Tonight, We're Gonna Party Like It's 1998

This is not the kind of start we Yankee Fans wanted for this season. Or any season.

After dropping the season-opener in Tampa Bay on Friday night, the Saturday game was worse. Hiroki Kuroda, making his American League debut, did not have good stuff, and had to be replaced in the 6th with the Rays leading 6-2. Clay Rapada allowed 2 more runs in the 7th before Cory Wade stopped the bleeding. Those 2 runs, as it turned out, would matter a great deal.

The Yankees scored 4 runs in the top of the 9th, 3 on the first Yankee home run of the season, by Nick Swisher. But that was as close as we would get: Rays 8, Yankees 6.

WP: David Price (1-0). SV: Fernando Rodney (1). LP: Kuroda (0-1)

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Then yesterday, we needed Phil Hughes to come up with a good performance -- especially considering he's had an injury-plagued career, and he's not even 26 yet.

Hughes wasn't pitching badly, but manager Joe Girardi removed him in the 5th, having allowed 2 runs on 5 hits. Although he was the losing pitcher (0-1), we can't blame Hughes for the defeat.

No, blame the Yankee bats for being lame -- or credit Rays starter Jeremy Hellickson (1-0) for nearly going the distance, limiting us to 3 hits and 4 walks. We stranded 1 in the 1st, 1 in the 2nd, 2 in the 4th (2nd & 3rd with only 1 out), 2 in the 6th, and 1 in the 9th (with Rodney getting the last out and his 2nd save). Rays 3, Yankees 0.

Three games, 26 men left on base. Except for 4-run innings in the 3rd on Friday and in the 9th on Saturday, in 25 innings we scored 4 runs. That is unacceptable.

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The Yankees haven't started a season 0-3 since 1998.

Of course, we all know what happened that season. Don't we? Don't we?

The point was made by ESPN that this is the 1st season since 1980 that both the Yankees and the Red Sox have started out 0-3. Well, in 1980, the Yankees won 103 of their last 159 games. Lost the ALCS, but won 103.

Only a Yankee Fan can go from pathos to arrogance that fast, right?

Tonight, the Yankees begin a 3-game series in Baltimore, at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a.k.a. Yankee Stadium South.

The Orioles, still managed by William Nathaniel Showalter III, are 3-0, but as long as Peter Angelos is the owner, there's little that Buck can do.

Tonight: Ivan Nova vs. Brian Matusz. Tomorrow night: Freddy Garcia vs. Wei-Yin Chen, a 26-year-old lefty from Taiwan who will be making his major league debut. (Uh-oh, red flag for Pinstripes! If the Taiwanese doesn't mind me using the words "red flag.") Wednesday night, CC Sabathia vs. Jake Arrieta, who has given the Yankees trouble in the recent past.

Come on you Bombers!