Yankeetorial: Yesterday, joy returned to John and Suzyn, but the Yankiverse grew shrouded in darkness

First came the A-bomb from A-Rod. (Notably absent, John's secondary cry, "Alexander the Great conquers again!" Casualty of the scandal?) It caught The Master by surprise.  He called it as a long fly out - no high-far-gone - until the ball cleared the fence.

Suzyn became drunk with joy.  After the walk-off, she actually chose A-Rod, rather than Brett Gardner, as her star of the game. (Might be that YES grabbed Gardner; Suzyn often gets sloppy seconds.) She sounded like a mom whose 3-year-old just won an international weight-lifting competition.  Her interview resembled the happy ending of a fairy tale. 

All this, after the funeral call of Mariano's third straight blown save - an emotional roller coaster ride and near psychological disassembly on the level of Eric Bogosian's angry lead in the 1987 award-winning "Talk Radio."

But I found Suzyn's post-game interview troubling. It's not that she didn't lecture him about steroids - everybody else does, why should she? - but as Alex blathered thanks to  the people of New York City, I had flashbacks to to the 2010 Tea Party celebration of Christine "I am not a witch" O'Donnell, after winning the GOP Senate primary in Delaware. If we think this will end well, we are as delusional as her supporters were that night.   

Frankly, I never really thought A-Rod would hit for us. Too many surgeries, too many miles on the tread. As a once-great player turned into an MLB scapegoat, I find him a sad and sympathetic character, a bull in the ring with four swords in his neck. He doesn't deserve the 24-7 public flogging engineered by Bud Selig, Brian Cashman, Bill Madden (and, of course, Alex Rodriguez.) Nobody - not even Youkilis - deserves to get beaned, and then have a crowd cheer. 

But if A-Rod does go on one final tear - it will be hard to take John and Suzyn, as they pretend the witch is dead, and the kingdom is saved. Yesterday, we gained ground on only one team - Tampa - in the fake one-game wild card race. If we win 10 in a row - (and we won't) - we will still be four or five games out with a month to play.

If there was one legitimate knock on A-Rod throughout his career, it was that he hits meaningless late-inning home runs.

Well, none will be more meaningless than those he hits in September.

No "A-bomb" cries or fairy tale post-game interviews can change that. And at some point, it will get crowded in the broadcast booth with that invisible elephant.