Gamblers take note: Unfortunately the Yankees are almost certain to not only lose tonight, but do so in spectacular fashion

My dad is the best man in the history of the world. I know everyone says that about their dads, but he really is the greatest. He’s also the reason I’m the ravenous Yankee fan I am today as well as why I’ve been incredibly fortunate to attend roughly 10 games or so at the Stadium every season for the last several years, primarily due to the periodic purchasing of tickets from a friend with a partial season ticket package.

Last year dad finally took the plunge and went in with our family friend on a partial season ticket package of their own, which resulted in me attending 10 regular season games — not to mention five playoff games — which I’m certain was an all-time high for me for games attended at Yankee Stadium in one season.

As part of dad’s generosity, we always seem to end up going to one of the first home games of the season — even if it’s not during the opening series, I’ve been to a home game in April every season since 2005 — and unfortunately, our running joke is that if dad and I attend a Yankee game in the first month of the year, we’re pretty much not only guaranteeing that the team will lose, but oftentimes get absolutely annihilated in the process. To wit, here are the April games I’ve attended during the last few years, along with the (ugly) results:

That’s zero wins and six losses, lost by a combined score of 74-24! That’s 12 runs per game for the opponent! And Mike thought he was cursed. FYI, that’s Diarrhea Park in that 2005 game against Texas.

So what does all this mean? Basically you probably shouldn’t give me tickets to a Yankee game in April. However, as a way of trying to break this horrible April curse, my dad has given his tickets to tonight’s game to my brother and I.

Randomly enough, my first game of the year last year was also the Yankees’ third home game of the season, and it (surprise, surprise) ended up being the team’s worst defeat of the season, as the corpse of Chien-Ming Wang gave up eight runs en route to a 22-4 loss.

As you can see by my 0-6 April record since 2005, the deck is not exactly stacked in the Yankees’ favor tonight. While I’m very excited to be able to witness my boy Phil Franchise’s first start of the season (as I proudly wear my HUGHES 65 name-and-number tee), I’m also afraid the confluence of historically bad Yankee play at home in April combined with the typically slow-starting Hughes — who also hasn’t started a game at the Major League level in nearly a year — facing an always-pesky Angels offense is almost certainly a recipe for disaster.

I won’t go as far as guaranteeing a loss tonight, but let’s just say if they pull out a win (or at least keep the Angels under 10 runs) I will be very pleasantly surprised.

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