Game 80: Blue Jays at Yanks

Wow. It's been a while since we've spoken (a quarter-season, to be precise) and there's a lot of catching up to do. Unfortunately, this is not the time for a wide-ranging discussion of all things Bronx Bombers (that'll be later in the week). This is the time for...photoblog:

It's not Fourth of July without baseball, the Yankees, and Freddy.

The pitching matchup for George Steinbrenner's 80th birthday was geared more toward the future--Phil Hughes for the Yanks and Brandon Morrow for the Blue Jay could spend a lot of their time crossing swords in the AL East between now and the Boss's 90th birthday. They're both power pitchers who established themselves in the bullpen before taking regular rotation slots. Morrow's a harder thrower (getting up to 97 on the stadium gun) than Phil, but also more prone to wildness (5.3 BB/9 for his career).

Phil the Phenom, coiled to attack. Has he been Joba'd?

Sadly for the Yanks, Phil's been in a bit of a phunk since the Yankees skipped him in the rotation a couple of weeks ago, the latest manifestation of their continuing experiment in limiting wear-and-tear on young arms. In his first start after the layoff he looked like he was throwing batting practice to the Mariners, allowing a career-high 10 hits in less than seven innings. Today he started strong, striking out the game's first two batters, but later he was Big Fly Hughes, allowing Lyle Overbay a cannon blast to dead center in the third, an excuse-me popup off the right field foul pole to Dwayne Wise, and another scorcher to star underperformer Adam Lind. Hughes' struggles were particularly galling since he was facing a true Sunday lineup: backups starting at second, catcher (Jose Molina for John Buck), and center (Wise for Vernon Wells).

Teixeira achieving full extension for his 5th inning double.

Wise's three-run homer was in the top of the fifth, and it really took the wind out of the crowd, erasing what had been a 3-1 lead. It looked like the Yanks were storming back in the bottom of the frame. Nick Swisher, fresh off his "Vote for Swish" pitch on the Jumbotron, singled to lead off the inning, then Mark Teixeira unleashed a massively promising drive to center...and, I'll let the pictures tell the story.

"Vote for Swish!" heading home! A-Rod says slide!

Sliding didn't work out so well. JoMo stonewalls Swish!

Yankee fans can give great dissertations on Jose Molina's failings, but an inability to block the plate has never been among them. If you click on the above picture, you'll see that the entirety of the plate is safely underneath Molina's ample backside--so long as he holds on to the ball, Swish is dead meat. Now, that was a bummer, but we still have a man on third, just one out, and the cleanup hitter at bat. Feelin' good, right?

Then the whole thing happens again. A-Rod hits a fly to Wise in mid-center. Teixeira heads home to score on the sac fly. Dead at the plate, again. Two hits, only one batter makes an out, no runs. Devastating.

At this point, Dwayne Wise--a guy who's only known because he made a gorgeous play to save Mark Buehrle's no-no last year--has dominated the game. His dinky little foul-pole homer was the leading margin; with Molina's help, his sharp throwing killed the Yankee rally in the fifth. Then, with the score 5-3 Jays in the sixth, here comes Wise again. Two outs, the team's slowest runner on first, and Brett Gardner hits a fly to fairly deep center, but it hangs up and Wise is under it. Should be an easy play. Then he loses it in the bright July 4 sun, something you can't do with Gardner running the bases. Tie game.

Now, as far as I can recall, I've never seen a Yankee hit an inside-the-park homer in person. Despite what the official scorer said, I still haven't seen one. Most inside the park homers involve some sort of blunder on the part of the fielder, but this fly ball hit Wise on the glove. As Brother Joe said on Twitter (mas o menos): if that's not an error, then there is no such thing as an error.

Brett Gardner trots home on his game tying...big mistake by the other team's fielder?

In the seventh, the Yanks took the lead, with Jeter scoring on another Teixeira double. Again, the inning meets a premature end because of a baserunner kill at the plate. (And again, it's Swisher. This is not how you get us to Vote for Swish!) Wise wasn't involved in that play at the plate, but that doesn't mean he was done...

Usually, the opposing team sees this, it's time to make sure you have dinner reservations.

Ninth inning, Enter Sandman, and the folks who've been melting in bright sunshine start heading toward the exits and the shade. The Jays got a couple of ground singles wrapped around a Jose Molina whiff, but it looked like Rivera had gotten out of it when he got Fred Lewis to ground one to Ramiro Peña for what looked like the game-ending double play. Rather than flipping to Cano for the 6-4-3, Peña took a page out of the Jeter playbook, going to the bag so that he could make the throw to first. Interesting idea, but it looked like Peña had a hard time finding the bag, so instead of the game-ending DP, he was only able to record the force.

Even though Peña had scored and knocked in a run earlier, Brother J, my wingman at the game, was livid. Channeling Boss Steinbrenner on his birthday, he wanted Peña immediately pulled off the field and put on a bus to Scranton before the inning was over. Either way, that made it Wise time again, and the center fielder blooped a single to center to get his fourth RBI.

The way the Yanks have been rolling lately, extra innings was bad, bad news. Under very similar circumstances, Dave Roberts and Chan Ho Park collaborated to blow Friday night's game against the Jays, and the bullpen overall has not been one of the team's strong suits (they're ninth in the AL in WXRL). Roberts, pitching the tenth, immediately looked Chan Ho-riffic, putting the first two batters he faced on base. Luckily, he was bailed out by some heads-up defense by Alex Rodriguez, who turned Edwin Encarnacion's sac bunt into a 5-4-3 double play.

In the tenth, it looked like Joe Girardi might have super geniused himself out of a win. Lefty Dave Purcey walked Robinson Cano to lead off the inning, and Francisco Cervelli, who replaced Jorge Posada due to injury, was at the plate. I'm not a Cervelli believer--I like him, but not as much as everyone did when he had a .390 batting average in mid-May--but having him bunt, against the lefty with Granderson and Gardner coming up...I have my qualms. Granderson's brutal against lefties (.514 OPS), Gardner's much better (.742 OPS) but still not wonderful. Splendid chance to see a runner stranded in scoring position. Luckily for Girardi, after Curtis made his out, Gardner was able to work a walk against the lefty, which brought up newly-reactivated Marcus Thames, who, as we all can remember, loves pie as much as he hates fielding. Marcus sent us home happy.

Marcus Thames says "Mmmm, pie!"

2010, Game 14: Yankees at A's (postgame)

I guess Phil Hughes doesn't really need that changeup, right?

This time--unlike CC's effort in Tampa a few weeks ago--I steadfastly refused to communicate with anyone about the no-hitter in progress. No email to the Baseball Prospectus mailing list, no Twitter, not even text messages to my brothers (on that last one, it helped that the Yanks were in Oakland--the first time I felt like sending out a warning, it was already 11:30 PM on the east coast). When Oakland finally broke through with a hit, I didn't feel as bad as I did during CC's bid--mainly, because I couldn't shout curses at the TV with la Chiquita, her mom, and my sons all fast asleep elsewhere in the apartment, but also because of the way Hughes's no-no ended. Onetime franchise player Eric Chavez hit a hard grounder back to the mound, which hit the heel of Hughes's glove and then his chest. The final result was all a matter of instinct. If Hughes looks down after the ball hits him, he would have had a pretty easy play at first. Feeling the ball kick off his glove, Hughes looked up, and had no chance of making a play. It was a bad break, but understandable; Phil the Phenom shook it off and struck out the next batter before issuing a walk and leaving the game.

Watching from 3,000 or so miles away, I saw no evidence of the Phil Hughes changeup--and neither did Pitch FX. A couple of pitches had an atypical downward motion, but the gun readings were too high to call them changes. It's early, but this just might be a myth that we don't see again until March 2011. Then again, if Hughes pitches like he did in Oakland--pounding the strike zone with his fastball, getting batters to fish for the curve, using the cutter to keep them honest, keeping his pitch count low enough to get into the eighth inning--then it'll hardly matter at all.

