tonight

hughes was awesome. melancon was great. cano has hit in 15 straight. matsui has hit in 8 straight, along with jeter. now, wang needs to come back and hughes needs to repeat, and joba can go back to the pen to take the eighth and arod will be a monster. we will be all right soon enough. matsui with his awful knees got a triple tonight. molina hit a grand slam. yankees cut their ticket prices in half. which is probably not nearly enough. boston will come back down to earth. it's only april.....

BARTLES AND JAMES OPEN REGISTRATION

any Yankees/ Red Sox fans are encouraged to join Bartles and James. just send a letter of intent to brianjnoto@yahoo.com. this site is baseball only (and some football, but only in season- no draft or camp talk). politics and recipes and wives should be blogged elsewhere... btw, we will only accept pictures of women's tennis, but no commentary. thank you...

it's only april ("It's getting late early")

it's only april. that's what i keep telling myself. no one remembers april in august. did CC pitch a complete game loss in detroit last night? it's only april. what is boston up to? 10, 11 wins in a row? it's only april. is there a reason half of scranton is in the yankees starting lineup? it's only april. i never thought i would say this: 

WE NEED YOU, A-ROD!!!

ellsbury.......& company

fuck the red sox. i hope they get swine flu. 

The Ghost of David Ortiz (that jersey they almost buried in yankee stadium ended up cursing him/ how scary is it that they score 16 anyways...)

it is kind of depressing to watch a player completely deteriorate. whether it's age, or the performance enhancing drugs wearing off, or a combination of the two. especially with manny gone, there is nothing even slightly intimidating about little papi at bat. and an in game update: 6 - 0 Yankees lead in the fourth, in what has got to be the slowest game ever played on earth. woops, 6 - 1 Yankees, it's too warm to pay attention.... beautiful fucking weather, which is weird with no leaves on the trees, what was i talking about???

*** well, apparently the Yankee stadium jet stream travels with the team. i just happened to check the score and it went from 6-1 to 8-8 in the blink of an asshole. beckit and Burnett were both awful. there is really nothing enjoyable about this game at all...

*** 12 - 10 boston lead in the 7th. 3 and a half hours, and only in the 7th. with no sort of rain delay, or anything. how do they do it? it gets passed from manager to manager, the art of the never ending 9 inning game. this game is officially stupid, but i'll watch the rest because some kind of lightning hurricane has moved in and it is scary to be outside... (even the peregrine falcon in the backyard flew away...)

*** 4 hours and 21 minutes later the red sox win 16 - 11. the only highlight of this game was when jeter hit a foul ball behind home plate and you can very clearly hear a boston fan yell : "that would have been a homerun in your stadium!"... for a 9 inning game in april, 4 hours is just too long, especially when the yankees have absolutely no bullpen left and it will be up to pettitte tomorrow. christ, i don't even want to think about tomorrow.......

it was a good game until the ninth

I really don't even know where to being to dissect this game. Joba was pretty bad, but managed to get enough double plays to get through six relatively safe. coke and albaladejo are always pretty good, bruney wasn't even in the ballpark, and somehow mariano turns into a different pitcher if he has to pitch to more than three batters. and fuck damaso marte, i was asleep when he came in and gave the game to youkilis. marte is the biggest bust. great in pittsburg does not equal great in new york... as for the offense: how many bases loaded no out situations can a team blow? the red sox are not the royals, the red sox play all nine innings, you have to put them away... and i'm not sure who they'll put at third base today, maybe just a scarecrow with a mitt tied to it, just as good as ransom ever was. at least today's game should be pretty sweet. i need to find a portable radio so i can listen out back while i am doing some lawn work, or just laying around, it's 85 fucking degrees outside. wednesday morning it was 35 and snowing/ friday evening it was 80 and thunderstorming/ you have got to love that. and burnett v. becket will hopefully be epic!!!

*** and wang goes on the dl. someone get mussina on the phone, mussina can explain what it's like to completely forget how to pitch, i watched him do it three seasons in a row... if hughes is any good, we might never see wang again, which is unfortunate, he is a great pitcher and i refuse to believe that three bad starts is the end of his career. so that makes wang, ransom, nady, and possibly bruney, all joining arod on the dl. that happened pretty fucking quick...

