The Yanks turn to their ace Michael Pineda to put an end to this three-game losing streak tonight in Kansas City. The Royals are playing well. They scrubs no more.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Carlos Beltran RF
Chase Headley 3B
Stephen Drew 2B
Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind the bbq:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: phdonohue]

Rest in Peace, Mr. King.

[Photo Credit: Danny Clinch]

Well, damn. The Rays beat the Yanks handily last night, 6-1. A three-game losing streak. Humble pie for the Yanks who now head to K.C.

Glad they’ve got Pineda going tonight because the sooner we forget another unhappy series down in Tampa the better.

[Photo Credit: Manuel Álvarez Bravo]

Maybe Joe Pierla will play the hero tonight.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Chris Young RF

Chase Headley 3B

Didi Gregorius SS

Jose Pirela 2B

It’s Chase Whitley. C’mon, Hoss.

Never mind a losing streak:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Phoebe Nakry via untrustyou]

Fin.

Okay, nothing is fucked here. No need to be un-Dude. Still, after scoring a couple of runs again in the first inning, the Yankee offense didn’t do dick (despite getting 10 hits), spoiling a fine outing from Adam Warren as the Rays beat the Yanks, 3-2.

Picture by Bags

C’mon Adam Warren. Let’s see what you got, dude.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Stephen Drew 3B

Jose Pirela 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind yesterday:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Farewell, Mr. Zinsser. 

Nathan Eovaldi pitched his best game of the year but a rocky finish earned him his first loss of the season as the Rays beat the Yanks, 4-2.

Hang this one of the Yankees’ offense who scored two runs in the first and had the bases loaded with nobody out. They didn’t score again for the rest of the game.

These things happen, don’t they?

Picture by Bags

The big question mark, Nathan Eovaldi goes tonight.

My Spidey Sense is tingling–I think he’s due to get walloped.

Let’s hope I’m wrong.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Chase Headley 3B

Stephen Drew 2B

Garrett Jones 1B

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind the indoors:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

I like this man (plus, he makes me laugh):

What advice would you give the younger you?

I’d probably say just calm down. Don’t worry so much, the way you tend to in your twenties. When young actors ask for advice, I tell them to treat it like a business. You lower the awning of the fruit stand at the beginning of the day and you do the best that you can, and at the end of the day you reel it back up and go to dinner. Somehow if you understand it’s a long-term business, it eases you into not beating yourself up. That’s a tendency of a lot of younger people — they’re pretty hard on themselves.

…You lost a brother and your parents at a young age. Later, your wife of 30 years died. How does a man handle loss?

You have to respect the fact that no solution is realized in a day. I remember the first Thanksgiving after my wife died: I’m with my three kids and we’re at the table and trying to do the same Thanksgiving thing, and we kind of look at each other and I said, “OK, let’s say what it is. Thanksgiving this year isn’t going to be what it was, but it will be, eventually.” The mark of the man is to figure out how to regain strength and move on the way the person you lost would want you to.

[Photo Credit: Dreamworks Animation]

The Yankees belted the ball around last night, scored 11 runs and gave C.C. Sabathia the kind of cushion ever pitcher dreams of. He pitched a decent game, too as the Yanks cruised to an 11-5 win in Tampa. First win for C.C. since Christ was a cowboy.

Smile.

[Photo Credit: Digitalhaas via It’s a Long Season]

Here’s to C.C. getting his first win of the season.

Brett Gardner LF

Carlos Beltran RF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Chase Headley 3B

Chris Young CF

Stephen Drew 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind the indoors:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Here’s Dwight Garner on Sally Mann’s memoir:

There aren’t many important memoirs by American photographers. I wish especially that, along with Robert Frank and Diane Arbus, Walker Evans had left one behind. How good was Evans’s prose? He once described James Agee’s sartorial style as “knowingly comical inverted dandyism.” He added: “wind, rain, work and mockery were his tailors.”

