I like the journeymen. Most fans, and understandably so, gravitate toward the stars. They like the Derek Jeters, the Mark Teixeiras, and the Mariano Riveras. I like those guys, too. You don’t win world championships without star players who can carry the load for long stretches during the regular season and at critical moments in the postseason.

But I’ve always taken greater interest in the lesser players on a team, those who fill a specific role, either in a platoon or coming off the bench. That’s because those guys have to struggle, in some cases just to stay in the big leagues. Because of that, some of those players work harder than your average player. I identify with those players–whether it’s an Oscar Gamble in the 1970s and eighties, a Luis Sojo in the 1990s, or a Glenallen Hill in 2000. Just like those players, I feel I have to work hard just to keep up, whether it’s teaching, making a speech in front of strangers, or writing one of these columns. It’s a struggle for me, too. I’m no Roger Angell, but I believe I can be a solid contributor by working harder (and perhaps learning more) than the next writer.

Marcus Thames is also one of those guys. I like Marcus Thames, and not just because he sent the Red Sox home with a crushing home run in the bottom of the ninth inning on Monday night. Thames is a journeyman. He started out in the Yankee system, having to overcome the label of being a non-prospect. Somehow, he climbed to the Bronx. He hit a home run in his first major league at-bat against a tall left-hander named Randy Johnson. Still, there were people who didn’t believe in him. Still, he had to prove himself. The Yankees didn’t believe. They traded him to the Rangers for an aging Ruben Sierra. The Rangers didn’t believe either. They granted him free agency, which paved the way for Thames to travel north and sign with the Tigers.

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A New York City Classic:

I see you out there on the ledge.  You watched Thursday night’s game with the Rays right up to the bitter end, then unfolded your life insurance policy, placed it neatly on the kitchen table, and calmly opened the window and took a seat next to the pigeons.  Or maybe I’m wrong; maybe I’m the only one on that ledge.

I put the TV on about five minutes after Andy Pettitte’s first pitch, and the screen came to life just in time to show me Carl Crawford and Ben Zobrist returning to the Tampa dugout, celebrating Zobrist’s home run and the Rays’ early 3-0 lead.  Pettitte followed that with a walk to Evan Longoria, but bounced back by getting a double-play ball and a strikeout to end the frame.  He made it through the second and third without event, but then gave up another home run to B.J. Upton in the fourth.  He clearly wasn’t sharp.

The Yankee hitters did their best to keep up through the early innings, but even when the score was close it was only a mirage.  Juan Miranda cut the lead to 3-2 with a second-deck two-run blast in the second inning, but the next couple runs were gift-wrapped, one unearned and the other undeserved.  In the third, Derek Jeter followed a Randy Winn single by dropping a sacrifice bunt that rolled untouched between the mound and third base.  Brett Gardner followed that with another bunt (natch), but this one produced a run when James Shields fired it over Peña’s head and down the right field line.  With none out, runners on second and third, and Teixeira, A-Rod, and Canó on the way, it really did look like the game was about to change.  As it turned out, Shields could’ve pulled a Satchel Paige and called his fielders in.  He snagged a tapper back to the mound from Teixeira, struck out A-Rod on a change-up that bounced in front of the plate, and fanned Canó on three pitches.  Move along.

If you were following the game on-line, you probably raised your eyebrows in the fourth inning when you read something like, “J Miranda tripled to deep center.”  The truth of the matter was that Miranda lifted a gentle fly ball that center fielder Upton never saw.  Upton immediately stood with both arms outstretched, asking for help that could never get there in time, as Miranda sprinted around second and slid into third.  Two batters later Randy Winn cashed in Upton’s gift with a sacrifice fly, tying the game at four apiece.

The tie score didn’t last long as a couple Tampa hits and a walk led to two more runs in the fifth, and Carlos Peña finally sent Pettitte to the showers when he led off the sixth with a home run.  If you’re looking for a silver lining in all this, it comes to you in the person of David Robertson, who relieved Pettitte and retired all six batters he faced in the sixth and seventh, striking out four of them.  The bad news, though, is that Chan Ho Park followed Robertson and allowed an eighth Tampa run, making the Yankees’ nightly ninth inning comeback attempt just a bit more difficult.  They could only manage two runs, settling for an 8-6 loss.

