(All comments taken from participants in the game thread.)

PRE-GAME 

Man, Teix down to seventh!

So they’re going to play through the rain.

I’m always happy to watch a Yanks game, but this is one of those nights they’d have to pay me to sit in their seats and drink their beer. I wouldn’t do it for less than $400 plus travel, and parking expenses. Everybody has their price. That’s mine.

TOP OF THE 1st: KC 2 – NYY 0 (homer by Moustakas)

Yankees are losing. This is familiar.

If Gritner is in LF, there is no score in this game. It’s not only that Raul is bad, but that Gritner is great. His glove is sorely missed.

I am trying not to let the Yankees get me down, but they suck at the moment. Come on, it is the Royals.

BOTTOM OF THE 3rd: KC 3 – NYY 0 (The first three Yankees reach base)

You know what’s perverse? I’m getting nervous about the prospect of bases loaded no outs because that seems a situation doomed to disappoint.

Bases loaded no one out. Do they score?

No worries, that was just our best hitter whiffing. No worries, that was just our second best hitter whiffing.

Jesus motherfucking christ on a goddamned motherfucking cracker.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

BOTTOM OF THE 4th: KC 3 – NYY 0 (Chavez gets to third with two outs)

And no two out hit. Now hitting 6 for 65 in that situation. Mendoza line looks like Mt. Everest.

Guess it didn’t rain hard enough.

I’m really not enjoying Yankees baseball much this year.

TOP OF THE 6th: KC 3 – NYY 0 (Teixeira passes on an easy out at first in favor of a difficult play at third, everyone is safe)

What the fuck is WRONG with this team?

WTF were you thinking Mark? This team is playing horseshit ball.

BOTTOM OF THE 6th: KC 3 – NYY 0 (Alex leads off with a double)

It looks as if the Yankees are aiming for one of those Everyone Who Participates Wins A Trophy awards at the end-of-season banquet.

TOP OF THE 7th: KC 5 – NYY 0 (2 out, 2 run homer for Franceour off Garcia)

.500 and dropping like a rock. I’m sure Joe’s remedy is going to be more rest.

I can’t watch anymore. Good night all.

Just wondering – if the Yanks finish last, do they have any shot at drafting Andrew Luck? RG3? Any Kentucky hoopster?

BOTTOM OF THE 7th: KC 5 – NYY 0 (Two on, two out for Cano)

Yay – two more chances to strand a runner in scoring position!

Hey, if they are sitting in the rain watching this slop I sure as shit aint’ turning my TV off.

TOP OF THE 8th: KC 6 – NYY 0 (Wild pitch scores 6th run)

Finally found a saving grace for this evening – my plasma big-screen went out and, thank Mickey, I was able to reboot it and solve the problem. The bad news is that it was still tuned to YES.

Hey, at least we’ve got each other. Cause if there is anything less sympathetic than a bunch of Yankee fans bitching about their sorry-ass, boring, horseshit follies team I’d like to know what it is.

Can’t just be a fair weather fan. Need to watch THIS in the rain. Now’s the time is to celebrate any win, not expect to always win.

BOTTOM OF THE 9th: KC 6 – NYY 0 (Teixeira leads off with a double, is stranded)

Are the Yankees trying? I think so. And if so, there’s a good chance they’ll start hitting and snap out of this weird vortex of suck with runners in scoring position. And if not, they don’t make it this year and our Octobers open up for other shit. That would be less fun than usual, but 2008 wasn’t so bad that they couldn’t win the whole damn thing the very next year.

And it’s supposed to rain all week.

AP Photo by Bill Kostroun 

For the first time in almost two weeks the Yankees were able to put together consecutive wins. DiMaggio wasted no time in extending his streak, as he singled and drove in a run in the first inning to help the Yanks beat the visiting Detroit Tigers, 5-4. Bill Dickey saw his streak end at twenty-one, but in Boston Ted Williams pounded out four hits to equal DiMaggio’s streak at seven games. Williams would match DiMaggio game for game for quite some time. You might remember that 1941 would turn out to be quite a year for Teddy Ballgame as well.

Luís Tiant was one of my favorite players when I was eight or nine years old. And why wouldn’t he have been? His cork-screwing windup was absolutely beautiful, perfect for imitating in the backyard. By this point in my life baseball was really the only thing in the world that mattered, which explained my four favorite pastimes, listed in no particular order: playing baseball, watching baseball, reading about baseball, and collecting baseball cards.

One afternoon, apparently a rainy afternoon with no baseball available on TV or the bookshelf, I found myself wondering which of my heroes might share my birthday. Today I can find this answer in the click of a mouse, but in 1978 my only choice was to turn to my baseball cards and flip through them one by one, checking the birth dates listed on the back. I don’t remember if it took me five minutes or five hours, but I found my answer: Luís Tiant. I’ll never forget that thrill. Somehow, he and I were connected.

