Mushnick, making sense

Every so often, of the 162 regular-season games your favorite team plays, maybe 20 will hit you just so, with a mixture of rivalry, anticipation, and cleared-away time. A game you look forward to all day just a bit more than the others. A game that asks that you work around nothing and allows you to ignore everything.

Sunday night was such a game.

Yankees-Red Sox. Pettitte-Beckett. Chance for the sweep. Yanks peaking at just the right moment.

Astro-Girl added to the ambience with her superb grilled salmon, supplemented with a Greek salad, squash, and a choice, ice-cold bottle of Chardonnay, all designed to be placed on the table 'round the anthem.

Then, ten minutes before first pitch, it hit me. No, really, I entered the kitchen feeling as if my horse had finished with a view of the field.

"Oh, man," I said, "I forgot. Sunday night ESPN."

"Oh," Astro-Girl said. "Right. Morgan."

If Mike Judge or Judd Apatow were to craft a film detailing one baseball announcer's preening sense of self, one announcer's ability to simply rip up and destroy what we were watching, they could scarcely do worse than last Sunday.

After the game I talked the whole grevious affair over with Sun Devil Joe. But, really--and SDJ saw this coming--who could improve on Phil Mushnick? His comments are reprinted here in full:

SINCE 2003, when this column began to include an e-mail address, two regularly scheduled live game telecasts have provoked the most infuriated feedback: ESPN's Monday Night Football and ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball.

But Sunday's Red Sox-Yankees broke the data bank.

By now, you and ESPN know the gripes: The telecasts are drowned in visual and verbal overload. They often become ESPN/ABC infomercials, designed to have you watch the next thing, not this one. The productions assault and insult all the good senses.

But ESPN long ago determined that it doesn't care what anyone writes or what you think. It doesn't care that we watch events on ESPN only because we have to, not because we want to. As long as ESPN owns exclusive rights it can continue to make jerks of us all.

Sunday's Red Sox-Yanks was so junked up with every-pitch over-analysis, banal conversation, Joe Morgan's short-story-made-long nonsense, mindless graphics and an endless, forget-the-game interview with Luis Tiant -- ESPN had a documentary about him the next night -- that my e-mail box, by Monday afternoon, three times had maxed out. I couldn't clear space fast enough. Impossible to gauge exactly how many were sent, at least 200 made it through.

And among those read, all complained that ESPN had destroyed another telecast that viewers were eager to watch.

Perhaps most remarkable is that scores of these missives were sent during the game, meaning ESPN so aggravated viewers that many couldn't contain themselves; on a Sunday night they arose and steamed to their computers.

One missive suggested that Sunday's telecast be shown to terrorism suspects -- a means to force them to talk -- before the next Geneva Convention could act. Others needed to rhetorically ask how America's sports network could continue to vandalize America's most attractive games. And several recognized that MLB doesn't care, as long as ESPN's checks clear.

One of the more sedate e-mails (sent at 8:53, during the game) was from Fred Rosen, Boynton Beach, Fla. He acknowledged that he was left to choose between listening to Morgan or John Sterling -- "What a choice!" -- but admitted to being fascinated by ESPN's non-stop stat graphics. He accurately noted two in particular:

"I am now aware that after a 2-1 count Alex Rodriguez bats .300. However, his average dips to .174 when the count is 3-1. Therefore, it should be a no-brainer that managers instruct their pitchers to throw a ball when the count is 2-1."

Meanwhile, the "ESPN Wrecks Red Sox-Yanks" missives are still stacked up. Lot of good they'll do either of us. "SportsCenter is next! SportsCenter is next! SportsCenter is next! . . ."

I only conclude with:

1. In over forty years of living in this country, Luis Tiant has steadfastly refused to learn how to speak understandable English. Neither here nor there. In twenty years of living in Houston (twenty years next week, actually) I've never learned how to speak Spanish. The point is: there was no excuse for having him in the booth, to answer every two-minute question with twenty seconds of mumble-grumble-mumble. Get and interpreter, interview the producer of the thing, whatever.

2. What if, during the half-hour or so of Miller's & Co.'s interview, a fantastic play had taken place? "Oh, uh, A-Rod hits a three-run shot to, um, Monument Park. Now, Luis, back to when you pitched to Joe in Game Four . . ."

3. SDJ called it: An infomercial. A butchery of what's on to show us what's on next. Aeey.

Yanks take 1st 2

Ahhhh--always the exciting games that end past my bedtime.

Last night: Sabathia seeming almost amused by the Mariners, Godzirra smacks around Seattle pitching.

Tonight: Pettitte get another win ripped from his left hand, Tex comes through. Hughes.

Peace and love, peace and love.

Joba, AJ, CC, Lefty: another four wins in a row, however obtained.

Now Robby-Boy can get ready for Mitre tomorrow.

Yankees 4, Jays 3 (F/11)

Missed it--out to dinner with a small sliver of in-laws. Too bad.

Yanks 7, Jays 5

A few thoughts:

1. A more important win than one might think, at first glance. It is time, contractually, for Joel Sherman and Bill Madden and Lupica and all the others to write their obligatory The Red Sox Aren't Going Away pieces. A 6 1/2 lead can become 4 1/2 in two days. And, really, none of this "Every time the Yankees have been ahead blahdeeblahh after blahdeeblah games they've never blahdeeblah." The Sox comeback from 3-0 in 2004 made all the "it never happened" crap disappear. SunDevil Joe, Robbie-Boy: if we've learned nothing in this life we've learned this: nothing ever happens until it happens.

2. Three things win in October: starting pitching, bullpen, bench. Joba has been bailed out twice. Time for our Game 3 playoff starter to show his chops.

Postscript

A few words from Robbie-Boy.

First, from last night:

Yanks get the sweep, stellar starting pitching. Yankee clutch hitting after the 7th inning starting to remind me of the late 90's.

As we go forward two questions. Do we want lefty Phil Coke facing right handed power hitters late in the game? And is Yanks Skipper Girardi using Phil Hughes correctly?

Answers: Maybe and maybe. My question for SG would have been: did he intend on leaving Hughes out last night no matter what, barring a replay of Friday.

Today:

I've said it before I'll say it again-Mitre is NOT good enough to be the Yankees 5th starter. Enough already!!!

Again, maybe. It's hard to make the case Acevedo isn't the better option. It appears SG wants Acevedo in the pen, where--besides Acevedo, and despite recent success--one only has confidence, real confidence, in Hughes and Mo.

And this may put the cart before the horse, but should the Yankees make the playoffs the rotation becomes four-man, and at this point you'd take CC, AJ, Joba and Pettitte over anyone, top to bottom, and Acevedo may need the seasoning for getting out of those 6-7 inning jams.

Well, crap

So: this is what happens.

The biggest Yankee win in almost three years, maybe since the 5-game Massacre II of 2006, and a virus assaults my laptop. So I hopped on Astro-Girl's manual tonight, all set to . . .

Oh, never mind. Tony Doubleday tells us there are three good chances to get at a starting pitcher: the first inning, when he looks to settle in; around the fifth, when he has thrown to probably fifteen-twenty batters; and the seventh, when fatigue becomes a serious issue.

Tonight, the Yankees had the first, and no chance after that, having to deal with a bucket brigade of relievers. Who could blame the Jays? The Yankees have such an explosive line-up that any second-tier team will gladly burn through its bullpen for a chance at a single win, and damn tomorrow. The Yanks duck Halladay this time round, something that last happened when Paul Molitor was their DH.

A slight lead on the Yankees coming off four (in their unique ways, each) emotional wins in a row, with the Yankee rotation about to flip back to Joba and AJ--well, who could blame Gaston, or whoever took over for him?

When Jeff Torborg managed the dreadful Indians in the mid- to late-seventies, Sparky Lyle complained he would get two pitchers up in the pen with a 2-0 lead in the second if the Yankee lead-off man reached base. This exaggerates, but not by much.

But about tonight's first inning.

Jeter has already homered. Swisher on. Tex nails a single to left.

Two on, nobody out, already 1-0. Jay pitcher (is he the son of the Duke basketball coach?) is back on his heels. The Stadium is rocking as much as it can on a Monday when the Sox left town yesterday.

Then, A-Rod, double play.

Well . . . A-Rod's come through too many times lately to jump on him.

And the sloppiness that followed could have been avoided.

And Joe West is a terrible umpire.

But what is comes down to is: they lost the game in the middle innings by not winning in the first.

Yankees 5, Red Sox 0

So now the work is done. Tomorrow, for everyone but the Yankees themselves, is gravy.

Funny thing (1): for the first time simply typing down some reflections of last night game round 12:30 Houston time, something funnny happened: I fell asleep. I have a big overstuffed and a TV tray I use at night, and I was getting to JD Drew's great catch in the 14th, when . . . I fell asleep.

So, today, incredibly, Houston Fox gets Yankees-Red Sox instead of Rangers-Angels, 'cause, you know, Texas is Texas right?

And running aainst the game were our ticklets to Astros-Brewers. Sabathia, at 12 up, 12 down, introdsuced a moral quandary. Watch the perfect game on TV or run to the ballpark? Herein I determined the hierarchy:

1. Perfect game on TV: stay and watch no matter what. Blow off everything. Be late with your tickets if you want.

2. No-hitter: If going to another game, race to the stadium and find a screen in a convenient or pillar. Watch this game in preference to the game you paid for.

3. Shut-out: go to your other game. Keep track on the scoreboard.

CC getting better.

Yankees 2, Red Sox 0 (15)

So . . . wow.

But still, one of thoss games you knew, just knew, the home team would break through.

(They always do, except when they don't.)

The pitching cards fell New York's way, the last Red Sox pitcher looked like the kid IT sends over to fix your computer, and even the close calls in the 14th hat went against the Yankees (both Hinske and Mely hit scalding long drives with a speedster on second. Each time, the Yankee batsman raised their arms in triumph halfway down the first base line. Then each saw, one after the other, sees Drew's twisting, lunging catch, then a foul ball by inches.

No, I thought, this was still going to work. When A-Rod swung in the 15th I shouted, "That's it!" as I jumped in the air. And so it was.

Yankees 13, Red Sox 6

What can you say except: The one they needed.

No matter what else happens this weekend, they will wake up next Monday in first place.

This, with Josh Beckett going tomorrow and a rested Papelbon in the bullpen.

Pretty much over when Melky took Smoltz deep.

Like so many Yankee games lately: messy, crazy, a little bit exasperating. But okay. So here we go.