Bartles and James Classics

Yankees Classics is a wonderful thing. almost magic! it's a place where the Yankees never lose, and Jeter dives into seats, and Cone pitches perfect games, and nothing awful ever really happens (except for the old MSG games where you can hear susan waldman during the middle innings behind the microphone, although for most of those games YES has replaced the tv audio with the original radio broadcast featuring sterling and kay)...so on this eve of another Yankees v. sox weekend, i would like to introduce Bartles and James Classics. tonight YES is airing the game from Friday, July 25th, 2008 (aka Manny's "knee" injury) and if you click the links you can 

TRAVEL THROUGH TIME

& 

TRAVEL THROUGH TIME, AGAIN

five hours later...

• i'm still trying to figure out how the red sox call the first game of a double header for rain yet still manage to play the second. how about one game at a time? must be playing Yankees rules baseball (call a game only after Yankees have a lead)...
• the main reason i love The Yankees is because i get so much done during their games. in 14 innings i managed to paint the living room and find a replacement burner for the grill. (75 and sunny this weekend- oh, shit!)
• Girardi needs to stop letting CC hang himself. CC blows games because he wants to pitch the whole fucking thing, and this early in the season his fat ass just isn't up to the challenge. stop being a bitch, Joe- don't ask CC if he wants to come out of a game, just do it. 
• the one thing that concerns me with this team is the health factor, and i'm not talking about Matsui barely walking the bases. to me it is a bit disturbing watching CC stuff big wads of chewing tobacco under his lip while Swisher stands next to him in the dug out and chugs a can of red bull between every inning. you almost expect a pizza box to be lying open on the bench and a keg of beer at first base.
• i don't have a problem with the Yankee jet stream when it allows a Melky Cabrera home run to bring an end to a five hour 14 inning snozzer of a game. (snozzer, that's my word. deal with it. embrace it)
• Boston tomorrow...

The Yankees are bulding a stadium in the Hampton's

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=4068536

"Hey wait 'till you see the sun reflecting off those gold bases." If you're waffling on clicking the link, do it...its freaking hilarious. The Onion is doing a spot on ESPN these days and this is the first installment. Hopefully we will see more of Mr. Greengrass.

Amazingly with all this talk about jet streams....let me start again....Is everyone (yankees fans, media) in such denial about their pitching that nobody has even considered that the pitching is mediocre at best? Instead its all talk about jet streams....Name me a middle rotation guy you can trust in the playoffs right now on the Yankees? You can't. Now name me three starters for the playoffs. CC, AJ and Pettite? Assuming they are healthy CC had an enormous collapse and Pettite will be out of cartilage by playoff time. I just don't see it...

Patriots Day

Unofficially known as the day most of Massachusetts gets drunk. Here is the wiki on Patriots Day...

It was a Beantown three-fer, with the sox destroying the birds. Ray Allen and Rondo destroying the bulls and ben gordon....and yes the bruins storming into montreal and beating the olde team.

Oh yeah Papi made an appearance....mean while Brother Barltes has been busy looking up wind tunnels and the affect padded seating has on slugging average.

perfect... ( they must be owned by republicans)

Don't worry, Dunn. You're not the only one...

 

this time it's not so funny...

Chien- Ming Wang's third start of the season and he has yet to get out of the 2nd inning in any of them. His e.r.a. is now ???? i don't even know. 13-2 Indians lead in the second....fuck me.

*** 20 - 2 Indians lead in the top of the sixth. Wang's e.r.a. is now 34.50. ouch. it's not too late to move back across the street, this place is worse than Coor's Field was before they started humidifying the baseballs... i'm gonna' go watch some LeBron.