So the Rays leave town, surely pleased with themselves, and the Yanks are left with questions.  But it’s not as bad as it looks.  The Mets are up next, and they could be just what the doctor ordered.

The Yanks look to avoid a two-game series loss to the first-place Rays tonight. Here’s hoping Andy Pettitte has another good outing, nobody gets hoit, and the Yanks make like Benny Blanco from the Bronx and play like the World Champs they are, walking wounded and all.

Who is coming up? What’s the haps? As usual, the fellas over at Lo-Hud have it covered.

My brother, sister and I had bedtime when we were kids, through middle-school if I remember correctly. It got pushed later and later as we got older of course, but my mom was not into letting us stay up late during a school night to watch TV. So we’d start watching a movie and then have to go to bed halfway through. Mom would tuck us in, kiss us goodnight, and then go back to the living room of our small two-bedroom apartment and watch the rest of it.

She filled us in the next morning over breakfast, the story slowly coming back to her as she sipped her coffee, spread a triangle of Laughing Cow on a burnt piece of toast, her face still creased from the sheets, her voice still thick with sleep. Mom came to this country in 1967 from Belgium but never completely lost her French accent. When excited, her voice would get dramatically high, but not in the morning. It wasn’t sing-songy but full of melody, inflection and animation (nothing frustrated her more than watching a woman getting chased by the bad guys in a movie…”Kick him in the balls, kick him in the balls!” she’d say. “I don’t understand why they don’t just kick them in the balls.”)

In re-telling the movie, Ma never cut to the chase. She traced her way back into the story and then proceeded to give us a blow-by-blow account in painstaking detail. Sometimes she’d pause, not remembering the sequence of events, and spend five minutes sorting out what happened. Aloud. I would hang on her words, annoyed by her deliberate pace, not for one minute comprehending the way the female mind worked. I just wanted the payoff. What happened? The important stuff, not details of the scenery and costumes.

One movie that she told us about one morning was Cactus Flower, a movie I’ve never watched, but for a minute or two here or there, since. I like it better in my memory, listening to Mom, who loved Goldie Hawn and Walter Matthau, telling us what went down.

There was something about Goldie Hawn that she could relate to–they both had the ability to be light and fun, and were not afraid to laugh at themselves. They were both adorable when they were young but their looks changed as they got older and their voices got huskier. They were tested by life and proved not to be pushovers. Still, there was something, if not innocent, then refreshing and bubbly about both of them that links them together in my memory. I image that the Goldie Hawn of Cactus Flower brought my mother back to a time that I was too young to remember, when mom was young and new to this country. Before she had kids and her marriage got dark and ugly.

The Times on Stoner Cuisine. 

[Picture by Bags]

The media blitz promoting a re-issue of the classic Stones record Exile on Main Street has been a real turn-off–Keith Richards even hosted a quiz between innings on the HD TV at Yankee Stadium last weekend–but then again, as a friend said to me the other day, the Stones never have left a dollar on the table.

And, Exile is a great record, so it’s not all bad.

Neither is this:

“Right now in the standings, they should be comparing themselves to us,” [Matt] Garza said. “We’re three games up. They’re three games down. That’s what I see. Our numbers, staff-wise, are better than theirs . . . knock on wood. We’ve done our job. So why is there a need for comparison? They should be trying to compare to us, trying to do what we do because right now we have found a winning formula.”
(New York Post)

Matt Garza is a very good pitcher who does not lack confidence. He’s got a mouth, clearly, and he looks like a Herb, but that can be forgiven–being cocky isn’t the worst trait for a jock, and having zero fashion sense comes with the territory. (Glad to see Mr. Rodriguez has finally given up frosting his hair.) 

Oh, yeah, Garza has never won more than 11 games in a season and is 32-35 for his career.

He’s right, of course, the Rays are no joke but last I checked the Yanks are still the defending World Champs. And oh yeah, and it’s May.

But I like that he got a rise out of me–tough to do, I know. After all, there isn’t much to dislike about the Rays. Okay, Evan Longoria and James Shields and Garza have an arrogant countenance that is easy to root against when they are playing your team, but otherwise, how are you going to hate Joe Maddon? What’s dispicable about Carl Crawford? The Rays are Darlings, and deservedly so.

Kudos will go to Garza if he’s still talking tough come October…

On my out of my apartment building this morning, I run into an older guy carrying a laundry bag.