When the Yankees took on the Reds on Sunday afternoon, it was the first time I had really watched Johnny Cueto pitch. Pitchers today are all the same. The perfect wind up has already been discovered (I read somewhere that Roger Clemens’s motion is the ideal), so young American pitchers all grow up into that model. Gone are the days when a flamboyant hurler might try to kick a hole in the sky like Satchell Paige, stare at the heavens like Fernando Valenzuela, or swing his arms above his head like Bob Feller. But there was Cueto, flashing the #47 on his back as he completely turned his back on the hitter, then uncoiling back to unleash a blazing fastball punctuated by a stylish leg whip that pulled him off the mound towards first base. It was enough to make any pitching coach cringe, but it was beautiful to watch. Somewhere in Cuba, El Tiante was chewing on a cigar and smiling.

For most of the game, all the Yankee hitters seemed to be doing was chewing on cigars. Cueto brought a 1.89 ERA in the game, and he backed that up nicely over the first five innings, allowing just four hits while striking out five and picking up two double plays. Robinson Canó was the one Yankee who looked truly comfortable against Cueto all afternoon, and he started the sixth inning with a booming double to the wall in left center. Two batters later Raúl Ibañez turned on a pitch and hit a moonshot down the line in right field for his ninth home run of the season and a 2-0 Yankee lead.

Cueto had looked so good up until this point that it didn’t feel like the Yankees would get anything more off of him. The good news, though, was that CC Sabathia was on the hill for the Bombers, and he had been even better than Cueto. The Big Fella didn’t allow his first hit until there was one out in the fifth inning, and didn’t see a hint of trouble until the sixth. In that frame Drew Stubbs reached on a bunt single and Joey Votto walked to put runners on first and second with no one out. But CC stiffened, getting Brandon Phillips to bounce into a double play and battling Jay Bruce for seven pitches before striking him out to end the inning.

So when the Yankees got those two runs in the bottom of the sixth, it certainly looked like it would be enough. Sabathia would cruise the seventh, maybe even the eighth, and the bullpen would close it down. But it didn’t work that way.

Ryan Ludwick sampled Sabathia’s first offering of the seventh and found it to his liking. He popped it over the wall in left and the lead was sliced in half. One out later someone named Ryan Hanigan watched two straight strikes before jumping on the third and popping his own home run to left, tying the score at two.

Zack Cozart followed that with a dribbling infield single that Sabathia couldn’t quite get to in time, but when CC recovered to strike out the next batter, things looked less dangerous — but only for a minute. Sabathia threw eighteen pitches to the next three Reds to come to the plate (Stubbs, Votto, and Phillips) and walked them all, giving Cincinnati a 3-2 lead. He struck out Bruce to end the inning, but the damage was certainly done. Sabathia let out a yell as he left the mound and it seemed to be directed at the home plate umpire, but I don’t think the strike zone was the problem; it was CC.

The Yankees had only one shot to get back in the game, and it came in the eighth. Curtis Granderson singled to lead off the inning, and Alex Rodríguez came up with one out. The play-by-play says “A Rodríguez flied out to left,” but that doesn’t tell the story. A-Rod jumped on the first pitch he saw from Cueto and appeared to crush it to left center. He immediately went into his “how you like me now” routine, flipping away his bat and looking into the Yankee dugout, confident he had put the ball into the seats and his team into the lead.

But the ball didn’t even get to the warning track before settling harmlessly into Chris Helsey’s glove. A-Rod posted an OPS of 1.067 when he won the American League MVP in 2007. Since then his OPS has looked like this: .965, .934, .847, .823, .767. (If you feel like your glass is a bit too half-full, take out a piece of graph paper and plot that progression out to 2017.) Through forty games this year Rodríguez has four doubles, five home runs, and 15 RBIs. This particular fly ball probably would’ve been a home run had it not been knocked down by the wind, but it was hard not to wonder. Is this what we have to look forward to for the next five years from our cleanup hitter? Warning track power?

Cueto cruised through the eighth before giving way to the triple-digit heat of Aroldis Chapman in the ninth. The Reds had plated two more runs in their half of the ninth, so nothing the Yankees did in the bottom half scared them at all. Reds 5, Yankees 2.

The Yanks have dropped five of six and now sit at 21-20, much closer to last place than first in the upside down American League East. There will be lots of angst in the papers and on the airwaves, so there’s no need for me to add to that here.

Things will get better. Mark Teixeira will be back on Monday. Brett Gardner will be back soon after that. A-Rod has to get at least a little better. The wins will come soon enough, and everything will look an awful lot better. I promise.

[Photo Credits: Al Bello/Getty Images]

Continuing the pattern, the Yankees followed a loss with a win as they topped the Browns in a slugfest, 10-9. DiMaggio lost a sure hit in the fifth as St. Louis third baseman Harland Clift made a spinning stab of his liner for a fielder’s choice at second, but the streak continued with a clean single to center field in the eighth. Bill Dickey extended his own streak to twenty-one and raised his average to .391 with a three hit game.

The Yankees continued their pattern of alternating wins and losses as they lost to the Browns, 5-1, before a crowd of only 5,388. For the first time in the young streak DiMaggio was forced to wait until his final turn at bat to keep his string intact as he doubled to left with two outs in the seventh inning. He finished the game 1 for 3, but catcher Bill Dickey homered for the Yankees’s only run and extended his own hitting streak to an impressive twenty games.

