A beautiful day for an ugly game

I need to apologize to the Yankeeist readership, Yankee fans and, particularly, Larry. I’m responsible for the Yankees’ ugly loss to Joel Pineiro and the Angels. I took advantage of the flexibility of my schedule and went to see the game today.

What I forgot is that for as far back as I can remember the Bombers always lose the first game of the season that I attend. So, if you need to blame anyone, blame me; or Alex Rodriguez for striking out three times; or Mark Teixeira who is now batting .097; or Javier Vazquez, whose ERA is now 9.82, which was an improvement; but mostly blame me.

If the game looked bad on TV, it looked even worse up close and personal. The Yankees had their chances, particularly in the 8th inning, but it’s only a matter of time before a baseball team will lose with its 3-4 hitters performing this poorly. It’s actually a testament to the strength of the team that it has posted a 5-3 record with its leading RBI producer batting below the interstate.

On a personal note, it’s still obviously great to get up to the Stadium early in the season, if only to see what has become of the old stadium. Just about when the 4 train pulls above ground the debris comes to sight. It looks like a bomb went off. There’s twisted metal everywhere, and one final wall of the stadium still standing, pristine. Its like having my old memories torn apart, right next door to a lot of new, very good memories.

The Phil Hughes experiment returns tomorrow.