Sufficient Seal Clubbing

The molting Blue Jays team out there this weekend has about as much chance as your average baby seal out on the ice floe does—but hey, those seals won't club themselves!  (At least, not until they are genetically modified by whatever American corporation is currently working on the Self-Clubbing Seal.)

It had to be done, and the Yankees did it, so hooray—though boy, that fifth inning was frightening, not to mention endless.  It seemed to embody everything wrong with this team now, its constant loss of focus and disengagement, its tentative approach to the game, its bad strategy and planning.

It can't be said the Tommy Kahnle was truly awful, giving up a couple of seeing-eye singles on balls that, to put it charitably, Didi seemed less than inspired in chasing.  But failing to challenge Richard Urena with a six-run lead should have got Kahn's butt kicked all the way back to the dugout, if not a certain city in Pennsylvania.

And was it Duque or Alphonso who said that a ball would find Neil Walker in a key situation in right field?  Whoomp, there it was, to keep with the 1998 theme of today's celebration, and if Billy McKinney had not overslid third base hat inning might be going on still.

But hey, we got out of it.  The team mercilessly bludgeoned every baby seal the Jays put out on the mound, and Ma Boone has even been putting on plays and trying to force the action the last few days.

Torres showed encouraging signs of life, as did Sevvy, and Stanton was terrific, and El Matador continues his drive to rookie-of-the-year, becoming the only player on our team with a .300 batting average, and Britton and Betances got the job done.

Even Bird hit a home run off a fastball (!), and so what if the pitcher in question has a 7.20 ERA?  The bullpen has become so unreliable on this Yankees team that nothing that produces another run can be considered a garbage time ribbie.

You have to bottom feed.  You have to kill the seals, or what's a heaven for?  (Wait, do I have that right?)

The magic number is 5!