2009 NBA playoff predictions....3rd annual.

NBA Finals:

Lakers v. Cavs= Lakers in 7


I was pretty much dead on last year....Something tells me, sadly, I will be dead on this year. Brother James I know you don't really care...but a large demographic of our readers have interest:

East

1. Cavs v. 8. Pistons= Cavs in 4

4. Hawks v. 5. Heat= Heat in 7

3. Magic v. 6. Sixers= Sixers in 7

2. Celts v. 7. Bulls= Celts in 6

second round, east

Cavs v. Heat= Cavs in 4

Celts v. Sixers= Celts in 6

third round, east

Cavs v. Celts= Cavs in 4

West

1. Lakers v. 8. Jazz= Lakers in 5

4. Blazers v. 5. Rockets= Rockets in 7

3. Spurs v. 6. Mavs= Spurs in 6

2. Nuggets v. 7.Hornets= Hornets in 6

second round, west

Lakers v. Rockets= Lakers in 7

Spurs v. Hornets= Spurs in 7

third round, west

Lakers v. Spurs= Lakers in 5

Yankee Stadium Opening Day

(gay)

1224 pm: did i really just witness all the pomp and circumstance of a lip syncing john fogerty dancing around in center field with his very gay unplugged baseball bat guitar and the loud backing track of a band that is absolutely nowhere in sight? the least you could do is throw a drum kit out there and a couple of people pretending to do the clapping part of that stupid song. no wonder the rest of creedence clearwater thought he was a pompous ass. there is such a huge cheese ball factor to major league baseball sometimes. not to mention that i am always bothered by lip synced performances... i'm looking at you yo-yo ma and itzhak pearlman at obama's inauguration.... in other opening ceremony news: yogi is still old, and don larsen has turned into quite the dirt thief, evry time i see him he is squatting behind a pitcher's mound scooping dirt into a ziploc baggie, those guys really didn't make enough money in their day.

*** update: and, sadly, john fogerty lip syncing was the only interesting thing to happen all afternoon... yanks throw away a 2-2 game in the seventh and lose to cleveland 10 -2, it is time to put joba back in the pen...(maybe if i keep saying it someday it will come true)

sox lose in overtime

"sully" the 2012 robot republican candidate for president threw out the first pitch in an extra innings game that i did not watch because it starts at 10:05 est. a deadly reminder of just how late baseball games start on the east coast. i almost died from sleep deprivation last time the sox won the the "world" series. how about some game times for the working man?

in an unrelated story the a's are either pretty good or the sox are pretty lazy because 2-6 ain't the way this is supposed to go down. it turns out i was drastically off kilter when i predicted an undefeated season......

i was gonna show pictures of the sox yelling at each other and looking depressed and travel logged (is that a saying?) but this looked kinda uplifting and funny...these kind postin won't last long.

to be serious for a moment, remember when this guy was on at least one channel for a week. i think he was on larry king for a month straight. well he's from long island but apparently he's an a's fan. i know people like that....they're called assholes.

you have got to be kidding me...

Nomar homers. Lester looks like junk. Full disclosure: Wang is killing my fantasy team. I'm sure Brother James will cover this but..Swisher even pitched last night in Tampa.

A full article on how awesome The Eck is coming shortly...er...someday.

karma is a bitch in tampa bay

well, all of those years of joking about the helpless tampa bay devil rays has really turned around and bitten the american league on it's ass. Wang pitched 1 inning and gave up nine runs. tonight i think i'll watch little people, big world instead... (as i type this it is now 10 - 0 in the 3rd, and it was girardi's great idea for the yankees to break camp and start this season without a long man.....it's gonna' be a long night) 

*** update: 15 - 5 in the bottom of the eighth and the one and only nick swisher is making his PITCHING debut! it's a bit early in the season to just start throwing them away, joe. and somehow those wbc mercy rules don't sound as silly as they did in march. how many millions of dollars worth of arms do the yankees have and nick fucking swisher is the only yankee who can pitch a scoreless inning??? he even struck out gabe kapler for christs sake (and showed up kapler as he asked for the ball and tossed it into the dugout to keep as a souvenir). maybe that was girardi's reward to all of us sad fools watching at home who sat through this fucking train wreck. swisher's era is officially 0.00 and wang's is 28.93... fuck me with a crooked stick......

why not???

a word on the new road uni's if i may?