2010, Game 9: Rangers at Yankees (postgame)

That was nice. I mean, Hughes wasn't as efficient as you'd want him to be--108 pitches didn't even get him a single out in the sixth--and the five walks were a downer, though it looked like the home plate ump was squeezing the strike zone a bit. Otherwise, his fastball had good life in the 92-94 MPH range that's his norm as a starter. The curve was gorgeous, the cutter effective.

But where was the changeup? Wasn't that all the hype coming out of Spring Training, Phil Hughes's new changeup? Al Leiter said he saw a couple of them; Pitch FX only identified one: the fourth pitch to Bobby Abreu in the third inning, a pitch well out of the strike zone.

The Spring Training changeup is often a phantasm. You always hear the stories out of the Cactus and Grapefruit Leagues of this or that guy who's been working on his change, and just you wait until this devastating new pitch is unleashed on the world in games that count! But when March turns into April, that's exactly what fans wind up doing: waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Maybe the new miracle pitch makes an isolated appearance during the first two weeks of the season, then is quietly shelved. Sometimes, it doesn't even get that much play.

Now, it takes cojones to incorporate the changeup in your repertoire mid-career. A misfired breaking pitch can be embarrassing, but a poorly-located changeup can make you look like an idiot, speeding up the opponent's bat and making a slap-hitting backup catcher look like Babe Ruth. You can understand why so many pitchers flirt with the pitch, and why many of those flirtations turn out to just be Spring flings.

I hope that Hughes's changeup is for real. With or without it, he's the key person in the Yankee starting rotation--the person from whom we're most likely to see upside. Pettitte and Burnett are long shots to improve on their 2009 performances, and might have a hard time matching them. CC could improve, but he was operating at a pretty high level to begin with. The number four starter...well, we'll talk about him in a second. There's a lot resting on Hughes's shoulders--if nothing else, he's the living indication of what, if anything, Dave Eiland and Co. learned from the Joba fiasco last year. Here's hoping the start against the Angels was something to build on.

****

So, eight games in, the Yanks have three losses, two attributable to Javy Vazquez. The first loss, in which Vazquez pitched three nice innings before giving up eight runs in Tampa, was greeted with panic; yesterday's loss, a more mundane four runs in five and a third innings against the Angels, inspired boos. Not the best way to re-introduce yourself to the fans after that whole 2004 season experience, where Javy went from coveted object of desire, to joyous acquisition, to All-Star, to not entirely trusted, and from there to ALCS Game 7 batting practice pitcher, and victim of a "let's forget this ever happened" trade, when he was passed along to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Randy Johnson.

[ASIDE: Off the top of my head, I can think of two other times that the Yankees immediately cut ties with an acquisition after one season, as if admitting that the whole thing had been a terrible mistake best forgotten. Dave Collins spent a fitful 1982 season with the club, after the Yankees had signed him to a three-year contract to play first base--even though he was an outfielder who'd only played ten games at first in his entire career. It was a bad, bad idea, based on an idiotic concept--that the Yankees should become a NL-style speed-and-average outfit. Collins was basically replaced Reggie Jackson on the roster--small shoes to fill, right?--and that turned out about as well as you'd think it would. After the season, the Yanks compounded their mistake by sending the two years remaining on Collins's contract, along with Mike Morgan and Fred Friggin' McGriff, to the Toronto Blue Jays for Dale Murray. Then, in 1988, Jack Clark was a Yankee for roughly ten months. Again, Clark was coming in without a position--he was a first baseman and so was Don Mattingly--but at least this time the Yankees were celebrating the end of collusion, and Clark was coming off a season where he led the NL in OBP and slugging percentage. He didn't have a horrible season, but he wasn't a good fit, either. Shortly after the World Series, the Yanks dealt Clark to the Padres, where he made Tony Gwynn's life miserable, and received a bunch of guys I dare anyone to name without looking it up. That's the company Javier Vazquez is in.]

It's early. Really early. No one should panic when a veteran pitcher has back-to-back bad starts, unless he's injured. But there's the Javy Vazquez history--that slide from arguably the ace of the staff to being kicked out of the starting rotation in the ALCS and you have to wonder. Vazquez was always regarded as a cerebral pitcher--when the Yanks first acquired him, he was considered Greg Maddux's heir--and you have to wonder if those failures are still in his head. That sounds like mainstream media drama-building, since he performed well enough once he was out of Dodge, and you have to hope that there's a mundane explanation, like he's still building arm strength. After all, last year, in his best season since he left Montreal, Vazquez's started his preparations early to pitch in the World Baseball Classic. So maybe once he gets some more innings under his belt, he'll improve.

Right now, however, the only reasonable thing to do is put him on the mound every fifth day, and hope that eventually he gives us reason not to boo.

Game Story: Sweep Dreams in the Bronx

The Sunday plan landed me at Yankee Stadium last night, for the most comfortable Yanks/Sox game I've attended since 2002 or so. With the Pinstripers taking the first three games of the set in dramatic fashion, there was a "found money" quality to the game--a loss would sting, but it's still three out of four, right?--and the spacier environs of New Yankee Stadium made it a bit easier for Yanks and Sox partisans to make their respective ways to the beer and bathroom lines without tripping over each other. When people who hate you come into your house, it's definitely nice to have some elbow room.

I wasn't expecting much from the matchup. The MoLester has been sterling against the Yanks for his career--he only has one bad start against the team, and that came before his cancer diagnosis in 2006. Andy Pettitte's record against the Beantowners was much more mixed--15-8 against them for his career, but in the last few seasons it's been more Bad Andy than Good Andy.

Fortunately, it was all about Good Andy last night, running up another seven shutout innings to go with the combined effort shutouts on Friday and Saturday. The only players who really gave him trouble were JD Drew and Nick Green, although Andy avoided pitching to Mike Lowell as if he were the second coming of Albert Pujols.

It was 1-0 in the eighth (on an Alex Rodriguez line homer to center) when both managers tried to cough up the game. With Andy at 112 pitches, Joe Girardi called on Phil Coke to face the top of the order. It made sense to play a matchup against Jacoby Ellsbury, and the third batter of the inning, Victor Martinez, is marginally better against righties than lefties in his career, but then you have two more righthanded hitters, Bay and Youkilis. So while it wasn't a surprise to see Coke come into the game, it was a surprise that after he left the bullpen, no one else was warming up. Not Rivera in case a four out save is needed. Not Phil Hughes. Not even Brian Bruney "just in case." I like Coke and I'm all in favor of confidence, but this was just lousy planning--this is the same guy who gave up 6 runs in a third of an inning just last week. You give that guy a safety net, if you can. Coke gave up the lead on a 2-run V-Mart homer, and was fortunate to escape more damage when Jason Bay rapped into a double play.

After the game, Girardi defended his decision by saying that he wouldn't pitch Hughes in three straight games--the Phil Hughes Rules, anyone?--but if that was the case, why on earth did Girardi only get two outs (on nine friggin' pitches, total) out of Hughes in those appearances?

Anyway, in the bottom of the eighth, Tito Francona has his house much more in order. Josh Bard comes out of the bullpen to face the #9 spot, Derek Jeter, and Johnny Damon. As Bard comes in from the bullpen, we could see that both Hideki Okajima and Jon ("I prefer Jonathan") Papelbon are warming up, and not just soft-tossing, either. The stage is set for Bard to face a pinch-hitter and Jeter, Okajima to face Damon, and Papelbon to stretch out to four outs if either pitcher gets in trouble. I mean, that's the only way that having both pitchers warming up behind Bard makes sense, right?

As you probably saw last night, after Bard retired Hideki Matsui (pinch-hitting for Jerry Hairston) and Derek Jeter--making the Captain look bad in the process--Francona lets Bard face Damon. As I twittered at the time, Brother Joe, who's with me at the game, says "This is a risk. Damon could pop one in this park." He barely finishes saying it and Damon has lined a shot into the seats. Bard then faces Teixeira--a more defensible call, Tex kills lefties this year--and the big first baseman pops one so high in the air we never saw it come down. I'm told it was a fair ball. A couple of insurance runs later, we're off to never never land, and Boston was swept.

