service. Not the last 2, though.

Weekend Observations/Highlights

• This morning I woke up at 8am and went into my bedroom to frantically ask Krista "where am I??" To which she responded, "You're in your apartment." To which I responded, "where am I supposed to be??" There are few things in this life that are better than the realizing it's a weekEND after the panick that ensues when waking up and mistakenly thinking it's a weekDAY.

• Krista scored the high score on Pop-A-Shot, then beat it. 74.

• Amy scored the high score on Skeeball, then got all mad when some barely-walking toddler beat her score by sticking his hands under the glass to place the ball in the holes.

• My sister asked, right after the Kentucky Derby finished, when the real Kentucky Derby was going to start. Amy! Weirdo. There's no basement in the Alamo!

• Lauren laughed so hard for so long that after 16 hours of hanging out, it was a point of contention when someone would say something funny/sarcastic, because her face was legitimitely sore from laughing. I'm not kidding. By 2am, the conversations were starting to sound like, "Hey, this is like that time when I tripped pretending to be a bear!" "KRISTEN. I'm NOT KIDDING. Stop making me think of funny things, this isn't funny."

• I hit myself with a cue ball when I tried to "break" without using a pool stick. It ricocheted off the edge of pool table and came flying back at me. That didn't go according to plan.

• The bucket of beers tradition is still very much in tact. This year, we even had a security guard tell us we were clever, as opposed to them usually looking judgementally at the situation trying to determine what rules we're breaking.

So, Episode V weekend was yet again a rousing success, and somehow yet again managed to trump the prior year, which we always fear is impossible. Weekend MVP of course goes to Krista for being the weekend point person every year, and every year handling her duties with spectacular awesomeness.

The Decoys continue to delight me to no end, the weather was approximately perfect this weekend, I played and won beirut, and it's a great way to stay in shape.

Yanks were 1 for 3 on the weekend, and are 1.5 games behind the Red Socks, along with the O's. Rangers lost to the Capitals twice (in other NY sports news), as they are want to do. And now it's Monday, and time to start a new week. No game tonight, as the Yanks are travelling out to Colorado.

Looking forward to watching the Decoys marvel at the gravity situation out in Coors Field.

Loss.

I usually love low scoring games like this (provided the Yankees have the higher of the 2 low scores), but given a choice between a Yankee win in 14-13 softball beer league-esque hit parade, and a fast-paced pitching duel, I'll pick the latter 90% of the time. (The other 10% of the time applies to games like this, which I wouldn't miss for all the condiments in a diner takeout order.)

HOWEVAH, a game like this goes down, and I kind of just can't make heads or tails out of it, in the sense that I can't figure out whether this was a GOOD baseball game or a BORING one. Were the As/AJ Griffin so exceptional that the Yankees were just reduced to little jello clumps?

Or were both teams just not overpowering enough to get runs in?

It's hard to call this one, since Fatso wasn't looking as nasty/filthy/sharp as normal, so the 2 runs for which he was tagged--are they indicators of the As' skill? Or is it indicative of that Fatty was just a litttttle off, but still dominant enough to limit them to just 2 runs?

And on the other end, there's AJ Griffin, along with many of the same questions. And some new ones, like why was he playing the guitar and serenading his teammates in different languages before the game, like he was some special guest on Sesame Street?

I'm not making this up, by the way. Apparently, no one believes in mental preparation unless it involves some kind of outward physical manifestion of such, particularly if it falls in the Big Book of Bar Mitzvah Elements. Over in Tampa, Maddon brought it a magacian and penguins and a DJ and a cockatoo to "keep the the team loose." Now, there's this going on in the As team dynamic:



THAT EVEN LOOKS LIKE AJ GRIFFIN. Douchebag city! $50 says he auditioned for the Real World at some point in his life.

So, what it is. This isn't a rhetorical question. Was this a good, tight, impressive baseball game? Or just a slow, lackluster one?

For those of you who base these decisions on statistical evidence, numerical proof, here's what it looked like on paper:

• Yanks had 6 hits, 2 from GGBG, 2 from Nix, 1 from Sneach, and 1 from Cano
• Oakland had 10 hits, the first of which was off the first pitch of the game, and it was a homerun. Which is what some might call "not an auspicious start." Some might call it that. I said, "are you kidding me?"
• Can't really remember seeing 2 men on base at the same time during the game?
• Yanks saw 114 pitches, compared to the 175 pitches seen by Oakland
• 0-6 with RISP, 6 LOB (vs Oakland's 2-7; 11, respectively)

Argh. I hate grey areas so, so much. I don't even believe in them, normally. The Yanks' bats looked silly. The Oaklands' bats looked less so, but not by much. The only thing that WAS impressive about this game was the infield defense.

Yeah, that's not a grey area. That was decidely outstanding. And aggravating.

Before I sign off to begin preparations for Episode V*, I'll leave you with this, the inclusion of I can justify by the fact that, like the Yankee game, it raises many questions with no clear answers:

I got nothing.

* Episode I, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4

WIN.

That was a close game. The good news is that they won, the bad news is that for the entire game, Laur and I had to listen to some yahoo yammer on about how he's the biggest diehard Yankee fan in the world but this team disgusts him. To certify his self-proclaimed "diehard" title: "Listen, I have season tickets, ok?"

