My guts are churning. I can't watch, so I'm listening to Sterling & Suzyn. Don't know how long I'll last, but I'll try to record as much of this as I can for future generations. Because I hate future generations. They're too young, and when they're all laughing together on the bus I think they're laughing at me.
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TOP NINTH: MO!
For some reason, Sterling seems very worried that, after the game, no reporter will ask Joe if Joba will be available to pitch tomorrow. He thinks it's a very good question, and he's right. Where he and I part company is, I feel fully confident that a reporter will ask John's question. We'll see.
One, two, three inning for Mo!
YANKEES WIN!!!
Torre lives another day!
BOTTOM EIGHTH: Borowski! Now we shall feast.
Suzyn's Talking Points Memo celebrates the return of competitive balance to baseball. "You don't go out and buy a team anymore. It doesn't work that way." So suck it, Yankee haters. You don't know what you're talking about.
Two walks, but no feast.
TOP EIGHTH: JOBA!
Base hit Victor Martinez.
Garko GIDP, Jeter-like.
Suzyn reminds us that the Redsocks won their series.
Peralta walks. Thanks, Suzyn.
Guidry heads to the mound so Joba can calm him down.
Base hit Lofton.
The PA announcer is really trying to sound like Bob Sheppard. Is it the Frank TV guy?
Nixon doubles in a run. YANKEES 8, CLEVELAND 4.
Joba outguns the formidable Casey Blake, inning over, flood averted, cancel pestilence alert. Looking at Joba, if I were going to send a Biblical plague after him, my first choice would be famine.
BOTTOM SEVENTH: Outside. Cigarette. Now.
TOP SEVENTH: JOBA!
Sterling is still upset about the bugs. He guarantees us that if it ever happens again, Joe will pull his team off the field. If it were Sterling's team, he would have pulled them. He would have.
Sterling clearly doesn't like to say "Asdrubal." It's 'way out of his comfort zone.
No boils appear on Joba as he retires the side.
BOTTOM SIXTH: BASE HIT A-ROD!! Goodbye, Westbrook. Goodbye, bitch. You believed all of that crap you read about A-Rod, didn't you? That's what you get for learning to read, jock.
Enter Fultz. BASE HIT POSADA!! Hi, Fultz!
LAY ONE DOWN, MIENTKY!! Good job, Mientky!
IBB Matsui!
RBI BASE HIT CANO!! "A RIBBY FOR ROBBIE!!" -- Sterling. NIXON ERROR SCORES TWO MORE RUNNERS!!! YANKEES 8, CLEVELAND 3!!!
Suzyn and Sterling are already having mic sex again. Insatiable. She actually says, "I just love happy endings, don't you, John?"
TOP SIXTH: Sweet hope returns. Hughes strikes out Lofton. Torre logs off Craigslist. Sterling is happy and his hand gestures have stopped making Suzyn flinch. They're talking about Joba's defeat vs. the pests of Cleveland and how hard he took it. "He did nothing wrong," says Suzyn. "He did nothing wrong," corrects Sterling. This leads right into three minutes of mic sex, fetishizing Hughes' fastball. It suddenly feels like games one and two never happened.
BOTTOM FIFTH: BASE HIT MATSUI! Suzyn speaks wearily of double plays, but CANO DOUBLES!! Suzyn doesn't see it. She's watching John nervously from the corner of her eye, and she's dialed 9-1 on her phone, her finger resting lightly on the 1 key. But the swagger is returning to Sterling's delivery... BASE HIT MELKY!! CLEVELAND 3, YANKEES 2!!!
Finally, a good time to mention Yankee Stadium 2008 ticket packages, and so John does.
Suddenly, IT IS HIGH, IT IS FAR, IT IS... GONE!!! POSITIVELY DAMONIC! IT IS A THREE-RUN JOHNNY DAMON DINGER AND THE YANKEES HAVE TAKEN A 5-3 LEAD!!!
TOP FIFTH: Cano makes an error. Sterling is reading from Fernando Pessoa's The Book Of Disquiet:
...in the sad disarray of my confused emotions...BOTTOM FOURTH: Sterling is on a rant about how very, very fortunate the Yankees were to score that run. A-Rod pops out. The US bombs Iran. Fox cancels The Simpsons. What's this lump on my...?