Some of the Red Sox fans in my section headed for the exits immediately after the Tex homer landed, when the Yanks had just a one-run lead. A couple of them had wrapped up their Boston regalia and tucked it under their arms, so as to hide that they were members of the RSN. It was an odd reaction, given Boston's recent history against the Yanks. You're up 8-4 on the season series! You lead the wild card, from whence you've won the World Series...twice!

This is ridiculous. The Red Sox are a good team. People are blaming Theo Epstein for not picking up Roy Halladay, oblivious of the fact that aside from John Smoltz's blowout Thursday, the Red Sox starters held the Yankees to four runs over three games, even while playing at Coors-on-the-Hudson Stadium. Things happen, and no one wins the pennant on August 10 anymore.

***

Overheard Outside Yankee Stadium--Man in Yanks paraphenalia talking to young woman of no visible affiliation, wearing a cardigan on a brutally humid night: "You covered up your tattoo? C'mon, show your tattoo. Why not? Show your tattoo. No one is gonna beat you up. Seriously, no one is gonna beat you up."

Zero Games Left: The End of Yankee Stadium

My brother J and I saw off the Cathedral in style yesterday, spending about eleven hours there en route to the Yanks' 7-3 win over the Orioles, the last Yankee win on the plot of land they've called home since 1923.

It was a bittersweet day, more celebration than wake for the defunct arena. I'll have more thoughts on it later on today at Baseball Prospectus, and there will be more pictures and discussion here on the blog once I've gotten some rest. Until then, just know I feel very lucky to have spent a very special day at the Stadium.

18 and Over?

The Yankees, having no real shot at the postseason themselves, tried to help out the Twins by taking three out of four from the AL Central-leading Chicago White Sox, but the Twinkies spit the bit by getting swept in Cleveland. Tonight's game featured good performances by two Yankees whose contracts are up when the season's over--Mike Mussina, who registered his 18th win of the season with a strong six-inning effort, and Bobby Abreu, who clouted a pair of big homers against former Yankee Javy Vazquez. Abreu wound up with six RBI, and Mussina cruised after escaping a big jam in the first inning, and allowing only one run on two hits and two walks. Moose's win keeps the possibility of his first 20-win season alive. It'll be a tough road to get here--he'd have to beat the Blue Jays and Red Sox, on the road--but at least it's a chance.

Meanwhile, the weather's been nice for Yankee Stadium's last week. Yesterday, I was in Riverside Park, where the local tweens were showing off their sk8er boi skillz. Hopefully, the good weather will hold up for the Yanks and Orioles to send out the Stadium in style this weekend. One way or another, I'll see you in the Bronx Sunday night.

Eight Games Left: Record-Setter

I didn't get to Sunday's matchup with the Rays; my Brother J and his wife did, however, and they got to witness some history:


(Hat tip to J for the camera work. Click on the image for a larger view.)

Congrats to the Captain on his torrid 9-hit weekend, and for matching Lou Gehrig's all-time Yankee Stadium hits record. Jeter now has all week to better the mark, one that will be a permanent part of the record books with the Cathedral closing its doors. The record-matching hit was a majestic homer off the Rays phenom, lefty David Price. The game also featured a first-inning grand slam by A-Rod, additional fireworks by Jason Giambi, and some slick defense by Brett Gardner in center. Can't Pitch Carl pitched well enough for his third win of the season, although his high-eighties cheese doesn't really tempt anyone to pick up the option on his contract. After some shoddy work by Jose Veras with a four-run lead, Mariano Rivera got a one-out save in the ninth to step into a tie for second place on the all-time saves list.

On the other side of things, Robinson Cano got benched mid-game by Joe Girardi, for failing to hustle on a hit deflected off Giambi's glove. Some would say that the benching is a long time coming, in a season where Cano will be lucky to finish with a .300 OBP, and where the adjective most often applied to him has been "lackadaisical." That's not one of the good English words, Robbie.

Ten Games Left: Sun Baked

The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly on the left field stands on Sunday, just as the unrelenting Roy Halladay beat down on the Yankees' batters. The rubber game of the series snapped the wrong way for the Yankees, leaving the team cooked as it goes on a ten-game road stand, seven games behind the Red Sox and two and a half games behind the Minnesota Twins, and leaving me with a nasty sunburn.

The day had a nostalgic tinge to it. Sunday afternoons have been my main experience of Yankee Stadium, ever since I got my first weekend ticket plan as a teenager. Rather than taking the train straight to the Stadium, I got off in Manhattan and walked across the Macombs Dam Bridge--one of my typical routes to and from the Stadium when I lived uptown and had all the time in the world.

As you can tell by the sign, the MDB is a draw bridge, which was a big curiosity for me when I was younger. I remember a number of times waiting to pass across, but I don't think I was ever actually on the span when the draw bridge bell started to ring.

Anyway, the walk to the park wasn't the only thing that brought back memories of the old days--the game itself did, as well. The Yanks needed Good Andy Pettitte to show up and counter Halladay pitch-for-pitch. But Bad Andy walked the first batter of the game, Marco Frickin' Scutaro. Scutaro came around to score, and before Halladay took the mound, the Yanks were down 3-0, thanks in part for Xavier Nady butchering a fly ball in left field. In the second inning, Scott Rolen--batting 8th against a lefty--roped a solo homer to make the score 4-0. Solo homers in the fourth and the sixth provided the tease, bringing it just close enough to make things frustrating, but again, the 7th inning brought things to a boil. Just like Saturday's game, Girardi tried to sneak one more inning out of his starter. Just like in Saturday's game, Pettitte stuck around too long, allowing three straight hits and another run. Finally, the score got to 6-2, Jays, where it would remain.

There are 26 games left in the season. Only 10 of those are home games, and their opponents' weighted winning percentage is .545. With no games left against the Twins and only three against the Red Sox, they don't just have to play out of their minds in September to make the playoffs, they need help from the opposition. It's a damn tall order.

Game 135: Painful

There are bad ways to lose; we've seen some of them this season. But I'm not sure that any loss so far has hurt as much as this one did. This was a game the Yanks needed, and had, and just let slip away.

The breakdown came with the Yankees up 6-2, and Joe Girardi trying to squeeze one last inning--the seventh--out of Darrell Rasner. With no outs and a man on first, Rasner got a double play ball to Robinson Cano, who tried an awkward lateral-flip move that skittered away from Derek Jeter. The runner wound up taking third, which was left empty when Alex Rodriguez came out to back up the play. The Blue Jays would score three times in the inning, then take the lead the following inning touching up three pitchers--Brian Bruney, who pitched well given bases loaded and no outs in the seventh; Damaso Marte, who may or may not still be hurt; and Edwar Ramirez, who's had a brutal August.

The Yanks had their chances to strike back, particularly when the Yanks got two men on in the ninth inning with no outs for Alex Rodriguez. Alex hit into a DP, keeping up the bizarre record that Brother Joe noted in his Friday column: A-Rod only has 3 RBI all season after the seventh inning. The box score would short Rodriguez some credit here--the ball was hit extremely hard down the third base line, and it took a great reaction play by Jose Bautista to turn a 5-unassisted-3 double killing. Still, an out's an out, and it's been a week of boo-birds for the highest paid man in the baseball business (well, the baseball-playing business, at least).

Anyway, I'll be in the crowd tomorrow to cheer the team in the rubber game of the series. It's my next-to-last ticket to the Stadium, and Brother Joe (that's Sheehan, for those of you who didn't check out the linked article) will be my guest in box 342. Hope to see some of you there.

****
NOTES

Hopefully, the "Catching Up" posts will continue tomorrow, along with the day's Game Story later on in the evening.

In other news, Jay Mariotti, of TV, radio, and, until recently, of the Chicago Sun-Times, has long been a mystery to me. I've never met anyone who would cop to being a fan of his, and every time I've read or heard his work, I've wondered how he could be so popular. Is it just that he doesn't write baseball well? Is he a crackerjack at other sports? Maybe people just like when a guy with a mullet condescends to them?

