Yankees Win! Yankees Win!

Twin Killing

Two nice wins. Obivously our starting pitching couldn't be as bad as it looked the first time through the rotation, and getting out of arctic temperatures has helped the defense tremendously.

I was talking to a Twins' Fan last night, and I said something along the lines of "I'm not sure how your Ponson experiment is going to work out." His reponse, of the many he might have chosen, was, "Ponson dind't pitch that badly." While not all of hte Yankee hits Monday night off Ponson were exactly scalded, where Ponson kills you is his total inability to respond to adversity. He can pitch well, but usually it's when everything goes right and he pitches well from the very beginning; when things go badly with Ponson they tend to keep going badly.

One for Joe

I criticize Torre a lot, so when he does something I approve of it's only fair that I mention that, too.

Last night, with the Yankees up by a sizeable magin, Damon came up with men on first and second and no one out. Now, I had the absolute certainty that Torre was going to have Damon bunt the runners over. Maybe Torre wasn't thinking of it, even, I don't know, but I felt sure he would bunt.

The pitching coach came out to the mound to talk to Boof Bonser. My exchange with hte aforementioned Twins' fan went something like this:

Me: He's giving him one of those extra-special pitching coach pep talks. [Note: Pitching coach visits to the mound are a pet peeve of mine -- I believe they are ridiculous and generally unnecessary -- they exist mainly so that the manager looks like he's "managing."]
Twins' Fan: More likely they're talking about how to defense it when Damon bunts.
(I'm thinking maybe he's right, since I do figure Torre's bunting here.)
(Then Damon smashes the Bonser offering for a 3-run homer!)
Me (giddy): Guess that wasn't the "good" pep talk.
Twins Fan: I guess he wasn't bunting.

Good move not having Damon bunt, Joe . . . and I thought that before Damon hit one out.

Totally Hot

A-Rod went deep again last night. I am not sure that I personally have ever seen a baseball hit harder.

It's great to see A-Rod on fire like this. I know it won't matter . . . when he has his first slump, when he makes his first bad/costly error, the idiots will be booing again. And the bigger idiots will be talking about him "doing it in October."

It's OK. I see the look on Alex's face these days, like it's taking all he's got not to just burst out laughing, he'shaving so much fun, and I realize that the idiots don't matter to him.

So they don't matter.

Smarten up. You are watching possibly the best player ever. People decades from now will look at his numbers and laugh at the idea that "fans" booed him.