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

May 20, NYY @ Os: The Sound (Pronk, Ding, Mo) & the Fury (Buck)

2013-05-21T00:12:00.002-04:00

Win.

You know how there's this guy or girl that everyone knows to some degree, who isn't really spectacular in terms of looks, job, or personality? (Yeah, not even a great personality to negate the other shortcomings.)

Mariano Rivera the cat is napping in the pen.
It's only the 6th, he's just waiting for the call.

This is what one might term "Melba"* or an "NGB."†

*Melba toast. Bland, etc.
†Nice girl/guy, but...

And yet, someone these NGBs manage to inexplicably kill it with the opposite sex. Not all NGBs obviously, but of these sect, there is a definite sampling of such a phenomenon.

And in the MLB, there's the Yankees.

And what makes it even weirder is that they even manage to be unpredictable in their undazzling-ness. You know, you'd expect a lackluster team in 1st to be one of those machines defined by rote and flawless conditioning.

Nope. They can be pigeonholed as playing small ball. Nor can they be relegated to the dependence on long ball silo. They're a hybrid. They're the opposite of type. And yet they're not florid enough to be considered a motley crew of characters.

But, although my hatred for grey areas hovers very closely behind my hatred for ties, I concede that this complete paradoxic anomaly of a team is one grey area that I'll take over black/white every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

The Decoys beat the Os in 10 innings, after first giving up a 2-0 lead that was built by solo bombs of Cano and new guy Adams' bats.

(By the way, where the hell did this Adams fellow come from? Hungry Hungry Hippoing every ball without flinching. Outstanding defense. And now add pretty stellar offense to boot. )

Fatso gave up 11 hits, 4 runs, and whiffed 2. See, even our big superstar is mediocring himself to the point of greatness! I hate things that I can't wrap my head around. But, as I said, not this time. Round on the Mound lets Chris Davies go yard to cut the deficit to 2-1 in the 2nd.

Then a bunch more hits, probably some from the perennially "above average, a little above pretty good" Nick Markakis. Score is tied, grumble grumble. Until the Decoys pull ahead with Lyle-Lyle-Turns-Out-Worthwhile Overbay's solo bomb.

NIP TUCK GAME, I tell ya!

Not for long. Later on in that inning, the Os comeback to not only answer that solo shot, but also tack on an extra, giving them their first lead of the game, 4-3, in the 7th.

I never read this book. Contrary to
popular belief, it is very possible to
judge a bookby its cover. And this
one isn't doing itself any favors.

Tubbo.com has handed over the game to the "for-some-reason-the-pen-still-makes-me-nervous-I-don't-care-what-stats-say-Yankees-havent-had-a-good-pen-too-often-in-the-last-decade-so-dont-blame-me-for-insecurity" collection of relievers.

Kelly, B-Lo, and D-Rob patched together the Bridge to NeverHits-ia which is just a fancy way of saying that they effectively plugged up the scoring long enough for the Decoys to give a save opportunity to our favorite closer.

HOWEVAH, such a save opportunity only was made possible right around the time when Kay informed up that the Decoys were "down to their final two outs."

(I want him doing my Last Rites when I get old. After a lifetime of having sports announcers tapping us on the shoulder when we're all dejected watching the finals moments of a lossing effort, I think that I should be entitled to having such a countdown imparted on myself. Put that in my medical authorizations form.)

Here's the sequence: Pronk. Ding. Mo. More or less.‡

‡Hafner ties it, Wells go-aheads it. Hafner go-go-aheads it. Mo ends it.

Path to win is lined with sound effect-sounding words Everyone knows that.

Yep. Slam, Bam, Alakazam, the Decoys pull it off in 10th, after Mo breezes through a 1-2-3 inning. The Os relievers, on the other hand, have been spiralling faster then Maverick and Goose. Their saver who hadn't blown a save in like 23942 attempts has screwed up the last 3 games he's tried to save.

It's like my favorite sports genius buddy Ollie once said, "Every fan hates their closer except Yankee fans."

Mo and his 92 mph cutter saved the game instead of sending it to hell in a handbasket, which is a phrase I think I prefer to "blown save." A blown save=blown game most of the time. Let's leave the "save" part out of it.

It's not like trying to grab a bunch of balloons from floating away, to give back to the clumsy child who accidentally released them in the post-McDonalds birthday party excitement. You tried to save them, but couldn't, but you didn't ruin the kid's day. (Also, if you only open one hyperlink on this blog ever, let it be the one in this paragraph.)

It's more like trying to push someone out of the way of oncoming traffic, yet by doing so you push them into a manhole.

Buck Showalter was really gracious about the whole thing, too.

Nope. Yeah, it's totally normal to insist on keeping every one of Fatso's used pitch balls.

I'm not kidding. He was examing each of them like he was looking for freaking trace evidence of a homicide. And then he'd just casually pass along to the bat boy, like, "What? Oh that? Yeah don't worry about it. Just checking things out. Trying to watch the game."

What a clever little sleuth that Showalter is! You got it, honey! You solved the case! CC SABATHIA HAS BEEN THIS DOMINANT FOR THIS LONG BECAUSE HE'S SPITTING ON THE BALL.

Buck's outside of his mind if he thinks our ace would ever willingly take something OUT of his mouth. (Pause, in spades.)

And to say nothing (jk, about to say something) of the fact that your team wasn't exactly BLANKED in that game. The alleged spitballer gave up 11 hits. Unless he mixed in some RISP allergens with that spit, you don't have a leg to stand on.

Some might say you could blame the game on the umps, I'm sure. But to that most Yankee fans might bring up this moment.

I know I would, anyway.

After this game, I'm finding it hard to believe that there are still people saying "Man, just wait til we have Grandy, Tex, Jeter, and Arod back in the lineup."

Arod, by the by, fielded grounders today. Even his rehab updates make him sound lonely and socially awkward.

Nice win, Decoys. And nice...existence, I guess? Nice being the way you are? I love it. Keep doing everything the way you're doing it. And I'll gladly become a grey-area-convert.

Hoc est nova. Non odiore res non intelligo.

May 16, Ms @ NYY: Yanks drop 2 of 3 to Ms. New York drops 2 of 3 across sports.

2013-05-17T05:14:00.002-04:00

Loss.

I had to work a little late, so I only got to catch the radio broadcast, missed an inning and a half while on subway home, and then got back to apartment to see the final innings. And it was kind of frenetic, like almost everything I do, regardless of whether it warrants a frenzy, because of the whole "Every single important show and game is on tonight at the same exact time" thing.

Felt like I was the mother in the last scene of the "Good Son."

I mean, obviously the Yankees were the ones pulled up over the ledge, and not the Rangers or the Knicks.

(I don't buy that ending of the movie, btw. No mother would ever let go of her own flesh and blood, even if he HAD killed his brother and tried to kill the rest of the family. That's not how mothers operate.)

Not that the Knicks had any chance of holding my attention for more than 2 minutes--if that--but I was more following it because the outcome would dictate my behavior towards the Knicks fans in office (ie probably would try to get my timesheet in on time to make life easier for the Knick fan in the finance department).

NEWS? More like OLD. As in, with headlines like these,
it makes it sound like we should be grateful the DL is only full
of physical ailments, and not Alzheimer's onset.

Anyways, both the Yanks and Rangers lost by 1, in real heartcrackers. (Not quite devastating enough to break your heart, but enough to put a hairline fracture in it, I suppose.)

As usual, half the team exited the game with injuries. It's one thing to start the season with a crop of people who aren't THE YANKEES as we've come to know them. It's another thing to have to start every game like that. Now even the Decoys are summering in the South DL.

(You know they're all just doing it just to be closer to Jeter and/or so that Jeter will think they're cool. And really, who HASN'T done that? Let he who has not faked an illness to go to the school nurse when a crush happened to also be in the nurse's office, cast the first stone.)

The only reason I'm being so glib about all this is because I'm pretty sure you'll see a mass exodus from the DL any day now, given that Joba Chamberlain has just printed out his ticket at the DL Axcela kiosk. (The DL-ela) Nothing kills a good old fashioned injured reserve party like a fat mustachioed reliever who has no respect for authority or even respect for his teammates.

Survey says...

Somehow the Yankees are still in first. This is interesting because they have scored fewer runs than every other team in their division. I mean, you expect this shit from NL-ers and their ridiculous 10-14 run games,

Obviously the flip side is that the Yankees' opponents have scored almost nothing, which is why our boys are in this position. Which means, the pitching has just been THAT GOOD.

Has it, though? There have been a handful of dammmmn-what-a-gem type of games from our starters, but there have been more than a handful of oh-cool-7-runs-in-the-first types of games. Fatty is managing to go deep in the game, but gives up a lot of hits (not runs, just hits). Andy's done great except when it's against a terrible team.

Maybe Gonzalez will get the starting nod in the interim. \

Anyways, sorry for the vagueries (sp? word?), tonight's recap will be more much for comprehensive, as it is one of my FAVORITE DAYS OF THE YEAR.

See you back here in about 23 hours...

Aenean tempus eget requiescit.

May 15, Ms @ NYY: Ollie's Tamales

2013-05-16T03:05:00.000-04:00

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.

Lusus habet rationem causae, quae nescit.

Happy Mother's Day!

2013-05-12T12:31:00.001-04:00

MY BEAUTIFUL MOTHER!

That's my mom. Stunning. Always. Me, on the other hand...if I was a cartoon, I'd look like this right now.

Except I'd be wearing a Yankee hat, and I'd be covered in paint. But the pony tail part is spot on. The resigned expression. And most importantly, the crumpled up paper balls. Except instead of paper balls, it's about 7 different Word windows open.

Each Document.doc has a stanza of poetry, 5 different attempts at trying to twist a famous poem into a Mother's Day spin. I did as much with The Raven, Annabel Lee, O Captain My Captain, Gunga Din, and the prelude of the Canterbury Tales.

And then I'd realize that the main character in all but the Canterbury Tales prelude, dies in the end. Didn't anyone back in the day have the foresight to write something where the nice Irish Catholic woman wins in the end, thereby making the task of tailoring it to fit my needs, more palatable? Thanks for nothing. Talk about LIT-for-brains, right??

It's Mother's Day, and no one wants a poem that calls to mind images of Abe Lincoln being assassinated, or a talking devil bird refusing to scram. (I know, if you've heard that once, you've heard it a thousand times...)

And the thing is, if I just wrote a post about all the reasons I adore my mother, I would never even get to post it, because I'd never be done writing. (And I can already hear my mom saying, "Kristen. God help you if you write an infinite long post and never take a break to meet your future husband.")

See, she’s not just a “cool mom.” She’s someone I aspire to be more like. I watch her do the things she does, and half of me is blown away by how her joie de vivre never wanes. (I get tired bagging my own groceries in self-check-out line. She's playing 18 holes of golf.)

And the other half of me is really proud that I get to be related to her.

I wish I was more like my mom. She never stops learning new things. She wants to try everything once, and not in a psycho bucket-list-seeing-the-ball-drop-in-times-square-bungee-jumping kind of way. In a joining clubs or taking dance lessons kind of way. Her Christmas card was a picture of her riding a CAMEL. In front of pyramids. To me, the Far East is the FDR.