As a writer, his columns give off such powerful pretension, it's as if he can't believe he has to write about anything so trivial as sports. He tends to put himself at the center of the story, as when Ozzie Guillen hurled a sexual slur at him. Although Guillen's words were unacceptable, Mariotti's reaction was so over-the-top that it made you wonder if Guillen had outed him, rather than just insulting him (apparently, he hadn't).

Anyway, this comes up because of Roger Ebert's open letter to Mariotti, on the issue of his leaving the Sun-Times. It's great when a writer as good as Ebert takes the gloves off to take someone to the woodshed, and defend something he loves (in this case, the newspaper business).

Notes from a Baltimore Sweep

The Can't Pitch Carl Experience--I had a bit of criticism to levy on the Yanks' broadcast team over on BP: Unfiltered this morning, over a bit of medical misinformation. Here's a taste:

I was watching last night’s Carl Pavano start–his third Major League start in the last three years–on replay, when, in the first inning, the YES Network broadcast team hit upon a huge pet peeve. They were explaining Tommy John surgery to the audience, and Ken Singleton claimed that pitchers throw harder after the elbow reconstruction surgery because “they use a tendon that is actually stronger than the ligament that was replaced.”

I don’t mean to single Singleton out–he’s a quality broadcaster, and often the voice of reason in the Yankees‘ booth–but the myth that Tommy John surgery turns pitchers into supermen is a bit dangerous. Technically, what Singleton said was right: the tendon is better than the ligament being replaced (or overlaid), but only because the ulnar collateral ligament that requires surgery as a result of being torn or ruptured, while the replacement tendon is intact.

As for the start itself, Pavano's pitching line (1 walk and 5 strikeouts in 5 innings) belied the lack of command he showed (2 hit batters, lots of deep counts). This is normal for guys coming back from Tommy John surgery, particularly those who come back relatively quickly (Pavano's surgery was about 14 months ago, if I recall correctly). Of course, if he's able to be effective past this first start, that just raises stakes as to when he'll get hurt again. Will it be tomorrow? The second inning of his next scheduled start, against the Blue Jays? How can you keep Can't Pitch Carl's fragile body protected from the cold, harsh world. Bubble wrap? Styrofoam packing peanuts?

On to Today's Game--It says a lot that after today's game, despite all the injury concerns and questions, Pavano's likely passed Darrell Rasner on the rotation depth chart. Since May, Rasner hasn't had any luck at all trying to string a pair of quality starts together. The wounded look on his face when Girardi pulled him in the fourth was brutal.

Pornstache Wars--What exactly is the mustache look that O's firstbaseman Kevin Millar is going for? Is it Oliver Hardy? Hitler?

Sometimes I Wonder if This is On the Up and Up--Yesterday's YES promos were touting Robinson Cano against the Orioles today. There didn't seem to be much reason for this: he doesn't hit particularly well at Camden Yards, or against the Orioles. Wasn't on a hot streak either. But in today's game, he clouts four hits, including two doubles and a go-ahead solo homer. Weird, huh?

34 Games Left: Sunday Night Lights

During Friday's Independence Day game, at some point shortly after the the Sox took a 6-3 lead en route to a 6-4 victory, a friend emailed me with a one-sentence note:

Why are there so many Red Sox fans at this game?

There are many answers to this question. As I've complained before, a mind-boggling number of Yankee "fans" can think of nothing better to do with their tickets than to bring a Red Sox fan to the Stadium, to cheer against their team. Corporate ticketholders seem to love giving their tickets to fans of whichever opposing team is in town, and online services like StubHub have made scalping tickets safe and sanitary for any New Englander who wants to make the drive down I-95. Moreover, the Red Sox seem to have attracted a fan base with no connection whatsoever to New England, composed of Dominicans who come out to honor Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz, and others who jumped on the bandwagon circa 2004, adopting the Boston "B" as their non-conformist symbol for hatred of the Yankees, and/or New York in general. All told, that makes for a lot of people in the stands to chant "Youuuuuk" when Boston's whiny firstbaseman comes to the plate.

The simpler answer to my friend's question is that the Red Sox fans, from wherever and however they got into the Stadium, came to preside over a funeral. A funeral for the Yankees. They'd come into town on Thursday like they owned the place--they absolutely beat down Andy Pettitte and Jon Lester held the Yankees lineup impotent--and on Friday, the roll continued behind Josh Beckett. The Yankees, losers of five of their last six, actually fell behind Baltimore into fourth place at the end of action on Friday.

Since Wang went down, I've been coming to terms with the thought that this isn't the Yankees' year. Not that I've given up, but the twists that it would take for the Yankees to overtake the Rays and Red Sox--much less perform well in the playoffs--seem to range toward the improbable. Everyone knew that this was a risky season, with the Yanks counting on their young players rather than making yet another move for a top-shelf talent like Johan Santana. That young talent has largely disappointed, with Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy on the shelf with injuries (and before they were injured, they were ineffective); Robinson Cano having a half-season to forget, and Melky Cabrera openly making some of us question whether he belongs in the major leagues.

So I was bracing myself for a Boston sweep, or three-out-of-four on the upside. Then, on Saturday, there was a nice surprise from Mike Mussina--he picked the Red Sox apart with precision pitching and chutzpah, and the Yankees barely survived some ninth-inning trouble for Mariano Rivera. Still, coming to the Stadium for last night's Joba Chamberlain-Tim Wakefield matchup, I wasn't optimistic--sure, Joba's probably the best thing the Yanks have going this season, but he hasn't faced an offense like Boston's as a starter.

Again, tonight proved a pleasant surprise. Joba pumping mid-90s heat at the opposition wasn't surprising, but the Red Sox pounding those balls into the ground was, a little (it shouldn't have been, given that Chamberlain recently induced 10 or more grounders against the Astros and Pirates as well). Chamberlain was excellent outside of the fifth inning, which went 38 pitches long and featured control trouble. I was glad that they let Joba pitch himself out of the mess, despite the fact that he looked fatigued as the inning wore on.

Robinson Cano's seventh-inning triple, which tied the game, was another pleasant surprise, and Kyle Farnsworth making it through the eighth inning without giving the Red Sox the lead was outright shocking. The biggest, and most surprising moment in the game came in the ninth. The Red Sox got a runner to third base with two outs, and Manny Ramirez, who'd spent the game on the bench, came to the plate to face Mariano Rivera. I expected an intentional walk, to face rookie Jacoby Ellsbury rather than the most dangerous batter on the team. Rivera had other ideas, and took down the dreadlocked slugger with a perfect, three-pitch strikeout. Ramirez never took the bat off his shoulder.

At that point, things stopped being surprising. There was a palpable feeling that the worm had turned. The crowd in the left field stands stayed on their feet for the bottom of the ninth, expecting that one of the trio of Alex Rodriguez, Jason Giambi, and Jorge Posada would send us home with a bang. It didn't happen, but then the top of the Red Sox lineup didn't find much to do with Rivera in his second inning of work. When Robinson Cano singled to start the inning, blood was in the water, a sac bunt and a Wilson Betemit whiff later, the game was in the hands of rookie Brett Gardner, who's concluding his first week in the majors. Against Jon Papelbon, the rookie hanged in there, fouling off Papelbon's big fastballs en route to a eight-pitch groundball single up the middle. Welcome to the Show, kid. Thanks for rescuing our week.

NOTES:

• In the second inning, Alex Rodriguez tied Mickey Mantle on the All-Time home run list, thwacking a Wakefield knuckler down the left field line. Rodriguez had a hard week, with rumors of an affair with Madonna following rumors that his wife had fled to Paris, to be with Lenny Kravitz, in turn followed by the official announcement, tonight before the game, that his wife will seek a divorce.

• I'm perplexed by Madonna's role as the catalyst that set this chain of events in motion. I remember Madonna at her peak, in the 80's: the photos of her published in Penthouse and Playboy were perhaps the most anticipated thing in the history of published nudity. She was attached or rumored to be attached to dozens of prominent figures of the day, from JFK, Jr. to Jose Canseco and Warren Beatty. But with over-exposure, her reputation as a sex symbol began to wear thin, and it outright died, in my opinion, with her performance in the Basic Instinct rip-off Body of Evidence. The movie cast her as a dangerous sexpot, in a cast that included quality performers like Willem DaFoe, Joe Mantegna, Frank Langella and Julianne Moore. She was hamstrung by an awful, awful script, but it was just shocking that Madonna couldn't manage to convince anyone that she was seductive, or even terribly desirable, in the role. Her coming back from motherhood and marriage to bust up A-Rod's marriage is a bit like if Don Mattingly came out of retirement today and went on to win the batting title.