Why wasn't he at the game then? "I was having dinner with a little someone known as GENE WILDER. Yeah, maybe you've heard of him? Yeah." Then he launched into a payroll diatribe, and Lauren knew this was my "What are you, McFly? Chicken?" equivalent. Or Roger Rabbit's "Shave and a Haircut."

She intervened and staved off bloodshed, and that was just the FIRST time of the night she saved the day. (Saved the night, I guess. But that sounded weird, which is something I ALWAYS try to avoid.) Lauren also saved the night by writing the recap of tonight's game, so I could get some sleep!

Alright, here she goes! THANK YOU, SISTER. And thank you for annotating it, and for closing with Latin, and for this.

PUN #2



 
Explanation: At this point you may have noticed that I was really excited about my “over-the-hill” joke, and never really got back to that original glory. But if you keep saying the same joke over and over, it gets funnier. [LP1]







Like the first 2 times I contributed on this blog, I have once again neglected to actually recap the game. Consider it like listening to Joe Buck! [LP3] 

Win.

So my coworker changed his profile picture on facebook yesterday, and everyone "liked" it. (I "liked" it.)

And we're sitting around talking about the events and mindsets leading up to this unprecedented deviation, and we notice Amy isn't contributing to the dialogue. "You're awfully quiet," we accused.

"Um. Well..."

I respect that, Amy. Sort of. It was a good picture. But when it comes to sports, life, work, etc, I think everything should try really to avoid change that conflicts with reason. Basically, everything should work out the way logic suggests it should.

(The picture doesn't fall into this arena of change though, so Amy probably should have just "liked" the picture like everyone else.)

Over the years of blogging, I think I've entrenched myself pretty firmly in opposition to departures from the norm, "upsets" as they are called.

The "previews" and scouting reports for this game were essentially uniform: Kuroda always wins against the Astros. Humber tends runs into trouble when pitching against batters.

Kuroda makes his own luck,whereas Humber already cashed in his favors exactly a year and 9 days ago. The Yankees score runs. The Astros rely on their manager to spin tales of offensive delusions in the post-game.

And still, there are people who think one anomaly, a plausability makes. I can't really talk, I guess, since I'm almost 100% sure that I will win the NY lottery won day. I'm so sure that sometimes I fantasize about how to share the news with my parents in a way that won't compromise my dad's heart. That "HEY you never know" tag was copywriting gold.

But, sometimes you do know. And this game was an example of things working out the way the should, which is--in most basic terms--a Yankee W.

I will concede that there were some "Hey you never know" moments:

• Like Nunez going 3 for 4 after spending the last month thinking this before every game.

• Or D-Rob giving up a bomb. (That's not really weird enough to be grouped in with Nunez zipping around the basepaths with such crazed gusto that I could get on board with the argument that he wasn't 100% sure what he was running towards or from. But, GOOD FOR YOU FOR RUNNING A HARD 90. Even if it was fueled by a mistaken impression that the goal was to break down the front door of a castle with a running start.)

But aside from that, there's the "Now" Normal category, comprising the offensive production of Pronk (3-4, 3 ribbies) and Overbay (1-4, 1 ribbie).

The "Not Normal" category:

• Humber saying "I think the whole thing was the leadoff walk in the first inning. I feel like I threw the ball well." For some reason the "lead off walk" is basically like the "sleeping with a guy on the first date" of baseball. Everyone thinks it completely precludes any hope of anything good happening after that. But if it turns out to be irrelevant, everyone dismisses it ever having significance at all.

• And speaking of He's Just Not That In The Game: "He did a great job of giving us an opportunity to win this game and that's what you want from your starter," Houston manager Bo Porter said. I don't know who he is talking about here. Humber, who gave up 9 hits, 4 runs, 21928 wild pitches. That does give SOMEONE a good opportunity to win, I guess.

Then there's the Back to Normal category: Sneach breaking out of slump, going 3 for 5, 2 runs, and a couple of stolen bags.

And then there's the Back to the Game category, which includes the pitching bookends:

• Kuroda starts out wild, ends strong, and this dialectic is apparently all but rote. Alllll I kept hearing from the booth for the first hour of game was repeating SHOCK over how wild Kuroda was pitching. Then it subsided, and our boy gave up only 4 hits, retiring 14 of his last 15 batters.

And this is normal, based on a stat I just read: "opponents are batting .318 against Kuroda in the first three innings and .092 after that." Huh. Maybe he's taking a page from the Tex book of "getting carte blanch to suck at first so long as you're good later."

• And then there's Mo who got the ok to head home for the night (like getting "cut" when waitressing), only to be called back to the pen when D-Rob and Shawn Kelley let the game go from 7-2 to 7-4 real quick.

"Hey, Mo? Yeah, where are you? Are you still by the stadium? Yeah, we just heard back from the Astros, and they're add 2 runs to the timing, so the timing on this game is gonna be a little tight. Glad I caught you before you got on the subway, right?? Ok, we'll see you soon. We'll wait to put in Seamless dinner order until you get here."

Mo comes back to the office and puts out the fires in minutes, Yankees win 7-4, inch up a half game in the standings.

Tomorrow features Bedard v Phelps. WHO KNOWS!

Til then.

OH! and ps there will be a special guest blogger for tomorrow's game. It is my sister, you may remember her work from this or this, which are both fantastically clever and economic in word choice and candid and funny.

(PS I love the fact there's a dude in MLB named Peacock.)