She keeps in touch with everyone she meets everywhere. In the grand scheme of Fantasy Friendteams, Mom is constantly “over max roster size.”

She sends snail mail, and if my handwriting looked like hers, I would, too. As Lauren always says, “Mom’s handwriting makes me cry.” It’s true. My handwriting makes people think they’re reading a ransom note.

She has style. I’ll never have it. My mom has more of it than anyone. And class. Every time I see her she looks so polished. My socks never match, and I thought color blocking was some kind of zone defense.

And she drives me crazy in ways that just remind me how insanely blessed I am to have her as my mother and my friend.

my best dance partner.

Yeah, my mom can make me nuts. But let’s call a spade a spade here, how “nuts” can you make someone that already has “crazy” as part of her moniker? It’s like saying this guy is “pleased as punch.”

I was thinking this weekend about a time when my mom was talking about how Nana used to always call her at work, and she said, "God, it used to drive me crazy, and now I'd do anything to have just one of those phone calls with her again."

It made me think of all the things about my mom that make me do this yet also make me do this.

When she calls me at work. At my last job, my office shared a wall with the head of HR. My mom lost speaker phone privileges pretty quickly, because it's really a game of Russian Roulette when it comes to what topic is going to be broached upon picking up the phone. It could be anything from "I played a great game of golf today!" to "Did you get the newspaper article I sent you about the cannibal who lives in your neighborhood?”

Her covert disposal of clothes she doesn't like. No one's possessions are safe when we go to my parents' place. I sit guard by the laundry room like a junkyard doberman.

One time my mom came into the living room, gasped, pointed to the sunglasses on my head, and said, "Um, where did you retrieve those from?" When I was living with my parents post-hurricane, I couldn't man my clothes while I was at work, and there was definitely a time when I went to the laundry room and saw all of my socks had been thrown out.

I think it's completely insane, but also completely endearing how she's in a way still picking out my clothes 32 years later. Except she's doing the inverse.

She thrives on stress. I empathize. I think me and my mom aren't at peace with ourselves until we're stressed out about something.

Her relationship with technology. When my mom was in Florida last year, she asked me to find something in her gmail, and when I asked why she couldn't do it, she said she only had access to her Florida gmail, not her NY gmail.

I wasn't crazy about digging through her "NY gmail" for "an email address of someone. I think it has blue cheese in the name." But I secretly like it when either parent asks for help, makes me feel a little like I’m paying off my debt of years of proofreading my papers, quizzing me for vocab tests…Looking for bluechz@aol.com or whatever it was, it is a microscopic price to pay.

Her interest in my love life. (Or her disapproval of my lack thereof.) In my mom's head, the bars of NYC are filled with eligible bachelors in scrubs, walking around with an engagement ring ready in one hand, and their fingers crossed on their other hand. And I’m just beating them off with a stick. Yep. That’s exactly how it is.

She never settles. I think everyone who has ever known my mom in ANY capacity has seen this immoveable conviction. When my parents moved into the suburbs right after they had, my mom designed the house and when it was done, she looked at it, and said the front door needed to be 3 ft to the left.

No matter that it was done, that this would require tearing down walls, and costing more, etc. This was how she wanted it. It can be maddening beyond the telling of it, but it’s also one of the genes I’m particularly happy to have inherited.

My mom is magnificent. Everything she does comes from someplace good. She's the one who once told me, "Our first responsibility is to be a good person." And that's how she lives and acts.

Mother-Daughter Yankee Fans

She lights up the room, she’s funny, she’s passionate (to a fault. Really, sometimes to a fault), generous, considerate, a complete loony tune, and just the kindest person in the world.

So, for what it is worth, Mom, know that my sisters and I think you are the epitome of class. None of it is lost on us, and you and Dad are at the heart of everything good in us.

So, with that, I’ll sign off with one of her more oft-quoted pearls of wisdom, imparted to me before my first day of freshman crosscountry preseason training:

“Life’s too short to do the things you don’t want to do if you don’t have to do them, unless you have to do them, in which case do them. So…if you get tired, stop.”

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

May 9, NYY @ Rockies: 1st place Decoys, Ortiz's victimization, and human error. (3 parts)

2013-05-10T02:59:00.000-04:00

WIN.

PART A

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.

PART 2

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.

PART D

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?"

* * *

There are a handful of phrases that I can all but guarantee will never be uttered in my lifetime: “Curt Schilling has remained mute on the subject,” “I hear Sean Casey’s kind of a jerk,” “The role of pitching in championships is negligible,” and, lastly, “I find no fault with any call made against my team during that loss.”

Every year, there is a smattering of blown calls that fans will wail about for weeks (or decades), and the degree of their fury is directly proportional to the perceived impact on the season. (No one’s coining any melodramatic catchphrases for a missed tag at second in an otherwise incident-free, early season game.)

And every year, there is that one call that slams the whole instant replay issue right back on the table. But it wasn’t until the tail end of last season that the issue appeared to be less of a hypothetical debate and more of a potential reality.

That small nugget of possibility is pretty much all any fan needs to make 2011 the Year of Unrelenting Umpire Scrutiny.

While this assignation may sound petty at worst and harmless at best, the threat of putting officiating under a microscope has an insidious effect: just as the application of the asterisk has us dismissing stats that are compromised by steroids, this year’s achievements could risk similar invalidation if we start blaming questionable calls for everything.

We charge Major League Baseball with the near impossible task of shielding the game from any and all vices that threaten its integrity. But the pressure to implement instant replay means the 2011 season will face an ethical paradox: in our efforts to uphold baseball’s classic purity, our innate need to point fingers may change the face of the game that we want so desperately to preserve.

The instant replay issue has been a ticking time bomb for years, and like Oscar Wilde once said, “the only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it.” We’re going to need to—the list of scapegoats is discernibly dwindling:

· The steroid maelstrom seems to be (dare I say) under control.

· We’re one billy goat away from closing the book on major team curses.

· The homerun replay is masterfully keeping ball-grabbing fans in check.

· No bloated off-season spending from the Yankees.

· No aggravating expanses between pitches that stretch out so long I could probably establish democracy in a third world country before Rafael Betancourt gets to a 1-1 count.

· And not even a rosin bag to disturb the ball’s surface.

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?

It’s a tough call.

But I’m not ready to default to Instant Replay to be sure.

* * *

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.)

Non tendo facere rectum. Iustus facere rectum.

May 8, NYY @ Rockies: The hard 90 wins the game

2013-05-09T02:13:00.002-04:00

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.

Suspicor nemo pretator ista.

May 7, NYY @ Rockies: Another 2-0 loss that leaves me cold

2013-05-08T06:07:00.001-04:00

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.

Bonum est tyrannus satis.

May 4-5, A's @ NYY: Episode V Weekend

2013-05-06T03:30:00.002-04:00

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.

Optimates numquam oblivisciti errores.

May 3, As @ NYY: Like an MC Escher painting

2013-05-04T06:57:00.005-04:00

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.

Est civitas hæc parati?

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

May 1, Astros @ NYY: "I like to go OVERboard." --Guest Blogging time!

2013-05-02T02:42:00.001-04:00

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.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I like to go OVERboard.

This recap is dedicated to Lyle Overbay. Originally because I like making puns out of his last name, but serendipitously, he did some important things today. And here are a couple things related to what he did, and what I then did with his name:

Important in-game notes/highlights

PUN #1

Situation: the first time I saw Lyle on screen tonight.

My reaction: that man looks ancient

My pun: “more like Lyle Over-THE-HILL!”

Explanation: At this point there’s not a lot of familiar faces on this team. I was at the game on Monday and every time I saw…whoever that catcher was…get up to the plate, I was incredulous that he was on the Yankees.

So when I saw Overbay, I was blown away that such an old fella could still play baseball. I probably should be more concerned about my apparent short-term memory issue.

Luckily, I came up with an awesome pun so all my concerns were gone! (also lucky was that I wrote down all the things I thought about throughout the game, so that I didn't have to actually remember my awesome puns.)

PUN #2

Situation: Lyle (wisely) does not advance to third base after a flyball to center field is caught.

My reaction: I am irrationally mad that Lyle has not landed at third.

My pun: “great. Way to not be Lyle OVER-TO-THIRD.”

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]

PUN #3

Situation:

a. The cleaners had the flu so Houston had to wear theBoston Red Sox uniforms. Because it was either leather jackets, or thisridiculous thing, for you. [LP2]

b. After 2 takes on the Lyle Overbay puns, I got creative and moved on to other words.

My reaction: There is a conspiracy unfolding wherein the Astros are really the Red Sox in disguise.

My pun: “WHOston are we really playing?”

Explanation: I’m really, really bad at puns. But seriously, there were points during the game when the jerseys were angled in a way that it was just OBVIOUS that it didn't say Houston at all. It said BOSTON. And there was a guy named Clemens!

Jer-SEE????

Not sure if anyone has discussed this yet, but apparently the Astros have a low payroll. Maybe if they ponied up a few extra bills they wouldn’t be fishing in the Salvation Army bins of the MLB for gear. Just saying.

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]

Oh the Yankees won, with my favorite score: 4-5.

LAUREN IPSUM.

[LP1]See you in hell

[LP2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd1JCJ1iSQg

[LP3]http://awfulannouncing.blogspot.com/2008/07/joe-buck-admits-he-rarely-watches.html

April 30, Astros @ NYY: Normal

2013-05-01T05:37:00.001-04:00

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.)

Quid dicam de pavone?

April 29, Astros @ NYY: Traditional gift for 18th anniversary..?

2013-04-30T03:41:00.001-04:00

Loss.

The headlines for this game sound like an Onion article:

Astros snap skid, pound Andy Pettitte in rout of Yankees

Astros hit like major-leaguers, crush Yankees

Yanks embarrassed at home by Astros, lose 9-1

Andy Pettitte implodes in 9-1 Yankees loss to Houston Astros

There was a bunch of stuff that happened on the Astros' end (obviously) and not of lot on the Yankee's end (to be clear), which is maybe not as shocking as it initially appears.

How many times have we seen the Yanks completely BUCKLE against a pitcher they've never seen before? A sinkerballer, in particular?

A lot of times. A lot, a lot, a alot.

And how often do we see the Yanks give Also-Rans their day of glory?

I remember this series very clearly.

Regardless of whether it was totally mindblowing or whether it was unremarkably routine, tt wasn't a good game (for the Yankees. Since they lost.)

And it's a game that probably no one wants to rehash. But, you know, I do get a kick out of reading my journals from my formative years, ie the profound anxiety that would ensue over losing my dad's mesh Redskins cap. Or having to get my test signed because it was below 90%. Or--the worst--the "couple's skate" at the roller rink birthday parties.

And someday Andy will be inducted into the hall, and we'll dismissively wave away these ridiculous outings. Not unlike Joe Pesci does to the counteroffer hick dude in "My Cousin Vinny" at 0:17.

God, I love that part.

Andy gets bludgeoned to death, basically. In a little over 4 IP, he gets tagged for 10 hits and 7 runs. Which, I have to say, looks better than it did on TV--meaning those 10 hits were HIT hits. (Along the same vein as when you LIKE like someone.)