• Girardi got booted from the game in the sixth, for arguing balls and strikes right before the Gardner single that set up the Yankees' second run of the night. The guy in front of me remarked "He [Girardi] is the only one in that dugout with any fire." Tough judgment, given that Jeter and Posada are in that dugout, too, but I'm not sure I disagree.

• Words of encouragement to Kyle Farnsworth: "Kyle! Pretend that Mike Lowell is a beautiful five-point buck. Or six points, whatever. Just take him out!"

42 Games Left: Sweep Aversion

After rampaging through the Astros and Padres, it looked like a shot of interleague play was just what the doctor ordered for the Yanks. But the Cincinatti Reds, dead last in the NL Central, provided a roadblock, with potential All-Star Edinson Volquez breaking up the team's seven-game winning streak on Friday night--allowing only two runs in seven innings of work wasting a pretty decent Mike Mussina outing. Then Darryl Thompson did Volquez one better, leading a five-pitcher shutout of the Bombers on Saturday. Again, the Yankee offense--this time joined by a porous bullpen--helped waste Dan Giese's fine effort in his first start in Pinstripes.

So coming to the ballpark yesterday, the Yanks were in a tight spot, a fun romp through a weak NL schedule suddenly turning into a must-win situation to stop a three-game losing streak at home. Sunday's starter, Johnny Cueto, is someone I think will be better than Thompson or Volquez in the long term. Physically, he reminds me a little of a young Tom Gordon--short but long-armed--just with a better assortment of pitches.

True to that promise, Cueto was a surgeon against the Pinstripers for four innings yesterday, allowing just a couple of Bobby Abreu singles, and a hit by pitch against six strikeouts. He was hitting spots with a 95 MPH fastball and his breaking stuff was darting in and out of the strike zone. Fortunately, Andy Pettitte was just as fine for the Yanks, working his way out of a bases-loaded one-out jam in the fourth. It was a gutty performance, with the veteran lefty having a classic eight-pitch confrontation with one of the top rookies in the NL, BP's #1 prospect, Jay Bruce, to close out the inning.

The forecast had said thunderstorms, which kept some of the, shall we say, less intrepid elements from coming to the Stadium. My brother T, who signed on as my wingman on the late side, got to the ballpark extremely late--he missed Pettitte's fourth-inning drama, if I recall correctly. He also brought a dark and foreboding cloud to the ballpark with him: up until that point it had been pretty nice weather. Still, his timing was perfect. He arrived, the Yanks rallied to score a run off Cueto on a Jason Giambi single, a Hip-Hip-Jorge! double and a Robinson Cano sac fly. Pettitte worked a clean top of the sixth, interrupted a couple of times by huge dust clouds kicked up by the incoming high winds. Then the skies opened up in the most discrete and tidy rain delay I've ever experienced: maybe 20 minutes of hard rain and thunder--just enough time for a bathroom break and a short search for snacks among the Stadium's concession stands--then a short period of light rain, and about 20 minutes of cleanup. The crowd was oddly complacent, during the delay--someone asked me if the game was official, as if asking for permission to go home, and it did seem that the crowd was thinner after the tarp was removed from the field than it had been when it was put on.

When the game resumed, it was no longer fireballing Johnny Cueto on the mound for the Reds, but Gary Majewski, the centerpiece of the Austin Kearns trade a few years back, who almost immediately came up lame after joining the Cincy ballclub. The Yanks staged a second rally against Majewski and former Rockies reliever Jeremy Affeldt, capped by an opposite field double by Jason Giambi, and an RBI single for Posada that ran the score to 4-0.

At that time, I abandoned my perch in the left field Main boxes, to meet up with Jay Jaffe by his seats in the upper deck. Jay'd run into Rob Neyer and some friends during the rain delay, so he invited me to visit, now that the crowd had thinned out and his section had a fair number of empty seats in. It's from there that I watched the game to its conclusion, made a little bit too exciting by a couple of singles off of Mariano Rivera in the ninth. Good win for the Yanks to take on the road to Pittsburgh, en route to a rematch with the Willie Randolph-less Mets.
Even though both of these teams have struggled, to some extent, the Yankees would be well advised not to take either of them for granted--after all, they just lost 2 of 3 to the Reds.

***
NOTES

Two issues came up in discussion after I joined Jay's party in the upper deck, and I fear both made me look like a New York fanboy rube. First, talked about the "Tell Big Papi Where to Hit a Homer" at the Home Run Derby promotion. There's next to no chance that this promotion will come off, thanks to David Ortiz's wrist injury, but now that my credential application for the ASG has been rejected, can I just say that this was one of the dumbest ideas, ever? Maybe I'm mis-remembering (as Roger Clemens would put it) but I don't think that Major League Baseball built too many promotions around Yankees ballplayers the last time the All Star Game was at Fenway. No, as I remember it, that game was all about Red Sox history, Ted Williams coming out in his motorized scooter, that sort of stuff. Featuring a Red Sox player in the last All Star Game at Yankee Stadium is a bit like inviting your fiancee's ex-boyfriend to your wedding, then letting him have the first dance with the bride. I know MLB promotes the living daylights out of "the Rivalry" but seriously--is this where attention should be at this event? Does that make sense?

Regardless of my feelings about the promotion, I'm pretty sure that if I'm in attendance at David Ortiz's last game--or even just his last game at Yankee Stadium--I will cheer for him. The same goes Manny Ramirez, or Curt Schilling: regardless of their status as "enemies" who've killed the Pinstripers repeatedly over the years, at some point you've got to get beyond that and just be a baseball fan. And as a baseball fan, it'd be pretty damn small of one not to acknowledge the accomplishments that any those guys have had, the mark they've left on baseball history.

Just the same, the cheers caught in my throat when it was time to recognize Ken Griffey on what is likely to be his last game at Yankee Stadium. Junior likely ended his Stadium career yesterday with a homer, the six hundred and first of his career, and it came in a perfect spot (from a Yankees perspective): a solo shot in the late innings of a game in which the Yanks were comfortably ahead. But I just couldn't bring myself to cheer a guy who's spent so much of his career venting vitriol at the Yankees franchise and fans. I don't mind an opposing player beating the Yanks on the field--after all, that's their job--and Griffey certainly put the knife in the Yanks a few times, most notably in the 1995 ALDS. But for his entire career he's carried a chip on his shoulder against the franchise, apparently because Billy Martin yelled at him when he was a kid. Griffey may not have noticed, but Billy died quite a while ago--the same year that Junior made his major league debut, in fact. You'd think that the adult thing to do would be to let go of the insult at some point, but in interviews this weekend, Griffey was surprisingly graceless. Rather than fondly recall any of the 18 homers he'd hit in the Cathedral, his response to a question about his time spent at Yankee Stadium was "My favorite Yankee Stadium memory? It's leaving Yankee Stadium...For us [the Reds], it's a trip we have to make, not something to look forward to."

For most of his career, I found myself wishing that I liked Ken Griffey Jr. more--the same way some people wish they enjoyed classical music. After all, he was one of the most important players of the 90s. It looks like I'll have to go on wishing. I only managed a half-hearted golf clap for Griffey's homer, and if that makes me a bad fan, then so be it.

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.

Comeback: A Pornstache Story

I've been running around like a lunatic the last few days, tending to a lot of real-life developments. So it wasn't surprising that I was walking through midtown today, and when I passed a bar I was completely clueless that the Yanks were playing an afternoon game. And losing, 7-6.

