Thursday, August 15, 2019

Holy crap! It's 9-1 Cleveland after two innings

Posted by el duque at 8:13 PM

We're not in Baltimore anymore, Toto.

31 comments:

Local Bargain Jerk said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
August 15, 2019 at 8:24 PM
Local Bargain Jerk said...


This confirms, as if we didn't already know. that eating soft shell crab in Baltimore is better than eating the Ohio-dish known as "Skyline Chili" (i.e., chili on spaghetti).

August 15, 2019 at 8:28 PM
Anonymous said...

Now it's just down to seeing how many players will get injured in tonight's game.

August 15, 2019 at 8:44 PM
Ceeja said...

Remember that scene in pulp fiction when the wolf is inspecting the bloody car and everyone is congratulating each other? And then Harvey keitel as the wolf says: "Well let's not star sucking each other's dicks just yet."

Well that's what we've been doing, gentlemen. No amount of wins against the Baltimore Bras is going to erase the serious flaws in this team.

Lousy pitching and lousy staff management by Boone

August 15, 2019 at 9:03 PM
Rufus T. Firefly said...

ya can't play .800 ball forever.

Bad thing is Lasagna not looking good. They need him.

August 15, 2019 at 9:21 PM
ranger_lp said...

So much for the opener strategy against a real team. Jeez.

August 15, 2019 at 10:05 PM
Rufus T. Firefly said...

Ford was a good pitcher in college. Not tonight. But then again, nobody was.

Hopefully this was the throwaway game.

August 15, 2019 at 10:21 PM
HoraceClarke66 said...

The crap I really hate is to see Mike Ford in there pitching.

Really? We're carrying 13 pitchers—and they can't get through a game?

That's pathetic.

In Horace Clarke's Baseball Universe, if my team feels obliged to pitch a position player, we will refund the money of every fan in attendance. Plus you get a certificate for a free Klondike bar. Unless, somehow, the team comes back to win (looking at you, Rocky Colavito).

I mean think about it: you spend major bucks to come to the Stadium, the Yanks don't have a real starter to begin with, and then they put in a chubby first baseman just up from Triple-A.

"Gee, I wonder why attendance is down?"

August 15, 2019 at 10:23 PM
HoraceClarke66 said...

Beyond bilking the fans (again), a night like tonight is no big deal. It's just get resettled, digging in.

The trouble is if you get too used to it, and you go into a real slide.

I'm not saying that's going to happen, but it could, with the schedule coming up.

The biggest red dashboard light tonight? Aaron Judge, once again 0-4 with 3 strikeouts.

Ma Boone's comment last night: "It's a little something with his top hand." Wow. That has to go down with, "He's just been tipping his pitches," and...what was the one for Sanchez?

August 15, 2019 at 10:26 PM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

Amens and thank-yous to Hoss for jumping in here with some clear-eyed perspective when I feel like saying this is one of the worst games ever. I missed a bunch of it, knew they were way behind but kept positive, checked in late and saw Ford (?!@&?!) got lit up... and still ended up being maybe the second-least puke-covered NYY pitcher at the Cleveland Kegger.


Seriously (and there's no sarcasm or untruth here), I love this blog for a lot of reasons but especially on nights like these where you just wonder why the fuck you were born with the inclination or penchant or tradition or whatever the fuck the word is, to love this team. You wonder how the hell they could be this bad; you wonder why you wondered that last thing when the fucking Orioles came within a few timely hits in every one of the previous four games. You wonder why the players don't collectively go Alfred M. Martin and dump the clubhouse spread over on top of Ma and Lair. It seems deserved; it seems like they collectively channeled all the traits of Mickey Callaway in the seeming mishandling of any number of bits of business tonight. It seems THAT bad.


And then Hoss and the other Voices Of Yankees Reason arrive on the screen, and I read and think and say: ain't nothing big.


This place is awesome. If you have a meet-up next year and can stand another warm body (albeit one who's Suzyn imitation leans toward Julie Kavner) then I am down with it. All those sunglassed smiles can't be wrong. Some of them, sure, but ALL of them wrong? No way!

Mostly, though: thank you all for this. I mostly just read but I often laugh and always love.

August 15, 2019 at 11:16 PM
13bit said...

Boy oh boy, I sure could not have predicted THAT baseball game, Suzyn.