Yankees 5, Jays 3

Something tells me beating Roy Halladay in August is somewhat akin to getting par on number 12 on Sunday at Augusta.

You know what I'm talking about. Sunday at the Master's, at The Greatest Par Three Hole On Earth, the flag is back and to the right.

Everyone in contention knows how to play No. 12.

You hit what passes for the fat part of the green. You two-putt for par. You pick up your ball and run to No. 13.

I followed tonight's game courtesy of the manual scoreboard at Minute Maid. 2-1 against Halladay for the longest time.

Then 4-1. Then 4-3. Then 5-3 with Rivera warming up.

Well, well played, Pettitte. A win over Halladay, just good enough to beat him.

And Tex.

Now we run toward tomorrow.

Hey, great title for a Lifetime movie: "Run Toward Tomorrow."

Do what you need to do and run toward tomorrow.

Yanks salvage weekend

Again: not pretty. Buty after three miserable games against the White Sox, I'll take it.

Yankees 6, Rays 2

Tonight's game was a cold beer after a jog.

A slice of pepperoni pizza when you're starving.

Having a catch with a nephew.

Watching Joba blow through the Rays was like watching your little brother walk the graduation podium (and yes, I mean you, Robbie-Boy). All the thoughts of innings and starts and pitch counts and blah blah blah--come on. Time to take the training wheels off. This kid is for real, and outside of Tim Lincecum (and even then it's a close call) I wouldn't trade him straight-up for any pitcher in baseball. Not Halladay. Not Beckett. Not Santana.

I understand the Yankees' wish to hoard their best home-grown prospect since Pettitte and Rivera both broke out in '95. (Ted Lilly had to make his bones elsewhere, which was probably best for all concerned.) And the Yankees have the luxury only a few teams--say, the Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, and Dodgers--have: they can pay market value for every one of their home-grown stars. But . . . come on. Turn him loose.

Rays 6, Yankees 2

CC, c'mon.

Still quiet on the Roy Halladay front. What is funny, and it just occurred to me, is that my two favorite teams, the Yankees and Astros, might meet their demise this season due to two players named Halladay and Holliday (St. Louis, Matt).

Yankees 11, Rays 4

Well, that was fun. And it's a good thing Burnett is looking so good, 'cause CC, Burnett and Joba at their best might be what the Yankees need. Joel Sherman in the Post:

1. The Blue Jays are listening to whichever teams call, but feel the best matches are with the Phillies and Red Sox. All things being equal, Toronto would prefer to ship Halladay out of the division, but if the Red Sox come up with the right combination of players the Jays would do a deal with Boston. Toronto is prioritizing a pitcher with a high ceiling as key to the deal so Clay Buchholz almost certainly would have to be a component.


2. The Jays also believe that the Yankees have the pieces to make a deal, but the YanksNew York Yankees have not been aggressive at all in an attempt to consummate a trade. That is probably because the Jays would have to have Phil HughesPhil Hughes , and that appears a deal breaker for the Yanks. But Toronto also is infatuated with Double-A catcher Jesus Montero, and like outfielder Austin Jackson, catcher Austin Romine and lefty starter Jeremy Bleich. The Yanks are one of about a dozen teams that have inquired on Scott Downs.

Sorry to ruin your day, Robbie-Boy, but you'll agree: Hughes needs to stay. You don't trade Joba for Halladay, not with the age difference. And the Jays aren't interested in Kennedy.

On another note: If Omar Minaya and Robert Gibbs traded jobs, would anyone notice?

Yankees 7, A's 5

It sure wasn't pretty . . .

Not when the double-play grounder glanced off the mound and eluded Cano in the first . . .

Not when Mitre messed up a sure double-play grounder, which (ahem) echoed another easy double play ball oh, some eight years ago . . .

When Cano, after clearing the bases with a three-run triple, overslid third base by so much he finally ground to a halt, flat on his back, in the coach's box . . .

Hughes offered up some uncommon thrills and chills in the eighth, before Rivera trotted out to restore order . . .

And we ended the day told that Anaheim had leap-frogged the Dodgers and joined Philly as the front-runners in the Roy Halladay sweepstakes . . .

. . . because oh, boy, if A) Anaheim lands Halladay and B) these Yanks don't win their division, New York can look forward to two games (one and five in the ALDS) against the Yankee-Killer of this generation pitching for the Yankee Killers of this decade--all for the privilege, probably, of playing the Yankee Killers of this season, potentially four times at Fenway.

That is, if both the Rays and Sox don't both race past them . . .

In the ten really good games past the All-Star game, the Yankees did precisely what they needed, maybe one win more than necessary, against such dreadful competition. 8-2 we would have taken, 7-3 would have been barely tolerable. 9-1 helps, but here come the Rays.

Yankees 12, A's 9

Or, as the rest of the world thinks of it: Yanks 8, A's 3; A's 6, Yanks 4

These Friday night/Saturday-essentially-morning games seem to run together, especially if you're being feted at your in-laws Friday night and have to teach all Saturday morning, after which you find out it's 6-1 A's in the seventh.

The FOX blackout was therefore moot.

Oh well.

Joba and Pettitte are moving in opposite directions at an accelerated rate.

And, by all accounts, Girardi stuck with Pettitte too long today. But would Acevedo been any better? (Um, apparently not.)

If the Red Sox catch the Yankees (or, more to the point, if the Red Sex beat the Yankees in the playoffs), it'll be in the sixth and seventh. "Gettin' to Mo" has been replaced by, at the moment, "Gettin' to Phil," but you wonder, thinking of yesterday's and today's pitchers, how much treat Lefty has on the tire and where the outer edge exists for starter Joba.

Once the playoffs start, the need for a fifth starter will become moot, of course, with CC set to go in games one and five. But still: Joba. Pettitte.

Oh, and, before we think about the playoffs: Thirteen games remain against the Angels and Red Sox.

Yankees 6, A's 3

Two observations.

One. When the Yankees went down 3-0, Astro-Girl, luxuriating in an Astros off-day following a sweep over the Cardinals capped off by a thriller of a 4-3 ninth-inning comeback/walk-off, felt comfortable in saying, "Hey, CC will calm down. Relax."

Easy for her to say.

Correct, as well. I was reminded, strangely enough, of the 1972 Munich Olympics, of the 800-meter finals, where Dave Wottle, all limbs and hair and gold cap, trailed at the halfway point. I remember seeing Wottle trail the field, of crying out to my father, "He's in last!", and hearing my father say, all assurance, "Just watch."

I spent 10 years thinking my father was clairyorant. Then I spent 10 years thinking the event was on tape-delay, and he was pretending. Since then, I realized the event was at night in Germany, carried live, and that my dad had seen Wottle in the semis and knew about his final kick.

So tonight. 3-0 A's. "Relax," Astro-Girl says. "CC won't allow any more runs and the Yankees will score. Sit down."

So: Tex, two-run homer, and I basically knew it was over then.

But one other thing. For all they charge, the Yankees forced their fans to wait nearly three hours for the game to start?

Not to go Phil Mushnick, but have they no shame? Three hours they hold their most loyal fans hostage against a last-place team, selling beer and snacks at premium prices?

This will never be the subject of any collective bargaining agreement. The owners are happy to delay games as long as they please, once the tickets are sold. The players hate make-up games. Both leagues have rules in place: Until September, home teams call rain-outs, until the first pitch is thrown. Or they let the rain fall, and call it a delay.

What motivation ,did the Yankees have except the pecuniary?

I think of football, of the New York Giants.

A family that might have held four Giants season tickets since the fifties, since the Polo Grounds--through Yankee Stadium, the Yale Bowl, and Giants Stadium--was just recently told they needed to come up with eighty grand. Not for their tickets, for for the privilege of keeping the tickets the family might have held for a half-century.

Personal Seat Licenses.

And three-hour rain-outs.

Don't know, was just thinking of them both.

Yankees sweep

6-0 out of the break, two games in front. with Nick Swisher playing (for better or for worse) like he's still trying to make the team.

ALL of which I glean part by part, perched at club level to watch (to this point, hopefully) the game of the Astros' season. Astros 4, Cardnals 3: not just the score, not just the game that provided the sweep, but the sheer drama of the game. Ace v. Ace, Oswalt v. Carpenter, the type of match-up which so often ends in a disappointing 9-7 hitfest with both starters in street clothes by the sixth inning--but no, both Carp and the Wiz blew past the opposition, escaping trouble a copuple of times, but fighting to a 1-1 standstill through six.

Top seventh inning: infield hit, hit, hit, play at the plate where Pudge, at the plate, drops the ball in trying to apply the tag. 2-1, Cards. Sac fly, 3-1.

Bottom eighth, Carp out: Four hits, station to station, one Astro run. 3-2.

Bottom nine: 3-3, two outs, first and second. Tejada, single to left. 4-3.

Maybe ten percent of all baseball games hold your attention on every pitch, every play, every 3-1 count. Astros win, pull to within 1 game in the NL Central. Game of the year.

Two for two v. the Orioles

Driving through night rain out to Lake Charles (good God) thirteen summers ago, I heard the Yankees had swept the Orioles in Baltimore coming out of the All-Star break. For many Yankee fans, this was the point we realized these 1996 Yankees were for real, 10 games ahead and pulling away. (The series was so memorable it worked itself into the first episode of that fall's Seinfeld.) Beating the Orioles--and these are not the Orioles of Ripken, Moose, Murray, Brady and Zeile--is always a harfbinger of good times.

Mitre!

The secret to Joba's great game?

Why,four days in Nebraska, of course.

Ibid, for details consult yesterday's game

Yankees 2, Tigers 1. S: Rivera (26)

Yes, how sweep it is. And how nice to see Joba back. Those nine-day rests can sometimes help.

Yankees 2, Tigers 1

They tell me Sabathia is a great second-half pitcher.

Lupica makes sense (Stopped clocks, etc.)

Anytime Mike Lupica ventures outside New York sports, or the sports he takes time for (tennis, golf), he's in trouble. He sounds like a fool when he talks college football (read: when he memorizes the college football talking points his interns prepare for him) and he's an even bigger fool talking about politics (how's that Roger Clemens Presidential pardon working out?).

But set him loose in the five boroughs and he can make some serious sense.

Would the Yankees be better with Roy Halladay? Sure they would. Should they get him?

Different question.

Lupica chimes in:

There are as many rationales for getting Halladay, of course, as there are empty seats at the new Stadium, starting with the most basic rationale of all: They're the Yankees, they're supposed to buy guys like they're one of those European soccer teams, they're supposed to think big. But then they've been thinking big since Piazza's ball ended up in Bernie's glove.

