Just Like Old Times

Looks like the Yankees are gonna get one back tonight. They're up 4-zip after 3 on the hated, detested Red Sox of Boston. This courageous squad of champeens just doesn't know the meanin' of the word quit, led by their fearless captain, Derek The Parking Meter Jeter... hitting a robust .370 for the year, two more hits tonight, and he passes the immortal Mr. Coffee himself, Joseph Paul DiMaggio for 5th place on the all-time Yankees hit list. Like Jeter, Joe D. squired a few winsome lasses around the Big Town in his own day... Hidecki Matsui has a 2-run HR & is really starting to come around as we all knew he would; the guy takes the game as serious as a subpoena and has the dignified monastic approach to fundamentals and doing things the right way that most of his countrymen seem to have... You could put Matsui down for his usual .310 or .315 and 110 RBI's...

Somewhere in the minor leagues Roger Clemens is in the middle of his tune-up start, perhaps his last tune-up start before he comes Bronx-ward with his $18 million arm and ego to match... Last night was a disaster, another lousy looking start from Mike Moose Mussina, who did battle after giving up a 3-run blast from, who else, Manny Ramirez, clubbing his 50th HR of his career against the Yankees, making him more like a Yankee serial killer where you know the ending is gonna be gruesome... and get a fucking haircut already, you lunatic; dreads are cool but come back to us here...

Posada just drove in A-Rod from 2nd, so it's now 5-0 over the hated, detested Curt Schilling! How great is that, we own Schilling, whose Indian name would be Big Chief Bloody Sock... and as John Sterling just remarked -- in between an unrelenting stream of commercials, ads, sponsorship announcements, company tie-ins on WCBS-Radio in what has to be the most commercialized nightly broadcast in the history of the medium -- the Yanks are hitting Schilling hard... According to Suzyn Waldman, Curt Schilling is a person, and people have off nights... Thanks for clearing that up for me, because I was beginning to have my doubts...

I think a blowout win would do a lot for this team's confidence ... The California or Los Angeles or Anaheim, pick a fucking locale and stop changing it, you're the California Angels for gods sake -- what, it's not inclusive enough to represent the whole state all of a sudden? Yeesh! Anyway, the Angels come to town and they're hot (7-3 last 10 games), led by Vlad The Impaler, the closest thing we have to Roberto these days: like Clemente, he's a misunderstood, enigmatic, prideful, sensitive man with a world of talent and a slight chip on his shoulder. And oh by the way he's hitting .338 with 10 HRs and 38 RBI's. Guerrero is another overlooked player who is never mentioned among the top names in the game. Well, I'm mentioning him now...

I was against signing Mussina when his contract was up last year. The guy's on the downside in a big way, he even knows it when you listen to his woeful remarks after his last two ineffective starts. I'm gonna look up his contract in a sec just so I can be even more pissed off, another bonehead Cashman personnel move in a loooooong string he has going, everything he touches lately turns to crapola. Bobby Abreu? This guy literally might be the most overpaid athlete in sports, at least this year, when his career .303 batting average has experienced shrinkage to an embarrassingly microscopic .239. Worse, he's got a total of 2 HRs so far in 45 games, which is only 2 more than me, and I haven't played in ANY games yet. That projects out to ... hold on here ... 8 HRs for the full season. This from a guy who had a seven-year run from 1999-2005 with the Phillies where he hit 20, 25, 31, 20, 20, 30 and 24 homers, while driving in 100+ RBIs four times.

Another disastrous free agent pickup in the news today. Carl The Big Moax Pavano, whose career is likely over, is limping all the way to the ATM with the $4o million Cashman gave him in exchange for 5 wins over three years...

Holy shit, Doug Mankaeawitz(sp?) just blasted a homer off Schilling, who is a Republican shill if I remember correctly. I'll check his Wikipedia page in a minute, which is my go-to Website for such matters... 6-0 after 4 innings.