I mean, Corporan's shot in the 5th was just sad. No one even budged after the bat crack. A resounding "Well, that ball got outta here in a HURRY" spilled from the booth. (Even though it didn't really get out of there in a hurry. It was a normal speed, and not even that far of a shot, but it just like an outtake from the Natural, nonetheless.)

I was surprised Andy stayed in for as long as he did, actually. Girardi has been hanging on the coat tails of Lard and Andy's ace tendency to pitch deep in the game, and do it with sparkling results.

But I can't really wrap my head around how you could watch so much as 2 innings of this game and not think that Andy looked about as comfortable as the guy at a cocktail party who saunters up to a few people already in mid-conversation.

And Andy looked like that guy looks when no one stops conversing to acknowledge his presence, leaving him with nothing to do but stand there and hope for an introduction and/or a phone call.

Girardi was essentially the converser. He just let him stew and sweat it out, when a simple, "Oh, hey Andy! Join us in the dugout/dialogue" would have been more merciful.

(Or maybe Girardi is subscribing to the same principle that my mom applies when buying airline tickets. She thinks that if she keeps waiting out the rising prices, that eventually the price will drop to almost nothing. Almost always this amounts to her doling out $800 for plane tickets to Ft Lauderdale in the 11th hour, aka doling out 10 hits after waiting out more than 4 innings.)

Alright, I'm done belaboring Andy's TOTAL IMPLOSION AGAINST THE WORST TEAM IN THE LEAGUE. Even if he HAD pitched brilliantly, the Yankees played like they were in some of kind of Wife Swap-esque reality show with Houston. Except replace "Wife" with "offense."

Top of the order did work: GGBG, Cano and Wells all pitching in 2 hits each. Then 1 from Overbay, and another from Nunez.

I may or may not create a Word macro for this phrase:

"reached on Nunez's error."

Function key + Shift + Backslash key

With Cervelli out, Andy pitched to nubian Austin Romine, and then verrry subtly threw him under the bus. Not really. It was more of a pushing him in front a rollerblader, at most.

"He hasn't been back there, and I felt like maybe I didn't get into the rhythm I wanted to." There was also a ton of frantic waving for baseballs, which makes sense since the balls didn't really stay in Andy's possession for long before they darted all over the outfield.

It was also Andy's 18th anniversary of his very first pitching outing in the Show. He came in for relief, gave up 2 runs on 3 hits in 2/3 of an inning on April 29, 1995.

1995 ERA for the day: 15.36
2013 ERA for the day: 27.27

I wouldn't sweat it, Andy. The 18th anniversary is not a big deal, and I know this because I looked up what the appropriate present is for this, but it just goes from 1 to 15, then jumps to the 20th anniversary.

I guess you get something in between China and Crystal? Cubic Zirconia?

(I like what's listed for the 6th anniversary: Candy/Iron. Too many questions, but the first one is what husband opts for the iron when social mores sanctions giving his wife some Rolos and calling it a day?)

Dealbreakers.

Tomorrow's another day, with Kuroda going up against the most recent member of the Perfect Post Mets club. The outlook would appear to favor our Yankees:

"Kuroda has never lost in seven career starts against the Astros while Humber has been hit hard in losing all five starts for Houston heading into Tuesday night's matchup."

Tomorrow is not only another day, but another ridiculous set-up for a game that everyone is going to think will "surprise" us again. They will surprise people who are expecting to be surprised. But for the realists, things are going to work out the way they should.

Spem praeter spem non posse.

April 25-28, Jays @ NYY: The first sweep is the sweetest

2013-04-29T02:53:00.003-04:00

Win. Win. Win. Win.

Look at that. The team to beat was beaten. 4 times in a row.

I apologize for the lack of coverage this weekend. Thursday night I just plain ran out of hours in the day. (Literally. I was still writing a manuscript for work when the sun was coming up, which gave me just enough time to shower, double check the manuscript for any sleepwriting mumbo jumbo that may have slipped in, and get to the office.)

And then this weekend I had to finally finally bite the bullet and paint the apartment. I mean, if I ever want to get a jump on the REAL paint job in my bed room, I'm going to have to knock the living area out of the way first (in terms of getting the paint done. I don't mean actually knocking down the living area.)

Since I wasn't allowed to take this with me when I moved out of my last apartment, I'm left with no other choice than to recreate this. (Actually, that's not true, since there are other choices available, such as subscribing to a more adult decor as opposed to painting my room like that of an 8-year-old boy. Semantics.)

HOWEVAH, I'm going to do the inside of the stadium this time.

Soon to be my room. Not "soon." But within a month.
I hate relative terms.

Which I have a feeling is going to be a little trickier than the last mural undertaking. But, you know, any excuse to adopt a completely consuming project that will monopolize my attention and waking hours.

So, yeah. A weekend of painting and Yankee games and vodka lemonades.

(I did get to see fellow sports writer Matt Waters play guitar--slash, awe us, bring house down--in the Upper East Side. AND smoke cigars with the great Joe K. We were celebrating what, I'm not 100% sure, though that didn't stop me from shouting to any passerby that "It's a boy!")

Aside from the DL-entry of Cervelli and Nova, the Yankees had a good weekend made even better by the fact it was a 4-game sweep, and made even better than that by the fact it was against one of the infinite "teams to beat."

We got to see a lot of Jeter in the dugout, which was starting to get a little awkward after a while, since it sort of felt like watching the Academy Awards when the camera man darts over to the losing nominee's face after the winner in announced. And said loser is forced to contort her face into an even mixture of grace/expected disappointment/excitement for the winner/aloof yet attentive. It's impossible.

If it were me, I'd just immediately crawl under the table and start playing Snood on my phone until I was sure the cameras had moved on to the next loserface.

Obviously, Jeter didn't crawl underneath the dugout bench. Mostly because he didn't lose anything, and also because he probably has more social graces than me. (I think CarrotTop has more social graces than me, too, though, so that isn't saying much.)

But seriously, every time Nunez did anything (fielding-wise) or didn't do anything (he had like 1 hit for the whole series), they'd cut to Jeter, as if to try to uncover some moment of revealing his true feelings. Did they really think he was going to scrunch up his face in raw jealousy at the site of Nunez making outs at SS like a pro? Or that Jeter would do that gentle half smile of condescension when Nunez would whiff?

No. When it comes to job security, I will say that while Jeter has about as much to worry about as an undertaker in Detroit, the rest of the DL tenants should be as worried as long-tailed cats in a rocking chair store.

Everyone for some reason keeps saying, "Yeah, and imagine how much better they'll be when Grandy and Tex and Jeter and Arod are back!" Maybe not that last part, but you know what I mean.

For my money, I don't care how the Yanks do it so long as they win. And right now, they are doing just that. As such, I'm not chomping at the bit to mess with whatever weird pact with the devil the team obviously made.

Lyle Overbay and Travis Hafner had triples in back to back games.

GGBG went yard for the 3rd time this year.

David Phelps struck out 9 batters in 4 innings.

Joba Chamberlain is chipping away at an ERA that started out looking more like the ticket cost for main level seating, and now looks more like the "handling fee" on Stubhub for said ticket.

Now do the same trimming with your weight.

Who on the team is in desperate need of being relieved of his decoy duties? I mean, the only player who everyone is poking is Tubbo. Seriously. Just because his fastest pitch clocked in at 92 mph.

(I was imagining this being said not by Suzyn Waldman, but by the illustrious Moira Quirk of GUTS fame.)

Arod's decoy is doing a fine job at 3B, and so-so at the plate, but I can't say with any confidence that Arod would be doing much better.

Wells is a beast. I said it last week, and I'll say it again, that this guy is the Carl Crawford we always wanted, but managed to dodge a bullet when he went to Boston, and now we get the bizarro edition of him.

It'd be like if all of sudden my ipod mini (it's blue with a green screen, ~2004) started working again, and not only could it play music, but it could do shit that the ipod, iphone, ipad, and possibly even the government itself, can't do. Like..display flash media content.

And it's kind of odd, because even though all 4 games were close ones, come-from behind thrillers, etc...it was like the blood pressure remained at even keel. There's just this very comforting committment to execution, sans frenzied panic.

(Compare that the the Jays' manager who is a nutjob. Not really Bobby Cox/Ozzie Guillen kind of way. But more like a Jack Torrance kind of way.

Very inspired gems from him this weekend:

"Basically what's happening is we're playing good enough to lose, we're not playing good enough to win." (What does this even mean?)

"You want me to go out there and hit or something? I couldn't hit when I played." (Ah, talk about resounding inspiration from your fearless chief. If that doesn't motivate a last place team, I don't know what will.)

"It's frustrating. I'm giving you guys the same comments every stinking day and I'm getting a little bit tired of it. I've got no answers." (Is he tired of the stinking days? Or the same answers? We need more information, John.)

On the other hand, I think the Decoys are causing Girardi to veer into Maddon territory, on account of him being so confused about what's happening here:

On batting Hafner against a leftie: "I just thought today was a good day to do it and he made it work." (BULL. SHIT. Uh-uh. You had a hunch? Stop. You're better than that.)

So the Yankees play the next 5 at home, 2 vs Houston, 3 vs Oakland. I'll be back to daily recaps this week. I can't say it enough how much I love watching the Decoys.

Now they just have to overtake Boston (2.5 games up), but I'm all for pacing yourself. Don't overexert yourselves.

Even though the DL is apparently a mecca of hedonism and utopian pleasure based on its popular appeal, I don't think the Yanks should try their luck with a new crop of Decoys for the Decoys. Let's just keep playing the way they're playing.

Mutatis mutandis.

April 24, NYY @ Rays: Any minute now... 5,4,3,2...

2013-04-25T02:21:00.000-04:00

Loss.

You know what's great about familiarity with a subject matter? The accompanying intuition that comes with it eventually. Most of the time, that and a subway card will get me uptown. Meaning that it doesn't do me a whole lot of good to know seconds before it happens that:

A project manager/traffic coordinator is about to come over to my desk to "see how that manuscript is coming along"
A girl is about to have a wildly graceless drunk/heels-induced slip/fall at Dorrian's
My dad is about to say, well, anything. We share a mind*
Someone's about to sing/play a wrong note
The cat is about to go from auditioning for a role as a stuffed animal, to doing suicide sprints back and forth in the apartment
AND I know when the panic button is about to be irrationally slammed for some partitioned out picadillo in the Yankees' clubhouse

That's any second now. The Yankees' hitting is going to be called into question within days, if not hours.

Oh my God, can't you hear it already? Vom dot com.

"The Yankees have been lucky so far this season, getting production out of players that are arguably past their prime. But how long can they expect to rely on offense from this line up? Without a young backbone, the argument can be made that the Yankees are arguably playing with a potential fire, one might argue."

No. No no no. This was a good game, except for the losing part. If for nothing else, the weirdness that is Eduardo Nunez is really quite disarming. He's like another Sneach, sort of. To take a line from the Girl Bathroom Banter Playbook: "I have NO idea what the hell this guy's deal is."

Last year, he was like a stock character in a Disney movie who always bungled, always tripped, made mistakes. Like Chunk in the Goonies.

This year, he's made 2 errors (allegedly. I could have SWORN he had a third one in like game 3 of the season).

Last year, he had 7 errors.