We are constantly told that the Yankees have to be this aggressive with high-priced talent because they have to win or else. Or else what, exactly? People will stop coming to watch them? No one will watch them play on YES? Even without the World Series or even the second round of the playoffs the Yankees were selling four million tickets a year before they started charging obscene prices over at that Eighth Wonder of the World on the other side of 161st. . . .

A-Rod missed the first month and still the Yankees are only three behind Boston. Hughes only recently became the setup guy. Sabathia will be better the second half than he was the first. There ought to be enough talent in the room without having to bring in another Cy Young Award less than 100 games after bringing in the last one. Unless the story with the Yankees is never going to change.

Translation:

1) If there's a Johnny Mize or Country Slaughter out there, who can be have for the price of his salary and little more, by all means go get him (Barry Zito, anyone?). But selling off young talent (which the Blue Jays are sure to ask for) for veteran talent is what kept the Yankees out of the World Series for fifteen years (cf. Willie McGee, Fred McGriff, Doug Drabek, Jay Buhner, etc.).

2) For five straight years after winning the World Series in 2000, the Yankees played the game of, "This, to be sure, is the final piece of the puzzle." Supposedly, in order, Mike Mussina, Jason Giambi, Jeff Weaver (!), Alex Rodriguez, and Randy Johnson made the Yankees world-beaters, all while the farm system and any kind of youth movement suffered. Now the minors have produced, in the last three years, Melky, Cano, Hughes, Joba, Gardner, and Cervilli, with Kennedy no worse than an open question. Would anyone rather watch this team or go back to the 2005 squad, that joyless bunch of veterans whose lasting image was getting on a plane after Game Four of the Divisional Series to fly 3,000 miles for the privilege of getting ass-kicked by the Angels?

Would Halladay help? Sure he would. But I like this team. Cashman's best move may be, "I'll play these."

Yankees 5, Tigers 3

So, um, Hughes is the new Mo, circa 1996, and Zumaya, who so bedeviled the Yanks in the 2006 playoffs--I cancelled class to watch him burn through the heart of the order--is a regular old pitcher.

Hughes, who now adds a 97 mile-an-hour fastball to The Best Slow Curve Since Burt Blyleven (have I said this before?) has become someone, I hope, the Yankees value.

Roy Halladay? Maybe.

But the first two names the Jays will mention will be Melky and Joba.

The Yanks will say no.

Then: Melky, Hughes, and a prospect.

Yanks: No.

Jays: Melky and Hughes.

Yanks: (Hopefully) No.

Break it down for the Yanks:

CC, Burnett, Joba, Pettitte and Somebody. That's the Yankee rotation.

Somebody, Somebody, Hughes, and Mo. Bullpen.

The Astros went this way in 2005, and wound up in the World Series: These are our guys. No trades, no call-ups. The guys in this room are our team.

So, let's see.

The Lost Weekend, plus Mo

I didn't watch the Angels game on Sunday--were I still in Vegas, I would have laid a hundred bucks on the Angels--and I didn't enjoy the Home Run Derby, as it has ruined too many swings I care to remember (Bobby Abreu, Lance Berkman, et al).

So now, heading into Detroit, the Yankees have their starters rested, a playoff spot (as of today) in line, their 32 million-dollar player getting better.

Things twist about--but, oh, Lord, what a joy to see Rivera close out the All-Star game, continue with an All-Star ERA of 0.00, watch his cutter bedevil the National League.

In his career, Mo has had three great pitfalls: the homer by Alomar in '97, the thrills and chills in Game 7 in 2001, and the Dave Roberts drama in 2004. Three bad innings in a career that features a 0.77 postseason ERA.

Mariano Rivera transcends his Yankee teammates; he is one of the greatest 20 players in baseball history. Always good to be reminded.

The Lostg Weekend, p[l\\

Angels 14, Yankees 8

Some series you simply mourn over, awaiting their end.

In the seventies, playing the Red Sox in June was sort of like that. One simply waited for Yaz's three-run homer, or for Pudge's three-run triple off the top of the monster, or for Rice to fist the ball over Chambliss for another two-out run to score.

Just get the series over with, damnit.

Yeah, that's where we are with the Angels.

Angels 10, Yankees 6 (Breaks of the Game, cont.)

Ouch.

If the umpire gets the call at second right (Molina had the runner dead), and if the Angels don't follow bloop after bloop after bloop before every blast, if anyone managed to be on base when A-Rod hit his homer, and if A-Rod's throw didn't yank Tex off the bag just before Joba served up maybe the worst pitch of his career (three-run homer), and if Matsui had gotten just an eighth of an inch more bat on the ball with the bases loaded . . .

. . . and if Jeter hadn't made the sort of error he hadn't made probably since he patrolled the infield in the Kalamazoo Little League . . .

. . . no, better, if Jeter hadn't made the sort of drop that made Luis Castillo look like the second coming of Nellie Fox . . .

. . . right before another three-run homer . . .

If if if if if if if if. Roger Angell, meet Rudyard Kipling.

Now today, with the Yankees up 2-0, I'm assaulted, thanks to Fox, by the 67th meeting this season between the Cardinals and the notoriously underexposed Cubs.

'Cause, you know, what a Houston baseball fan shut in by the oppressive heat wants to see on TV is a mid-July game between the Astros' two most hated rivals.

What was it Kissinger said about the Iran-Iraq war?

Yanks sweep Twins, head to Anaheim (sound familiar?)

One can make the case that the true end of the Yankee dynasty was their dispirited, ugly 3-1 Divisional Playoff loss to the whatever-they-were Angels in the 2002 playoffs. This was the series where they lost Game 3 after leading 6-0 with a rested Mike Mussina on the mound. Worse yet, this was the fulcrum. Between 1996 and 2001, only two close calls went against the Yankees: Sandy Alomar's homer in the 1997 playoffs and Mo Rivera's errant would-have-been-a-double-play throw that pulled Jeter off the bag in . . . well, you remember.

Those two bad brekas seemed to turn into a dozen; one remembers, from that Game 4, Derek Jeter missing a home run two feet to the left of the foul pole, or Robin Ventura missing a three-run homer when his line drive hit the padding of the center field wall, instead of three feet horizontally to the left.

With the exception of the 2003 Championship Series with the Red Sox, think of Alex Gonzalez' home run against Jeff Weaver, over the precise portion of the outfield wall that was lower than all the rest, Bernie Williams' tying home run the following night, hit fifty feet longer than Alex's but to the deepest part of Dolphins' Stadium . . . then, the following year, Brian Roberts beating Posada's throw by a thousandth of a second . . . Tony Clark's line drive bounding into the Fenway Park bleachers, thus freezing the runner at third . . . Randy Johnson's left arm sputtering to a halt precisely when the Yankees acquired him . . . Joba's adventires in ectymology . . . then last year, season-ending injuries to three of the seven (at the time) most important Yankees. And so on.

Joel Sherman sets up the weekend:

Truly fascinating road trip for the Yanks as they are in the midst of playing the team they always beat (the Twins) and the team they never beat (the Angels). By winning Thursday, the Yanks swept all seven games against Minnesota this year. It is the third time since 2002 that the Yanks swept a season series against Minnesota. In that time, the Yanks have never lost a season series to the Twins and beat them twice in the playoffs.

The Yanks lead their season series against the Angels 2-1 going into this weekend. They have not won a season series from the Angels since 2003. Since 2004, they are 20-31 vs. the Angels and have lost to them twice in the playoffs in this decade.

The Yanks have seven games left this season vs. the Angels, so they cannot win the season series this weekend. But what a great symbol it would be for the Yanks to close the first half with another winning series against the team they can't beat.

Blue Jays 7, Yankees 6

Just well enough to lose.

Yankees 10, Blue Jays 8

I go away for a week . . .

. . . and hey, not bad.

Only question: Is it better to watch the Yankees win or the Mets stumble around?

Yeah, I know, but it's closer than you think.

By the way:

I had given up on tennis since the heydey of Borg-Connors-McEnroe. Two days ago, I sat and watched the last set of Andy vs. Andy.

Today, for the first time in 27 years, I sat with Astro-Girl and watched an entire men's tennis match from start to finish.

And my innocence in such matters precludes agreeing with John McEnroe's conclusion.

It just sounds right.

Such is the talent of Roger Federer that this happened:

Back to back, Andy Roddick played the two best matches of his life.

And came in second.

Yankees 9, Mets 1

Some quick thoughts (and I've waited months to type this) before I go catch a plane:

1. CC as Yankee is a work in progress. You play the whole season and look at the numbers.

2. Same is true for Brett Gardner, but if he's the real deal, is makes the Yankees (Brett, Melky, Jeter, Damon still) in the class of the fastest Yankee teams of my lifetime, right along side the Mickey Rivers-Willie Randolph-Roy White-Reggie Jackson teams of the late 70s. People forget: Jackson, in his 20s, could fly, so much so the A's had him in centerfield for awhile, even though he couldn't catch the ball.

The week that was

And I missed most of it. Oh well, back tomorrow.

It seems like I'm always writing, "Bring on the Mets."

Yankees 5, Marlins 1

Anyone notice Andy Pettitte--though he is surely the beneficiary of some titanic Yankee power--is 7-3 as we speak?

ERA is a better predictor of future wins and losses than wins and losses, if you get my drift. But a pitcher's career comes down to wins and losses. Tom Boswell: "They give you the ball. You win. You lose."

Nolan Ryan, for all his heat and strikeouts and no-hitters, was a .500 pitcher until the last half-dozen years of his career. Catfish Hunter, though he couldn't come within a dozen mph of where Ryan topped out, was, at his peak, a far better pitcher than Ryan ever was. Preacher Roe would give up three home runs in one start and win 4-3.

And Andy Pettitte is 7-3.

Oh, and this, from Old Testament scold Phil Muschnick, who I've been waiting a week to come out emphatically on the Castillo-Tex pop-up:

Friday, the Yanks beat the Mets not only because Luis Castillo failed to make a one-handed catch of a pop-up, but because Mark Teixeira busted it from first, scoring on the botch. One play told plenty about both teams' sense of fundamentals.

The next day, Castillo was praised for taking the heat, for standing up and facing the questions. OK, but if he hadn't regularly chosen to play minimalist ball from the day he became a Met, he wouldn't be in position to take such heat.