Glad we got that out of our system.

Thank god we have Larry "The Kingmaker" Rothschild's steady hand on the tiller of the good ship Yankeea-Doria

"U-Boats on the right of me, icebergs on the left, here I am, stuck in the middle with you..."

I'm glad we had the International Huckleberry Convention while the Yanks were peaking.

Time to climb back into the tree stump with my jar of honey and hibernate for a while.

I love you all.

August 15, 2019 at 11:17 PM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

WHOSE Suzyn imitation...etc, and whatever else I fucked up.

August 15, 2019 at 11:25 PM
Stang said...

Are we going to keep pretending that Cashman didn't have a run-in with the police?

August 15, 2019 at 11:27 PM
HoraceClarke66 said...

Thanks, Mike Fan Cessa. But I have to admit: I lose it plenty of times over the season (just in case nobody noticed).

There are games like this. I remember going to a Saturday afternoon game, September, 1977, and a wretched, expansion Blue Jays team in its first year beat the Yanks, 19-3. 19-3! A Jays third baseman named Roy Howell—who I think we eventually picked up for about five minutes, probably on the basis of this display—had the game of his life, hit 2 homers AND 2 doubles, and drove in NINE RUNS.

Well, I didn't sweat it, the team was in first in a tough race with Boston, they'd been amazingly hot—had just run off 28 of 33—and the pitching was very tight. When Catfish got bombed early, that was that—though even then, they didn't end up pitching a first baseman.

They had a big series coming up with the Red Sox in a couple days, and I thought, okay, let it go, sit in the sun and drink beer with my buddies. Hey, I was 19. The world seemed to offer infinite possibilities. The blackout riot was behind us, the Son of Sam had been caught, and Reggie's three-home-run game still awaited.

Good times.

August 15, 2019 at 11:48 PM
HoraceClarke66 said...

Flash forward 27 years, to 2004.

Yanks lose to the Indians at home, before more than 51,000, 22-0.

It was August 31—and again, the game was something of a deliberate sacrifice. The Yanks had a 3 1/2 game lead, they beat the Indians the next two nights, and they won the division.

But that game presaged the abyss. I wasn't at that one, but I looked it up: we threw Vazquez, Sturtze, Nitkowski, and Loaiza. All were beaten mercilessly. It showed that someone who was supposed to be a mainstay of the rotation had nothing, and after him...just a long drop into the blackness.

You could see the looming catastrophe in the ALCS, all in that game.

So what was tonight? 1977—a necessary speed bump on the road to Shambala? Or 2004—a chronicle of a death foretold?

You make the call!

August 15, 2019 at 11:55 PM
Leinstery said...

Can't believe the shoe string pitching didn't hold up against an actual team. They're about to get rocked this series.

August 16, 2019 at 12:08 AM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

Definitely good times, Hoss. I remember Roy Howell as a guy on a bunch of Brewers cards I got too many of a couple years after this cool story. I think I remember he could hit but mostly I just wanted him and Charlie Moore to get the hell out of the wax packs for... another Gary Thomasson, maybe?

Luis Leal, Jim Clancy, Dave Stieb… spent a few days in the north watching names like that kick ass against everything I believe in. Christ almighty, Danny Ainge didn't even suck when I was present. Nor did Rance Bleeping Mulliniks. Nor Garth Bleeping Iorg.


You got a few years on me (not many) but I agree that cool shit was going on and other cool shit awaited.

And awaits.

August 16, 2019 at 12:26 AM
JM said...

Mercifully, I was sleeping in a drunken stupor thousands of miles away when this happened. Ford seemed to enjoy himself, though, from what he said to the press.

Tanaka tonight. Which Tanaka, nobody knows, but I'm a little afraid since the good Tanaka showed up last time. Twice in a row? And against this lineup?

I will mercifully be sleeping again and not have to witness it.

August 16, 2019 at 5:03 AM
ranger_lp said...

Another great job by Larry. #FYL #LarryManBoobs.

August 16, 2019 at 6:26 AM
JM said...

Does Larry do pole dancing? Just wondering.

August 16, 2019 at 6:40 AM
Local Bargain Jerk said...


Thanks, guys. I enjoyed all these comments this morning ... even more than usual for whatever reason.

The only acceptable response to a beatdown like the one we suffered last night is to take the series 3 games to 1.