I held Evans’s writing in mind while reading “Hold Still,” the photographer Sally Mann’s weird, intense and uncommonly beautiful new memoir. Ms. Mann has got Evans’s gift for fine and offbeat declaration. She’s also led a big Southern-bohemian life, rich with incident. Or maybe it only seems rich with incident because of an old maxim that still holds: Stories happen only to people who can tell them.

…Her writing about “Immediate Family” is only one of many reasons to read this memoir. “Hold Still” is a cerebral and discursive book about the South and about family and about making art that has some of the probity of Flannery O’Connor’s nonfiction collection “Mystery and Manners” yet is spiked with the wildness and plain talk of Mary Karr’s best work. Like the young Ms. Karr, Ms. Mann was a scrappy, troublemaking tomboy, one who grew into a scrappy, troublemaking, impossible-to-ignore young woman and artist.

The details in “Hold Still” nail Ms. Mann’s sentences to the wall. She describes being dropped off after a date, for example, emerging from some boy’s El Camino and walking into the house to confront her parents. “My hair, trailing bobby pins, would be matted and tendriled against my hickey-spotted neck, and the skirt of my dress would be wrinkled, the taupe toes of pantyhose peeking out from my purse,” she writes. “My swollen lips were now a natural, chapped red, and my cheeks blushed with beard burn.” Taupe toes of pantyhose. It’s been a while since I’ve read a phrase that good, even in poetry.

I’m sold.

“In the first inning, I threw the first slider, I said oh, everything is working good today,” Pineda said after today’s game, according to Chad Jennings. “… I don’t know how to explain to you how happy I am right now. But I’m very happy now.”

Stud. That’s what Michael Pineda is. He’s the Yankees’ best pitcher and the only that can temper our feelings about him now is a nagging concern that he won’t stay healthy. Otherwise, he’s been tremendous. Today, he mastered the Orioles for 7 innings. Gave up a run, didn’t walk a batter and struck out sixteen. Can you remember a big dominant Moose like Pineda–with this kind of control and stuff–pitch for the Yanks in the past 30 years?

Carlos Beltran hit a line drive off the right field wall in his first at bat, a foot or two away from being a homer. Later, he did hit a home run, his first of the year. McCann hit a dinger, and Didi Gregorius drove in a pair as the Yanks won, 6-2.

[Photo Credit: Jim McIsaac/Newsday]

The Yanks lost a dud of a game yesterday, 6-2. This afternoon their best pitcher, Michael Pineda will pitch. Love to see him pitch well again, go deep into the game, and help give the Yanks a series win.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Chase Headley 3B

Stephen Drew 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Happy Mother’s Day and:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags

Afternoon game at the Stadium.

Ellsbury CF
Gardner LF
Young RF
Teixeira 1B
Beltran DH
Pirela 2B
Headley 3B
Drew SS
Murphy C

Never mind the fog:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

This is how I spark it…

[Photo Credit: Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times via This Isn’t Happiness]

This is becoming a routine, huh? Yanks get an early lead but their starting pitcher can’t do deep into the game so the bullpen takes over and preserve the lead and the Yanks win. Brian McCann (2-run homer on a 3-0 pitch) and Carlos Beltran (2-run double on a 3-2 pitch) had big hits as Jacoby Ellsbury and Brett Gardner continued to set the table, Adam Warren couldn’t make it out of the fifth, and four relievers followed him, Betances and Miller dominant again at the end.

Seems like a dangerous game to be playing. As deft as Joe Girardi is at handling the bullpen it’s not hard to be concerned about them being overused if this keeps up.

Still, another win, and that’s always reason to smile. Final Score: Yanks 5, O’s 4.

It’s the Warren Report tonight at the Stadium.

Jacoby Ellsbury CF

Brett Gardner LF

Alex Rodriguez DH

Mark Teixeira 1B

Brian McCann C

Carlos Beltran RF

Chase Headley 3B

Jose Pirela 2B

Didi Gregorius SS

Never mind the warm weather:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Picture by Bags.