In 2011, he had 20.

GAH! I hate things that have no rhyme or reason. Give me iambic pentameter and tautologies any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Eduardo Nunez is confusing. To say (next to) nothing of the fact he sort of resembles a Dominican version of Nicholas Cage.

Last year I thought he looked more like a villainous frog from the Care Bears.
Moving up in the world, if "the world" means my head of endless comparators.

So Eduardo Newnez gets one of the 4 total team hits of the game (others came off Nix, Sneach, and GGBG).

And the error actually gets attributed to Bosh [sic], who looked like That Girl that gets put in right field for softball games.

The one hit of the game that inevitably heads her way is a homerun.

Because she will not catch it (if she could, she'd be playing a different position), and the ball will go beyond her (because scientifically, our depth perception is significantly inferior and we'll misjudge the ball to be closer than it is), and she'll chase it, and try to relay the ball back in from Pittsburgh, or wherever it's ultimately rolled off to, and by that time not only has everyone cleared the bases, but they've also updated their facebook statuses, checked their voicemail solely to get rid of the VM icon on their cells, and established democracy in a third world country.

Yeah, YOU, BOSH [sic].

2 runs scored. The Yankees lost 3-0, and none of those runs from the error are looming large etc, because it doesn't matter how many scored on how many errors, if you can't even put 1 run of your own on the board.

That needed to be said, to be sure. Not as an attack on the offense, but in defense of the defense.

SPEAKING OF defense...this.

Dayummmm. Jeter who. (Or I guess "Derek who?")

So this Alex Cobb guy really got the best of the Yanks. 106 pitches in over 8 innings. 7Ks. 2 hits. His full name also spells"Bed Bacon Relax" when you mix the letters up.

Although a full decade and a half his senior, Andy was no slouch, ether. 10Ks, only 3runs. At 40 years old.

(He's one of the best CURRENT pitchers, not just all time, stifling young bat after young bat. At 40 years old. Which is not old, but which is impressive considering I'm 8 years younger and get winded moving wet clothes from the washing machine into the dryer.)

Alright, yeah they lost, but it wasn't a bad game. It doesn't warrant concern or qusstions or examinations or analysis. They didn't beat the Rays. They lost because the Rays scored more runs. But they're coming home! Mercifully, especially the Yanks themselves since I don't think they like the Trop. Understandably.

I also have just about had it with these inane circus antics that Maddon's desperately trying to pawn off as a calculated psychological strategic move. First there was a magician. Then a cockatoo. And now:

Maddon concluded his homestand-long effort to keep his team loose Wednesday by having a pair of penguins, Cliff and Shelly, in the clubhouse before batting practice.

"It's a continuation of our attempt to get our players to chill out a bit," Maddon said.

Christ. Shut up, Maddon.

Same goes for any "argument can be made"-ers who make arguments challenging the Yankees' record, claiming it belies "greater issues."

No. We're 2.5 games from 1st. I'm into this team. A lot. And back home they go!

Si audier ungulis, equorum cogitare.

(NON ZEBRAS.)

*I'd be remiss in not mentioning the time in early 2008, when I went home to watch the Green Bay/Gmen playoff game with my dad. Then I thought of something that happened 20 years prior--a memory that was 100% triggered by nothing. A moment that I don't think anyone else even was cognizant of at the time. And I said, "Oh my God, you know what I just thought of out of nowhere. This is completely random." And my Dad replies, "YES. That time after the softball game when the girl jumped out of the car in front of us and grabbed the chicken wire from the side of the street." Yes.

The first and only reason I've seen to get an iphone

2013-04-24T13:16:00.002-04:00

It takes me a long time to get on board with technology trends. I'm always 2 notches behind, ie I'm still listening to mix casettes when the rest of the world has moved on to CDs. I resisted the VHS --> DVD movement for so long that it wasn't until mp3s came around that I finally acquiesed. Same goes for digital cameras, ebooks, etc.

I usually catch up eventually, but not with the iphone. I don't care how many people say "You get used to the touch screen"...I still prefer the tactile joys of pressing keys.

HOWEVAH, now I may have a reason to convert.

This.

FANATIC=FANTASTIC.

I've been saying for YEARS that I wish there was an app, or a suite of apps, that basically help me avoid situations where I walk into a bar, survey the scene, and then have to pretend to get a phone call or pretend to use the bathroom just so I don't look like I'm walking in and out.

For example, when bouncers check IDs, the ages should be logged and then there should be an app that allows you to check the average age of patrons, so I'm not walking into a bar full of people who either are comparing drink prices to those of the Roaring 20's...or people who actually are still in their roaring 20's.

My coworker just told me about the FANATIC APP. Which is GENIUS.

Fanatic is a new social sports app that connects millions of fans and venues all over the world. Fanatic helps you follow your teams, find the best places to watch every big game and share the fan activity with your friends. Wear your colors proud!

Every check-in, plan and share earns you points, whether you’re at a sports bar, the stadium or even at home. Compete against your friends and fellow Fanatics for top ranking in your area.

•EXPLORE: Browse a list of local venues to see which games are being shown and where local fans are gathered. Fanatic ranks every venue by team affiliation so you know exactly the hot spots for your favorite team. For example, you can locate the #1-rated Real Madrid bar in New York City or the #1-rated New England Patriots bar in San Francisco.

•PLAN: Invite friends to watch with you, and share those invitations across social media. We will help you organize and track the best watch parties!

•COMPETE: Compare your points, ranking and fan activity with your friends. It’s all about winning!

It's like foursquare for sports venues!!! I mean, if I'm watching a game, I have NO TIME to mess around with bars, no time to explore the city, and no time to venture into a place only to discover they're showing cricket instead of the NBA playoffs, or--worse--they have a giant plasma tv that's used to just show animated fractals or something, and not Sportcenter.

I'm serious. These exist. It's like meeting a blisteringly hot, charming doctor who turns out to be gay--a stunning specimen but one that you will never be able to fully take advantage of.

Anyways, I need this to be available in noniphone-format asap. (The app. Not the hypothetical gay doctor.) Until that happens, I refuse to deviate from form. I will spend the rest of my sports-watching-days at Dorrians until someone proves otherwise that a better Yankee-support venue exists.

I'm okay with that. But I still want the Fanatic app. It's just really, really cool.

April 23, NYY @ TB: What a great game!

2013-04-24T03:23:00.000-04:00

Win.

That was so much fun to watch! Maybe not for my neighbors, who have now been officially (or unofficially, since I don't know what differentiates the two) been introduced to the sporadic whoops and groans and staccato claps and spontaneous yeahs, characteristic of apartment 6B during the season.

The Yanks have had extra inning games already, so this wasn't the first "good game," so to speak. But you know how once in a while an unnotable will become notable based on the context? Like someone relinquishing his subway seat can be the most chivalrous gesture in the history of mankind, if you're coming off the heels of a browbeating day.

Similarly, I was real tired by the time I got home. And I wanted nothing more than to just turn on my9 and not use my brain anymore. I needed a pitchers duel, because any more runs than that would have been too much for my mind to compute. (This ability to process big numbers, however, isn't necessarily exclusive to exhausting days, so much as it is basically a hallmark of every day that I exist.)

So I came home sans work folders, avec bottle of wine and avec committed interest in dedicating my attention to nothing other than the game. Also, I came home prepared to watch an awkward mess spearheaded by Hughes and Price, both of whom I considered prodigies emeriti.

I was actually picturing something along the lines of a hockey game intermission when they have a bunch of middle schoolers play a mini scrimmage on the ice, while on dollies. (I swear I've seen this at a Ranger game more than once.) Or better yet, an episode of GUTS (do-do-do-do-you-HAVE-it).

Boy, was I am wrong! Price and Hughes, with a combined ERA that would've been allowed to go to a PG-13 movie unaccompanied by an adult, both pitched sick. (Sickly? I hate using adjectives when adverbs are called for, as much as the next person, but "pitching sickly" doesn't really get my point across.)

The point being: the pitches were stunningly on point. I was impressed. That goes for you, too, Price. Not that I REALLY care if you go the way of Oliver Perez, because, you know, you're not a Yankee so do whatever you want. But I will say that if you keep dismissing your indelible talent. And Maddon, tough love this kid, for God's sake. He's not an overweight sophomore trying on prom dresses, so comments like this probably aren't necessary:

"We don't score enough runs and he doesn't feel as good about himself. That's just how this baseball thing works."

Hey now. No one can make you feel inferior without your consent! Whatever, moving on to Hughes...

Actually, their line scores were nearly identical: 7-8IP, 5-6Ks, 0-2 BBS... both starter similarly nervous and apologetic and self-deprecating. If they were stray cats that I found and took in, I would say things like, "I bet they were kicked and abused in their last home."

The game starts out with the Yanks in a 1-0 hole because Zobrist hit a sac fly in the 1st, but Hughes held on the game. Wells picked him up (Wells!! Can't get over this) with a ribbie in the 4th to tie up the game.

Excitement!

TB pulls ahead, bleh, with Molina's single. But here's the thing I noticed during this play. Yeah, damn Tampa takes the lead, BUT Loney getting thrown at 3rd was kind of like a microcosm of the game, sort of. Meaning that, aside from the weirdly impressive pitching from the two neurotics, the thing that made this so great to watch was the whole Winston Churchhill-ness of it all.

Yeah, that is straight-up my dad's genes right there. (When I was 10 and playing little league, he said to me before every at bat, "Remember, tis far better to dare mighty things and risk failure than to live in the grey twilight that knows neither darkness nor dawn...oh, and level swing.")

This was a 2-out, behind in the count kind of game. Down by a run, Sneach gets on base, steals 2nd, makes it to 3rd on Nix's single, and then is driven home by GGBG's groundout. And in the top of the 9th with the game tied, and 2 outs, Sneach comes through again.

Drives in Cano and Pronk, and just to prove my long-standing contention that he has approximately ZERO idea of where he is, what he's doing, what team he's on, etc, at any given point, Sneach had this to say after the game:

"I just had a feeling I could make it there. It was a steal and I was just running. I didn't see where he hit the ball but I heard it, and luckily when I looked up I saw the ball in front of me."

I don't call him Sneach for nothin'.

Anyways, bottom of the 9th and Mo terrifies us by giving up a moon shot to Longoria in about .42 seconds. Damn. And also, yikes.

That's all, though. Pfft. Game over, save for Mo. Win for D-Rob. Self-esteem boost for Hughes. And more labor-intensive productivity from the Decoys.

Maddon, however, not to be outdone by, well, anything ever, brings this to the table:

Maddon's effort during the current homestand to keep his team loose Tuesday featured a cockatoo, which he had in clubhouse and later on his shoulder as he held his pregame media session. In previous games, Maddon had a DJ play music in the clubhouse and a magician do card tricks, and promised a big animal finale on Wednesday night when the homestand ends.

"Snakes are out," Maddon said. "I will not be in the clubhouse with a snake. Regardless of what people say, I'm not on board with that."

Snakes are out. Got it. You tell 'em! Let the administration know that YOU. MEAN. BIDNESS.

Or better yet, tell 'em this.

Reads like baseball Mad Libs or something. Christ, what's next, Joe? WE GET IT. You march to the beat of your own drummer. You do things YOUR WAY.

