Yankee notes from SXSW

Manager Girardi pumped me with Mucinex and germ-killers, and we hit the 6th Street chaos zone head on, where Sheer Mag was playing a rooftop show over a whiskey shots bar. Small but gonzo crowd. No Yankee caps. This is t-shirt hipster heaven, my two faves being LEVON FUCKING HELMS and THE DUDE ABIDES. I need those shirts. Even Manager Girardi was impressed, and she's usually down on my crap.

We showed our geezer stripes by scorning modern youth for The Zombies, who we're playing two blocks away. Like tripping back to 1967, except for cell phones and the girl dressed as a seven foot tall drum majorette, who blocked our view of the stage. For the record, band opened with "Tell Her No," and closed with "She's Not There," preceded, of course, by "Time of the Season." The band abides.

From the looks of things, Esmil Rogers yesterday pitched like the Esmil Rogers that has bumped around the majors throughout his career. A real shocker, eh? The Yankees seemed to believe that because they are the Yankees, Esmil Rogers won't be Esmil Rogers. This is what historians call hubris. It was sort of like thinking because America brought democracy to Iraq, everybody would stop fighting. Oh, well, Charles Bukowski once wrote that sometimes you had to waste 100,000 people just to learn again that money is piss and the sparrow is immortal. The Yankees do well when outspending everybody by $100 million. Now, we're rolling the dice on Esmil Rogers.

No harm, no foul. Long before Chris Capuano tweaked his gonad, nobody believed we had five starters. Pretty soon, teams will start dumping players they have decided are washed up. The Yankees will pounce. We'll have a new infusion of Esmil Rogerses. It's the time of the season... For scrounging.

The Dude wouldn't abide.