Leading into tonite's game . . .

If the short (so far) Yankee season were a game of Blackjack, you'd describe it as a "choppy shoe."

If you've ever played Blackjack in a casino, you know what I mean. The "shoe" is the box of six decks uses to thwart amateur card counters. (Professionals, of course--say, the MIT crowd--would laugh at such a safeguard.) For reasons having a little to do with the way cards are gathered up after a hand, a little to do with the manual shuffle still used by many casinos, and in part because God Hates Them That Make a Plan, tables run hot and cold about 75 percent of the time: play smart, you win, win four hands in a row, lose five, win three, etc., all the while knowing about the 1.5% house advantage that, over time, will grind you down if you stick to the Basic Strategy (those laminated cards people flash in Lake Charles but are forbidden at most Vegas tables).

The phenomenon of the streaky shoe is why so many Blackjack players go broke in ninety minutes: the engage at an intuitive strategy called "chasing the loss": doubling up after a loss. Players chasing their losses is why Steve Wynn builds 2000-room hotels reaching up into the clouds; start with a five-dollar loss, chase it eight times, and you're laying down a thousand dollar bet.

So (to complete the metaphor) as counterintuitive as it may seem, don't chase the loss. Do the opposite. If you're losing, bet the minimum. If you're on a roll, put as much money on the table as you can. Go up three bets, double. Go up six bets, quadruple. Push a hot streak, 'cause, baby, they don't happen very often.

The exception (and they happen rarely) is the choppy shoe. Win one, lose one. Good pitching, bad pitching. Hitting, no hitting. Bullpen, no bullpen. No rhythmn, no rhyme. No one (Guidy in '78, Pettitte in '96, Wells in '98) to grab onto, not yet.

Choppy shoe.