the rem-dog wearing the new uni. i really like them, they remind me of the old school uni of my youth. you know boggs, oil can, and greenwell.

the only question is, who's number to get? lester...he's the lead candidate. pedroia...eh, he might be replacing ellsbury as the ladies favorite if jacoby continues his descent to the bottom of the batting order. beckett...he's my boy but will he leave us in free agency? lugo....just kidding. bay....mmaayybbeee but he needs to be resigned first. time will tell. youk?....yes i think thats the one.....i remember when youk hit his frst homerun i remember how happy he was just to sit on the bench when he was a young pup. the greek god of walks....

back to the rem-dog, he was sick on friday and they had orsillo doin' play by play and a few other guys doin' color throughout the game. it was just a simple reminder of how lucky we are to have jerry and his cigarette laced golden pipes. there is something so authentic about his fall river accent. and tommy of the celtics too. these old announcer guys with boston accents and homerisms....they're just gonna be replaced by smooth sounding guys with no connection to boston and it just scares the crap out me.

C.C. is a monster/ Joba get's his first start today

CC throws 7 and 2/3 scoreless innings. i love this guy, especially the fact that he has to be pulled from the game kicking and screaming. he'd pitch evryday if you let him. now if someone could get him to stop tugging on his pant cuff after evry pitch i would be happy, certain players have nervous ticks that once i notice them i can't stop watching them, and it drives me up the fucking wall. anyways, my boy Swisher went 2 for 3, with a triple and a two run homerun, chugging down red bulls between innings and refusing to be a back up player, you've got to love that. he'll probably be one of those "hey, do you remember that guy in april who was great for a week?" kind of stories, but we'll take any offense we can get- ransom and gardner are instant death at the end of the lineup... Joba goes today, personally i hope he is awful, he belongs in the pen preparing for Mariano's job in two years. a sweep of Kansas City is my easter sunday prediction........ in other news: tomorrow is opening day at PNC Park for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and yes- hostages get in free.

*** a bit of an afternoon letdown, i'd blame it on the Easter candy, but i haven't had any Easter candy. the yanks lose it in the Kansas City rain while tiger and mickelson make it interesting, but not interesting enough, at the masters. fuck- at least they got that guy off that fucking boat. 

yanks win 1(***2) and fuck you, tiger!

so the Yanks finally win one, and i am beginning to realize that this team is full of maniacs. Burnett is kinda' creepy with that weird look on his face and the odd tattoos, Damon who won't argue with the umps because he doesn't want to upset his young children who may be watching at home, and Nick Swisher who is just totally nuts. (5 rbi on thursday). if you ask me this is exactly what the Yankees need, A PERSONALITY! the pinstriped businessmen act is getting old, they need to get back to the bronx zoo style of the late 70's, give me something to care about. now the circus travels to Kansas City, which will hopefully start a trend of the Yankees sweeping these triple a level teams and reserving their strength for games that matter with Boston and Tampa and whatever city the Angels are from this year. Pettitte vs. Ponson- my favorite Yankee work horse vs. my favorite drunken aruban dui court  judge puncher, this one should be over early..... (oh- and fuck you, tiger woods. slowly but surely you are tricking me into watching motherfucking golf. what do you want me to do next, tiger? take up knitting? it's the same fucking thing as watching golf....)

*** and that's the way i like it, an easy win over KC in less than 3 hours. Pettitte had 7 dominating innings, Bruney and Mariano did their work, game over. the only question now is: Swisher or Nady? Nady was named the everyday right fielder, but Girardi loves Swisher and he started him for the second straight game today. i enjoy this little bit of spring training competition continuing into the regular season- make them fight for it and eventually trade the loser. Nady is alright with me, but i am sure they can use him in the eventual trade for Holladay in the next couple of months. fingers crossed... restart C.C. tomorrow, show me what that money buys! (and in golf news: master's coverage is very gay. a lot of camera shots of birds, and those fucking azaleas, and the sound of so many hushed british accents, close-ups on squirrels nibbling nuts, the television hosts in that cabin with the roaring fire, and the softest soft guitar playing in the back round. a black man or two, except for tiger they are always a caddy, and NEVER a woman allowed. very strange. no commercials and no network logos on the television screen do make it all quite enjoyable. golf is like a nap in the basement of the library...)

the captain

two homers in the opening series...not to mention a huge homer against the rays in the playoffs last year.

this begs the question: is the dead bat of varitek experiencing a resurgence? his power numbers have never been spectacular but last year he was an easy out.... .220 ain't a way to keep you captaincy on the best baseball team of the decade. one thing i know for sure. it felt like the 03-04 'tek all week and that made me feel twenty pounds lighter...5 years younger and 12% more handsome.

