Umm, That's What I'm Talkin' About!

I'm a superstitious type.

I'm the kind of guy who won't say the words "no hitter" when one of my team's pitchers (or a pitcher that I like, or any pitcher in a game where I have no rooting interest) goes into the fifth inning with a zero in the middle of the team's linescore. Even though announcers have eased up on this sort of silliness, I'll make cryptic phone calls friends and siblings when something like that is going down, and I'll never use the "n" and "h" words when doing it.

Why? I'm a fairly rational bloke. Reasonably educated. I know that my words, over a phone, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of miles away from where a baseball contest is being played can't affect the outcome. But still, I stand by the simple axiom: you don't [mess] with fate. You don't take any chances when something legitimately special is happening.

By the by, I usually don't use the word "mess" there. But I'm told this is a family weblog.

Anyway, with what's happening with the Bombers right now, I have a hard time talking about it. Not so much talking about it, but giving the thing a name.

For example, I'm happy to speak about Giambi's 3 for 4 night, with a dinger, as a really hopeful sign. It's a sign that Jason really needed, too, seeing as Ruben Sierra is ready to start his rehab assignment, and DH at bats could soon become real scarce.

I'm happy to marvel at the str--um, better to not use that word--the hot hitting that Tino Martinez is doing, ripping his way near the top of the home run leaderboard.

I'm not quite as happy to see that Carl Pavano, a guy both Alex and Cliff over at Bronx Banter say reminds them of Andy Pettitte, has gotten into that Pettitte-like knack for inconsistency. World beater one day, whipped mule the next. More about this in another post.

I haven't seen nearly enough of Robinson Cano. But since every time I have seen him, he does something weird in the field, I think it might be for the best.

And I'll say that it's odd that the first West Coast road trip is where the Yanks have gone to get healthy. Part of it is two disappointing teams--the A's legitimately disappointing, the Mariners unsurprisingly so--meeting the wrong team at the wrong time.

I'm not going to complain. As Crash Davis once said, you never [mess] with a wi...

Nah, I'm not going to say that now, am I?