But I guess you could only play in the Trop for so long until you finally called a spade a spade and recognized the venue for what it really is, which is a big top circus tent. Girardi should respond in kind, and make a big ball pit in the bullpen.

Great win, Yankees. Thank you for that. Keep up the good work, Decoys!

Bigas ipsum non est realis. Sed uincit sunt.

April 22, NYY @ TB: Tubbo had an "off day"

2013-04-23T00:37:00.001-04:00

Loss.

I just spent the last 5 minutes trying to write an opening line that communicated the fact that this post will be more brief than normal, but every time I tried to construct the sentence, all I could hear were THATS WHAT SHE SAID! and PAUSE! in my head. "This is going to be quick." "This is going to be a short one." "Here's the quick and dirty version of the game." Grumble grumble.

You get the idea. I have to be up at 5am for a meeting in NJ, so I'm going to put a cap on how long I spend looking for obscure links to even more obscure movies that quasi-support a ridiculous analogy that only tangently is relevant to the game. I may or may not actually stick to this plan.

(Spoiler, sort of: Just finished. About to post. I did not stick to plan. I need to be more like Anthony Trollope.)

The odds are actually in my favor, since it was a loss, I guess, and not surprisingly, I'm not as keen on dwelling on it. Particularly this type of loss, which would be one in which our lovable Lard pitches like he just signed with the Mets. Also, it's a loss to the TEAM TO BEAT IN THE AL EAST. The list of teams who AREN'T considered "teams to beat in the AL East is considerably shorter, if even existant at all.

PS, they are all teams to beat, because winning > losing. By design.

So, yesterday I wrote about the Yanks' off day, and this performance from Round Boy was exactly the type of phenomenon that baffles me. How does such a talented athlete have a whole day of being off?

I mean, obviously this is not to say that I'm incapable of it. Far from it. But it IS to say that every time I DO have a bad night of beirut or softball or pop-a-shot (I really wish the list of competitive endeavors in my life had a richer scope)...well, it makes me crazy, because none of those games can be chalked up to aging. It just means I'm inexplicably bad for an entire day.

Anyways, Tubbo.com's off day was off from the get-go, as most off-days are want to be, otherwise they'd be off half-days (or on half-days, in a glass half full kind of way). The 1st inning seemed to last for and hour, and the homeruns off our ace weren't just homeruns so much as this.

The type of hits where the outfield looks likes it's playing some kind of game of Red Light Green Light One Two Three. Except they're all on the Red Light phase of the game.

Ok, SPEAKING of inertia, immobility, this, etc...Robinson Cano's homerun in the 4th inning--the only run for the Yanks of the game, and only one of the 2 hits of the day (both by Cano)--crossed into Manny territory.

I said this last week (during the #42 costume party) about a Cano bomb:

I will say that Cano was about half a second away (ok, 0.42 seconds away) from crossing into "Locking Up a High and In Fast Ball Next Time He Sees McCarthy" territory.

Which is to say..well, you know. Pause. Like, a real pause.

Yeah, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because that stadium is so f'n annoying and weird and he probably got paralyzed while trying to track his shot (thought he really should just be taking off for 1st, no?) But it was a little much.

I only say this because if I were Cano, I'd want to adopt an "aw shucks, just trying to help team. Please. Thank you. Ma'am. Sir. Tiffany's Table Manners" type of attitude, in the wake of the whole "linked to Biogenesis" nonsense. For the record, I don't think Cano is on steroids. Seriously. I mean, I think almost everyone in the league is, but I don't think he is. His interviews are too candid. Really doesn't sound like he's lying at all.

Ah, whatever, he can pause at homeplate all he wants. He DID manage the only 2 hits off Moore, so live it up, big guy.

As for Moore: what the hell is your problem? 8IP, 9Ks, 2 hits. Go hang a salami. I'm a lasagna hog.

(Comparatively, our Fatso's line: 7 IP, 7 hits, 8Ks...3 homeruns. I'm not sure I would've kept him in for as long as Girardi did. He was struggling from the first batter. And ended up leaving game after 104 pitches. Just because our boy CAN go long into the game, doesn't mean we necessarily HAVE to have him do it, yeah?)

Alright, so it's after midnight, I gotta go force myself into bed so I can wake up in a panic every 15 minutes for the next 5 hours, for fear of not waking up.

The Devil Rays beat the Yankees, and I think we probably lost our right to quantifying the Yankees' recent success in terms of "won the last ___ of their ___ games."

Oh, also. Vernon Wells is a beast defensively. He's like the new Carl Crawford. YES! He is. Only he's old. I guess that's not irony so much as an oxymoron.

Jayson Nix=great job at 3rd. GGBG=great ABs, despite no hits.

It wasn't an off day for the Yankees, just Tubbo. The hits were hit hard albeit hit hard in the vicinity of ready fielders--mercifully, no one in the booth said, "Well, you can't ask for a better than that."

So, just as yesterday was a very Sunday-esque game, this was a very Monday-esque game. Which doesn't make an abundance of sense since both teams were playing on Monday, but only one team had a Monday-esque game. I don't care though. About the Monday-esque thing, not the loss. I care about that.

But it's Tuesday now technically, so let's move on. To the fallen prodigies. To Hughes v Price. Which doesn't even sound like a pitching matchup so much as it sounds like a court docket for a civil litigation suit or something. No plea deals. Just deal, Hughes. (See what I did there. Tuesday-esque.)

Est vicis pro Tuesday veneficus. Nullus postulo esse dramatic.

April 21, NYY @ Jays: An off day? Sunday-esque game.

2013-04-22T01:54:00.001-04:00

Loss.

The whole concept of having an off day is weird to me. Not that I expect everyone to be on all the time. You can't hit a homerun every time you get up, etc. (Can you? Why is this impossible? Because it's never been done?)

But it's the idea of having a whole day where you're off. What happens to make it that way? And what makes Ivan Nova think that today was an "off" day for him? I mean, he hasn't had an "on" game since August of last year. So I'd venture to say that this game was very much "on" for him, and that his "off" day is whenever he deviates from form.

He is consistently inconsistent, I guess. I mean, AJ Burnett pretty much had the market cornered on on and off days. It was his thing. Fatso has off days sometimes but we're always sad and surprised to see them happen. A whole day of being off for a normal/non-athlete person can almost always be attributed to a hangover. What are athlete's excuses? Stress? GAH!

Nova was pitching like a little leaguer who will throw a strike and then the parents in thes stand give him encouraging claps and cheers etc, and then it'll take him another 12 pitches to be able to find the strike zone again.

The Jays scoring began with a throwing error from Nunez. There we go. I knew Nunez was going to roll a 7 any minute now. Then an inning later a sac fly from a Japanese player I've never seen or heard of before the 1st inning when he scored, puts the Yanks down 0-2.

Everything looks shaky. Well, except for the hitting. Almost everyone contributed a couple of hits. Except for Pronk, Sneach, maybe Nunez, too. I feel like Chris Stewart was the only one playing. And I don't mean that in a "he was the only one who showed up" or "he was the only one who played WELL."

I mean that in a "I feel like he was always up and always in the middle of a play and always on base." Which isn't true. Obviously. Actually, I think he had fewer ABs than everyone. Oh, you know what, probably because he had a homerun, which was surprising since he unequivocally assured us in the offseason that he would not contribute offensively.

Also, he had the dubious task of catching Nova's mess of pitches that reminded me of those guns that shoot out t-shirts at baseball games.

For my sister, however, the real standout of the game was Lawrie. "Did you see that go-ahead run for Toronto? That was THE most roided out player I've ever seen in the history of ever. He was like Popeye on steroids. With red eyes. And when he got to second, his celebratory gestures were honestly terrifying."

Ha. I DO remember how he acted after doing something good. And it escalated throughout the game, because by the time Melky drove Lawrie in to make it 6-4, Lawrie looked moments away from sounding his barbaric yawp over the rooftops of the world. That or pull out someone's heart from his chest with his hands, then rip telephone books in half.

Yankees scored with 2 consecutive runs walked in. Again. Second time this has happened this weekend. This is probably not significant at all.

(See? It's because it's the Decoys. If the Real Yankees had done this, it would be leveraged into a complete breakdown of BB vs BA etc, and Bill James would have already invented a stat for it that demonstrates how the Yankees' record belies its true talent. Every time I think the Yankees look good, someone writes an article about a little known stat that reveals the Yankees to be "the worst in the league.")

So, yeah, it was an off day, I suppose. Though, not for nothing, the Jays' starter was nothing to write home about, either. Both pitchers were making everything floppy. Except Toronto responded with realllly hard hits. Like bullets have left guns slower. Oh, and a lot of this came from the 2nd half of their lineup.

Melky Cabrera, who will never be the same to me again. hit well. But since he is not Arod, no one will attribute every single hit to a function of his sinister cheating and steroid use.

Seriously, everyone acts like the Yankees are Patient 0 in PED epidemic, but Toronto would be a more likely suspect, yeah? Especially since they're not even in America. They don't have the same regulations and/or difficulties when it comes to acquiring the stuff. And I don't know, but Jose Bautista may or may not have dabbled.

From 2006-2009, he hit around 13-15 HRs each season. In 2010, he hit 54. 2011, he hit 43. I mean, when the dumbest kid in the class scores a perfect score on his math final, you can't assume he just studied extra hard. That doesn't happen.

Whatever, everyone's on steroids. I don't really care. Let them eat HGH. ("Qu'ils mangent de la HGH.")

The bullpen was shaky. Again. But I say "again" in a "it has happened recently" way. Not in a "this ALWAYS happens" way. So Nova's so-so day was handed over to a couple of pitchers in the pen who were ALSO have so-so days. Which amounted to the game going from slightly under control to slightly out of control in the 6th.

A bunch of hits. Manufacturing runs. TORONTO IS SOOO THE TEAM TO BEAT IN THE AL EAST. They were shaky. So were the Yankees. Everything had all the trappings of a Sunday that was flying low to the ground. And the Decoys lost 4-8, but like I always say, I don't believe in playing 100% all the time. You get burnt out.

The other half of that sentiment, however, is that you should play just enough percent to win. Which they didn't really do, so I'm hoping the stuff they saved up can be applied to a nice and easy series against Tampa, who, like Toronto, is THE TEAM TO BEAT IN THE AL EAST.

Tubbo.com vs Matt Moore, who is very adorable until I remember his era is like lower than the legal BAC levels.

Alright, so things were a little off for the Decoys maybe, but it's just an isolated incident, as are all things that aren't the most favorable outcome. But tomorrow is today already, and yeah they wont 2 out of 3, won the series, and looked pretty strong doing so. And as for the Tampa series that begins Monday:

Id est valde on.

April 19 & 20, NYY @ Jays: Long-, short-, and money-ball

2013-04-20T22:53:00.002-04:00

Win. Win.

It's not the A's version of Moneyball. They're not trying to get baserunners. They're getting Yankee Baserunners, which are people who run around the bases after they hit the ball and it goes over the fence.

You know what else is different about these games, aside from the fact it looks like a 2006 fantasy autodraft? The Yankees' wins and losses aren't portrayed as microcosms of bigger issues.