Yes, and yes. Lot a talk this sumkmer about the price of Yankee and Met tickets. The Yankees may be overpriced, but if the Mets charge anyone over five bucks for that easy-riding middle-of-the-pack squad that seems content, again, to loaf away a half-dozen wins and give up the division to the Phillies, they ought to be wearings masks.

In the late nineties, as the John Robinson II era seamlessly merged, after a fashion, with the Paul Hackett era, I simply gave up on the USC Trojans. There is always a built-in front-runner quality to rooting for USC--why deny it? Unless USC is contending for at least the Rose Bowl, there are simply too many better ways to spend an October Saturday in Southern California than driving into the ghetto to sit in an 80 year-old stadium originally constructed for track meets. The Dodgers are down at Chavez Ravine, the beach is at the end of I-10, and Disneyland is 25 miles from the 50 yard-line.

But my distaste--and eventual trial separation--from USC went deeper than the USC fan mentality. It wasn't that USC was bad. They were worse than bad; they were punk-ass. They were unwatchable. They had learned all the wrong lessons from Keyshawn Johnson, and it showed. They seemingly got up for one game a year, Notre Dame, and even then in their zeal they would kill themselves by piling up the personal fouls. Anything less than a top-tier (meaning Rose) Bowl and they barely showed up.

I'm not against watching overmatched, dogged teams. I'm the man who cheered for the 1991 Houston Astros, as they scratched and clawed their way to 65 wins, led by a youth core of Bagwell, Biggio, and Caminiti.

But if a team doesn't apply the fundamentals or try--if a team doesn't seem to care--why should I?

Lose two of three to the Nats

Too depressing to contemplate.

A deep breath

I mean, thank God the Yankees won on Sunday; otherwise Mike Lupica would be in full meltcwn mode about how the Yankees were "one Luis Castillo pop-up away from losing seven games in a row to their most hated rivals."

Lupica probably did write that. Until Sunday afternoon.

People need to calm down. The Yankees historically have always lost to the Sawx in May and June. Back in the days of NBC's Game of the Week, Yankee-Red Sox games were an event in my house: Ball Park Franks my father would cook on the grill, potato chips, TV trays and, in May and June, gloom. It was during one of the Games of the Week that Billy Martin attempted to start a fistfight with Reggie Jackson; only the intervention of two former catchers--Yogi Berra, and, more so, and to his everlasting credit, Elston Howard--kept the situation from becoming worse.

First, the Wild Card is coming from the East. That is a given. So after a terrible series against the Red Sox, the Yankees are in prime position.

Second, the free-agent signings are looking better every day. Everyone lambasts the Yankees for their spending. No one focuses on the fact that when they go shopping, then Yankees go to Tiffany's. Three of the first four players they ever signed (Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rich Gossage) are in the Hall of Fame. Now we have Tex, who we love more every day; and CC, who Girardi should have taken out after seven innings, and AJ, who pitched those shutout innings against a Mets team that does know how to hit.

Okay. Go get 'em.

Yankees 9, Mets 8

Tonight's game was a Little League manager's dream.

What did Coach always tell you?

Run hard. On every batted ball. We'll steal a few runs here and there. Not many. But enough to matter.

In the major leagues, the difference between those teams that run hard and those who don't is, maybe, three to five wins a year. Maybe.

By how many games have the Mets lost to the Phillies the past few years? Pencils down.

Not hustling cost the Mets Game 1 of the 2000 World Series, and maybe the Subway Series itself. These days, watching the Mets flounder amid a combination of not-caring and--please, people--fundamentally atrocious play is a Mets-hater's dream.

2000: Derek Jeter's frantic relay throw home vs. Timo Perez's loafing from second when Todd Zeile's home-run-that-wasn't bounces off the top of the Yankee Stadium left field wall.

2009: Luis Castillo's dropped popped fly vs. Mark Texeira's mad dash around the bases.

Both times, in a matter of seconds, the difference between the two teams is revealed.

Sox Sweep

Saw it coming.

Yankees 5, Rays 3

Bring on the Sox.

Yankees 4, Rays 3

Missed last night's game (another Wizard metldown at Minute Maid) which was just as well.

But you know what today's game was like?

Today's game was a cold beer after a long jog.

Today's game was doubling down on eleven and getting a face card.

Today's game was ordering a medium-rare steak and getting it just red enough in the middle. With a meaty Cabernet.

Today's game was slashing all around a golf course for seventeeen holes, then on 18--from 150 yards--clicking your five iron to send the ball to within six inches of the hole.

Today's game was laying down fours against a full house.

Today's game was waking up in the middle of the night, thinking it was time to get up, then seeing you still had three hours left of sleep.

Today's game was a two-hour afternoon nap that you've known for three days you've needed. And then taking it.

Today's game was seeing a column by Mark Steyn or Jay Nordlinger and saying to yourself, "I'm really going to enjoy the next ten minutes of my life."

Today's game was not perfect, just beautiful.

Yankees 8, Rangers 6

Messy but effective. But what about Wang?

Rangers 4, Yankees 2

One of those games, but can I get in on something?

John Sterling, and I mean, Jesus.

I am one of I don't know, maybe hundreds of thousands of Yankee fans who listened to the last season of Yankee radio broadcasts, in 1988, before Sterling and whoever was his stooge took over.

Hank Greenwald and Tommy Hutton. Those names ring a bell with anyone under 35?

In 1988, I was a graduate student in Binghamton, New York, trying to make enough money to last the summer, and was lucky enough to land a position as a security guard at Binghamton General Hospital. Mostly, my job entailed looking in on yobs the police had brought in, those too drunk or too high to yet withstand psych evaluation, those who would have to sleep it off before their interview and assignment.

I was being paid five bucks an hour to watch people sleep and read as much as I could inhale. The work was so low-stress I was able to work double shifts and put away enough money to patrol New England on the weekends: just enough money for gas, coffee, sandwiches, and the occasional beer.

And what kept me going? Through upstate New York, Vermont, and even Massachusetts, what kep me going was Greenwald and Hutton; Greenwald, bringing the gravel; and Tommy, the honey. Not once did their account of the game stand at odds with the filmed account of the game. Not once did their self-aggradizement cloud what was happening.

I mean, these guys were the real deal.

But this was the era of Steinbrenner. The Boss. The guy who said "You're fired!" back when Donald Trump was some millionaire's son trying to make it real estate.

Greenwald and Hutton? Not pro-Yankee enough. So after superbly capturing a not-so-bad pennant race (1988, look it up), these guys were let go.

And in came, in 1989, John Sterling.

Who, in the first three weeks of the 1989 season, called two home runs that weren't.

"It is high . . . it is long . . . . it is gone! . . . No it isn't!"

Great announcers, the Vin Sculleys and Ernie Harwells of the profession, get a home run call wrong maybe once a decade. Simply okay announcers (think of the Caray boys), maybe once every four or five years, though this may be too harsh.

Sterling? Once a month, minimum. Minimum!

A bill and a half for the stadium, they can't afford an announcer who can call a damn game?

More: Jeez.

Yankees 12, Rangers 3

Ohhhhh, those mid-week extra-inning games that so mess up the next day . . .

By which I mean the Astros over the Rockies in 11, Tejada's walk-off.

(Which does raise a point. Again, folks, let new Yankee Stadium settle. This happens with parks. When "Enron Field" opened in 2000, balls flew out for the first season. Last night, in 11 innings, the 'Stros and Rockies combined for five runs, one of them a solo homer. The last name of the Houston starter was Paulino.)

All night, to relieve the tension/boredom, I could look over and see the Yankees pile the runs on the mechanical scoreboard. Seven runs in one inning? Surely a Texiera slammy.

Um, no.

A baseball season is a game in macro-cosm. It is tempting to give everything, in retrospect, an air of inevitability. As the Astros trailed for six of the first nine innings, not only piling up men left on base but men left on base from insane situations, everybody was on the same page: They're blowing it. First inning, first and third, nobody out, with Pence, then Lee, then Puma due up. result: Zero runs. That sort of thing.

In the end, though, you'd say that though the Astros had squandered their opportunities the Rockies had let them hang around. Well, I saw it coming, dummy.

The game of "I knew it right then" is easy to play, so long as you play it after the final score.

I'm saying this because should the Yankees have a successful season (and at this moment nothing less than the World Series would define "success") this will be one of the games we look back on, when the team really started to come together.

This bring us back to Tex. Like the O'Neill/Tino/Scottie bunch who came over to the Yankees in the mid-nineties, a Yankee fan finds out about a new player a day, a game, an at-bat at the time. I had known something about Tex from watching him play maybe ten games a year. Hit, field, power, average--not much else.

When I got a look at him in pinstripes I (along with five million others, I'll wager), took him in. Heighth, build, facial expression--I'll be honest, I put him in the Kyle Farnsworth/Lou Piniella School of Red-Ass.

Well, not so fast. With his military upbringing (didn't known that), his fanaticism for a sharp-looking uniform (didn't know that), and his own personal code of conduct (he has, for instance, vowed never, ever to charge the mound), what we have here is a different cat than what I'd thought.

Tex was the catalyst for last night's big inning. But, as everyone not at the Astros' game knew, not the way you might have thought.

There's a little Pudge Fisk in this guy, a sense of how the game should be played. Right way, wrong way. (Pudge, you may recall, once screamed at Deion Sanders for not running out a pop-up . . . and this was when Sanders was playing for the opposing team, for God's sake.)

Asked about Padilla's headhunting, Texiera gave an answer that revealed something about him: his concern was not merely the danger aspect of a beanball, but how antithetical it is to the best notions of the game. He objected to the way Padilla played when they were teammates, and not just because Padilla's style made his better-hitting teammates (including, of course, Texiera) vulnerable. Anyone who has watched or played baseball knows the line between protecting the plate and attempting to injure someone--it's subtle, but it's there. And Texiera knows it, and suspects Padilla does, too.

So Padilla did what he did, twice, and Texiera did what he did, taking out the shortstop on a rough slide. A double-play was averted, the Yanks scored seven runs in the inning, and down went the Rangers.

Does this portend great things?

Since real life isn't fiction, we will only know in retrospect.

Last night at Minute Maid, so many fans had given up in the seventh, eighth, and ninth (they'd seen this story play out too many times already this season), only a few thousand remained to the end. I thought they were going to ask Astro-Girl and me to hit the lights and lock up when we left. Instead I was able to high-five an usher as we left and shout those magical five words: "Had 'em all the way."

Yankees 5, Indians 2

Soime housecleaning.