A crowd in excess of thirty thousand filled Yankee Stadium on this Sunday afternoon and watched as the Yankees pummelled the worst team in the American League, beating the St. Louis Browns, 12-2. Lefty Gomez, one of DiMaggio’s closer friends on the team, started and got the win. Joltin’ Joe went three for three on the afternoon, scoring three times and driving in a run. New York papers reported the next day that two of the hits could’ve been called errors, and the third was a single awarded on the basis of catcher’s interference, the result of a rule which has since been changed. At any rate, the three hits brought DiMaggio’s four-game totals to 7 for 14, an even .500; the slump was certainly over.

…don’t say anything at all?

That would make my job a little easier than normal tonight, because right now there is nothing nice to say about the Yankees.

Here’s the best I can do: Phil Hughes has been decent for four straight games. He’s struck out 22 against only five walks. But I can’t go past decent because of the taters. The only certainty about the Yanks this year is that Hughes will let up a long ball – at least one in each game so far, ten total in eight starts.

I think I know why we’re kinda nuts over Phil Hughes and his developmental path. Sometimes we see him uncork fastballs that overpower hitters for a couple of games in a row. We’ve already had very high expectations due to the hype he generated during his Minor League career and then we see him blow guys away sometimes.

That’s the path he should be on, but we also see him toss batting practice half the time. So the path he’s on now must be the one the Yankees created for him with their incompetence. That’s probably partially right, but I think Hughes has a lot to do with this himself.

The fastball plays sometimes, but I’ve only rarely seen that loopy curve ball fool anybody. David Robertson throws the Platonic Ideal of the Nardi Contreras “spiked-curve” and Phil Hughes throws the Play-Doh version. And the 86 MPH cutter seems like a mistake every time he throws it. It was the cutter that Jose Bautista jacked to give the Jays a 2-1 lead and it was all they needed as the Yanks didn’t score another run. Jays 4 – Yanks 1.

The Jays, behind a rookie named, let’s look up the spelling, Drew Hutchison, punched so many holes in the bottom of the order they’d fail to qualify as swiss cheese for lack of substance. The fourth through ninth batters went 1 for 21 with 2 walks in the game. Ouch.

In the game thread, Ara Just Fair mentioned that the Yanks are 3 for their last 40 with RISP. Double ouch.

It’s not that fun when the Yanks don’t win, and especially so when they don’t hit. When they are going like this, it seems like it would take a miracle to bust the score truck out of the impound lot. But it will happen sooner rather than later and we’ll be laughing about this one and all the others like it.

Won’t we?

Photo by Abelimages/AP

The day after appearing to snap out of their funk, the Yankees slipped again, losing to the White Sox, 3-2. The Yanks were now a game below .500 at 15-16, and they stood a disappointing 7 1/2 games behind the streaking Cleveland Indians (23-9) in the American League standings. DiMaggio was limited to a single in the second inning, but he had now hit in three consecutive games.

[Painting by Erin Wong]

Yanks play the Blue Jays for the first time this year. They’ll play two games up in Toronto.

Meanwhile, Marc Carig writes that the Yanks have enough pieces in the bullpen to get to Soriano in the 9th.

Curtis Granderson CF
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Mark Teixeira 1B
Raul Ibanez LF
Eric Chavez DH
Russell Martin C
Jayson Nix SS

Jetes the the night off.

Never mind the tantrums: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Featured Image via Personal Message; photograph by Bags]

There were fewer than 1,500 fans in the Stadium as the Yankees snapped their five-game losing streak, beating the White Sox, 6-5. Those who were there saw DiMaggio hit a momentous homerun in the third inning, a colossal blast which cleared the bullpen in leftfield before landing far up into the bleachers. It was said at the time that the only other right hander to hit a ball that far in Yankee Stadium was Detroit’s Hank Greenberg. The Yankees came to bat in the bottom of the ninth down by a run when DiMaggio smashed a triple to dead center, keying a two-run rally that would earn his team a much-needed win. Two down, fifty-four to go.

Dock Ellis is back in amination.

Seventy-one years ago Tuesday, Joe DiMaggio began his historic fifty-six game hitting streak, a feat which likely will never be matched. To commemorate this achievement, we’ve decided to track Joe D day-by-day and game-by-game over the next two months, which promises to be fun. Here’s the first installment…

As the Yankees arrived in the middle of May, both the team and its twenty-six year old center fielder were in the midst of terrible slumps. DiMaggio came into the afternoon’s game against the White Sox hitting a respectable .306, but he had seen his average drop more than 200 points in the previous three weeks following a torrid start to the season. The Yankees started the day 5 1/2 games behind the first place Cleveland Indians, and they lost that day to Chicago, 13-1. DiMaggio’s 1 for 4 effort at the plate actually lowered his batting average to .304, and so it appeared that both slumps were continuing. While it’s likely that few would’ve expected the team’s struggles to continue, it’s certain that no one had any idea where DiMaggio’s first inning single would eventually lead.

The Yankees lost to the Orioles 5-2 tonight in a game so dull and unremarkable that I’m worried I might lapse and accidentally recap the drama at Manchester City on Sunday instead. The Yankees had a chance to sweep a two-game set with the division leading Orioles and with CC Sabathia on the hill and in form of late, what could go wrong?

Wei-Yin Chen. I don’t know if he’s really any good, but he’s pitching pretty well and the Orioles have now won six of his seven starts. CC wasn’t good on a night when he had to be. Adam Jones really smacked one out of the park in the second, and CC let up three doubles, but he could have survived if not for all those other base runners. Seven Orioles reached on via walk, hit by pitch, or infield single and CC was toast after six.