But Mussina has just lost his fastball, or maybe it's temporarily abandoned him. John Flaherty was right on this last night BEFORE the Manny HR, when he said that if the Moose can only hit the high 80s with his fastball, 87-88 MPH, his breaking ball and curve are not gonna be as effective. The Boston hitters, and the rest of the league lately, don't have to worry about getting busted inside, so they sit on the OUTSIDE pitch, hitting liners to right. All the deep waist bends in the world aren't gonna help Mr. Crossword get hitters out. He's really been susceptible to the long ball almost every start, giving up that one key blast per game it seems, and then he actually pitches and scraps, as much as a guy from Stanford can ever be said to scrap...

Yanks amazingly have never had a 3,000 hit guy. (Some guy named Lou Gehrig leads with 2,721.) What's up with that? Kind of like a Mets hurler never tossing a no-hitter despite their 45-year history of good pitchers. Doesn't make a lick of sense, as Smoky the Biker sez on those GEICO commercials. Boy, those GEICO ads have to be considered among the most successful ad campaigns in the history of Mad Ave. Think about it, it's a long running campaign for an insurance company, and the commercials are not only NOT annoying, they're still refreshing, they don't insult you, and they're always cleverly done. You've got the Brit-speaking Lizard, the Cavemen, Smoky the Biker... In yet another ominous signaling of the forthcoming apocalypse ,The GEICO Cavemen will be getting their very own show on ABC in what has to be the only known case of an advertisement spinning-off a prime-time sitcom, where we find the cave-persons living in Atlanta and trying to fit in while battling anti-neathanderthalism. What a silly premise: everyone knows it gets too hot in Atlanta for cavemen. Duh! As much as I am always amused by the Cavemen, I think ABC is out of their minds on this one. But if I were running a network, I would use the Cavemen to anchor my nightly news program and give Katie Couric her own primetime show; you got a better chance of success that way, but that's just moi...

Fifth inning, Grand Slam inning: if the 4th batter of the inning hits a grand slam, some schmuck wins a Toyota... How do ya like those odds? Something tells me no Toyota gets given away tonight, just a hunch, and I'm right, Matsui just grounded out to short, canceling out the granny possibility, and of course in turn triggering another ad for Benihana, the tourist trap of a restaurant chain that sponsors Hidecki's at-bats. And right after another batter made out after Matsui, John Sterling I kid you not reads ANOTHER AD for Ford Auto! In the space it took me to type this paragraph, two batters, three ads read by the announcers. End of 5, 6-0 Yankees, cut to commercials...

Andy Pettitte is pitching a gem. The relationship between Pettitte and Clemens scares me just a tad, kind of like a cross between Brokeback Mountain and 300. Hey, what they do in their spare time is their business, isn't it, even in Texas? Just asking...

The 38-year-old Mussina is playing in the last year of a two-year $23 million deal, coming on the heels of a six-year $88 million package. That's a lot of gabagol as they used to say in Little Italy; now you're just as likely to hear Chinese as Italian on Mulberry Street, my sources tell me. Hey, I got sources, I got sources...

Andy now at 86 pitches, just thought I'd point that out to the listening audience. With his 87th, I would love to see him stick a fastball in the ear of Manny Being Manny. Long overdue. Let's fucking rumble, make it a street fight between overpaid multimillionaires...

Clemens gave up a few runs, a few hits, a few walks. You're gonna hear about this for like five days till you want to stick a fucking Uni-Ball Vision Elite pen right in your own ear. That's right, this paragraph was brought to you by the good folks at the Uni-Ball Vision Elite Pen Conglomeration of Smaller Pen & Pen-Related Fine Writing Products That Feel Really Nice In Your Hand, Not Too Heavy Not Too Light, Just Right, Inc. Makes a swell writing implement...

Can someone give me a freaking Mets-Braves score? The Metsies must be winning or else John & Suzyn would have given us the score a few times by now. She just mentioned Pavano is having season-ending surgery of the Tommy John variety. What is that, something like elbow replacement surgery, that's gotta hurt like a son-of-a-bitch. I'd ask for Vicodin at the least after something like that. Hell, I ask for Vicodin after a routine blood test...

Schilling comes back out for the 6th, somewhat surprisingly, but he is a bulldog. A bit of an asshole, but a bulldog. In short he's a bullhole.