I am a fatty, gooey shell of myself....up next....the los angeles angels of los angeles featuring chris angel.

full disclosure: i did not watch this game

apparently we lost though....a few thoughts on the beginning of the baseball solstice.

it's freaking cold out...during opening day it was snowing up here in the white mountains. i spent most of my opening day barely paying attention simply because my body temperature will not allow me to.

why don't we play games in florida, texas, arizona, and cali for the first month? can something be too logical?

here's the joba dui link  - i have no comment, only because i have dialup and it would take ten days to download a six minute video. in other news: Wang get's his first start since that awful june afternoon where he hurt himself running the bases in houston, ruining any hopes of any kind of yankees postseason, leading to an awful summer full of darrel rasner and sydney ponson. at least we had mussina winning 20. i am not going to sit through another season like that.

opening day 2009 live blog

illustration from the article Boomball @ nymag.com

1019am: yeah, i know the first game was technically last night, but i have nevr been able to sit through more than twenty minutes of any braves game, almost as horrible as trying to watch the mets. it is a perfect day for baseball as i look outside this morning to see nothing but dark ugly skies and falling fucking snow- for christ's sake i think six months of winter is more than enough. i just read an article that argued that since the old yankee stadium is about to be torn down, fenway park is now the cathedral of sports in america. that's a lot of bullshit. yankee stadium hasn't gone anywhere, it's just gotten better. yankee stadium is yankee stadium, there is no "new one" or "old one"- there just happens to be a massive 100 ft by 60 ft hi def screen in center field now. i'll get into my predictions a little bit later, first it's coffee then it's beer... and in other beer news- ellsbury, or whoever else will man center field for the sox should be advised, yankee stadium has lifted the decades long ban on alcohol sales in the bleachers...

251 pm : mets v. reds in a scoreless game. i'd have more fun braiding nooses out of pubic hairs in a ww2 internment camp. so awful in fact that i decided to take apart the garbage disposal and degrease it, exponentially more entertaining and enjoyable than mets baseball. keith hernandez is the creepiest gayest sportscaster around (followed by buck and mccarver, and those assholes who do the whitesox games...) 

here's a link to conan old timey baseball...

9 minutes till yankees pregame. hope it's not snowing in baltimore, the yankees will never tell you in advance if a game is cancelled.

357 pm: the rain let up and a touch of class came out in baltimore as they introduced the yankees bench to beck's song "loser", and the starters are introduced to the star wars "imperial death march", and even the assistant trainer and bullpen coach get a healthy dose of boos...

651 pm: matsui reminds me of how much i missed him last year as he homers in the 7th to bring the yankees within one. i don't care if he can't barely walk the bases, as long as he keeps smashing shots like that i will be satisfied, he was always a liabilty in left field anyways... c.c. was not sharp. not even good. and knowing the yankees luck with free agent pitchers i was extremely worried that inbetween each inning he sat on the bench with a heating pad strapped around his ribs. 

758 pm: well, so much for the yankees undefeated season. i really thought that this would be the year that they went 162- 0, but i say that evry year. i hope the orioles enjoy the win, because in the a.l. east they don't have shit to be excited about. this division is a beast and they are the bitch. on the other hand, IT IS SO FUCKING GREAT to have baseball back again. i can be ignorant to politics again, and get all of my news from the daily show and colbert report and the vaginamonoblogs metrognome... btw- did you see obama shit his pants in turkey as they fired a canon shot after the national anthem? fucking classic..... goodnight. red sox/ rays coverage tomorrow.