If anyone on the team puts up a donut for the day with the Decoy Yankees, it's a little blip in the boxscore, less jarring than an 8th grader's i's dotted with circles.

But if anyone on the Standard Yankees put up a donut for the day--hell, if anyone put up a 1-4, with 2Ks for the day--it gets parlayed into 3-part tv-movie about the Degradation of Talent, Morals, and the Yankees' Legacy.

Every Yankee win is a function of "buying their team" or "relying too much on the long ball" or "they suck." Every Yankee loss is a harbinger of their declining empire of greatness and the price they pay for not cultivating younger farm. Every time the Yankees don't make a play, it's the first symptom of their brittle aging bones.

Now? It's a win. Or it's a loss. There aren't theories or subtext or allegories. There are just very strange box scores, and there is a blithe excitement every time I check to see who the clean-up batter du Jour is. You know that one of these days we're going to see Gardner there. It's happening.

I really don't know how anyone (professionally) writing about these games can do it with a straight face. Or at least with some kind of paranthetical Editor's Note. It's like writing "Posada's suicide squeeze in the 11th was his 5th steal in as many chances." That's it. No comment? No anything?

No one is THAT objective that he can write about the fact Vernon Wells is the leading homerun guy in the AL. Or that the Yankees' longball tradition is being carried out by Lyle Overbay, Wells, and Travis Hafner.

Or that the Yankees are playing some strange iteration of what has been called "small ball," yet produces line scores like these:

The Yankees won 9-4, with 13 hits, while batting 2 for 11 with runners in scoring position. (Friday)

The Yankees won 5-3, with 11 hits, while batting 3 for 12 with runners in scoring position. (Saturday)

What the hell is small ball anyway. It's not hitting homeruns, yeah? It's getting base hits and bringing runners in with singles etc? How is that small? Everything about that is bigger. The number of hits. The number of runners. The duration of the game (usually). The overall team BA. Usually the number of opposing pitchers seen. The pitch count.

Everything is abbreviated in "long ball." The only thing long about it (pause) is the distance the ball goes.

So our long-small-medium sized game of ball is driven by the off-season pick-ups that threw most Yankee fans into a tailspin. Which makes me feel less stupid about flapping my arms and protesting their utility and overall relevance in the world.

Yeah, I will freely admit that at each of these acquisitions, I roared and exchanged, "I KNOW! Are they kidding me??" head shakes with all the other Yankee fans in the office, who--like most sports fans--spent the offseason using Hallway Hot Stove shorthand.*

*One to two word phrases or names said in passing, that substitute for long discussions that require coworkers to stop walking, come to full stop, engage in dialogue of indeterminate length. For example:

"YOUK." Doesn't skip beat in walk to Xerox.
"UGH." Continues walk to get purple pens.

This replaces an involved discourse on what both coworkers thought about the Youkilis acquisition.

Time is money.

And during my own HHSS moments, I had the same grunt response for the each of the "PRONK." "Wells." "Overbay?!" walk-bys.

But apparently, it's true. "Senior citizens, though slow and dangerous behind the wheel, can still serve a purpose."

34, 35, 36. Those are their ages. I turned 32 end of March and I was in bar bathroom, my sister being all "AHH! It's her birthday!", and all the other girls crammed in the bathroom were shrieking, "AHH! We love birthdays! Happy birthday!! How old are you??"

"32."

Brief hesitation. Then:

"Well, you go, girl! Seriously, I hope I'm still raging when I'm that old. God bless ya. Seriously, good for you for still going out at that age and just being like cool with it."

Soo..I guess I sort of do the same thing with baseball players, maybe. If you don't get a rookie whose voice is still in the throes of plummeting down a few octaves, then you're a moron of a manager. If you pick up someone who's been playing ball a few years and doing it pretty well, you may as well be playing Russian roulette.

You have the same chances of a 35-year old pick-up panning out on the favorable side, as you do asking a drunk person at the bar to watch your beer while you go to the bathroom.

I'm getting such an enormous kick out all of this. Not the winning, although it's true my tv would be getting all the kicks if they were losing, but the whole "Replacements" movie element of it all.

For some reason I've been hesitant to make that comparison, probably because I don't like it when motley crues of sports team beat well-oiled machine teams, in the movies or in real life. It just promotes irreverance and undervalues organization and cohesion.

Or maybe it's because nothing good can come out of an analogy that calls for weaving Keanu Reeves into the mix.

Whatever, too late now. No one is going to come out and say that they don't want Jeter/Tex/Grandy healthy and back to playing like they're capable of etc. (Ok, and if Arod wasn't Arod, everyone would want the great hitter and fielder that won us the 2009 WS. I don't want Arod back because he makes everyone angry, and because he's like a walking rheumatism.)

So while I'm not going to start hoping the DL starts doubling as a hospice, I like the Decoys. And I hope a movie is made out of them, with Gene Hackman as Girardi. And I want the janitor from Rudy to play some Yankee Stadium worker who pops in scenes once in a while, to have some kind of inspirational relationship with Cervelli or Sneach. He can even use the same lines as he did in Rudy.

Senescit justis modis essendi anni miris. Et ego intentio esse miris diu.

April 17, Dbacks @ NYY (L): GAH! Jeter, DO something!

2013-04-19T19:13:00.000-04:00

Loss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From espn, of course:

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

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

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

Hi, I! Kobe. Look at you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

April 17, D-backs @ NYY: It's all coming back to them

2013-04-18T05:36:00.000-04:00

Win.

I forgot about that, how the Yankees like to come back when down late in the game. It was awesome. Like when you're in some kind of logistical dilemma involving transport, and one of your friends is like, "Well, I can just drive." To which you respond, "Oh yeah!! Yes! I forgot all about the fact you had a car in the city! PERFECT."

It's exciting when you rediscover some great providence that's always been there. Like getting winter clothes out of storage.

And while I'll take a comeback win over a ride any day of the week and twice on Sunday, I'm going to call it a draw between the comeback and winter clothes. I spent 3 months post-hurricane trying to repurpose my summer clothes into 15 degree weather gear. "This sundress can be winter-y, right? Like if I wear it with a scarf? No?"

But, yeah, what a great game. I wish I had gone--weather was as good it gets for an April game, Fatso started, low-scoring game, tie-breaking/game-winning long ball late in game, to supplement runs "manufactured"* by way of base hits, during a 2-out rally.

*I hate this almost as much as "step up to the plate" and "must-win situation," and more than "insurance runs." All runs are manufactured. Some are manufactured by hitting the ball over the fence. Some are manufactured by driving in baserunners with base hits. It's like "walking distance" and "divisible by __."

Round Boy starts off the game with about 738 pitches in the 1st inning, including one that Paul Goldschmidt launched over the opposite field. It was opposite of encouraging, too. I hate when Lard struggles, not so much because of impact on game, but for sort of the same reason I hate it when Mo blows a save.

Non-Yankee fans never say, "One bad game, one bad inning, he's great at any age, any weight." They say the opposite of that, and it's ridiculous hearing people say, "CC is done! He's getting up there, you know. Yankees were f'n morons to sign him to such a big contract. You know, the Yankees buy their team. P.S.. Arod."

The less time spent listening to animated, empassioned drivel that lacks basic corroborating support and facts... the better, The best even. That's a big reason why I don't like Round Boy/Mo pitfalls.

HOWEVAH, no pitfall from either side last night! After the bomb to Goldschmidt, he was good ol' Tubbo.com again. It bears mentioning (maybe), that every time I hear or write Goldschmidt (which is like n=11), he keeps popping up in my head as Pewtersmidt. Not only did that not bear mentioning, it needed even less picture cobbling:

Pewterschmitt.

After gorging himself on pitches in the 1st, Fat fasted, giving up only 3 hits rest of game (through 8th anyway), sac fly to A.J. Pollack. No powerpoint photo manipulation for him, though.

3-0 game, Yanks down in 7th, and from my memory of the stale, shapeless, and lackluster season last year, this was when --as we had sadly learned--was not a magic time for them. No mystique. Most just the Que? part of the word.

But then the NY Yankees, in all their weirdly Motley Crew-formed "glory," pulled it off. Ben Francisco (Like the city, only a BE instead of an SA. Cute! BESA! or BASE!) singles in the 7th with 1 out, after the Yankees were almost hitless against Miley Cyrus for the first 6 innings.

Super Mario struck out, 2 outs, 1 on. No runs. Brennan Boesch, whose name just isn't right, doubles. 2nd and 3rd, 2 outs.

(His name's not right! Where's the D? Why the E? It looks like one of the words I'd try to pass off during my brief Words With Friends stint, when I'd just throw all the letters on the board in every permutation possible until "Not a Word" didn't pop up after pressing submit.)

Then Nunez errs on the side of doing the right thing, which is walk, to load up the bases for Jayson Nix, who also walks. Miley is throwing the ball like he's playing Pop-A-Shot, arcade basketball, and he's just trying to get as many tosses up as possible to jack up the buckets before time expires.

So, if you remember from Tuesday's post, I did have a prediction about the game:

"Miley is going to be Rowny by game's end."

And look at this! Adding to the thematic silo of "missing letters in names," here is Rowny being taken out:

He is biting a towel.

Joe Girardi on Rowny:

"He's a good looking pitcher. He gets you to swing at that ball that's just above the waist and looks really tempting."

Yeah.

Yanks on the board. Tony Sipp comes in for relief, who sounds like he would make a nice ice cream truck operator.

In comes GGBG, whose numbers with bases loaded are pretty ridiculous(ly good) for someone who will never have the meanness and teeth grinding aggression of a big slugger. He looks like he should be working with the Geek Squad at Best Buy. But he came through. With a 2-run single that slipped through the fielders like a tomato seed under a nail gun. Tie game.

Then Hafner goes yard off Sipp:

Yahtzee!

Mo gets the save. Yanks take 7th game of the last 8. Keith texts me to say he's "liking this team!" I continue to be confused by things such as Vernon Wells being the Yankee to break up a hitless game through 6 innings.

Tonight we go for win #9. The pitcher match-up isn't as promising as the Tubbo/Miley Cyrus duel. It also looks like the Little League commissioner needs to step in and talk to the coaches about having lopsided teams. It's unfair to the kids.

Arizona: Corbin (2-0, 1.50 ERA)
New York: Hughes (0-2, 10.29 ERA)

Ignorantia non est beatitudo. Ita malum non est confusio semper.

April 16, D-backs @ NYY: The answer to life, the universe, and everything

2013-04-17T08:11:00.001-04:00

Win

I love how much this unintentionally speaks to the storied closer in pinstripes, and I love how it much frustrate Douglas Adams to have his sneaky ambiguity abused by misguided baseball fans. I'm sure he was sitting back all smug watching the literary world clamor over interpretting this, patently refusing to enlighten anyone. Mystery=value. And then someone probably said, "He's just a big baseball fan, dummies!"