Sun Devil Joe writes:

Regarding Gardner's baserunning blunder, I'm not sure that Giradi threw him under the bus as I think Gardner was the first to talk about it. He also admitted to misjudging Asdrubal Cabrera's leadoff fly ball to center in the fifth inning. What should have been the first out turned into a double and a cheap run that extended the Indians' lead to 4-0. Welcome back Melky.

Well, okay, and yes. And:

I'm the one who asked about Ian Kennedy. He is on the roster of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees but on the DL. Did you know he is a Trojan?

To the last, no. Strange as it may seem, as dominant as USC baseball has been over the years, during the McKay/Robinson I/Carroll years it has run a poor fifth to USC's four major sports:

1. Football
2. Spring football
3. Football recruiting
4. Basketball

I bounced around looking for Kennedy's current stats; nothing so far, just that 8.17 staring at me from 2008.

Now, Gardner. Well, good for him. This piece of knowledge turns the whole deal on its right angles and may (to mix sports metaphors) help the Yanks gain yardage over all.

Now. As to tonight. Robby-Boy: Still Joba to the pen? Or Joba to 35 starts and 220 innings for the next 10 years?

Yeah, and Mo. Has anyone noticed something? Since the days of Alexander Cartwright or John McGraw or whomever, Mo has blown some high-profile game in April. Happens. This has lead to some scare backpage headline--"OH, MO!", or "SAY IT AIN'T SO, MO!"--written in the same 120-point-size typeface the Daily News or Post is saving for its front page, when it caen write "MARINES CAPTURE BIN LADEN"--something they'd probably run as "OUR BOYS BAG THE BUM."

So: high-profile game in April. Mo blows a save. So: It's over for Mo! Mo can't bring it! Mo is mortal!

This wouldn't be as funny as it is were it not for every other time Rivera comes to the mound, how Miller and Morgan (or whoever) rhapsodize about how Oh, God, pity the poor batters, and notice how he's harder on right-handers.

Rivera is the greatest closer ever, and it's not even close. (He surpassed Eck and Sutter a long time ago, sorry, and Goose, and Hoffman was never close.) Not about to fall off a cliff. Not perfect. Everybody calm down.

Indians 5, Yankees 4

One of those, "Yeah, saw it coming, even when they tied it up" games.

The downside of winning so many cliffhangers is that, eventually, your first line of relievers is going to exhaust itself. Happens all the time, happened today.

Thoughts:

1. For Hughes, again, two forward, one back. Meanwhile, Wang, in three scoreless relief innings, has cut his era more than half from its apex! (To sixteen-something.) So: whaddya do? Watch and learn? Right now, about a dozen Yankees couldn't play better in their dreams, from Tex on down. They're in first, and there's about a ninety percent chance the Wild Card comes from the East. Does Girardi allow himself the luxury of forcing Wang to play himself back into the rotation? Does he sit back and observe, and wait for Phil Hughes to become Phil Hughes?

2. Robby-Boy is pushing hard for Joba in the pen. Two thoughts: 1. If you do it now, do it forever, and with the intention of installing him as closer eventually. 2. Are we looking at a rotation of CC, Burnett, Pettitte, Wang and Hughes, in that case? 3. I forget who asked the question, but where in the world is Ian Kennedy. Yeah, yeah, that's what the internet is for. I'll find out myself.

Joba back to set-up? I disagree, but not vehemently.

3. Of course we really knew when it was over. Posada's DP grounder in the ninth. Turns out Brett Gardner was given the "must steal" sign. Re Girardi:

Yankees manager Joe Girardi gave Brett Gardner at first base the steal sign with Posada up, but the rookie didn't go.

"It has been addressed," Girardi said.

So: Gardner gets his sign. He breaks for second, the shortstop breaks for the bag. Tapper to second, Gardner comes in safe, Posada out at first, go-ahead run scores from third, and Gardner is on second, ready to score on a base hit.

In any case, in this scenario, up comes Mo and out go the Indians.

Well, of course we know that.

Funny, though. Did Girardi throw the kid under the bus? Sounds like he did. How very un-Torre of him.

14 of 17 and counting

At the quarter-pole, it is time to ask ourselves:

Are these guys really this good?

CC, Burnett, Tex, Melky/Gardner, Cano, Joba.

Jeter in the middle of rallies. A-Rod, back in the groove--with Manny as his new best friend and Selena Roberts, in her odd way, as his second-best.

Yankee 11, Rangers 1

Astro-Girl pressed hard for a jaunt north to Arlington when the Yankees came around, and I toyed with the idea before deciding my compact schedule couldn't permit it.

And this would have been the game I saw. Damn.

Should have listened to the missus.

More than A-Rod's hits, more than Tex and all his doings, the main story was Phil Hughes. Every so often, on your favorite baseball team, there's some kid coming out of the minors you just badly want to see do well. Al Leiter was that way with me in 1988, and he did make good, though with the Mets and a decade later. Lance Berkman, and more recently, Hunter Pence with the Astros.

When Pence showed up at Spring Training two years ago, then proceeded to hit something like .460 with a dozen home runs, throw out guys from center and run the bases like a Little Leaguer, it was impossible not to like him. Then, it took one month of playing in houston for Pence to go from, "Hey, this kid can play," to "Damn, they could build a line up around this guy." Now, unless Pence's batting average falls off a cliff, Pence should go to the All-Star game whether Tejada is voted as a starter or not.

And now Hughes, with that sweet slow breaking ball (did I mention--the best I've seen since Bert Blyleven's?). Hughes is starting to tantalize us the way Leiter did two decades ago: a few good starts, injury, bad start, good start, etc.

I want

Roger Maris belongs in the Hall of Fame

Call this my new crusade. In the wake of steroids, the case becomes more compelling. More to follow

More housecleaning

" I confess. This past Sunday night I betrayed Howie Rose, something I knew was risky and wrong, when I chose to both watch and listen to ESPN's coverage of Mets-Giants.

Why I thought that ESPN, instead of smothering another game with verbal and video excess, would let this one breathe, I can't explain. But it was, of course, a mistake.

To lighten the load of both the Yankees' loss today and the fact of my post being zapped by PC ( that geek I want to slap), I give you this, coutesy of SundDevil Joe:

A

microcosm from Sunday's telecast as to why ESPN's Sunday night baseball remains insufferable:

Shortstop Kevin Frandsen charged a bouncer, made a sweet grab on the half hop, then threw out Gary Sheffield. "Nice pickup," admired play-by-player Jon Miller. The play otherwise spoke for itself. But Joe Morgan was just getting started:

"Very nice play. Well, you have to time this perfectly because you're going to get that in-between hop, and the way you field the ball is that you catch it on the short hop or on the big hop. But this is the in-between hop. You can't get there in time to get the short hop, so he gets it on the in-between hop; you don't get it at its highest point. And a nice pick, there."

Good grief.

So now I'm trying to remember my brilliance. I remember thinking it odd Morgan didn't fit in either "my two consecutive MVP awards" or "The Big Red Machine" or "We never should have traded Tony Perez" into that paragraph.

(A time-out here. I mean, every time a line drive gets past a diving first baseman, it's not warrant to plunge into a ten-minute monologue about how Tony Perez was the anchor of the 70s Reds, and blah blah how the Dodgers blah blah and then after we got Seaver blah blah blah. I mean, some on, dude.)

Thing is, and this the tragedy, Morgan was a fantastic player. I'm about to turn 44, and in my lifetime, if one twins offense to defense with second basemen, three players are even in Morgan's area code: Ryne Sandberg, Jeff Kent, and Craig Biggio. Morgan and Sanberg are in the Hall of Fame, Biggio is headed there in 2013, and Kent should follow--never mind everyone hated him, teammates, press, fans.

Jeff Kent, red ass first-class, is a Hall-of-Famer. Sorry, Mitch Albom.

Nine is . . . fine? Divine?

Just auditioning for a job as the Post backpage headliner.

It's called the "wood," if you're interested. Something to do with how the old printing presses were manufactured.

As the Yankees sail above an ocean of joy on a pink cloud with a rainbow rainbow wrapped their spikes, a few matters of note:

1. The more 2004 recedes, the clearer it becomes that the fulcrum in the Yankee/Red Sox rivalry was the moment Dave Roberts led off first against Rivera. It's not just that since then, the red Sox have won two World Series, the Yankees not a single playoff series. The intriguing point here is how the teams are comprised, in contrast to the previous decade of their wars, 1995-2004. As we speak, the Yankees and Red Sox (and Blue Jays, more about anon) are essentially tied in the middle of May, when--in the old Sparky Anderson adage--the standings actually start to mean a damn. The Red Sox are in first without Manny, and with their best player--Papi--hitting so poorly it was said even rival players were starting to pity him. The Yankees' pitching is starting to come around; until it does, they seem content to win games 10-8. When a portion of the outfield bleachers is named after your most prominent singles hitter (Damon's Deck, anyone?), well, that's some power.

2. Up until the last few days, the big question has been: Are the Blue Jays For Real? Clearly, they couldn't play better in their dreams, and may play worse as the summer goes on. Something to watch.

Back, Back, Back (Headline NY Daily News)

"You're never as good as you look when you're winning, never as bad as you look when you're losing."

But this team looks pretty good. 11-4--which, strangely enough, was just about enough to put the Yankees on the positive side of the runs scored/runs against ledger (they're plus-2). runs in the aggregate, and this never is said enough, is the best determinant of future success. (What is worrisome, of course, is that Toronto sits at between plus-40 and plus-50).

And now--what--it's having fun? Swisher, the team DJ?

More here.

Yankees 7, Twins 6

Last week: Choppy shoe.

This week: Aces and faces.

Big Tex and A-Rod--not a bad start.

Yankees 6, Twins 4 (11)

Amazing, isn't it, how well things set up for A-Rod. He comes back in the middle of May, with the Yankees neither so far out in front nor too far back to make him irrelevant.

The whole Manny thing has become the new big story.

And that field of blue at Yankee Stadium, all those empty seats behind home plate reminding you of when TV cameras wouldn't track the apex of punts during Arizona Cardinal home games, the better to conceal that nobody was sitting in the upper deck at Sun Devil Stadium.

It all reminds you of what Bob Lemon said to Reggie when he showed up to replace Billy Martin in the tumult of 1978: "Just bash a bunch over the wall, Meat."

Yankees 5, Twins 4

A few more wins like that, boys . . .

Astro-Girl and I hosted her uncle and aunt for dinner tonight, and both our guests were subject to my agony early and late, and then eventually to my, "Yes, yes, yes!" when Melky stroked his two-run single to left in the bottom of the ninth.