The score held until I could get to a bar myself, over on the far west side of what used to be known as Hell's Kitchen. It's been a while since I saw a game in a bar--fortunately, it's like riding a bike, you never really forget how. The patrons were really into it, which was mildly surprising for a weekday before 5PM. During the Yanks' tease of a rally in the eighth, there were audible gasps when Brad Wilkerson (Brad Wilkerson?) caught Johnny Damon's gapper. And the disappointment and restlessness were palpable when Blockhead Kyle pitched himself into trouble and put the team one more run in the hole in the top of the ninth.

But then our Co-Player of the Month of May, the master of the Pornstache himself, Jason Giambi, came up to the plate against B.J. Ryan (there's a certain Beavis and Butthead symmetry to the pornstache facing B.J. with the game on the line). As it turns out, Giambi abused Ryan for a three-run, walkoff upper deck shot. I said before the season that with his Yankees contract finally coming to an end, the Giambino would be motivated to perform in 2008, and (at least where the bat's concerned) that prediction seems to be bearing fruit.

Don't Call It a Comeback

Anyone who didn't think the Orioles would claw their way back for the win, the minute they saw LaTroy Hawkins on the mound, raise your hand. Anybody but Joe Girardi have their hands down? Didn't think so.

It was really looking better for the Yanks last week, but it only took two games for the Orioles to derail that optimism and send the Bombers back to the AL East cellar. The Yanks lost on Memorial Day despite Darrell Rasner continuing his Aaron Small impression, and again last night after the Yanks had 4-0 and 8-4 leads. Hawkins figured in both losses, though Ian Kennedy gets some partial credit for once again taxing the bullpen with a 3 inning start. Why was Joba Chamberlain paired in a tandem with Mike Mussina rather than Moose's shorter pitch-alike, Kennedy? The way Kennedy was seldom able to go even halfway into a regulation game, you think it would have been a natural situation to allow Joba to stretch out his arm in anticipation of becoming a starter again.

That's all academic now. Kennedy has joined Phil Hughes on the DL, and Joba may well wind up pitching in that slot, anyway. The season is frustrating again, just when things were starting to look up.

***

I got to catch Sunday's game in the Boogie Down Bronx with my Dad, the first game he's been to in a few years. Dad's largely a sports non-combatant--the only real reason he cares about baseball is because he knows that the game has a profound effect on me and my brothers' moods--but he enjoyed the Yanks' comeback greatly, and seemed to be having a pretty good time even before the Mariners' bullpen coughed the game up n the eighth inning.

Up until then, things looked pretty grim. Chien Ming Wang had a second straight start where his control was off, and the team's defense was spotty behind him as well. Jarrod Washburn, a guy who'd been as hard to hit as a tee-ball this season, provided six innings of really solid work--this was something we saw on occasion last season, as well, and it follows the pattern of the Yanks being unable to hit any starter that throws lefthanded (with the nine-run outburst against Erik Bedard on Friday perhaps serving as the exception that proves the rule). As was the case last week, the Yanks looked constantly on the verge of breaking out against Washburn, but they could never quite fire up the engines all at once.

Luckily for the Yanks, the Mariners are a brutally bad team. Their excellent bullpen performance last year, the one that gave them that nifty record in one-run games, hasn't held up this season. The Mariners pen--thanks in part to the trade that sent George Sherrill to the Orioles, and in part to the simple volatility of relief performance in general--is currently below replacement level in WXRL, and the pitching staff as a whole is below replacement level by VORP.

So the Mariners' eighth inning meltdown wasn't a surprise--except to the extent that seeing the Yankee offense perform is sometimes surprising, these days. Bobby Abreu's at bat against Arthur Rhodes reminded me of the Rhodes-David Justice matchup in a long ago ALCS, and JJ Putz's freak fall/bad throw later in the inning was just the kind of play that happens to a team when they're going bad. It's a fluke, but good teams hang in there to capitalize on those flukes.

The question is, are the 2008 Yankees a good team?

***

After I criticized Girardi for not coming out to argue the wrong side of the Subway Series Delgado home run call, the skipper seems to have gotten the memo that he should be a little more expressive in his support of the club. Last Thursday, he threw a classic, Piniella-style fit over a strikeout call on Jason Giambi, a good enough tantrum to earn him a suspension. In last night's game, he was all over the umpiring crew for continuing the game in the ninth, when it was raining so hard that Hideki Matsui was having all sorts of trouble seeing the ball and gripping the bat. Girardi was 1 for 2 on the arguments (wrong on Giambi, and right about the rain). But a little theatrics--specially if they're heartfelt--can really help keep your keister off the hot seat when the team is underperforming.

Abastonado!

Well, I've certainly had better times at the Stadium. For three innings, it was a brilliant game. The Yanks were getting on base against Oliver Perez, working the count, driving the Little Unit (as Perez was once known) into high pitch counts and what should have been an early shower. The Yanks hadn't been able to capitalize on the baserunners, but it felt like they were on the verge of breaking through. Chien Ming Wang, Sunday night's starter, looked sharp, retiring the first nine in order, delivering first pitch strikes, and generally being as efficient as Oliver was wasteful. I know it was too damn early to start thinking this way, but I started to imagine the emails I'd send to the various people who stood me up for this game (citing the late start, rainy forecast, and other exigents as excuses not to come to the old ballpark) if Something Special happened.

Then it all fell apart so suddenly, it was like a slap to the face. Wang lost the strike zone, falling behind hitters early. Jose Reyes responded with the game's first hit, a double, but was erased on some poor baserunning and a heads-up play by Wang on a comebacker fielder's choice. But just when it looked like things were getting back to normal, the Yankee defense deserted Wang. Alberto Gonzalez, who'd already muffed a pop-up for an error, allowed a ball to go under his glove for a single. After a walk, Jason Giambi made a nice stop at first, but instead of making sure to get an out, he threw poorly to Jeter at second, drawing the Captain off the bag. Everybody safe. Then another single by Moises Alou, and the score was 3-0.

The Yanks caught a break when the umps reversed a really bad home run call (from my seats in Section 342, one thing you do get a pretty good view of is the left field foul pole--no way that was a homer), but the beating just continued, until the Mets had batted around and the Yanks were lucky it was only 4-0. Hideki Matsui cut that lead in half with a 2-run jack in the bottom half of the inning, and when the Yankees had a man on third and one out in the fifth, it looked like the game was still manageable. That runner--Jose Molina, who'd reached on a double--was stranded, and the Yankees wouldn't have another hit all night. The gap started growing again on a Ryan Church homer, and got completely out of hand with the Mets' 6-run eighth inning. Those of us who stayed past the eighth got treated to Mets fans acting like they owned our house, having fairly uncontested chants of "Lets Go Mets" all the way to the subways, and generally acting as if their team hadn't come into the Stadium with their manager on the verge of getting fired, or, for that matter, as if their team hadn't choked their way out of the playoffs last September despite a huge lead.

In the end, the Yanks were playing so lifelessly that there wasn't much to do other than grin and take it. It was a little bit easier to grin since the more obnoxious Mets fans are like the cast of misfits out of a Mad Max movie, and not terribly good at rubbing it in. Near my section, we had a tubby guy with a cowbell and a bunch of (poorly) handmade signs. His devastating witticisms included chanting "1986" (not a lot of bragging to remind us that the last time your team won a championship was over 21 years ago, and against our hated rivals), leading a chant for Endy Chavez, and then, chanting--for himself--"Cowbell Guy! Cowbell Guy!" Even a Mets fan seated behind me was disgusted: "This guy's a fake. I'm a season ticket holder at Shea, and I've never seen him before."

There was some entertainment value to be drawn from heckling their amateur hour attempts to make us feel bad. Another member of the Mets' freak show--an older lady who looked like a run-down, foul-mouthed Doris Kearns Goodwin--installed herself in our section late in the game, the better to talk smack. A quick reminder of the Mets' follies last September led her into a foaming-at-the-mouth rant against the Phillies: "The Phillies suck. Ryan Howard is a piece of s***, and Jimmy Rollins is a piece of s***."

"Well, that s*** beat you, didn't it?"