Chen kept the Yanks off the board for those same six innings. Curtis Granderson got him, the other way no less, in the seventh for the only two runs the Yanks would score and the game never seemed like it would bend towards the Yankees.

Maybe with a little bit tighter defense and a few decent calls from the umps at key moments and if we could swap those three rally-killing double plays for hits… oh hell, forget it. We’d have to start over and play this one again to find a way to make a Yankee victory plausible. They were the second best team at the park and that’s because the rain scared away that Little League team that was planning to attend.

Moving over to basketball and soccer, let’s just say that if your Mother’s Day celebration did not include the Manchester City game versus Queens Park Rangers, you missed out on the best sporting event of the year. No doubt, lock up the prize, no one is topping that. It was the 2004 Red Sox, but if all that craziness of the Games 4 and 5 of the ALCS happened in Game 7 of the World Series instead.

In the NBA Playoffs, I’m rooting for Lebron I guess, though I’ll be plenty psyched if Roy Hibbert and the Pacers keep winning. I just want Lebron to win one and then to see what happens after that. Will he break through and become something different and better than he is right now? Will he slide back after grabbing the ring? I also would like him not be the terrible choke artist that many paint him to be.

Then I look at the play-by-play data from tonight and I see he disappeared at the end of the game only to pop up and miss the two biggest free throws of the night, ones that would have turned a one-point deficit into a one-point lead with 54 seconds to play. He didn’t get a shot off for the final three and half minutes, clearly deferring to Wade, who managed to pump off five and was fouled shooting a sixth in the same time span.

I wish I watched that game instead of the Yankees because I’d love to know what the hell was going on there. I don’t think we’re asking Lebron to win or lose by himself. We’re just asking him to play the final minutes the same way he plays the rest of the game. Did anybody watch?

The title of this post was inspired by Eduardo Nunez, who can play any position on the field, not that you’d want him to. It also applies to CC Sabathia, who, I learned from YES, had locked up with the resident lefty Hulk over in Tampa, David Price, five times previously and not yet delivered a win for the Yanks. Despite E-Nunez gifting two runs to the Rays by botching two routine plays in the first two innings, the Yankees were all over David Price from the word “go” and CC Sabathia clamped down like a too-tight Ace bandage over eight excellent innings for a 5-3 win and a series victory.

What does Eduardo Nunez do well? He’s 24 years old. He can steal a base. He can stand anywhere on the diamond you ask him to and, if the ball is hit in his general vicinity, he might block it with some part of his body and throw it somewhere within the stadium in which he is playing. For some reason, this skill set is the lynchpin of Joe Girardi’s roster management strategy.

Most of the outfield is hurt? Don’t call up a Minor Leaguer, Nunez can stand out there. We have an old and injury prone left side of the infield? Start Nunez as often as possible. The legendary closer broke his knee? Is Nunez already in the game? Damn. Call up a reserve outfielder, I guess. Is this really what the Yankees have become? A team so shitty that Eduardo Nunez and his null set is vital? I don’t believe it.

But I digress. I considered writing about Mariano Rivera again tonight. About how his sudden absence has changed my outlook on the Yanks. Less childish. Less emotional. Less passionate. Then Eduardo Nunez booted an easy inning-ending grounder in the first and I shouted at the TV, “Get him off the field, he’s terrible!”

“What does “terrible” mean?”

Oh, shit, the kids are still up and they heard that. Backtrack and apologize or give them the hard truth that Eduardo Nunez sucks at baseball, relatively speaking? Backtrack. I have to get these kids through Little League, after all.

Anyway, somehow bedtime got extended until the Yanks tied it up at 2-2, so they went to sleep with fresh memories of Curtis Granderson homers. Better than sugar plums if you ask me.

Price sure looked like he had all his stuff, but the Yanks weren’t fooled very often. Granderson homered and blasted another to the warning track. Alex had great swings and two hits. Cano saw him better than anyone, with three hits and the telling blow, a two-run jack. Last night, the Yankees scored one run off of Jeff Neimann and were lucky to get it. Tonight they scored five off David Price and seemed a good bounce away from getting ten. Go figure.

In the six innings without a Nunez error, Sabathia permitted four base runners and held the Rays scoreless. His final line was eight innings, two unearned runs, seven hits, one walk, and ten strikeouts. I think he was better than that line indicates, if that’s possible. CC Sabathia is quite possibly the one thing the Yanks got right this winter. And it’s a big one. Next time we’re bitching about Pineda, Montero and Ibanez, let’s be sure to throw CC on the scales.

Let’s also give Joe Girardi some credit for a smart move tonight. He took Nunez out for a defensive replacement. In the sixth inning.

Photo by Mike Stobe/AP

If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees, it’s possible you’ve come to believe what some will tell you — the closer is the most overrated position in baseball. Those last three outs are really no different than the first three outs. Far too much glory and farther too much money are heaped upon those few soles lucky enough to have been weeded out of the starting pitching pool and thrust into the last spot in the bullpen. Any pitcher, after all, could get those last three outs. If the only baseball you’ve watched over the past fifteen years has involved the Yankees and Mariano Rivera, it’s possible you think those last three outs are easy.