My uncle-in-law, a hero of the Khmer Rouge death camps, a boat refugee, did his gracious best to follow the last few innings of a game he's never followed. When Melky hit home the winning runs, he asked, "So how much time is left?"

None, baby, I said. None. Game over.

"Then," he said, and lifted his glass of Chianti, "to Melky. To the Yankees. To victory. To Tammie and Joe."

No, Uncle: to you.

So how was your night?

Sometime in July, when the Yankees have an off night and all the networks are running episodes of my favorite shows for the third time, I'll remember last night. In descending order of caring, my interests were:

1. Bruins-'Canes (Seventh game, naturally)
2. Celtics-Magic (chance to advance in the playoffs)
3. Yankees-Blue Jays (because, come on)
4. Rockets-Lakers (Watching the Lakers wrestle with a team that, currently comprised, would not make the playoffs in the West in one of the pleasanter surprises of the spring)
5. What happened to Izzy on Grey's Anatomy (Astro-Girl's favorite show and, as Samuel L. Jackson said in Pulp Fiction, "My girlfriend's a vegetarian, which pretty much means I'm a vegetarian.")
6. If Meredith and McDreamy finally hooked up.

All this, while contending with:

1. A TV in the den stuck on a channel, it seems, that aired nothing but back-to-back showings of the David Hasselhoff made-for-TV movie Layover.

2. The Bruins game nowhere to be found. Last month, we seemed we had NESN. Now, not so much. And the Red Wings were hogging Versus. I mean, I'm old enough to remember friggin' Curt Gowdy call the Bruins-Rangers Cup Finals on NBC.

3. My lack of knowledge of about the last seven episodes of Gray's Anatomy. (Wait, is that "Grey" with an a or an e? I sort of got distracted since the chubby one went lesbo--and, as I recall, showed extreme skill.

So. What do we take away from last night?

A busted silverware drawer. When Paul Pierce missed two free throws in a row, essentially handing the game to the Magic and sending the series to game seven, I slammed the drawer so hard, the front popped out.

A potential Dan-and-Dave moment. I laughed out loud the first time I saw the Nike Kobe-and-LeBron-as-puppets commercial. Everyone outside greater Houston, Denver, Boston and Orlando seems to want . . . but more important, expect . . . a Cleveland-Laker final. But LA, as they're playing right now, can't beat Denver.

A chance to party like it's 1999. Yanks last night: strong starting pitching (enough to keep it close), timely hitting late, then Mo. Fellas, is that so hard?

A letdown on "Grey's Anatomy." The problem with series-leavings on network TV shows is that we've already been told via Entertainment Tonight and its various outlets. Mark Harmon on St. Elsewhere, Ed Marinaro on Hill Street Blues, Shelley Long on Cheers: the only suspense is how it's going to happen.

A sense of doom. Was it me, or were the Bruins, in overtime, just delaying the inevitable? Since the days of Brad Park and Rick Middleton, the onlt Bruins I could tell you about were Sergei Samsanov and Joe Thornton--both of whom the Bruins, sticking to their post-Park game plan, traded years ago. So there was Samsanov in a 'Canes uniform last night, in the middle of every rush toward the puck. The Bruins, at the end, were just hanging on.

Laughs. This Rocket team--missing both its first- and second-string center, its most talented player, sporting a center three inches shorter than Magic Johnson and a point guard (Aaron Brooks) who sounds like he plays quarterback for Oregon State--will not win the NBA championship. But after last night's victory against the Lakers, they will, in Houston, always be loved.

Celtics.

Celtics. You're kidding me.

Blue Jays 5, Yankees 1

Roy Halladay has owned the Yankees pretty much since he was pitching at Exhibition Park (he was the starter the night Dave Winfield offed the seagulll, right? And do you remember when Canadian authorities held up Winfield at the border on some animal rights' charges . . . I mean, a frickin' racoon with wings . . . and manager Billy Martin, in one of his more genial moods--famously defined by Stick Michael as more or less between Scotch number four and Scotch number seven--offered to mollify the Canucks: "We'll give the bird a funeral of honor. We'll have a day for it and bury it out in Monument Park next to the Babe.")

So, anyway, I spent all day waiting for Halladay the way a kid who partied on finals week waits for the dreaded envelope stamped GRADES ENCLOSED next to the address.

So, no surprise.

For the Rockets, not so much a surprise. What amusement I'm getting from the game is how Bakley is in all those T-Mobile commercials, and how at the end of every commercial they play the familiar four-note tinkle, which is precisely the tone that Astro-Girl keeps on her cell phone and refuses to change. So every time we come to the end of a T-Mobile commercial, the tone plays, and Astro-Girl comes charging into the living room.

"Where's my phone?" she asks.

"Commercial," I say. I mean, this happens every time.

So, getting back to the Yankee game, I cheered myself up by reading this item over at Deadspin, by Will Leitch, who writes a column for Sporting News (link:)

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, after writing a column making fun of the two New York baseball stadiums, I invited SN readers to email me their pitches as to why their stadium was unappreciated. I would "reward" the best pitch by buying them and me a ticket to a game this year. I received some impassioned pitches for Detroit, Arlington, Philadelphia, Toronto, even Tampa. But the contest was kind of rigged: I really wanted to go to Pittsburgh.

This was for two reasons. First, I've heard from numerous people that PNC Park is a gorgeous stadium where it's easy to procure great cheap seats because the Pirates play there. But mostly: I had slated May 12, today, as my travel day for the game, and the Cardinals happened to be in town that day. That's cheating, but whatever, it's the Cardinals.

Anyway, I was primed to proclaim the first person to email me about PNC Park the "winner," but, because the Pirates have no fans left, nobody sent me a thing. Then, they day before I had to make a decision, I received an email from some guy, whom we'll call "Robert." His note was not inspiring — "The reason that PNC Park is different is that it's the most beautiful stadium of any sport in the entire world and it's parking lot is located near our pre-Forbes stadium, Exposition Park" — but who cares? I had my Pittsburgh resident! I emailed him posthaste, told him he won and asked if he could make it May 12. "I'll buy the tickets," I told him. "We can just meet there. My hotel will just be a few blocks away. I'll buy the booze too!"

I was on deadline, so I began to worry when I didn't hear back from Robert for a few hours. I kept needling him, saying I needed him to confirm so I could file my next column and buy the plane tickets. I kept offering him plenty of booze in Pittsburgh: Nobody fails to act when booze is on the line, I figured. And nothing. So I finally gave up. I chose Minnesota, because I've always wanted to see the Metrodome, which is in its last season, and because I thought I would seriously try to talk the Twins into making me their general manager because that would be HILARIOUS. And then I didn't think that much more about it.

Three days later, I received an email from a woman named "Barbara." She informed me that she was the mother of ... Robert. Who was 13 years old. Who had told her that "the man from the magazine" had invited him to "meet" him at the Pirates game, that his hotel was right by the stadium, that he would buy his ticket and buy him lots of booze.

"He was a bit overwhelmed by your kind invite," she said, and I really, really hoped she'd seen the magazine, the column and the "contest." Because I had just invited her 13-year-old son to come meet a stranger with alcohol at a baseball game. With my hotel "just a quick walk away."

Man-Boy love humor. Dig it.

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.

Batting Practice

The Yanks are in their third generation of prospects since the Dark Ages of 1989-91. The kids of the early nineties who came of age under Stick Michaels (first Roberto Kelly (who was flipped for Paul O'Neill), then Bernie Williams, then in rapid succession the Jeter/Pettitte/Rivera/Posada crowd) gave way, in the early aughts, to a cast of characters either traded away (D'Angelo Jimenz, Alfonso Soriono, Ted Lilly, Nick Johnson) or proven a bust (that cast of The Gong Show paraded out as pitching prospects--one of them was named Randy, right? And Kei Igawa).

What has taken shape in the first month in the season is Generation Melky: Cabrera, Cano, Joba, Hughes, Gardner. Tex will be Tex, and Swisher Swisher, and CC will be fine once he'd told of this fabulous, new, innovative, secret pitch that goes by the code name "Strike One." AJ and Pettitte: not as good as their first few starts, not as bad as lately. Call it a wash. A-Rod will come back, serve himself up as the dinner special once around the division, and hit 30-35 home runs. Posada is healty and Jeter, yes, is Jeter.

But, for a team that supposedly went out and bought itself enough veterans to ensure at least a spot in the playoffs for the foreseeable future, it is startling to see how much is riding on the performance of a crop of youngsters at least as numerous as 1995 and 1996. Their importance to the club was never so evident as last night, and in fact for every game since the Fenway debacle.

In a few weeks, Cano has gone from, "Christ, can he please not hit .150 in April?" to a player in the middle of every rally. Cabrera has transformed himself from an airheaded defensive replacement for Johnny Damon to . . . well, we'll see. Hughes pitched a major-league game and actually didn't end up in the hospital. Joba is settling in as a number 3-4 starter.

Now, all of a sudden, the Yankees need all these guys.

But hey, some game last night, huh?

Yankees 10, Angels 9

Ladies and gentlemen, to celebrate May Day: the Best Game of the Year So Far.

And now I'm going to bed. More tomorrow.

Three in a row

Just about what they needed.

The turning point was Jeter's single-plus-Abreu's-error. Yes, the Angels came back to tie the game up, but there's always that point whwere you just know who will win, and that was it.

12-10.

Well, all right then

Yankees 11, Detroit 0.

More important even than the victory is the notion that Phil Hughes, (who, if the Yankees wore names on their jerseys, might as well be NOT JOHAN SANTANA), might, dear god, be the real thing.

What ESPN called a slider seemed like a slow curve. No problem: stay healthy, Phil.

Tigers 4, Yankees 2

So we turn to Earl Weaver, who once said, "May God, we're playing so bad that back-to-back home runs means one today and one tomorrow."

And: "Our best game last week was the rainout."

I mean, this game was against Justin Verlander--that's Chen Mieng Verlander until today, at 0-2 at 9.00 coming in. Good news for him, he got better against the Yankees.

If this were blackjack, the Yankees would grab their chips and run. But they gotta play tomorrow.

Sox Sweep

Knew it was coming. Knew it was coming. Knew . . .

Ah, what's the use? I used every excuse not to watch the game, all the way up to and including taking Astro-Girl's car to the gas station put air in a tire, then drive azll the way home, then out again.

Our newest car will tell you if a tire needs are. It won't tell you which tire, and since the equipment is so sensitive you'll never find out simply by kicking the vulcanized rubber. You need a tire gauge, which I took some time finding. Lovely use of a Sunday evening.