She moved away after that, to sit closer to Tubby Cowbell Guy. But despite the amusement that the Mets fans provided, this was a dispiriting loss. This Yankee team isn't right, not by a long stretch. They're completely hapless against lefties (4-9, .637 OPS against southpaws), and it didn't help that the Yanks started five lefties against Perez, who had a .459 OPS allowed to lefties this season. It didn't help that Shelly Duncan and Morgan Ensberg sat this game out, which begs the question: if they're not going to play against Oliver Perez, why are they on the team? It doesn't help that the Attorney General hasn't shown any of the glove magic that's supposed to make up for his weak bat. It doesn't help that after impressing with five homers in April, Melky Cabrera's come back with a .190/.230/.293 May. Mike Mussina is now the guy charged with ending the Yankee losing streak on Tuesday.

NOTES

• Ryan Church's 9 homers would lead the Yankees.

• The Yanks' latest "get fired up" montage is from the movie 300. The whole concept behind these montages is kinda cheesy--they should have stopped after the montage from Rocky II. Do these people know that the Greeks all die in that movie?

• Maybe I just didn't catch it from my vantage point in left field main, but it didn't look like Joe Girardi came out to argue the fourth inning home run call. I understand that he's emulating Joe Torre, but it's strange that there's a call that could crack the game wide open, and he's letting his players argue with the umps, without his support.

Blame It On the Rain

Saturday's game was winnable. It was winnable in the sixth inning, when the Yanks' 2-1 lead--by the way, when is this team gonna start scoring?--was blown on a tactical gamble. Mike Mussina, who was sterling in his last start (six two-hit innings against the Rays), was having a fine afternoon through five, marred only by a Manny Ramirez homer. In the sixth, a one-out single and double had put men on second and third for the struggling David Ortiz, and the Moose, showing some old-school stuff, struck Ortiz out on four pitches. And then, with Manny coming to the plate, Joe Girardi held a conference on the mound. The question, of course, was whether to walk Ramirez.

According to Pete Abraham, Mussina told Girardi that Ramirez was the matchup he wanted, and Girardi went with his pitcher's call. Moose's first pitch was waist-high and caught too much of the plate--Manny (being Manny) ripped it for a double, and the lead.

Now, coming into today's game, Manny was 17 for his last 44 against Mussina, with four homers--that covers the period from 2003-2007, postseason included. Yes, it's a small sample, but after Manny belted one halfway to the moon in the fourth inning, maybe Girardi should have considered the matchup between Mussina's cerebral stuff-challenged pitching style and Ramirez's, um, not-so-cerebral hitting style an advantage for the batter.

Yeah, I know Mussina has lots of experience. Yes, he'd just gotten a big out against the Sox's other big bopper. And no, I don't blame Mussina for thinking he could get Ramirez out. He's an athlete--he has to believe he can get Ramirez out. Girardi isn't obligated to listen to Mussina, much less agree with him. This was the manager's bad call.

The Moose apparently felt he'd rather face Manny Ramirez than Kevin Youkilis, and that's exactly the way it worked out. Just not in a good way. One bad turn followed another, as the pitcher brought in to replace Mussina was Brian Bruney, the, what, eleventh? Maybe even twelfth man to make the pitching staff out of Spring Training. Youkilis hit a single, and now it was 4-2.

The game was still winnable, though. The Yanks brought the score within one in the seventh inning. That rally stalled out when Jose Molina--who had to bat because the Yanks aren't carrying a third catcher and Jorge Posada is still injured--struck out against Manny DelCarmen with the tying run on second base. The Yanks rallied again in the eighth, against Hideki Okajima, when the Yanks got two men on with two outs, and Alex Rodriguez coming to the plate. This time, it was Terry Francona who seemed caught off-balance by the turn of events--the two baserunners came over the space of just five pitches--and closer Jon Papelbon was rushed into the game. The tide was turning...

...and then, as Papelbon warmed up to face A-Rod, the rain came. The umps made a judgment call to put the tarp on the field rather than let the inning go one more batter--a call that looked kind of stupid when the rain died down immediately after the tarp was rolled out, and seemed to stay okay for at least 15 minutes before the rain started in earnest, for matbe two hours. Maybe someone who was in Beantown can tell me that this was a monsoon, but it just didn't look that way on the tube.

Now, maybe the result would have been the same had Alex gotten to face Papelbon at 6:20, rather than 8:30. But because of the delay, Papelbon got to warm up again (a couple of times) in a leisurely fashion, rather than with the sense of urgency they had when he was first called into the game. Meanwhile, Rodriguez had to sit in what's reputedly the smallest, crappiest visitor's clubhouse in baseball, getting cold and thinking about the at-bat. When his opportunity finally did come, it was a three-pitch strikeout, and the epic poem "Alex Rodriguez Chokes in the Clutch" had a new verse or two.

Papelbon's pitches were nasty, but Alex has to get tired of saying "you just have to tip your cap to the pitcher..." Now Phil Hughes takes the mound tomorrow hoping to salvage a series win.

The 21 Project/Non-Baseball Ramblings

I'll admit, I haven't been too optimistic about the prospect of LaTroy Hawkins in pinstripes, and his performance Friday's game has me desperately hoping I'm wrong about him. Mini-Moose (and sadly, I don't mean that nickname in a good way right now) nibbled and got shelled (4 BB and 6 runs in 2 1/3 IP); then, after a four-run third inning rally and 4 2/3 sterling innings of relief by Jonathan Alabadejo, Ross Ohlendorf, and Billy Traber, the Hawk came in and coughed up six runs of his own, and couldn't even get out of the inning.

The extra bit of salt in the wounds was that Hawkins made this craptastic appearance wearing Paul O'Neill's old number, 21. No Yankee had worn the number since O'Neill retired, but Hawkins wanted it because it was Roberto Clemente's number. Supposedly, Hawkins can't comprehend why Yankee fans would mind him wearing O'Neill's number.

Now, the natural reaction from fans will be to help him comprehend by booing him whenever he takes the mound. If he keeps performing like this, that'll be an easy choice. But here's an idea: what if, instead of making Hawkins's life miserable, we just asked him nicely to pick a new number? I'm thinking of something on the level of Steve Lombardi's Project P46, just rather than trying to convince a beloved Yankee to return to the fold, we'd be asking a new Yankee to respect the 0ur feelings about about a team favorite, and give up his uniform number.

It's pretty easy. Get a card, postcard, or regular letter stationery. Write LaTroy a pleasant note, explaining what Paul O'Neill meant to you, and why you think no one else should wear that uniform number for the Yankees, ever again. Ask him nicely to give it up, and maybe even suggest another uni number he'd enjoy. Affix a stamp and mail your letter/card to:

LaTroy Hawkins
Yankee Stadium
161st Street and River Avenue
Bronx, NY 10451

If you want to get some extra credit, you can also try to ensure that no one else ever wears O'Neill's #21 on Yankee pinstripes again. You can do this by buying a couple of extra postcards and letting higher-up members of the Yankee organization know that you think the Yankees should retire uniform number 21, in honor of O'Neill and/or Clemente. While I think that Paulie O is enough reason all by himself for the number to be retired, the fact that it's also Clemente's number makes it an absolute no-brainer: retiring the number would be special not just to all those fans of the late-90s Yankees, but also to loads of Hispanic fans throughout baseball. Many forget that the same segregation that kept African Americans out of MLB until 1947 also kept dark-skinned Latinos from playing. Clemente was the Latino Jackie Robinson; and honoring him is a way that the Yankees could be ahead of the curve. Anyway, you can write a note explaining why you feel the Yanks should retire #21 to Brian Cashman, at the same address as Hawkins, above, or you can just send your complaint straight to the top:

Hank Steinbrenner
George M. Steinbrenner Field
1 Steinbrenner Drive
Tampa, FL 33614

I suspect that you could also address a letter to Hank's brother/co-managing partner Harold Steinbrenner at the same Tampa address. If you want to learn more about the overall effort to have Clemente's #21 retired throughout Major League Baseball, you can visit Retire21.org.