Actually, that book had some pretty good lines, so I should ease up on this picture-painting-of-smugness. But before we get into the game:

There's also this "explanation" from the reputable wiki answers reference:

The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, however, is known to be 42.
How it was computed had to deal with 6 x 9 = 42. Now this does not make sense in the Base 10 number system (our common system). However, when computed in Base 13, the equation actually works out.
6₁₃ x 9₁₃ = 42_13. Now 6 and 9 in Base 13 still are 6 and 9.
However, 42 is represented in groups of 13 instead of groups of 10, as would be found in the Base 10 number system.
So, instead of 4 x 13 = 52, 4 x 13 = 40 (since 13 is translated to 10). 2 x 1 is still 2.
The original equation shows 6 x 9 = 54. Which is (4*13) + (2*1).
Therefore, with the case of Base 13, it would mean (4*10) + (2*1) = 40 + 2 = 42.

I know it does not solve the question of "Why?", but it does solve the question of "How?"

Yeah, this is like in college when I'd get an essay question on some 800 page monster book of which I had read 200 pages, and all I could do was really just write down every single fact and detail I remembered from those 200 pages in the hopes that this would mask the fact every character in Middlemarch was referred to only by pronouns. Sometimes "it," even.

Anyways, thanks, Wiki, for giving us a valuable lesson on base numbers. (This is why I hate math. There's a Base 10 number system and a Base 13 number system? If I had known this in school, I would have started justifying every incorrect answer with this. "No, no. Yeah, it's wrong in our COMMON system. But this is..Base 42."

Back to 42. As I predicted, I was confused with all the 42s running around. This could be because I just finished watching the game about a half hour ago (6:12am). The taping of the game thing actually worked tonight, in the sense that the bar I was at didn't have a tv. It had victorian molding and big Ruben-esque paintings of fleshly women. But no tv.

I watched the game like it was live, and now it's over and there are so many 42s whipping around in my head. It was like that scene in Sister Act when the bad guys were chasing after Whoopi Goldberg but there were so many nuns in the casino that they didn't know which was the Whoopi nun.

Allllll the players had 42 on. 27 people in game. Watching McCarthy throw that many pitches to so many 42s was legitimately making me delirious.

Robinson Cano, named after the original 42, whose number 24 is to honor, was the star of the game with the 3-run bomb in the 4th to answer the 2-run lead the Dbacks staked in the 3rd. I will say that Cano was about half a second away (ok, 0.42 seconds away) from crossing into "Locking Up a High and In Fast Ball Next Time He Sees McCarthy" territory.

Which is to say..well, you know. Pause. Like, a real pause.

And then our #42 came in to get one two three #42s out in a row to get the save.

Nunez hit a sac fly to make the final score 4-2.

All in all, a pretty tidy game for our weirdo team, despite the unfamiliarity of the whole interleague play.

(It's POSSIBLE that all these things I keep putting on par with Sodoku, Raisinettes, Kreb Cycle, and these in terms of things I can't wrap my head around...are actually not that mindtwisting as I'm making them out to be. I should be able to handle seeing a couple dozen 42s, in an AL/NL matchup. No, I'm sorry, I'm still not there yet. I need the numbers otherwise I have no idea who these strange Yankees are.)

Nova wasn't super nova. But the pen did the job. Even Joba mustachioed his way out of the inning without giving up a hit. Which meant he didn't give up 6 runs either. Good show, I say.

Speaking of good, that is what tonight's match-up will be. Well, no future tense. It is. It is already good. Tubbo v Miley. 100% sounds like a brightly-colored-critters-from-space type of cartoon. Or maybe the final two contestants in a appeals-to-the-people-who-arent-here-to-make-friends kind of reality show.

I don't care. Miley is going to Rowny by game's end. Yes. That happened.

Also happening is thunder and lightening, both of which I love so, so much. So long as it stops by 7:05. But if it doesn't stop by 7:05, I don't want a YES network guy to relay the bad news. I want it to be some lifeguard who blows a whistle and yells, "OK EVERYBODY OUT OF THE POOL NOW!"

Tempore facere donuts. A calicem tea dedisset restituturum normalitatis mea.

Or this. Which I did not do in my head or on paper, but rather on a math translation site.

01010100011010010110110101

10010100100000011101000110111

10010000001101101011000010110

10110110010100100000011101000

11010000110010100100000011001

00011011110110111001110101011

101000111001100101110

Back in time for interleague

2013-04-16T04:11:00.001-04:00

Probably should have mentioned I was going to be off the grid for a week.

(Sorry, J.C.)

But it was one of those weeks where you think 24 hours in a day is more than enough time to get everything done..until it's 6am and you realize you have so much left to do that you need to write a to-do list to keep from going crazy, except you don't have time to write a to-do list, and you're mad because if you DID have time, you'd put "write to-do list" on the list.

Yeah, it's not making any sense to me, either. Suffice to say that the Yankees took their first W on my sister's 30th birthday, and that night put me out of commission for the weekend.

Then Monday came, as it is want to do, and even though I've done 1,666 of them so far, this particular transition from weekend-to-week felt like it should have had one of those cartoon soundtracks where part II of the William Tell Overture abruptly screeches into Flight of the Bumblebee or soemthing.

Anyways, that's neither here nor there. It's purgatory. Normally scheduled blogging will resume tomorrow for the A's series. To recap* the last week:

*I just realized that the last time I recapped anything, by conventional "recap" definitions and standards, was probably circa SAT prepping. Now my version of "recap" is like the "throw-away-obviously-wrong" multiple choice option in a reading comprehension quiz.

"What is the best way to summarize last night's Yankee win?"
a.) The Yankees beat the Orioles on Sunday.
b) The Yankees shut out the Orioles in a 3-0 victory.
c.) The Yankees's 3-0 victory over the O's was fueled by Kuroda's 5th career shut out, and GGBG's 2-run bomb.
d.) I have a love/hate relationship with starts that feature two Asians, because I love slash hate the post-game "said through a translator"s. Also, I just found out what YOLO stands for.

(It stands for You Only Live Once. Also, FOMO means Fear Of Missing Out. I don't like either of the terms, though I am pleased I can add them underneath "Intensive Purposes" and "touche" on the list of "Long Overdue Epiphanies About Words.")

Check. Here's what I got on last week:

Yankees avoided a sweep at the hands of Boston, and Mariano Rivera came out of the bullpen, and my heart leapt. And then I texted Hug because he bet me last year we've seen the last of #42. I was so happy, that the "fear-of-reminding-someone-of-a-deal-a-long-time-later-is-met-with-oh-you-were-serious-about-that-I-totally-forgot-about-it" was completely muted.

Yankees took off for Detroit, and the "fear-of-being-shut-out-ALCS-style" was not completely muted. Detroit terrifies me. I said it. 1st in BA and OBP...7th in SLG? Yeah, Detroit terrifies me because in my head they are how movies portray the Yankees: evil, powerhouses of invincibility. Run manufacturers don't scare me. But apparently that's what Detroit is. I need someone to check under the bed for HR stats before I go to sleep.

Two losses. Then a win. In terms of SAT questions, that is a pattern I could identify.
LLWLLW_ _ _
a.) WLW
b.) WWL
c.) LLW
d.) Turkey

Shows what I know! WWWW. 4 wins. (Oh, and speaking of run-manufacturing: Oakland. It's the 2013 Team That Begins With the Letter O That We Will Spend All Year Asking If They Are For Real Up Until the Point Where It Gets Ridiculous Because They Have Secured a Playoff Spot.

11-1 is pretty good, though. Admittedly, if I were an A's fan, I'd be already thinking about logo designs for the "161-1" trademark. (That sounded snarky, but I'm being dead serious.)

Whatever, as long as it's not the Royals. I am so, so sick of EVERY year some sect of "analysts" that analyze as well as I "recap," decide that the Royals are the team of which everyone should be scared. They're 7-5! Everyone is 7-5! Seriously, there's the Braves, the "7 and 5"-ers, and the Padres. That's the league right there.

The Padres got into a big fight with the Dodgers, and Greinke broke his collar bone. Matt from Finance: "WELL, HE WASN'T SO SHY THEN, WAS HE?" Ha. Yeah, Greinke's got to get his story straight about his aw shucks social awkwardness.

To boot, he acted like he could NEVER play in NY, when in reality Greinke was basically like, "Hi Yankees? It's Zach. We met at the Dresdin, uh, tonite. And um I just called to say I had a great time. And you should, uh, call me tomorrow. Or um, in 2 days. Or whatever. Anyways, my number is 555--" BEEP. And then 5 more calls later and Cashman picks up, and is like, "Zach? Don't ever call us again."

Moving on, the Yanks head to Cleveland, and Girardi has a shit fit about scheduling, a la Mike Mussina style, because two of the games were canceled, and the Powers That Be have some Goddamn nerve making the Yankees play in a cold climate at night so early in the season.

Here's what I don't get about scheduling complaints: it's not supposed to be easy. It's supposed to be hard. (Pause). As Jimmy Doogan said, "The hard is what makes it good." (Pause.)

On the other hand, Joe makes a pretty strong case for himself: "I mean, it’s snowing in Minnesota and the Mets are there. I don’t know who can make the best snowman."

Well...sure. I mean, really, there is nothing that boils the blood more than a snowman making contest that lacks a clear victor. That and this.

Two games played in Jacobs Field, both won, by a combined score of about 103-3. Cheers, Kuroda and Pettitte.

The Week Where the Time Continuum Got Lost in the Shuffle came to a close mercifully on Friday, aka MY FIRST GAME OF THE YEAR! First game with Matt from Finance Dept.!

Saw the triple play, and I love the other fans who erupted like we won game 7, and then frantically looked around pleading, "DID EVERYONE JUST SEE WHAT JUST HAPPENED?" It was pretty sick.

From espn.com:

The play featured six throws and was ultimately scored a 4-6-5-6-5-3-4 triple play -- the first such play in Major League history. It was the first triple play for the Yankees since April 22, 2010, against the Athletics and the first at home since June 3, 1968, against Minnesota.

"That was awesome," said starter CC Sabathia, the main beneficiary of the triple play. "Any time you get a triple play, you're fired up."

Ha: the "first triple play since 2010." This is why people hate the Yankees. Because up until Friday, there were 3-year-olds walking around thinking they'd never get to see a triple play in their lifetime.

Yanks lose Saturday with Hughes, make it up on Sunday with the aforementioned 3-0 shutout. Bringing the Yankees to 6-5, but the most stellar 6-5 in the league. Because the way people talked about them, that's 6 more wins than everyone expected them to have. Actually, 8 more, really.

The team is being propelled by the spunk and youthful panache of Vernon Wells, Travis Hafner, and Youkilis. Yes, the Yanks' offensive stats are at the top of the AL, 3rd in MLB.

OPS: .756

Which is to be expected out of a lineup where your power hitting is coming from Piglet and Old Men River DHs. The Yankees, ladies and gentlemen. Lyle Overbay. Super Mario. Sneach. Cano. Bosh [sic].

It's like a mix tape you make a significant other in high school, where nothing belongs together, yet there was a method to the madness that may produce some harmonic fluidity.

But this is coming from someone who'd put Velvet Underground and Sinatra and Weezer in succession and not think twice about it.

And if I wasn't having a hard enough time already making sense of who I'm seeing play, tomorrow everyone will be wearing #42. This confuses the hell out of me every. single. time. Significantly more than it should.

(And to say nothing of the fact that I don't even know which of them wins in a snowball fight.)