“Looks like a beautiful day out there,” he says.

“Sure does.”

“You going to work?”

What am I Jeff Lebowski? “Sure am,” I say.

“That’s a sure way to spoil a good day,” he says. “Or as my father liked to say, ‘Work is the curse of the drinking class.'”

My Old Man would have raised his glass and gotten a chuckle out of that one.

[Picture by Bags]

So, Jorge Posada’s achy foot that got hit by a foul ball off the bat of Michael Cuddyer on Sunday? Yeah, it’s broken. He’s out three to four weeks. Hey, but he wasn’t playing anyway, so at least putting Jorge on the disabled list frees up a roster spot for . . . a backup catcher that will never play? Right. And Nick Swisher . . . still isn’t ready.

Oh, and Marcus Thames stepped on his own bat while running to first on a single during Wednesday night’s game and sprained his ankle. Oh, but he’s not going on the DL. No, his x-rays were negative and he’s day-to-day. So, the Yankees will still have two unusable players on their bench tomorrow and heading into Queens this weekend, where their pitchers will have to hit.

Yeah, it was that kind of night for the Yankees. Jason Bartlett hit A.J. Burnett’s second pitch for his first home run of the season. Brett Gardner got picked off in the bottom of the first. Burnett gave up a run in the third without allowing a hit by walking the ninth-place hitter, hitting Carl Crawford in the back foot, walking Ben Zobrist, then giving up a sac fly to Evan Longoria.

Hey, but that could have gone worse, what with Longo up with the bags juiced, right? Oh right, it did go worse in the fourth, when Burnett coughed up four runs. That inning that started with a pair of infield singles and a double steal, with Hank Blalock of all people on the back end, followed by a two-RBI double by Rays catcher John Jaso, a Francisco Cervelli throwing error that moved Jaso to third, an RBI double off the right field wall by Crawford, yet another walk to Zobrist, and an RBI single by, hey, look at that: Evan Longoria.

The Yankees eeked out a run in the bottom of the fourth when  Rays starter Wade Davis issued a leadoff walk to Alex Rodriguez and Rodriguez came around to score on a Robinson Cano single and a Cervelli sac fly. Rodriguez later doubled the Yankee tally by leading off the sixth with a solo homer that made it 6-2 Rays, but Derek Jeter ended that inning by grounding out with the bases loaded, and Boone Logan gave that run back in the eighth, giving up a walk and an RBI double to the only two men he faced.

Down 7-2, Joe Girardi broke the glass on Mark Melancon, and Melancon returned the favor by shattering the Yankees’ hopes completely by coughing up three more runs (the first of which was charged to Logan) on a series of singles and a sac fly.

Down 10-2, the Yankees were in the process of going down meekly in the bottom of the ninth, Randy Winn grounding out on a 1-2 count, Derek Jeter grounding out on the first pitch he saw, when suddenly they found a new life. Eight runs behind and down to their final out, the Yankees rallied against Tampa Bay longman Andy Sonnanstine.

Brett Gardner singled to center. Mark Teixeira drew a four-pitch walk. Tex beat the flip to second on an Alex Rodriguez grounder to short that was ruled an infield hit and loaded the bases. Robinson Cano singled home Gardner. Francisco Cervelli walked on five pitches to force in Teixeira. Ramiro Peña, who had been the only available man on the bench and thus came in for Thames in the sixth, hit a dying quail to center that ricocheted off the glove of B.J. Upton, who lost track of the ball long enough for both Rodriguez and Cano to score and Peña to reach second on what was scored a single and an error.

That brought Juan Miranda up one baserunner shy of bringing the tying run to the plate, but Joe Maddon killed the mojo by taking Sonanstine out of the game and replacing him with Joaquin Benoit, who struck out Juan Miranda to kill the rally and earn an extremely unexpected save.

I expect the Yankees will move Nick Johnson to the 60-day DL on Thursday to create room on the 40-man roster for veteran backup Chad Moeller, who will play sparingly, though Robby Hammock, who could double as a utility man having played all four corner positions in the majors, would be an even better option. Jesus Montero, who is struggling at the plate and behind it and was recently benched for loafing, won’t be considered, nor will Austin Romine, largely because Cervelli is already well-established as the starter. Also look for the Yankees to shed a pitcher, likely Melancon, in favor of an outfielder, likely Greg Golson, who can be recalled as an injury replacement for Posada.