Come home, turn on Jeff Goldblum's debut on Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

Commercial.

Astro-Girl: "Don't you want to at least check out the score?" Turn on the small TV in the kitchen.

Commercial.

Left the TV on, set it to mute, walked back to the living room . . . then spent the rest of the evening peeking around the corner, like a kid on the lookout for a truant officer.

1-0 Yankees.

"Only a matter of time," I said.

1-1 Red Sox.

"Only a matter of time," I said.

Went away, came back. 4-1 Boston.

"Ballgame," I said, and turned off the TV.

After the Aaron Boone game in 2003, one of Bill Simmons's readers memorably wrote that rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for the house in blackjack. Long time ago.

I don't want to talk about it

I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it.

. . . . and sometimes, it rains

So a breather on Monday, and a first look at the standings. Down 2 1/2. Meh.

Word all weekend was about balls flying out of Yankee Stadium at a "record pace."

Interesting. Twenty home runs in four days? Considering something like sixteen of them were served up by Wang, that's an outlier. So the joker who emailed Rome yesterday to ask, "Since when does someone spend a billion and a half on a softball field?"--yeah, funny, guy, you can sit down now.

Still, it will be funny to see what a couple of years brings--and, really, that's the only way these things can be measured. When Minute Maid opened as Enron Field, it was derided as "Ten-Run" Field, a softball track that was reconfiguring batting records as much as steroids. Jeff Bagwell, not given to complaining about anything, openly admitted to mental exhaustion, saying it was difficult to come to the park knowing you had to score six runs just to keep you in the game.

A big hint about that first season came on a Thursday afternoon game I attended, an early-season game against the Cubs. Jose Lima, a change-up/breaking ball pitcher, had won 37 games the previous two seasons feasting on the cold, dead air and faraway fences of the Astrodome, quite possibly the worst hitters' park of all time. Enron Field, and specifically this game, ended his career as we knew it. It wasn't that he gave up four home runs in the first inning. Nor was it that he gave up four home runs and none of them were hit by Sammy Sosa (and this was 2000, mind you, when Sosa could have run in the Kentucky Derby). What struck us all was the sheer towering magnitude of the home runs he gave up: something like, say, a line-drive beneath a left field archway, two scorching line drives off the left field facade, then finally, a shot by Henry Gonzales up to the train tracks that had the assembled Astro faithful giving up any pretense of the 'Stros actually winning the game and shouting, "Whoaaaaaaa!," like ten year-olds watching fireworks.

That game did it: Shell-shocked Astros pitchers were afraid to step on the field. They seemed to start every at-bat down 2-0. In May, in pretty much the game that sealed the season, Billy Wagner gave up a ninth-inning home run to Ken Griffey, Jr., that landed somewhere in downtown Conroe. People called in sports talk shows demanding the playing field be restructured. Radio guys wondered aloud if Drayton McClane would simply tear out the left field Crawford Boxes (let's see: 1700 seats at forty bucks per, every one of them sold out for every game . . . let me do the math here . . . oh, I got it: No).

Then . . . nothing. Pitchers adjusted, and began treating Enron/Minute Maid like any other ballpark. The whole place kind of settled, the way a new building does. And this season, in the last four days, in a four-game wraparound series with the Reds, the 'Stros pitchers allowed, in order, two, zero, four and four runs, and lost three of the four games. Absolutely common.

Fixating on the X number of homers the Yankees have allowed in four games makes as little sense as those "at this pace" items people used to run anytime somebody got multiple home runs on Opening Day, long before Sportscenter and Jim Rome shamed them into stopping it.

In progress . . .

I was just getting worked up to crapping about the local Houston FOX station carrying the Cubs-Cardinals instead of the Yankees, when I was greeted by this:

Indians 9, Yankees 2. Second inning.

If you're scoring at home, Wang's ERA now stands at thirty-four point five-oh.

What I wanted to say before

The first sports team I loved was the 1972 Boston Bruins.

This was the first team for which I had best four-of-seven explained to me. I was allowed to stay up for one period and then sent to bed. When the Bruins won the Stanley Cup, my mother waited until the following morning to slap the Boston Globe in front of me. Waking kids up to celebrate championships never took hold until (uh oh) 1986, when Red Sox Nation thought it had a World Series title in hand.

Okay, what I wanted to say. Wilt's 100 points cast a shadow over Bill Russell's 11 championships.

Oh, damnit, you know what I'm getting at. Bobby Orr, who as a stickhandler was second to none except Gretzky, had an Irish fistfighter's mentality, and therefore was the greatest hockey player ever.

The owners of the Bruins need to answer for why the franchise has devolved. If they win, I will dance in the streets.

Well, all right then

An especially touching essays today from Bill Simmons.

This is written in the shadow of Celtic Kevin Garnett being gone for the season. I grew up a Celtic fan and Yankee fan, and no, I'm not a frontrunner, I grabbed onto both those teams in the earlyt seventies, in the shadow of their twin Dark Ages. The only winning team I latched onto was the Bruins, this when the Boston Bruins ruled Boston over the Celtics, Red Sox, and god forgive, the Patriots.

Anyway, along the whole "oft thought, but ne'er so well expressed" deal, I thought back to November, when the Celtics were being roasted for letting James Posey go, the thought being Posey might be the difference between beating or losing to Cleveland, and hence having a rematch with LA in the finals. Now it turns out that Posey would have made no difference at all, because without Garnett there would be no title. So . . . Simmons writes:

My dad and I had the same conversation five times in the past month, as it became clearer and clearer that Garnett was more injured than the team was saying, and we had it again today: Was one title (and a memorable season) worth giving up Al Jefferson, a few first-rounders and Ratliff's expiring deal that maybe could have been used to trump the Lakers for Pau Gasol? Yes. Yes it was. The goal is to win the title. We won a title. I would do it again. There is no statistic to capture the effect Garnett had on the rest of these guys; they played with a collective heart that reminds me of only one other Celtics team.

Then Simmons writes something close to my heart:

The best thing about winning an NBA title is defending it. My favorite Celtics team ever was the 1986-87 group. They lost Lenny Bias 48 hours after drafting him. They lost Bill Walton and Scott Wedman for basically the entire season. Kevin McHale injured his foot near the end of the regular season, played on it and broke it (and gamely kept playing). Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge and Robert Parish were limping around on sprained ankles by the second round. Only Larry Bird was healthy -- he ended up averaging an inconceivable 44.1 minutes in 23 playoff games. In the second round, they fended off a really good Bucks team, winning Game 7 even though they trailed by 10 with six minutes to go. In the Eastern finals, they held off a hungry Pistons team by winning two of the greatest games in the history of the Garden: Game 5 (Bird's famous steal from Isiah) and Game 7 (an unforgettable display of heart and will, with a little luck thrown in: the Dantley/Microwave collision). In the Finals, they came within Magic's baby sky hook and Bird's miracle 3-pointer missing by a sliver of tying the series at 2-2 against one of the five best basketball teams ever. When they got bounced in Game 6, every Celtics fan said to themselves, "I cannot ask for anything more than I just got."

Now that, my friends, is a title defense.

Man after my own heart.

Oh, yeah, nice of the Yankees to win today, Jeter with the winning home run, the bullpen saving Joba. Forget what I wrote.

Bronx Bummers

Opening day at the glistening new Stadium. Anthem by Bernie, first ball courtesy of Yogi, first homer by Georgie, out-his-ass start by CC, and . . .

. . . thanks, bullpen. No really--as they say in the sixth grade, no applause, just throw money.

Nine runs. If Dave Eiland were throwing batting practice from behind a screen, it's hard to see the Indians scoring as many.

If CC, AJ, Lefty, Joba and Mo stay healthy this year, the Yankees may give up more runs in innings seven and eight then the other seven innings combined. No, really: I'm not kidding. This may actually happen. Throw out Wang's starts, it might be true already. (Wang, we'll save for another day.)

AJ and CC seem--early early early on--the real thing. Joba is young and strong and is headed for great things. Pettitte will, barring injury, give you his 200 innings and 14 wins. Mo is Mo. Wang, at the moment, is a bonus, and we're talking about a pitcher who was on year-by-year Cy Young watch until that dreadful Father's Day in Houston when he rounded third and ended his season.

Early on, Jeter and Posada are partying like it's 1999. Someone kicked Cano in the butt. Gardner hasn't embarrassed himself. Swisher has been that rara avis: the bench player who disrupts his manager's Grand Plan by playing well enough to force himself into the starting lineup. (The last timer I saw this happen, Hunter Pence did it to the Astros, batting like .460 in Spring Training and screwing up all of Phil Garner's plans. Garner still sent Pence down to Triple-A--for a month, before finally giving in.)

So where are we left? Looking for set-up men who look like they're not auditioning for Eastbound and Down.

Meanwhile, Astro-Girl, in heaven because of the 'Stros two-game winning streak, decided to concentrate on a potential trip to Louisvill next spring. I mentioned the Muhammad Ali Museum.

Astro-Girl: They have a Muhammad Ali Museum in Louisville?
Me: Yes. Plus a Horse Museum.
AG: They have a museum filled with horses?
Me: No, mostly horse memorabilia. Statues of horses.
AG: Like who?
Me: Secretariat. Out front.
AG: They make a horse stand out front?
Me: No. His statue.
AG: They make him stand next to his statue?
Me: The horse doesn't stand anywhere. He's been dead for thirty years.
AG (wrinkling nose): But woudn't he smell by now?
Me: No, the horse is in the ground.
AG: But you said he was out front. Is he out front in the ground?
Me: No, his STATUE is out front. In front of Churchill Downs.
AG: Did Winston Churchill live there?
Me: No.
AG: Is that why they named it after him?
Me: NO. He never lived there.
AG: Then why did they name it after him?

Say goodnight, Gracie

Yankees 11, Orioles 2

How tired do you have to be to take a nap while the Yankees lead the Orioles 3-2 in AJ Burnett's maiden Yankee start, in a game in which "Treacherous Tex" (Baltimore fans are really reaching for villains these days) has already homered?

Very tired.

Wednesday was a travel day. Arizona does not observe Daylight Savings Time--on the theory, I was told growing up, that DST would burn what little grass existed in the state. Or else DST was a Communist plot. Or we had so much daylight we didn't need to save it, thank you. The only effect on me growing up was that, sometime in October, Monday Night Football went from starting at six to starting at seven, and I had to listen to the end on the radio, in my room, in the dark.