I'm watching these games with my head cocked, with this perpetual dumbfounded expression of "Huh. Look at that." Good or bad. Look at that.

And in the middle of everything, I'll get these excited email updates from yankees.com etc, like reminding me the hired guns still exist:

"DON'T WORRY!

Tex says he's going to consider picking up a batting glove first week in May!

Granderson makes first steps towards cleats, predicts early June shoe tie!

Jeter says hi!"

Then a requisite follow-up mass email blast like, "Btw...Arod. What's up with that guy, right??"

So that's what I got. I mean, for tonight anyway. Interleague play starts against the D-backs, and I want to see something good happen with Nova. If I can pick him out of the scores of #42s running around all over the place.

Ok, irish exiting out of this post. Sort of. Til tomorrow night..!

Esse bonum. Incumbe. Facere rectum.

Game 2 (April 3, Red Socks @ NYY): These games are weird

2013-04-04T13:56:00.002-04:00

Loss.

So they lost again. Harumph.

It was nice to watch a game at home, though. In the silver lining world. Go home. Have a drink. Turn on YES. And then delight in the ridiculous pre-game catch phrases "they" attach to the pitchers. Who comes up with these things? What do they mean?

Not that intuitive.

Yankee Panky?

Press the reset button?

Sometimes I don't even think the announcers have any idea how they're supposed to speak to these bullets.

It is sort of like when I'm writing a detail aid and I try to do the sneaky copywriter thing of streamlining copy, with the argument that "Well, there's always going to be a sales rep attached to this, so can't the sales rep just speak to the bullet points, instead of having to spell out what every thing means??"

No. No, you cannot. And now I know why. Because no one knows how to speak to abstract phrases that don't mean anything. Understood. Point taken.

You know what? I was supposed to drink Hi-C yesterday, and I didn't. I even had the opportunity to, when I went to Subway, and I stood in front of the soda dispensing machine for so long going back and forth between Hi-C and Nestea and Sprite, that I think the Subway employees were starting to think I was in some kind of a trance. Seriously. I looked over to them at one point, as if to give them a silent plea of help. Help me make this choice.

And they looked at me with some hybrid expression of fear and bemusement. A look to which I've grown well accustomed. Yeah, I don't know why they're not lining up at the door for me, either.

Anyways, the Yankees lost. Again. No punch again. Here's what I got:

I must have seen Youk bat a bajillion times in my day, but I guess it's just now that he is on the Yankees that I'm wondering the etymology, so to speak, of his stance. Where did it come from? In Little League, did his coach say, "No, no, NO. Like this, Kev. Watch me do it. It's important to make sure the head of the bat resembles a scorpion's tale. That's what's most important." He went 2 for 4 though, so maybe we should all accept this key lesson about arthropods and baseball.

This right here is what made the game weird: Youk went 2 for 4, Vernon Wells- 3 for 4, Nunez- 2 for 3. Only other hit was Pronk. Those people comprised the Yankees' offense for yesterday. WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? If ever there was more concrete support for that whole Seinfeld laundry tenet, it's that.

Oh yeah, and Pronk had a ding. I hate calling homeruns "dings," but I do like how it sounds to say Pronk had a ding. Like I'm speaking "cartoon."

Alacazam!

I also don't like the term ding because it falls into my despised list of words that sound like they should mean the opposite of what they actually do:
Ameliorate
Puissant
Pulchritude
(For starters)

Speaking of starters, poor Kuroda got drilled in the hand. And then was forced to stay in the game for reasons unbeknownst to the layman. Then he starting hitting batters, and I kind of wanted both benches to get warned, just because it would have been funny. (You know if it was ANY other pitcher other than this guy, they benches would have been warned. Except, going back to that whole laundry thing, is there still a rivalry between 2 teams that don't know any single player they're facing?)

Bradley Jr, is one such player. He is the equivalent of the singer FOX focuses on in the early audition episodes of American Idol. And then this singer gets all the play and hype going into the actual competition. Bradly Jr, to be sure, could not be more junior. He could TRY, but he would not be successful. His jersey should 100% be revised to say Bradley Fetus. Because that is the only appropriate way to name someone who looks like this.

Sad cat.

My cat was just as confused as I was regarding the game, fyi.

I like how in the background, Boston's new manager is doing to the same thing to his ear as I do when I'm thinking. Which is obsessively pull at it.

Although, he is probably giving a signal. Whereas mine is what is called a "bad habit."

(Last week at a client meeting, we all had to go around and say a bad habit of ours. That was fun. I should've done what everyone else did and pick a habit that wasn't really that bad. Like in interviews when they say, "what's your biggest weakness" and you're supposed to say "working too hard!" Instead, I'll be like, "too distracted by youtube" or something.)

Chris Stewart made a ridic catch in Boston's dugout, which ultimately meant nothing beyond corroborating his pre-season contention that he's really good on defense, so that absolves him of offensive responsibilities. A few Boston players helped him up, "even after he made the catch, which was pretty classy of Boston!"

That's what the booth said. Ha. Yes, it was very classy of Boston, not to drag Stewart into the dugout and go fisticuffs on him after pouring hydrochloric acid on him. Good form, Socks. Good form.

In other, more stat-related news, the Socks saw 177 pitches yesterday. Sweet Christ. Aceves gave up some runs. The Yanks ALMOST came back, but not really. It wasn't like that game last year during the Fenway centennial when fans just sort of knew something bizarre was going to happen. This was more of a Blech. Nothing to see here, folks. type of game.

Oh Sneach almost got caught leading off first. Who are these people? Fortunately Nunez made an error, which was comforting. I'm not even kidding. It was like going home and having your mother berate you about not being married. It's annoying, but makes you feel like you're in familiar grounds of home.

Anyways, so let's drink some punch tonight, avoid the sweep, and remember the following:

Si vos es iens per infernum, custodi eundo.

Game 1 (April 1, Socks @ NYY): OPENING DAY!

2013-04-02T02:00:00.003-04:00

Sans punch.

But the sound wasn't sad! Why, this sound sounded glad! Every Who down in Who-ville, the tall and the small, Was singing! Without any presents at all! He HADN'T stopped Christmas from coming! IT CAME! Somehow or other, it came just the same!

YEAH, Baseball Season came just the same. (Pause, I guess.)

Spoken like a fan whose team just lost opening day? Yeah, I'll sign off on that. Semantics. Baseball came just the same. The Yankees may or may not have actually showed up, but the season did. So, there's a start!

Ahh, in the words of M&M:

Sorry about the delay. I got out of work at a normal hour, so this time we can blame the washer and dryer, because of that whole not-being-able-to-sit-down-and-start-something-if-I-know-I-have-to-get-up-in-30-minutes-to-put-clothes-in-dryer phenomenon.

So, the Yankees lost opening day. Tubbo.com got knocked around like a poodle on a surf board during Sandy. Lester acted like pre-KFCgate Lester, cleansed of the Beckett tumor. And the Yankees, the ones I recognized, lost to the Socks.

(I toyed with the idea of making a losing socks in the laundry/losing to the Socks corollary, but decided better of it. But it's also still very early in the post, so who knows.)

I watched the game in the big conference room on the big tv, which I like doing (if I have to) because I kind of get a kick out of the staccato parade of coworkers that wander in, the constellation of reactions to the scene that range from genuine interest ("score still 0-0?? Have to run to another meeting in a minute, maybe I can be late..") to bemused curiosity ("so...this is like...your big holiday?") to genuine disinterest leveraged into disingenuine Yankee taunts ("THE METS ARE PLAYING RIGHT NOW, TOO. THEY'RE ACTUALLY WINNING, CAN WE WATCH THEM INSTEAD. THE YANKEES SUCK.") to a project manager, who wants to throw hydochloric acid on any and all institutions and events that detract attention away from a job folder. I mean, as they should.

And then there's last year's Rookie of the Year, finance Matt, who became this year's Opening Day MVP, by virtue of the fact he was the most benign Mets fan as well as the soon-to-be party to my first game of the season. His first game at Yankee stadium. My first game back in GNH. April 12. Orioles. Left field bleachers. Also probably will mark the last day Matt will be in the "people who hang out with me on purpose" category.

Yeah, ok, but today. Here we go:

The Red Socks are being called a revamped line-up. This is what you call the winning side of a match-up where long-time fans recognize an embarrassing percentage of their roster.

The Yankees are being called "barely recognizable." In fairness, they seemed very recognizable since the last time I saw them play. I mean, pretty much in lock-step with what they trotted out for Game 4 ALCS, an 8-1 loss, where Round Boy was fat but not good. And the hitting wasn't even fat, it was just not good. Un-phat.

(I visited this college en route to Mardi Gras once, and they spelled Women with a y. Something about the word "men" being in it. Similarly, there's phat. I can't decide how I feel about this practice of changing spelling rules on the basis of connotation. I'll formulate a more robust opinion once I try my hand at it.)

Laundry time. Again. This is the 3rd time the dryer is being run. I'm starting to thing it's drying my clothes a la some Fred Flinstone-esque laundry apparatus. Like a brontosaurus sneezing or something?

The Yankees have also been called "punchless" which was a popular qualifier for them last year. They had no punches today. If you read all the coverage on the game, you'll find that the off-season has really cultivated an interest in "painting the picture." I empathize, sort of. Like all these writers going off antibiotics and being allowed to drink again. For example:

The Red Sox scored three times against a mustachioed Joba Chamberlain.

Mustachioed. Yes.

Good work, Justin! Why are you mustachioed? It's like he got so fat (with an f) that the cells in his body were like, "WE HAVE NOWHERE ELSE TO GROW! WE'RE AT MAX CAPACITY!" and then the follicles said, "We're on it" in a Jimmy Chitwood deadpan.

Also, stop Tanyon Sturtzing the shit out of pitches, please.

Youkilis was cueballioed, in the sense he unmustachioed himself, because he's trying to fit in. Good move. He had a hit. Also, good.

Actually, let's look the box score.

Most of the punchless Yankees had hits.

Nunez didn't, because he never does what he is supposed to do. Usually that comes in the form of errors, but today he brought out the special silverware for opening day and just went hitless instead.

Vernon Wells was without punch because he's aboutn 93 years old.

Ben Fransisco blanked but I have literally NO idea who the hell this guy is.

Lyle Overbay also nothing. Seriously. That wasn't a joke, Lyle Overbay was actually signed. I honestly thought that was a rumor that was going to be dismantled on snopes.com.

Super Mario had our only ribbies.

And the Red Socks beat the Yankees. They left 13 men on base, Yanks left 9. Wasn't that impressive a game, outside of Lester being decent. I guess. The bad guys' ribbies came from Iglesias, Victorino, Pedroia, Ellsbury, and Bradley Jr. How pissed is Pedroia right now that there's some Endy Chavez version of him stealing his thunder?

Not as pissed as Cano is that couldn't Kobe Bryant the team into a win with a "Aight, lemme take care of shit, just give me the ball and get out of my way" swing of the bat.

Welcome back, baseball!

In the interest of illusive corollaries, I'm drinking nothing but Hi-C tomorrow. You understand.

Hey, and for the record, I'd like to establish myself firmly in the position of the following:

In Yankees erit terminus sursum in summo. Suae quisque indiget ut statim obturatio fatigo et ens negativum.