Larry (Robert Wuhl): Lollygaggers!
Joe: Lollygaggers! What's our record, Larry?
Larry: 8-16.
Joe: Eight... and sixteen. How'd we ever win eight?
Larry: It's a miracle!
Joe: It's a miracle!
-- Bull Durham
It's bad enough that the Yankees lost the finale against the Angels in Anaheim, 8-4, thus losing a series for the first time this season. But, last night, the bullpen (specifically, David Robertson) wasted a good effort by Phil Hughes, and the Yankees fell a little short with a 9th-inning rally, losing 5-4 to the Baltimore Orioles?
What was the Orioles' record coming into the game? Three... and sixteen. How'd they ever win three? It's a miracle.
They've got several guys with on-base percentages -- not batting averages, on-base percentages -- under .300. Their starter last night, Kevin Millwood -- how many teams has he washed out with, now? -- came in at 0-3, and did not get the decision, because, in his first 3 starts, the O's scored a grand total of 5 runs. And they play in Oriole Park at Camden Yards, one of the homer-happiest parks in the majors. The Orioles stink.
And the Yankees lost to them.
The Daily News points out that the Yankees have now lost 4 out of 5, and they ask, "Time to panic?"
No, it's time to suck it up and fry those Birds! CC Sabathia goes tonight, so let's get 'em!
*
Last night, John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman were remarking on WCBS about how, due to the schedule (midweek), the O's' awful start, and the cold, it was the smallest crowd they'd ever seen there, and that even the Yankee Fans who sometimes "take over the place" (or, as Michael Kay would say, turn Camden Yards into "the really South Bronx") didn't show up.
They also remarked about how it was a typically dragged-out Yanks-O's game. Suzyn actually used Phil Rizzuto's old line: "Holy cow!"
Yeah, well, it wasn't long enough: The Yankees couldn't force it to a bottom of the 9th.
The Yankees will snap out of it tonight. After all, they're not the 1987 Durham Bulls.
Of course, those Bulls did snap out of it. By the 4th of July, they were in first place. (In the movie, anyway.) But, strangely, the film doesn't tell us how they finished the season. (It didn't matter: Both Crash and Nuke were gone, and the movie wasn't really about the team, it was about the Annie-Crash-Nuke menage-a-trois.)
But the Yankees will snap out of it. Good thing they don't need Annie, in the person of Susan Sarandon: In real life, she's a Met fan. (And, in hockey, a Rangers fan.)
And I don't care how good she looks at age 63: Met and Ranger fandom is a double dose of anti-Viagra.
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