So: basically between just after St. Patrick's Day and just before Halloween, Phoenix, which sits in the same time zone as El Paso, sets its clocks the same as San Diego.

So, in late afternoon, long past when the game should have been over. I awoke in my parents' casita. Didn't want to hear from my father. Didn't want to hear that Burnett had been the third Yankee millionaire to be knocked out of the box. That Rivera had given up a broken-bat blooper in the ninth, three inches past Jeter's glove.

No, more. I didn't so much as want to see the expression on my father's face that foretold bad news. I hid in the guest cottage and watched ESPN's scroll--luckily, for only ten minutes.

Well, all right then.

From Houston, Astro-Girl was on the phone. The Astros had been thumped by the Cards the previous night.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said. Then she proceeded to talk about it.

Joba's DUI caught on video

Ouch.

Complete with shots at Yogi: "He's probably not as tall as the front of your car."

Question: who has gone down in history with the worst DUI mug shot? Glen Campbell, then Nick Nolte . . . yeah, that's about it.

Still think "reset" was a bad idea?

'Stros 3, Cubs 2--10 innings.

What I know now.

1. When Lance Berkman strikes out with men on and the Astros losing by one run, do not describe the third strike to Astro-Girl.

Me: "Huh. Went chasing that high fastball."

Astro-Girl: "I know."

Me: "Yeah, okay."

Pause.

Astro-Girl: "I mean, I have eyes."

Me: "Yeah, okay. Fine."

Astro-Girl: "I mean, I'm sitting right here watching."

2. Nine out of every ten Astro mid-inning one-run leads has an expiration date. For tonight's reference, see Soriano, Alfonso.

3. We'll learn. Or else we won't. Decades ago, journeyman NBA center-forward Rich Kelley found himself with the Phoenix Suns. In his first game with his new team, a home game, he provided solid off the bench brio--say, 10 points and five rebounds--and with the game well in hand, left the floor to a standing O. Afterward, the attending sportwriters asked, essentially, Not a bad reception, ay?

"Don't worry," Kelley said. "They'll learn."

Regarding tonight's late-inning heroes, Michaels and Keppinger, we'll learn. Or else we won't.

Yankee Links

Turns out CC had no faith in his fastball yesterday. Funny you should mention that, CC . . .

But wait! Not a single strikeout? The Post asks: couldn't Darrel Rasner have done better? (Or, one wonders, Carl Pavano? Steve Trout?)

Sitting in Minute Maid Park, watching the Orioles pile up runs in the eighth and put the game away, I did my best Superintendant Chalmers impersonation: you know, when Chalmers shouts, "SKINNERRRRR!" Except, without matching the scoreboard's posted jersey number to the specific pitcher--in other words, without being told who was going down in flames--I reflexively shouted, "BRUUUUNNNEEEYYY!" Correctly, as it turned out.

What has hurt the Yankees, post-2003, was the arm-falling-off work given to the Flash Gordons and Scott Proctors, who found themselves unable to pick their noses in the post-season, never mind stand up to Manny and Vlad. (I remember standing in Minute Maid Park in 2004, watching a monitor as an exhausted Gordon heaved the ball in against the middle of the Boston lineup. I thought, Well, maybe they'll hit a line drive at somebody--just as David Ortize did just that, hitting the ball right at some guy sitting in the fourth row of the Monster Seats.) Joba was the answer two seasons ago until . . . well, let's not revisit that Cleveland fiasco again.

Orioles 10, Yankees 5

Perhaps ask Obama if he's got another "Reset" button around. Can we have a do-over and start the season over tomorrow?

The old legend of living in Brooklyn is that one could walk down Flatbush Avenue and hear--through a series of open windows--an uninterrupted Red Barber narrative of that afternoon's or evening's Dodger game. The modern version of this phenomenon exists in every available media form, as witness today. To start, the first few innings on the YES network, during which CC Sabathia seemed determined to earn all 10 trillion dollars of his contract in his first thirty pitches, and succeeded in two wild pitches, one that hit the brick backstop so hard it bounced back like a raquetball, and I thought seriously for an instant Posada could have cut down the runner at third. With a little help from Jeter, CC fought his way out of an inning, at which time two possibilities arose: 1. "Baltimore missed its chance, CC is about the settle down; 2. It's only a matter of time, he's staving off the inevitable."

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Door Number 2, which I witnessed via the internet at work. Then, more damage the hard way, in one of those insidious Sports Flashes where Golden Throat starts off, "The Yankees scored two more in the sixth . . . (Cool! Too more in the sixth!) . . . but still trail the Birds, six to three."

Okay, just die, Radio Guy. And calling them "the Birds" isn't fresh, it doesn't show you're smart, so shut up! Shut shut shut shut shut up!

Off to Minute Maid and the wooden scoreboard. I should tell you our seats this year are at an odd angle, so the innings and the runs in each inning do not quite measure up. When the Yankees scored to come within 6-5 in the seventh, I thought it was in the eighth. When they scored zero runs in the eighth, I thought, therefore, the game was over.

So only when the Orioles scored four runs in the bottom of the eighth did I realize it was the eighth . . .

. . . which meant the game was not only not over . . .

It was worse than not over, it was not over plus a crucial portion of the 2009 Yankee squad, the keep-a-deficit-close portion of the bullpen, had officially crapped the bed in the first game of the season.

All this, meanwhile, was while Astros v. Cubs, Oswalt v. Zambrano, was unfolding.

First inning: Alfonso Soriano hits the ball 350 feet into the runway behind the Crawford Boxes. 1-0.

"Okay," Astro-Girl says, "Royo got it out of his system."

Second inning: Aramis Ramirez hits the ball into the Crawford Boxes.

"No problem," Astro-Girl says, "Now Royo really got it out of his system."

No matter. Zambrano plus Astros plus lead equals boat race. True, Astro Kaz Matsui made a baserunning error that was totally excusable were Kaz a) eight years old, and b) eight years old. I wondered aloud, "Does Jose Cruz need to learn how to say, 'One out' in Japanese?"

Ah, too depressing. Robby-Boy picks us up:

Well I pulled my kids out of school at 1:00pm for a "family function" I had to tell the office secretary.

We popped the corn and watched the first pitch. Jeter leads off with a gutty 2 strike single. Then we watched C.C. have ZERO control over his fastball.

Posada goes deep and has a great play at the dish!

Gardner looks really good in center, Godzilla looks to be in his old forum but alas C.C. digs us to big of a hole to climb out of today.

But it is baseball and there is always tomorrow, or Wed in the Yanks/O's case.

The re-relaunch

Shows what little I know about this stuff. An Opening Day has driven me back here and streamlined this to sports. Politics I'll place elsewhere soon (though I do note the that opening day in Chicago has been cancelled due to frigid weather and two inches of fluffy white global warming).

Tankees start in three hours. CC Sabathia is--who? Catfish Hunter, Tommy John, Mike Mussina, the Roger Clemens of 2000-2001? Or Ed Whitson, Carl Pavano, the Randy Johnson of 2005?

Meanwhile--Minute Maid at 6:05. Astros-Cubs. Oswalt-Zambrano. Astrogirl's and my 33% season tickets are down the left field line, twenty rows up--in other words, precisely to give us a perfect view of Manny Ramirez when the Dodgers come on April 21st. This might be the only time I'd regret a game being a regular-season instead of spring training, as it lessens dramatically the chances Manny coming to sit with us in the stands.

A word

When the emails inquiring if I was all right, given my recent silence, reached double digits, I figured it was time to first, say thanks.

I'm giving this sucker a break for a bit, to concentrate on a few things interesting, at the moment, only to me. The Yankees September meltdown was easy enough to take; Jeter and the guys have provided thrills enough the past dozen years. I'm fine, thanks for asking.

As for the election--well, at the momnent I prefer to pass. Joe the Teacher has nothing to contribute at this time. If I have anything to contribute, Profesor Kingsfield, I shall raise my hand.

Be good, my friends.

Royals 4, Yankees 3

Rivera. Another tie game.

It is here that I depart for a week; I trust Sun Devil Joe, Robby Boy, Jimmy, O'Nan Imus, GSB and all the rest to hold down the fort.

Let's go, Yankees, indeed.

Twins 4, Yankees 2

Game happened right under my radar.

Yankees 9, Twins 6

Saw it via the scoreboard at Minute Maid (and has anyone noticed the Astros lately?).

Not the sort of game the guys have been winning.

Twins 4. Yankees 0

I smell a big slide coming. When Ponson gets elevated from "at least he'll eat innings" to "okay, we have to win if he keeps us in it," to "Ponson: Oh, God, we have to win this one 'cause look at who else we have," there is trouble.

This comes at a time when Boston has just lost the greatest Yankee killer since ever, when Tampa's best two players jus when on the DL, when neither Minnesota nor Chicago nor Texas are anything special.

Four games out of the Wild Card. But they'd better start hitting.

Angels 4, Yankees 3

Pettitte pitched fine, save one inning, against the Angels' meat grind of an order.

The larger question is: Just what is it with Rivera and ties this year?

As a consolation, I sat down to watch the Olympics: specifically, the Men's 4 X 100 freestyle relay.

Reader Desert Rose had informed me of her all-Olympic boycott, and I was already following suit, but was drawn back by my favorite sports, those involving either a race or a ball--meaning swimming, track and basketball. Thus I was able to see The Greatest Swim Relay Ever--or, as those over 40 will remember, the greatest swim relay since the 1976 Women's 4 X 100 free, when Shirley Babashoff and Co. upset Kornelia Ender's East German 'roid monsters for the only US women's swimming gold in Montreal. In those days, the freestyle relays were (as they are in most swim meets) the final events of the competition. The race result was so stunning--Ender and friends had dominated the distaff side in the pool to that point, winning 11 out of 12 gold, most of them in laughably easy fashion--that the East Germans actually filed a protest, claiming that Babashoff, swimming the anchor, had dove off the podium early. Babashoff, who had swum internationally since her early teens, who had spotted the East German cheating for what it was, who had called them on it, and who had then endured terrible press calling her a poor sport as she collected one silver after another, could finally smile. "Her fingernail touched and my toenail touched," she said with a laugh, gold medal around her shoulders, when asked if she had left early.

I would place last night's race just behind that one. But what a race.

Angels 11, Yankees 4

We may be agt the tipping point, people: Wang and Posada are gone; Matsui probably so; now Joba, maybe. And Pettitte soon to follow.

Don't blame Girardi.

Angels 10, Yankees 5

Hello, Ian, and goodbye.