They aren’t. At least not always.

On Wednesday night the Yankees scored a run in the top of the first inning when Derek Jeter notched his 50th hit of the season and scored all the way from first a few minutes later on Robinson Canó’s double to left field. That 1-0 lead stuck for a long time, thanks mainly to an impressive start by Yankee rookie David Phelps.

Phelps got off to a rough start, giving up a leadoff double to Ben Zobrist and backing that up with a walk to Carlos Peña. He’d eventually issue another walk to Luke Scott to load the bases with two outs. He recovered to get Will Rhymes to ground out to second to end the inning, and then settled into a groove, setting down nine of the next ten batters to cruise into the fifth.

Baseball is a funny thing. If everything we read back in 2007 had come true, Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes, the one-time jewels of the Yankee farm system, would have about 150 wins between the two of them by now. Sure, Phelps was the team’s Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2010, but he hasn’t generated nearly the hype of countless other Yankee prospects. Still, it looks like he might stick around, even if his spot in the rotation is given to Andy Pettitte. His control is good, and his money pitch — a Maddux-like fastball that starts at a left-hander’s hip before darting back over the inside corner — seems perfectly designed to neutralize the scariest hitters he’ll face in Yankee Stadium.

With two outs in the fifth and still clinging to that 1-0 lead, Phelps looked to be in position to grab his first major league win. But with his pitch count climbing into the eighties, a walk to Peña, another to B.J. Upton, and Joe Girardi’s itchy trigger finger all conspired against him, and Phelps found himself walking off the mound an out too early.

Boone Logan quelled the rally by striking out Matt Joyce, then set down two more in the sixth before passing the baton to Cory Wade, who saw the game through the seventh. Things got a bit interesting in the eighth, thanks to a leadoff walk issued by Rafael Soriano and a throwing error by Canó, by Soriano wriggled free and passed the game to David Robertson in the ninth inning.

Robertson’s statistics coming into the inning were obscene. He hadn’t allowed a run since the end of last August, and he had struck out 23 hitters in just 13 innings in 2012. Sure, he had struggled a bit the night before, but this was the Hammer of Thor. Now that he had worked his way through his jitters, he’d surely get back to doing what the Hammer does — pounding the strike zone and blowing away any and all overmatched hitters who dared oppose him. These last three outs, after all, are no different than the three in the eighth.

All of this zipped through my head as Robertson came to a set and readied for his first pitch to Sean Rodríguez. Fifty-five seconds later the Rays had runners on second and third with no one out. Rodríguez singled to left on the first pitch of the inning, and Brandon Allen echoed that with a single of his own to right on Robertson’s second pitch. (Nick Swisher’s ill-advised attempt to nail Rodríguez at third was nowhere near the cutoff man, and Allen was able to take second.) Robertson was probably as stunned as anyone else, and he promptly walked Zobrist on four straight pitches to load the bases and bring the dangerous Carlos Peña to the plate.

Robertson’s teammates call him Houdini for his uncanny ability to squirm free of jams like this one; in his career fifty batters have faced him with the bases loaded and twenty-five of them have struck out. Peña became the twenty-sixth of fifty-one, and suddenly it seemed possible. On a 1-1 count to Upton, Robertson dropped a pitch that may or may not have (but probably didn’t) dance across the outside corner. It was the type of pitch that many umpires would honor, but Jim Reynolds had been squeezing pitchers on both sides all night, and he saw this as a ball. If Robertson had gotten that pitch, you can bet he would have pumped a 1-2 fastball up in Upton’s eyes, and you can bet that Upton would’ve swung right through it for strike three. But at 2-1, justifiably fearful of extending to 3-1 with the bases loaded, Robertson was forced deeper into the meat of the strike zone with his fourth pitch. Upton didn’t get all of it, but he got enough to float a fly ball to medium right. Swisher made one of the best throws I’ve ever seen him make, but Rodríguez slid in just ahead of Russell Martin’s tag. The game was tied, and the save was blown.

A few minutes later Matt Joyce hit a three-run home run to right (spraining his ankle on the swing and falling down at home plate), and the game was over. Rays 4, Yankees 1.

Should we worry about Mr. Robertson? Hardly.

[Photo Credit: Kathy Willens/AP Photo]

Steve Kerr advocates raising the NBA’s age limit over at Grantland. His argument is that the NBA is better served financially by having players in college longer. And in the end, Steve, isn’t what’s in the best financial interests of  the NBA really what’s best for America?

The dreckiest sentence in this mountain of dreck is this one: “Why should NBA franchises assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development when, once upon a time, colleges happily assumed that role for them?”

Let’s rewrite that question for Steve, but add one single ounce of humanity and perspective: “Why should anyone other than the NBA assume the responsibility and financial burden of player development?” Steve thinks the NBA is entitled to reap the corrupted benefits of the professional basketball player factory that is the NCAA.

And thank goodness for the NCAA. Assuming responsibilty over here and financial burden over there, all out of the goodness of their collective heart. The NCAA and NBA have concocted a virtually risk-free scam in which the NCAA develops talent at no cost, funnels that talent into a monopoly.  The only potential risk is a player getting hurt before he gets pushed through the funnel. That’s a minimal risk because the flow of talent is endless.