Apparently Clemens threw 102 pitches, which is a lot for a tuneup. That's more than I would left him in for, but knowing The Rocket's penchant for drama, he probably wouldn't come out because it would make for a good postgame story for the press...

Schilling at 89 pitches now, battered for 12 hits. Does he still leave a seat in the stands for his late dad every game he pitches? If not, why? Is Dad any busier now than he was in the 2001 World Series against the Yankees? Just asking the tough questions here, the Tough Actin' Tinactin questions, is what I meant to say...

So Boston goes to Texas, then somewhere else before they head back home to Fenway to host ... you guessed it, your beloved New York Yankees. Maybe we'll have shaved off a few more games, get it down to 7, 7 1/2 games behind, then we'll see if fucking journeymen like Hothead Julio Tavarez can pitch with a little pressure hanging over his, well, hot head...

Pettitte just threw his 102nd pitch. Ooohh... Next pitch, or the one after that, I forgot already, ground ball out, seven strong innings for Pettitte. That's just Andy Being Andy, I guess. Oh by the way: Fuck the Red Sox and their annoying fans, who always somehow seem to fill up half the Stadium for these games, where they breathe. I'm just saying...

Chief Bloody Sock is out of the game, doesn't answer the bell for inning Seven. Fucking pussy. Jeter just tripled into the gap, third hit. He's got an RBI double, a triple, passes Joe D. for first place on the all-time Yankees hit list, helps beat Boston. Just another night for The Captain. Matsui just singled home Jeter, making it 7-1. When the fuck did Boston score? A-Rod juuuust missed a HR according to Sterling, which means Ramirez caught the ball about 10 feet from the warning track. End of inning...

7-2 now. Kyle Farnsworth just gave up a HR to Coco Crisp. Turns out Coco Crisp is not his real name. Also turns out Kyle Farnsworth really sucks. Thanks to Brian Cashman for another one of your gems--NOT! ... as annoying people used to say in the 1980s. How does Farnsworth throw so hard, 97, 98, 99 miles per hour yet he can never get a big out? He should be better with that stuff... Now another base hit off Fucksworth, an RBI for Kevin Youkalis sending home Ortiz, and it's 7-3. Boston fans are either chanting Youuuuuuu for Youkalis or Yankees fans are quite rightly booing Kyle, one of those names that George Carlin quite rightly disparages as a "soft" name, along with Tyler, Todd, Blaire and Blaine and Brent in one of his trademark HBO rants that I think I have on video somewhere....

You know it's your night when Doug Mankiewz(sp?) gets himself three hits ... came into the game hitting 1-19. His whole year has been an endless series of 1-19's, 2-30's and 3-41's ... The guy is All Glove No Stick, All Leather No Wood ... What I'm saying is he can't hit a lick but plays the field with dexterity and a certain confident insouciance that's rarely exhibited these days. Or something like that... Somebody just drove him in and it's 8-3 now. I'm sure we'll see Mariano come in no matter what the score is because let's just say he needs the work. Ya think!

Sure enough, I hear the dulcet strains of Enter Sandman on the Stadium PA, so here comes The Once-Great Mariano into the game to put the hammer down. It won't be long before we hear THUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH-YANKEEES-WIN!! call by Sterling. You have to admit it's a helluva call. At this point Sterling is better at making up catchy phrases and nicknames after a home run call than the actual nuts-and-bolts of play-by-play. Only about half of his IT IS HIGH, IT IS FAR's actually involve a ball clearing the wall; the rest are caught in play, but that doesn't stop him from pulling the same stunt an inning later.

Mariano has an 0-2 count on Crisp, here's the pitch, and it's swing and a miss for the last out. There goes Sterling. But it's a half-hearted, strangely muted THHHUUUUUHH-Yankees-Win ... hardly worthy of an exclamation point, but what the hell, they cost the same as a period technically, so an exclamation point it is, and another Yankee win in the books! Or is the phrase Put It In The Books! already trademarked by Howie Rose.

So the Yanks win the series, they win the damn thing by a score of 8-3, and are now only 9 1/2 out ... lurking, stalking, sizing up the Sox in what I have a feeling is gonna be an interesting summer of beisbol.