By the way, everyone saying they’ve never seen a player step on a bat and injure himself before is forgetting about John Olerud, who did just that in Game Three of the 2004 ALCS, leaving first base in the hands of Tony Clark until the seventh inning of Game Seven, when his return was too little too late. Talk about your bad omens . . .

The Tampa Bay Rays have the best record in baseball and a three-game lead on the second-best Yankees in the American League East. At 28-11, the Rays are on a 116-win pace, and their run differential suggest they’ve been even better than that.

This trick is that, though the Rays have indeed been scoring a lot of runs, they’ve not been hitting much. Tampa Bay is second in the AL and third in the majors (behind the two defending pennant winners) in runs scored per game with 5.31, but they rank 17th in slugging, 18th in on-base percentage, 20th in batting average, and 19th in VORP. According to Baseball Prospectus’s Third-Order Winning Percentage, which figures a team’s expected record from run differential but takes the extra step of figuring their runs from their component parts (hits, walks, outs, etc.), the Rays should be “just” 23-16. That .590 winning percentage still puts them on a 96-win pace, but flips the standings with the Yankees three-games ahead at 26-13, a game better than the Bombers actual record and on a 108-win pace. That’s something to chew on the next two nights as the Yankees, even with a two-game sweep can’t catch the Rays in this series.

Looking at the roster, the only Rays who are hitting are Evan Longoria (raking at .318/.386/.596) and Carl Crawford (putting up a solid walk year at .313/.372/.510 with ten steals, though he’s been caught four times). Many expected a strong walk-year performance from Carlos Peña, but the man the Yankees let go has turned back into a pumpkin, hitting a mere .191/.310/.344. Ben Zobrist and Jason Bartlett are proving their 2009 power surges to be flukes. After combining for 41 homers a year ago, the don’t have a single long ball between them and are hitting a combined .257/.327/.346 on the season. Similarly, bounce-back candidates B.J. Upton and Pat Burrell haven’t bounced back. Upton is doing a fair job of replicating his miserable 2009 performance minus about 20 points of batting average, and the fork sticking out of Burrell’s back was causing so many issues with airport metal detectors that the Rays just up and released him last week, replacing him with former Ranger Hank Blalock. Job shares at second base and catcher haven’t produced much either (.243/.310/.400 and .231/.336/.300, respectively).

Despite all that, the Rays have scored nearly 20 percent more runs than they should have thanks to some team speed and clutch hitting (.301/.378/.485 as a team with runners in scoring position compared to .221/.302/.351 with the bases empty). Don’t expect that to continue (in fact, it has already begun to tail off a bit as the Rays were leading the majors in runs scored not that long ago). That puts the onus on the pitching and defense.

Despite all that, the Rays are on a record win pace. Why? Pitching and defense, of course. Buoyed by the most efficient defense in the American League (in turning balls in play into outs, that is), the Rays have allowed a major league low 2.97 runs per game. To put that in perspective, no team in either league has allowed fewer than three runs per game over an entire season since 1972, when the Orioles and A’s both did it the year before the implementation of the designated hitter. Last year, the Dodgers and Giants were the stingiest teams in baseball in 2009 and both allowed 3.77 runs per game, as did the Blue Jays, who were the stingiest in 2008.

Rookie Wade Davis, who faces A.J. Burnett tonight, has the highest ERA of any of the Rays five starters. That inflated number is 3.38. As a group, the Rays’s starters, and they’ve only used five of them, have gone 21-6 with a 2.58 ERA while averaging nearly 6 2/3 innings per start. Three of those losses have been charged to Davis, and the Rays scored a total of five runs in those three loses. The Rays’ bullpen, meanwhile, has been merely the fifth best in baseball (by both ERA and WXRL).

The Rays can’t keep up that pace of run prevention, and they can’t keep scoring runs via clutch hitting alone, so it seems clear they won’t continue on their record winning pace. The only question is how much will they fall off their current pace, and can the Yankees take advantage. The two games this week will tell us a little, but not enough.

Jorge Posada is going for an MRI on his foot. Nick Swisher is still out with his sore biceps problem. Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera both threw about 30 pitches last night. Sergio Mitre is also unavailable having started on Sunday. So, Mark Melancon remains in the Yankees’ eight-man bullpen and the bench consists of Ramiro Peña. If the Yanks can split these two games, they should be pleased. Get ’em next time, boys. Let the rest of the league (the Rays have yet to face the Twins, Tigers, or Rangers) and the law of averages soften them up a bit first.