Well, minimal risk for the NBA and NCAA anyway. But screw the kid. That’s Kerr’s point and at least he had the guts to state it bluntly – albeit after he piled on about 2000 words of tone-deaf platitudes and other compost:

The arguments against raising the age requirement hinge on civil liberties, points like, “Who are we to deny a 19-year-old kid a chance to make a living when he can vote, drive, and fight in a war?” If this were about legality or fairness, you might have a case. But it’s really about business. The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry that depends on ticket sales, sponsorships, corporate dollars, and media contracts to operate successfully. If the league believes one rule tweak — whatever it is — would improve its product and make it more efficient, then it should be allowed to make that business decision.

With that guiding principle Steve, what other “rule tweaks” might serve the greater good of the NBA, and by definition, America? An endless and frightening list of things comes to mind. No business should be allowed to violate fundamental freedoms of our society to improve their bottom line. That type of thinking is vile.

And why is Grantland publishing this badifesto? I’m not asking an entire collection of writers to speak with one voice, but dropping in a non-writer with partisan ties to an issue to editoriolize is in poor taste. Especially when his case is so glaringly weak and offered without counterpoint.

I also don’t think rich, old, White men should be allowed to arbitrarly decide when impoverished, young, Black adults should be allowed to earn a living in their chosen profession, but Steve Kerr deftly dealt with that issue by not mentioning it.

With a 4-2 lead after seven innings, the Yankees showed off their new “Plan A” bullpen tonight. Rafael Soriano took over eighth-inning responsibilities as David Robertson packed his hammer for the ninth. It was the first close game since Mariano got hurt and I felt another wave of shock and depression as Mariano’s theoretical absence hardened into an actual game situation. It’s not that I’ve never seen the Yankees win a close one without Mariano, it’s just that those games were obviously temporary. A fleeting glimpse at an alternate universe, its otherness reaffirming our reality where Mariano was firmly and safely entrenched. This, as we all know too well, was different.

Ben Zobrist rocketed a triple to left-center gap to greet Soriano. He bounced back to strikeout Carlos Pena and B.J. Upton and was one strike away from stranding Zobrist when he threw a 55-foot slider that glanced off Russell Martin’s chest protector and bounced far enough away for Zobrist to score. Soriano then walked Matt Joyce on a close pitch, another slider, and went 3-0 on Luke Scott. Scott was ripping dead-red on the  3-0 pitch and Martin and Soriano wisely stayed with the slider. Soriano worked the count full and punched Scott out on a nasty, diving slider – the one he meant to throw Joyce.

The lead down to one, the Yankees rallied to give David Roberston a little slack. Alex Rodriguez hit a screaming bastard of a line drive that nearly impaled B.J. Upton in center. They gave Upton an error for letting Alex get to second, but better an error than a hole in the chest. Teixeira finally out-hit the shift and snuggled a double into the right field corner, scoring Alex.

David Robertson faced the bottom of the order in the ninth and did not burst into flames when he took the mound. It took a couple of batters. He got the first out but walked Rhymes. He let up a single to Sean Rodriguez and Tampa sent up Brandon Allen to homer or whiff. He whiffed. The real problem was that the Rays had turned the lineup over and their most dangerous hitter, Ben Zobrist, came to bat as the go-ahead run. Robertson worked him carefully but could not get the umpire to give him even an inch on the outside corner. He walked him on five pitches to load the bases.

Holy shit. Couldn’t we get a nice easy save our first time out there without Mo? It has to come down to the one player on the Rays who can hit it 500 feet at any time? Carlos Pena had had a rough night with three strikeouts coming into the at bat, but I’d like to meet the Yankee fan that was glad to se him up there. Robertson started Pena with two perfect pitches – a curve and a fastball both on the outside corner – for two called strikes. Robertson tried to get Pena to chase a low curve and a high heater, but the count ran even at 2-2. Don’t let it get to 3-2, I thought, with all those runners in motion, any hit might lose the game. Robertson took aim at the outside corner one last time and drilled it with his best fastball of the night. Pena never took his big bat off his big shoulder and the Yanks won 5-3.

Phew. That only counts as one win? Are we sure?

The Yankees scored their first four runs on homers – two by Raul Ibanez, who is a more animated corpse than I thought he would be, and one by Curtis Granderson. Good thing the Yanks hit the ball over the fence, because they can’t buy a hit between the lines. The Rays are employing the shift with such audacity, I think it’s as much gamesmanship as it actual defensive strategy. It’s starting to remind me of how the 1986 Mets were completely spooked by Mike Scott’s scuffed balls. If they’re not careful, they’re going to end up mindfucked against their most dangerous division rival.

For the second game in a row, Joe Girardi pushed Ivan Nova through a trouble spot in the seventh inning. Last week, Nova kept the Yankees close for six innings but it wasn’t close after he pitched the seventh. The rest of the thirteen man staff watched the game get out of hand. This time, through an annoyingly consistent rainfall, the Yankees gave Nova a three-run bulge to work with. He was strong through five, but allowed solo shots in the six and the seventh. Perhaps rattled by the homers, he gave up his only two walks of the night immediately following the dongs. And he looked vulnerable for the first time all night in the seventh.