***

Speaking of 21, I hadn't previously mentioned here my experience sitting in for Joe Sheehan at the AL Tout Wars draft. Tout Wars is an expert fantasy baseball league, in which all the participants are pretty much fantasy baseball professionals. The AL Tout league had been the subject of a bestselling book called Fantasyland, and this year, was the subject of a documentary by the same name. If you want to know what the draft was like, you can read my column on it over at Baseball Prospectus. Just don't needle me too much on the fact that the player I spent 10% of Sheehan's budget on, Mariners reliever J.J. Putz, just got injured and is likely to miss close to two months of the season. I hear that often enough from Joe.

Anyway, after the draft, the participants and a few others went out to a restaurant to socialize, which was tremendous fun. I always enjoy hanging with a crowd that knows more about baseball than I do, and it was great to hear behind-the-scenes stuff about how MLB.com's Gamecast system works, and anecdotes about the Atlanta Braves, and that kind of cool stuff.

At one point in the evening, one of my fellow-drafters sheepishly confessed that he's a big devotee of blackjack, and that he counts cards in Vegas. Which was funny, since the guy was sitting about five feet away from perhaps the most famous card-counter in the country, Protrade founder Jeff Ma, who was going to participate in one of the other Tout Wars drafts the following day. Ma was the main subject of a bestselling book about an MIT card-counting team, Bringing Down the House, which had just been turned into a movie, 21. As of last weekend, 21 was the top movie in the country. Small world.

***

Now, despite the box office success, the reviews haven't been kind to 21. Not having seen it yet, I can't comment on whether they have the film pegged right or wrong. The one thing I will say is that the movie seems to have bothered the New York Times's Manohla Dargis enough that she invented a new term for her review:

Ben ogles the chintzy glamour and the chesty blondes spilling out of their dresses, and the movie does exactly the same. He particularly likes it when his skinny school crush, Jill, clambers aboard and offers him a lap job, for which I hope the young actress Kate Bosworth was well compensated. Like everything else in “21,” Jill can be bought for the right price, as of course can Ben and, by extension, us.

Now, Dargis is a great reviewer; but if you're going to be judgmental and snarky, you need to get your terminology right. If you google the term "lap job" you get a bunch of references to people overclocking computer processors. Since Bosworth's supposed to be playing an MIT genius/nerd, this might not be out of character. But that wouldn't explain Dargis's comment that Bosworth's character "can be bought." Obviously, Dargis thinks that a "lap job" is more than just trying to give the boy she likes a more efficient heat sink.

I've, um, heard of lap dances. As someone who tries to keep up with the language of perversity, I'm also familiar with various fine, intimate terms ending in --job, which I won't enumerate since this is a family blog. However, among what Padma Lakshmi would call the "Job Family of Products" I've never heard of the lap job. Is it new? The whole thing sounds like the scene in 40 Year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell tries, and fails, to describe what a woman's breast feels like.

Scoreboard!

Opening Da--, erm, Night was all you could ask for in a ballgame and in a start to Joe Girardi's career as Yankee manager. I wrote the experience up for Baseball Prospectus (subscriber article); here's the requisite taste:

The big story of the night was the historic final Opening Day of the House That Ruth Built, one of a litany of lasts that will run at least through September 21 against the Orioles (the Yankees' final scheduled regular season home game) and perhaps be stretched even farther should the Bronx Bombers manage to make it to the playoffs for the 14th straight year. We can look forward to these "historic" markers growing increasingly absurd as the year wears on, with broadcasters encouraging fans to catch the historic final midweek series against the Rays in July, and in August alerting us to Carl Pavano's historic final trip to the Yankee Stadium Trainers' Room. (I can almost hear Suzyn Waldman reverently running down the historic implications of the latter event: "Should Pavano somehow stay with the Yankees next year, and need a cortisone shot, or a rub down, or a precautionary X-Ray, it will be at the new Yankee Stadium.")

Of course, there will be an audience for all the sentimentality that's being unleashed with the Stadium's send-off. In a sport that conscientiously markets itself on its past and its traditions, the Yankees trade most effectively in nostalgia. Possibly the greatest achievement of the Yankees' nostalgia machine is the perceived continuity between the building that Colonel Ruppert built in 1923 to house Babe Ruth's bat and the current Yankee Stadium. The 1976 "renovation" was more of a gut-and-rebuild job than a simple sprucing up of the structure. Just about every significant detail of the building--its dimensions, the playing field, the seats, the scoreboard--was altered, resulting in an arena that doesn't fit in with the great classic ballparks like Wrigley Field or Fenway Park, but doesn't quite have the plastic uniformity of the cookie-cutter parks of the '60s and '70s, either. Although many still admire its timeless look, Yankee Stadium II (as we sometimes like to call the post-1976 structure) shares little with the original other than its address.

Across the street, the new new Yankee Stadium looks a bit like the Death Star, circa Return of the Jedi, enough so that I half-expect it to sprout a laser cannon and vaporize the present stadium sometime after the last pitch of the 2008 season is thrown. Its still-under-construction exterior shell self-consciously recalls the original structure, but the ballpark within will be thoroughly modern and built from scratch-there's no longer any plausible deniability that this isn't a break with history. Talking to fans around the ballpark, the recurring theme was anxiety about the new ballpark. Will they be able to afford tickets? Will they be near the other regular ticket plan holders in their section? Will the new Stadium be the same kind of place the old one was?

I know some of the rest of you had to be there...after all, the place was packed. How do you feel about the the last Opening Day at the old ballpark?

Rainout Photoblog

(Click on any of the pictures for a larger view.)

So, hearing a rumor that they'd be Opening the baseball season today (after opening it a couple of weeks ago in Japan, and again last night in the nation's capital) Brother J and I went up to the Bronx, in hopes that there would be a game going on...


Cool! Forewarned of the weather conditions, we were wrapped in many layers and sporting ponchos to keep the rain away. Anyway, as you approach the old ballpark in the Bronx these days, you can't help but have your eyes drawn to its replacement, across the street:


At the beginning of last season, this was nothing but an extremely organized set of girders. By October, it looked like an arena, albeit one covered with scaffolding. But now, much of the outer shell of the new Stadium (what you could actually call a facade) looks like a completed product.


Looking up, you can see the lights already installed, and perhaps a hint of the outfield wall frieze (what some incorrectly call the facade):


Perhaps the most interesting touch was the Derek Jeter billboard (actually, one of those cloth screens) that's been set up inside what will be the main entrance.


Having toured the outside, Brother J and I headed in, through what we call the veal fattening pens--the security corrals set up by the left field gate. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get this picture to load rightside-up.

After a lot of waiting, to get to an inconsistent concept of security (we were waved through, without a second look), we finally hit the inside of the House that Ruth Built:


As you can see, the tarp was out, umbrellas were in evidence, and folks other than ourselves were sporting ponchos. When we walked in, the precipitation was nothing more than a strong drizzle. Still, the word being bandied about by the PA announcer and by Yankees apparatchik Michael Kay and John Sterling was that the forecast was favorable, and that the game should start after an hour delay.


With nothing much to do, we went to the escalator area to peek into the new Stadium, where construction workers and random Parks Department folks with Department-issue umbrellas roamed the structure.



Meanwhile, the Yankee Faithful did everything in their power to stay dry and warm during the delay. For folks in the Upper Deck, that meant crowding the concourses up there. For the Bleacher Creatures (OK, faux creatures sitting in the left field bleachers for Opening Day) that meant taking to the slight bit of shelter offered by the bleacher's back wall:


Then, we got the ugly announcement:

Apparently, "evaluating our options" meant sending Joe Girardi, Brian Cashman, and a third man I'm 70% sure was Reggie Jackson out to tour the right field line:

The crowd pleaded with them to play the game. It was barely raining, and the field was definitely playable.

However, our pleas fell on deaf ears.


After the game was called, Roy Halladay went out to get his throwing in. Earlier, AJ Burnett and Scott Downs had done a little light throwing. There hadn't been much sign of any Yankees players on the field, at least not while we were waiting.



Halladay had a coach standing in as a batter while he threw from flat ground. The coach didn't mime a swing, but with his legs he made the same weight shift a batter would while waiting for a pitch.


And that was as close to baseball as we got today. Soon, Stadium security was asking us to get moving, tossing us out into the throng trying to make it to the Subway. See you guys tomorrow night!