Scorched!

I was cooped up in the New York Public Library today during the game, working on an upcoming project that has yet to be announced. I was happy to be indoors out of the heat, but sad to be missing the game--until I checked the score online, and saw the Yanks were down 10-6 in the seventh inning. That's life, these days, I guess. We saw on Friday--when the Yanks' late-inning comeback hopes were stifled by Joakim Soria--that the reason that comebacks like the one the Yankees engineered on Thursday are so special, is because they don't happen every day.

But can comebacks happen every other day? The next time I checked the scores, the Yanks had won the game 12-11. I excitedly clicked through to check out the game story at MLB.com, and I got this headline:

Pettitte, Yankees scorched by Royals

Had I misunderstood the score? The story was 350 or so words long, and started like so:

If the heat wasn't making the Yankees uncomfortable -- game-time temperatures soared into the 90s -- then the outcome certainly was. For most of Saturday afternoon's game against the Royals, the Yankees either possessed the lead or possessed a chance. But neither possession helped them to win.

Jose Guillen hit a tie-breaking grand slam off Andy Pettitte, and the Yankees fell, 10-8, to the Royals at Yankee Stadium. It was their fifth loss in seven games.

But no, the box score was pretty clear--the Yankees won. Johnny Damon had six hits, including the game winner. He had four RBI, and Jason Giambi, Alex Rodriguez, and Jorge Posada each hit homers. Obviously, someone had let an early version of Anthony DiComo's game story--before Damon tied the game at 10-10 in the eighth inning, before Mariano Rivera gave up the lead on a David DeJesus homer, and before Posada tied the game again with his homer, setting the stage for Damon's walk-off hit--get up on the front page. A couple of hours later, his real story was up on the site, talking about the "rather ugly maple bat" Damon used to match the Yankee record for most hits in a ballgame. The headline was amended to "Damon, Yankees Scorch Royals." It's a nice piece--check it out, just remember that it could have come out much differently.