A twilight sadness made of fatigue and false renunciations,a tedium of feeling anything at all, a pain as of a choked sob or a discovered truth... A landscape of abdications unfolds in my oblivious soul: walkways lined by abandoned gestures, high flower beds of dreams that weren't even well dreamed, incongruities like hedges separating deserted paths, suppositions like old pools whose fountains are broken. It all gets entangled and squalidly looms in the sad disarray of my confused sensations.
TOP FOURTH: I'm going to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Maybe two.
Update: Reading this over later, I'm struck again by what a delicious cigarette that was. But I missed Hughes. Was he good?
BOTTOM THIRD: BASE HIT MATSUI! This is the turning point! The Yankees are going to win this series! But Sterling is still being Captain Bringdown, mentioning that the Yankees haven't had two hits in a row since they got off the plane in Cleveland. There goes my hope. In fact, I'm starting to hate the whole idea of hope. Hope can kiss my ass. This is not what a homer broadcaster is supposed to do, Sterling. Buck up. Jesus. It feels like we're playing without Bob Sheppard and without the real John Sterling. We might as well gore out our ears.
Cano advances the runner and it seems like a miracle, but I'm not buying it, because Sterling will mock me if I show a single worthless shred of hope. Plays are happening and the crowd is roaring, but I can't hear what John is saying. I can only hear the misery and doubt in his voice. I think I just saw something move. Is that a bug?
BASE HIT DAMON! MATSUI SCORES! CLEVELAND 3, YANKEES 1!!
GIDP Jeter. What did Torre do, come on to Gabrielle Union?
TOP THIRD: Hughes is warming up. Rocket threatens to dot Torre in the temple if he takes him out. Then he walks the leadoff hitter. Thanks, Rocket. Will you really retire this time if we buy you two Hummers?
Suzyn: "This isn't helping anybody."
Rocket's postseason greatness gets us 2.1 innings. I can't see Hughes, but surely his eyes are wide with fear as he tries not to think about what happened to Joba. Cue rain of frogs.
Sterling is obsessing again: "The Yankees can't afford to give up any more runs! They can't score any runs!" He's only said it 900 times.
Peralta: "Welcome, Hughes!" He drives in Hafner. CLEVELAND 3, YANKEES 0.
BOTTOM SECOND: BASE HIT A-ROD! This is the turning point! The Yankees are going to win this series! Wait. Never mind. GIDP Jorge, who is apparently sick and tired of Torre's bullshit.
TOP SECOND: "Normally you'd say, well, 2-0, it's early. But not with the Yankees, because they haven't hit. They haven't hit at all." -- Sterling. CLEVELAND 2, YANKEES 0.
BOTTOM FIRST: GIDP. Jeter doesn't want Torre back.
TOP FIRST: Nice throw. Jeter doesn't want Torre back. CLEVELAND 1, YANKEES 0.
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4 comments:
Philip Hughes.
That's all I've got to say.
Philip Hughes.
Joba wants me to be able to watch baseball before Thursday.
This would make a fine book of poetry.
How come they didn't bring in Vargas, or veras, or Jose V when Joba loaded bases with two out?
Tell me he wasn't running out of gas?
And what was Jorge saying in all those trips to the mound?
When I read that Joba only let the one run in, I figured that Veras/Vegas was far too risky, even with Joba's arm weighted down by moth bites.
El duque tells me that he is already old ( the V guy from Scranton ).
Torre takes a chance on him, he blows it, and it is a new career for Mr. T.
BY the way, I did here Sterling say that Joba would be ready to go tomorrow. Sure, John.
And Ming Wing will pitch a no hitter.
Nice work SuperF...I think your blog approach is the best way to deal with these games, and may just be the voodoo we need to pull this thing out of the sewer.
And on a couple of your observations ( famine for Joba, Torre logging off Craiglist etc), had I been in a bar with you , I would have blown beer out my nose laughing.
- Alphonso the Cubbie
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