Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Them One Bad Inning Blues

My life hasn't been too good lately. I'll spare you the non-baseball details. Suffice it to say, if the movies were like real life (and I'm not the first person to make this analogy)...

* The Wicked Witch of the West would have found a way to make herself waterproof (after all, she could make monkeys fly), and she would have cast a spell to give Toto rabies and have him bite Dorothy.

* The Luftwaffe would have shot Ilsa and Victor Laszlo's plane out of the sky, and Rick Blaine would have ended up in a concentration camp.

* Darth Vader would have immediately figured out who the pilot "The Force is strong in" was, and used The Force to jam Luke's proton guns, and the Star Wars saga would essentially have ended right there in an Imperial victory.

* Superman would have stayed kneeling before Zod.

* The government would have shot Elliott's bike out of the sky, and both he and E.T. would have fallen to their mangled deaths.

* Jake would have disowned his daughter, and made sure that Johnny remained framed for the theft, thus ensuring that "Baby" stayed in the corner. (Next... on a corner?)

But, sometimes, the movies do reflect what really happens without "the magic of Hollywood." Bonnie and Clyde did go down in a hail of bullets (which happened in real life, too). Butch & Sundance also went down in a hail of bullets (which, ironically, may not have happened in real life). Wyatt and Billy were felled by shotgun blasts from rednecks. Maria was shot and killed in the playground. Rhett didn't give a damn about Scarlett in the end. And Daniel not only drank Eli's milkshake, but clubbed him to death with a bowling pin.

And Beckett was (apparently) killed in last night's season finale of Castle. (UPDATE: The doctors saved her in the next season's premiere.)

On the other hand, yesterday was the 25th Anniversary of Pam Ewing finding Bobby in the shower on Dallas, leading to the revelation that the entire previous year, starting with Bobby being killed, was all a dream, the moment when that show "jumped the shark."

*

For a while, it looked like the Yankees were going to get out of the slump last night, and against the best possible team, the 1st place Tampa Bay Rays. They took a 2-0 lead before the Rays even got to bat, but stranded 2 runners, leading me to think, "Uh-oh, here we go again, those runs will matter."

Sure enough, they did. Curtis Granderson hit a 3-run homer in the top of the 5th (his 14th of the season), and A.J. Burnett was cruising. Going to the bottom of the 6th, it was Yanks 5, Rays 1 -- the Rays' run coming on a home run by our old pal Johnny Damon -- and John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman were saying, "Win, and all that will blow over," meaning the Yankees' slump and the Jorge Posada situation.

And then, to use Sterling's postgame words, the roof fell in. No, I don't mean the dome of Tropicana Field. A.J. suddenly went kablooey (if you'll pardon my use of a technical term), having a 2010-style inning for the 1st time all season. Sam Fuld and B.J. Upton both homered off him, and the next thing you know, it's Rays 6, Yanks 5.

That turned out to be the final score. WP: Juan Cruz (2-0). LP: Burnett (4-3). And guess who got the save? Kyle Farnsworth (8th). Yeah. That Kyle, Not a Darn's Worth. I feel like using about a dozen "George Carlin words" here, but I won't. (The Red Sox make me do that, the Rays usually don't.)

*

The Yankees are now 3 games behind the Rays, 2 in the loss column, and just 1 game over .500. They have lost 6 in a row, and 10 out of their last 13. They wrap up the 2-gamer tonight in St. Petersburg, Ivan Nova against James Shields, before going to Baltimore for 2, and then... home for the beginning of Interleague play, 3 against The Other Team, and 3 against the Pesky Blue Jays.

It ain't gettin' any prettier. Let's hope them old One Bad Inning Blues have been worked out of their system.

Jeter 2965 35
Rivera 572 29
A-Rod 619 144

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