August 16, 2019 at 7:13 AM
13bit said...

Best understated headline of the year on the Yankees' official site: "Opener strategy hits first snag for Yankees"

I'd call 19 runs a snag, yes, I believe I would.

August 16, 2019 at 9:02 AM
Lieber said...

All my "friends" from Ohio come out of the woodwork with juvenile text messages (five happy faces!) that are only going to guarantee their demise..

August 16, 2019 at 10:39 AM
Ken of Brooklyn said...

Thank you all, I needed to be talked off the ledge after last night's beat down,,,,

@ Mike Fan Cessa, YES! Please join us next year for the meet up, everyone's terrific and you'd have the time of your life, I promise!

August 16, 2019 at 10:41 AM
HoraceClarke66 said...

Yeah, if I were a Cleveland fan I don't think I would gloat even if the Tribe took the World Series. 71 years and counting!

August 16, 2019 at 11:33 AM
HoraceClarke66 said...

Thanks, Mike—and of course you know who built those Blue Jays teams: Pat Gillick, former Yankees front office man.

This has been the vastly underrated failing of the Yankees in the Steinbrenner era—particularly under Old George, the Mad King.

Again and again and again, first-rate, front-office talent has been allowed to walk or actively chased away...usually to build winners in Toronto, Houston, SF, etc.

It's the mark of a truly bad organization, where the top man can't tolerate intelligence and maybe even contradiction in the boardroom. Hence Coops, GM for life. Or at least until a 400-pound guy at home with his mother can plug another stolen car license plate number into the CT state police computer system...

August 16, 2019 at 11:36 AM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

Ken of Brooklyn: Thank you. I have no doubt that what you say is true, absolutely no doubt. I have loved this blog as long as I've known it for the funny shit Duque says (Christ; I watched the Bronx Buttocks vid a couple weeks ago and laughed my ass off as usual) but the other writers and commenters-which I guess is redundant but fuck it-are always thoughtful and intelligent and funny as hell. Even that one Anonymous. Whoever that is, I dig him or her because he or she is passionate and funny and damned good at keeping my attention. Like the old Howard Stern/Charles Grodin or, if you're nuts like me and/or 105, Jack Benny/Fred Allen feuds, it rings with beauty if it's true but becomes even funnier and more beautiful if it's not. I don't have a clue, but the possibility of an inside job makes me smile. Which is worth a hell of a lot. Like the Eagles, I can't tell you why. But thank you sir.


Hoss: Thank you. Absolutely know Stand Pat, which seemed like a strange insult (where I lived at the time the papers said it in contexts where you'd question its kindness, to say the least). Fully the better of most of what's followed him, as far as gathering talent and keeping it safe and not fucking things up. And gathering people who win. No knock on Coops; I suspect his hands are tied more than we could know and he's allegedly fronting some group of people who have found some gold in unlikely places. Impossible places. But I wonder, if you dropped Brian Coops into Detroit right this second and changed nothing else about their organization or culture or whatever you want to call it, could he win? I don't know. I suspect Pat Gillick could figure it out.


The rest of you: Thank you. This place is too fucking cool; I'm a middle-aged man who thinks he knows some shit, but here I feel like a kid just spewing silliness. I sometimes wait for a day or two before checking to see if you've blistered my ass for some good reason. And you never have. Doesn't mean you can't, and sure doesn't mean you shouldn't if you see a need. Just means I love you and you must kinda love me and we can agree: FUCK HAL. In the words of De La Soul: Jennifer, Oh, Jenny.

You ladies and guys are the best. Thank you each and all.

August 17, 2019 at 12:01 AM
Rufus T. Firefly said...

Mike,

Blisters on your ass should be attended to promptly.

However, I doubt you will get more than good natured "you're full of shit" at the worst here. And Shemp was an underrated Stooge.

August 17, 2019 at 12:43 AM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

Hey Roof, no literal ass blisters; just metaphorical ones. And this is all about preservation of ass. And so: Save Winnie. Fuck Hal.

And though somebody else may be at it somewhere: Fuck Ted Healy.

August 17, 2019 at 1:06 AM
Mike Fan Cessa said...

For some strange and maybe relevant but maybe not reason: Rest In Peace Captain America.

August 17, 2019 at 2:31 AM
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