In the sixth, Mark Teixeira and Derek Jeter turned a nifty 3-6-3 double play to erase the walk and end the inning. In the seventh, it didn’t look like Nova would be so lucky. After the walk to Jeff Keppinger, Will Rhymes doubled down the first base line. It rattled around the corner, but Keppinger held at third. Sean Rodriguez flew out to shallow right. Swisher caught the ball with his body moving towards home plate and uncorked a very good throw just to the first-base side of home plate. Russell Martin received the ball and spun to place the tag in front of the plate. Keppinger stayed at third. Martin stood in front of the plate with the ball like a kid on a doorstep with flowers in his hand waiting for his date to come down the stairs.

Keppinger would have no trouble winning a Republican primary with such unimpeachable conservative principles.

Mad props to Ivan Nova, who struck out eight Rays with his excellent mix of pitches. I thought the change-up, slipping down, just out of the zone, was particularly promising tonight. He looked so good through most of his outing, it’s hard to reconcile the homers. He let Jose Molina take him deep, which, on a better team might be a punishable offense in Kangaroo court. Nova was up 0-2 in the count and threw a pitch like he was down 2-0. Watching Molina jiggle around the bases I wondered if this game is really as hard as we make it out to be sometimes.

Despite the Molina incident and coming damn close to blowing the lead in the seventh, Nova held on and rewarded his manager’s faith in him. But even though Nova and Ibanez were the stars of the game, the story was new look bullpen. And in life after Mo, we’re going to have to settle for success, even if it’s not quite as beautiful.

The Yankees lost to the Royals in Kansas City on Thursday night, falling 4-3 to a team that hadn’t previously won a single game at home. Young lefty Danny Duffy was in control for much of the night, dominating most Yankee hitters with his 98 MPH fastball and an assortment of curves, sliders, and changeups. (It should be noted, however, that Derek Jeter picked up four more hits, raising his average to .404 overall and a ridiculous .576 against lefties.)

Jeter’s fourth hit was a single to lead off the ninth inning, and when Curtis Granderson followed with a walk to put runners at first and second with no one out and the 3-4-5 hitters due, Kansas City’s one-run lead seemed about to melt. But Mark Teixeira promptly grounded into a 4-6-3 double play, leaving the game to Alex Rodríguez. A-Rod swung through Jonathan Broxton’s first pitch for strike one, then took a pitch that was low and inside and should’ve evened the count at 1-1. Home plate umpire Vic Carapazza saw it as a strike, and suddenly A-Rod was in an oh-two hole. He reacted about as strongly as you’ll ever see a batter react after strike two, taking a step or two towards the umpire with both arms outstretched wide in disbelief. A player of lesser stature would surely have been tossed, but to Carapazza’s credit, he let Alex have his say, perhaps because he knew he had missed the call.

Rodríguez stepped back in the box and dug deep, fouling off three straight pitches before taking three balls to work the count full. He took a mighty swing at the ninth pitch of the at bat, but only managed to dribble it weakly down the third base line. Third baseman Mike Moustakas rushed in, plucked the ball from the grass with his bare hand, and fired to first to get A-Rod by half a step and end the game.

By now, though, you know that none of that matters. While shagging fly balls in the outfield during batting practice before the game, Mariano Rivera twisted his knee and fell to the ground in obvious pain. Waiting his turn in the cage almost four hundred feet away, A-Rod spoke for Yankee fans everywhere when he said, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god! He’s hurt!” Manager Joe Girardi raced to where Mariano lay on the warning track, and moments later he and bullpen coach Mike Harkey were hoisting the greatest closer of all time — and by at least one measure, the greatest pitcher of all time — onto a cart that would drive him off into the sunset, perhaps forever.

The true extent of Rivera’s injury wouldn’t be revealed until after the game, but the specter of disaster loomed over the entire evening. At one point Ken Singleton reported that it was simply a twisted knee and said something about how Girardi would have to do without him for a few days. Anyone who had seen the play (you can watch it here) knew it was much worse.

Within minutes after the final out, Rivera himself confirmed the worst. He had torn his ACL and his meniscus. The exact course of action won’t be known until Rivera flies back to New York and meets with team doctors, but one thing is for sure: he won’t pitch again in 2012, and since this season had long been rumored to be his last, there’s no guarantee that he’ll want to return for 2013, nor is it clear that he’ll even be able to pitch next year. When asked if he thought he would pitch again, an emotional Rivera gave a sobering answer: “At this point, I don’t know. At this point, I don’t know. We have to face this first.”

And now I have to face it. Throughout the game as we were all wondering what the news would be, I didn’t once consider how Rivera’s loss might affect the team. I didn’t wonder who the new closer would be, and I didn’t worry about the team’s playoff chances. All I could think about was whether or not I would ever see Rivera pitch again.

What I’m about to say wouldn’t make sense to people who aren’t sports fans, but I’m guessing that anyone who reads this will understand. Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, and Jorge Posada have been fixtures in my life for so long that they’ve transcended sport and become more than just baseball players. They have been the Mt. Rushmore of these Yankees, the faces of the franchise.

With Rivera specifically, it won’t just be during the final three outs of the ninth inning that I’ll miss him. I’ll miss those moments when the camera catches him tutoring a young reliever and modeling the grip of his cutter, a magician opening his bag of tricks. I’ll miss the naps he’d sometimes take in the middle innings. I’ll miss his measured reactions to wins, his stoic confidence in defeat. Without question, I’ll miss the man more than the player.