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The Kiss, By Auguste Rodin (1889)

[I’ve wanted to incorporate a regular movie column to the music, art, and food features here at the Banter for more than a minute now, so here goes… My good pal, Matt Blankman, who is mad for movies, will contribute his take, as will some of the other regular Banter contributors. Here’s our debut, cue the lights…Alex Belth]

I’ve spent the last few days enjoying a rare moment of pop culture serendipity which has placed my brain squarely in the 1970s, the decade of my birth. First there’s been Josh Wilker’s fantastic new book Cardboard Gods (which we’ll assume you’re already familiar with to some extent if you’ve been keeping up with the Banter). Josh’s memoir isn’t just largely set in the 1970s, but it’s obviously shaped by it as well, and he sincerely attempts to make sense out of those strange times, how they came to pass and what they meant (and continue to mean) to him.

Soon after seeing Josh do a reading from “Cardboard Gods” last week, I found myself at home watching a new PBS documentary on the John V. Lindsay years (1966-1973) in New York City. To look back at those years now, with clear eyes, one can see many ways that the hope and exuberance of the 1960s gave way to the despair and confusion of the 1970s. How the New Frontier and Great Society faded and left us with gas lines, custom vans, pet rocks and malaise.

Finally, I watched a film from 1971 I’d never seen, The Hospital, which felt like a fictional illustration of so many of the issues present in both the Lindsay doc and Wilker’s book. The Hospital was written by Paddy Chayefsky, who was still enough of a big deal in the early 1970s that he may have been the only screenwriter ever to get his name above the title. Chayefsky’s script was directed by Arthur Hiller, a director who managed to have a lengthy career marked by a number of “big” movies and yet never once seemed to have any discernable personal style. (I’d call him a hack, except he always displayed a knack for comedic timing and knew to trust his script and cast. He may not have been much of an artist, but he wasn’t incompetent.)

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How about a fried green tomato blt? Why the hell not?

Over at SI.com, Cliff kicks off a season-long column about who is in the lead for post-season hardware. Phil Hughes holds the top spot for the AL Cy Young award. Next, two studs from Tampa Bay:

2. David Price, LHP, Rays

Season Stats: 5-1, 2.03 ERA, 1.07 WHIP, 7.2 K/9, 2.29 K/BB

Last Four Starts: 3-0, 1.24 ERA, 0.93 WHIP, 6.8 K/9, 2.44 K/BB

This is how it was supposed to go for Joba Chamberlain. The first pick in the 2007 draft, Price arrived in the majors in late 2008 and dominated out of the bullpen as the Rays surged to their first pennant. He then opened 2009 in Triple-A to limit his innings and returned to the majors in late-May as a starter. After some growing pains in ’09, Price seems to have arrived as a dominant ace this year. However, the big difference between his 2009 and 2010 performances, like Hughes, has been some good fortune on balls in play and fly balls staying in the park, both of which could regress as the season progresses. Still, Price has Cy Young stuff and pitches for the team with the best record in baseball, so don’t be surprised if he sticks around on this list.

3. Matt Garza, RHP, Rays

Season Stats: 5-1, 2.38 ERA, 1.08 WHIP, 7.6 K/9, 2.82 K/BB

Last Four Starts: 2-0, 2.60 ERA, 1.01 WHIP, 7.5 K/9, 3.83 K/BB

One could make an argument for Rays starters James Shields and Jeff Niemann as well, which should give some explanation as to why the Rays have been the best team in baseball thus far. The top four men in their rotation are a combined 17-3 with a 2.44 ERA and 24 quality starts in 30 appearances. Shields has the best peripherals of that quartet, Niemann the second-lowest ERA after Price, but Garza has a better overall line than either of those two as well as share of the AL lead in wins, the category that seems to speak the loudest to awards voters.

Tough loss last night. Time to shrug it off, cause hey, it’s never to early to feel sexy.

This is the one of the great can’t-miss records of all-time. Hard not to move to this one. It’s a Lady-Killer.