Sometimes, it’s not about baseball.

[Photo Credit: AP Photo/YES Network]

After skipping the latest Phlobafest last night, I was determined to catch most of Ivan Nova’s performance tonight. He’s the flip side of the aching disappointment attached to Phloba – surprising success. Sadly, Nova’s not that great either.

He’s good when he keeps the ball in the park and works his magic escaping jams of his own creation. The ball left the park tonight, and as his pitch count ran north of 100, all those men on base began to score. The Yankee offense did next to nothing against Jake Arrieta and lost the rubber game of the series 5-0 to the Orioles.

Jake Arrieta deserves the game ball for this one. He threw hard fastballs on the corners and mixed in breaking balls when needed. But the well-placed fastball was enough. The Yankees hit few balls hard and never threatened. Arrieta went eight strong innings, a career high.

Nova kept the Yanks in the game for six innings, but he was always in trouble. As he lost control of the game in the seventh inning, the thin ice of the Yankee bullpen finally fell through. With injuries to two starting outfielders, the Yankees decided to go with a short bullpen this week and it cost them a chance to steal the victory tonight. Who can fault Girardi with leaving Nova out there to put the game out of reach when he was carrying only 13 pitchers? Hopefully everyone will be healthy by the weekend so he can restock his arms.

The good news is that when Eric Chavez had an unexpected head injury in the middle of the game, there was another player waiting there on the bench that could fill in for him. That’s the kind of circumstance a professional manager must be prepared for and fans like us would overlook. The thirteen man staff might have forced Girardi to stretch Nova, but he would have looked even sillier if he had to forfeit the game when one of his starters got hurt.

I think the Yankees will win their fair share of games this season, and probably contend for the postseason. But with this starting pitching it’s hard to imagine what a winning streak might look like. Phil Hughes throwing a gem? Arod carrying the team over a three-game set? Those things seem impossible these days. Even worse, Cano and Teixeira are making Alex look dangerous. The pitching is so weak after Sabathia and somehow, in the absence of Gardner and Swisher, the lineup scored three runs in an entire series against the Orioles. When the Yankees are rolling they find three-run homers in seat cushions.

The Yankees are currently built like a .500 team: a fantastic bullpen, a creaky, streaky lineup and a rotation so top-heavy, if it was a human pyramid, the bottom layer would be crushed to death. The lineup should improve with health and a little patience. The rotation, though, I don’t see it. Andy Pettitte has done a lot of wonderful things for the Yankees, but would turning this starting staff into a postseason threat be his most impressive?

Photos by Kathy Willens  & Jim McIsaac/ AP

I received an email last week from a former teammate I hadn’t heard from in years. He was letting the old team know that our high school was celebrating the twentieth anniversary of our first Bergen County championship before the varsity game on Saturday. I looked at the word “twentieth” and for a moment wondered what team he could be talking about. I thought our 1992 team was the first to win Counties, but surely that wasn’t…shit, that was twenty years ago.

We showed up at the field on Saturday and most of the guys look like they could put on a uniform and get through seven innings without a nurse. The two decades took a toll in other ways though. There was less hair on display than a shoddy Brazilian bikini wax. It was the first time I’d seen my teammates since they became husbands and dads and it was a trip to see the changes in one fell swoop.

We’ve transitioned from teenagers to middle-agers along different paths but wherever and whenever it happened, our collective youth had vanished. Maybe some people held on longer than others, but after twenty years, nobody was spared. And that brings us to Phil Hughes who, it occurs to me now, has used up all his youth.

That’s the depressing part of Phloba’s (I am fusing Phil and Joba into the most disappointing word I can fashion, I might have broken that out last year, I don’t remember) breakdown. It would be fun to root for a Cy Young candidate or an All-Star (wait he was an All-Star?) but what we’re really lamenting injury after injury and sputtering pitch after pitch is the creeping shadow of time claiming Phloba’s youth. Whatever Phloba becomes now, it becomes as a man (as men?) with the burden of failure and the destruction of promise.

I knew I had to recap this game tonight, but I had a tough flight from Chicago backed up by dragging my ass around a basketball court and now a precarious time in which I try to make sure the coach seat and the boxing out don’t conspire to throw my back out when I sleep. When I saw Hughes was pitching, I didn’t even bother to record the game. I figured he’d be at best mediocre while giving up dongs left and right. If he was brilliant, I could suck it up and catch the replay.

No sucking it up was required.

My flight was delayed because of weather and I really hoped the game would be cancelled. I remember that’s how I used to feel when I young. I was so nervous for the games, I always hoped for rain. This time it was for strategic purposes – I didn’t want Phil Hughes to have to throw a pitch.

No such luck. The Yankees lost to the Orioles 7-1 in a game I’m glad to say that I missed entirely. I didn’t want to see Hughes let up homers. I didn’t want to see Eduardo Nunez massacre another position on the diamond. I didn’t want to see an offensive highlight package in which Arod’s bunt single, which led to no runs, featured prominently.

Hughes was better than last time, maybe the best he’s been all season, but it was nothing worth celebrating. And now he’s just another day older.

Photos by Al Bello / AP