Though it’s an everyday occurrence for beat writers who work on deadline, I rarely start writing my game recaps before I’ve seen the last out, and given that I typically watch the games on DVR-delay, that can lead to some pretty late nights. Tuesday night’s game, delayed for an hour by rain, slowed by the deliberate pace of the two starting pitchers, Josh Beckett and CC Sabathia, extended by a controversial moment when Beckett was removed ostensibly due to a back injury just after giving up a two-run double on his 101st pitch, prompting Joe Girardi to put the game under protest as the Red Sox didn’t have anyone warming in the bullpen and reliever Manny Delcarmen was allowed unlimited time to warm up on the game mound, and inflated by the usual rain-related business (pitchers cleaning their spikes, the grounds crew applying drying agents to the mound, etc.), took so damn long that I decided, with the Yankees leading 5-1 in the eighth, to start writing.

Bad idea.

The reason I usually don’t start writing before the last out is the same reason I never leave games before the last out. In baseball, until the final out is made, anything can happen.

As I began to type, Alex Rodriguez made a bad throw on a ground ball, pulling Mark Teixeira off first base and allowing Marco Scutaro to reach base to start the inning. From there, Joba Chamberlain, the first man out of the Yankee pen after CC Sabathia gutted out seven innings allowing just one run on a Kevin Youkilis solo homer, began to unravel.

Dustin Pedroia singled. J.D. Drew doubled Scutaro home. Kevin Youkilis singled home both Pedroia and Drew, and after a Victor Martinez groundout moved Youkilis to second, David Ortiz hit a would-be double off the wall in front of the Yankee bullpen to plate Youkilis and tie the game at 5-5.

I say “would-be double” because Ortiz, failing to account for the wind blowing in, didn’t run out of the box on what he thought was a home run, and was easily thrown out at second. It was that kind of game. The Yankees scored their first two runs in the second after Scutaro muffed a would-be double play ball, failing to get even one out. Rodriguez’s error started the Red Sox’s comeback.

The worst gaffe of the game, however, came in the top of the ninth with the score still knotted at 5-5 and Mariano Rivera on the hill. With one out and Darnell McDonald on first via a single, Scutaro popped up to shallow right. Robinson Cano went back and Marcus Thames came in. Thames call for the ball, which was clearly his to catch, but after Cano peeled off expecting Thames to make the catch, Thames dropped it, putting the tying run in scoring position with still just one man out. Rivera got Pedroia to ground out, but Jeremy Hermida, in the game for Drew who hurt himself running the bases during the Sox’s rally in the eighth, crushed a 2-2 pitch over Randy Winn’s head in left for a two-run double.

Having won the night before on a pair of two-run home runs off Jonathan Papelbon in the bottom of the ninth, the Yankees rallied against the Boston closer again. Again the inning started with an error, an Alex Rodriguez grounder that skipped under Scutaro’s glove. Robinson Cano, who hit the two-run double that drove Beckett from the game, followed with a double that scored Rodriguez, then was bunted to third by Francisco Cervelli to put the tying run on third with just one out.

That brought up Monday night’s hero and Tuesday night’s goat, Thames. Likely aware of Thames’ ability to lift a game-tying sac fly, never mind another game-winning two-run homer, Papelbon threw just one of his six pitches to Thames in the strike zone and Thames accepted the free pass. Ramiro Peña ran for Thames and took off on a 1-1 count to Juan Miranda, who earlier had driven in the first Yankee run of the day with a single and later added a solo homer. Miranda hit a hard grounder back up through the middle, but Papelbon made a nice stab to hold Cano at third and could have had a double play had Peña not been running. That passed the baton to Randy Winn with two outs, the Yankees down by one, and men on second and third. Winn battled Papelbon for eight pitches, three of which he fouled off on his way to working the count full, but ultimately Papelbon got the upper hand, blowing a fastball by Winn to seal the 7-6 win for Boston.

The whole affair took four hours and nine minutes, which is long enough for a nine-inning game, but with the hour rain delay, miserable weather, and sloppy play, it felt like six hours. Hell, it felt like eternity.

The rain she ain’t a-stoppin’. No telling if they are going to get this one in, but it don’t look likely…

I’m headed over to Two Boots in Grand Central to see Josh Wilker, Greg Prince and a Mess-o-Mets bloggers. Yee-haw.

[Photo Credit: No One Can Remeber the End]

Movin’ in the right direction…