Dumbest Possible Purchases from the Yankees Catalogue

(This is part one of five of a planned American League East series. I'm all but certain this will be the funniest entry already, however.)



With the staying power of "God Bless America" at the Stadium, eight years after 9/11, isn't it simply implicit that if you love the Yankees, you love America, get a rash any time you accidentally drink foreign beer or foreign-owned American beer (fuck off, Budweiser!), waterboard Sully from Roxbury every chance you get, personally fought eight tours in Iraq, three in Iran on your own initiative, and cum a little bit in your pants every time you hear the comely screech of Kate Smith?

No, it's not implicit? Well, fucking buy this, then.

Diagonally? And you signed Bill Mueller and David Ortiz for nothing? Pretty sneaky, Theo!



"I know you woulda made the bigs if you didn't knock up Mom when you were playing with the Tantallon Traders in the East Central Saskatoon League, and I know you can't stand Billy Martin, so hey, happy Father's Day, Pa!"

"Now get loose in the bullpen. Wang's pitching, for Christ's sake."

Brah, if that hat actually looked that tattered when you bought it, and I know it did, I'm going to have to pull out my box cutter and show you what a truly tattered hat/head looks like.



Yeah, those are little Yankee emblems in the pattern of the sash around your girlfriend's waist. And she knows you spent $75 bucks on the sash; you told her twice. She's still breaking up with you.



Sorry Yankees, the Mets already have dibs on the whole fake-Brooklyn-Dodgers thing. May we suggest another defunct team from the menu? Perhaps a side of Philadelphia Athletics?



The item is actually tasteful enough, and it's less than $20 to boot. Mainly, it's the sheer creepiness of this image that's disturbing me. They shouldn't have used the HH-1955 filter.


"And if you don't like the Yankees, kiss my Royal, Irish, unemployed, quickly expanding ass!!"

/belches, opens a second fifth of Vat 69, gives up entirely.



Meh. If I was a styling lady with a bikini body, I would have asked for this model:



I heard it comes with free hGh, too.



The Where's Waldo? of Yankee items. Flowers, patterns, flowers, patterns, and THERE it is! Yeah. Awesome. Why did I buy these?

For the family in the $5,000 seats with the toddler in the $125 Baby LeBrons, a $55 jacket that will last 9 months, so he's warm at the thrilling Yankee victory he won't remember, towards the start of a childhood he will later resent. Happy days.



Questions:

1) Is this a dark or light crystal?
2) Can you talk with the crystal? Does a hologram shoot out of it? Will the crystal make me kill for it?
3) Does the crystal give me the ability to mesmerize any of Jeter's exes, that legion of 1,290 dissatisfied starlets? (And counting!)
3) When were MVP Crystals first given out to athletes who never won MVPs?
4) How much of the value of this collectible has it lost since I first started asking questions? Did it have any when we started?

Sigh, just 10 to go.

Talking baseball to my girlfriend because, well, someone had to hear out my excitement after the Red Sox completed another sweep with a stirring 4-3 counter-comeback, I explained the importance of the Red Sox winning their first eight against their most likely long-term competitor this year in the AL East like so:

More Likely Outcomes				Games Back
Red Sox win 3/8				3
Red Sox win 4/8				2
Red Sox win, gasp, 5 of 8				1

"And if they lost today, they'd be tied," she replied.

Exactly. So overhyped as the Red Sox/Yankees neverending series has been post-2003, dead even as they've been over those same years, this has been the one season where the Red Sox, thus far, have saved these rocky two and a half months--the awful start, the .500 May, the starters' initial reluctance to be good--by, you know, not losing to the Yankees. At all.



Two World Series removed from a lingering sense that all this team does must end in doom, that still seems pretty fucking weird. So does the feeling of disappointment that we can't play the Highlanders nee Baltimore Orioles I until August. The flipside being that I will be told "Take off that hat!" at a 3-6X rate walking around New York than during a standard successful Sox season. Sweet, sweet music.

The Orioles are "Hummingbird."

Rays= Paper.

Returning AL Champions, supposed to be good for years to come, not terribly good thus far. Loses to Scissors, and most other teams, but in spite of being but a paper tiger, covers Rock. (And by covering it, defeats it? I've never understood this element of the game. You can still throw a rock through the fucking paper.) 42% of victories versus Boston.

Yankees= Scissors.

Some sharp edges acquired by free agency, mostly dull thus far. Even a rusty pair of scissors can cut through paper. (Yankees took 2 of 3 from Tampa, in Tampa.)

Red Sox= Rock.

Well-rounded team, potentially, from lineup to rotation to bullpen. Turns to Kryptonite around Tampa (losing 5 out of 7 so far...yeah, that's half of their losses), turns Scissors into shards of metal (winning 5 of 5 against New York, including two very similar games Monday and Tuesday night). Vulnerable, but still the best throw.

Oh, and the importance these teams have to each other's record thus far? Proof that we don't know shit until our team goes around the league, and further reason I hate the unbalanced schedule, because we won't be around the league until late July. The thrill of 18 games a year against all rivals is gone. Stop the madness.

Enough.

Having been treated with civility for my nearly five years in New York City, whether I was wearing the navy cap or the red cap, I've just gotta repeat Deadspin's sentiments with even more feeling:

You motherfuckers need to stop.

This shit is wrong and it shames me almost as much as it should shame you.

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Sox lost last night in too familiar a fashion (grab small lead late, lose lead because of lack of set-up relief, lose game) to recount. Another good start by Wakefield, and another good start wasted. This team needs to limp into the All-Star break without losing much too more ground, because the last three series have served to undo a lot of good.

The New York Post: News You Can Lose!

Yup, this is the front page story of a major American newspaper. It's a weak back page story, really, something for News of the Weird, but do read the article as a lesson in how to stretch a story with bemused quotes.

Additionally, curses are apparently easier to discover than ever: while the Curse of the Bambino wasn't properly "discovered" by this assclown until 1986, 68 years into it; however, 4 championship-less seasons into his time in pinstripes (2 MVP seasons, no matter my feelings on 2005), the Curse of A-Rod, says the article, exists. That's some clever stuff. So there's your solution. Trade A-Rod, and re-sign Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius (now THAT's a third baseman!) and Luis Sojo, and your problem's solved: new Yankee dynasty.

The Bostonian construction worker pulled a nice prank, even if by putting it under the visitors' clubhouse instead of the Yankees', he missed an opportunity to cause some real bad mojo. And that really matters, you know, if you're one of the people that was really riveted by the search for Babe Ruth's piano or thought the stint on the DL Pedro Martinez logged following his proclamation that he would drill the Bambino in the ass if he ever faced him was cosmic karmic payback.

In other words, this story matters if you're a fucking dolt. But it's amusing to see Yankees fans become the superstitious ones all the same.

Is the Jackson 5 Alex Rodriguez? The Yankees?

In either case, the love is back...sorta. I feel oddly happy about this movement, actually. Count the blessings:

1) Alex Rodriguez would not be a Sox.
2) The Yankees would not have a chance of bumping up the price for Mike Lowell or signing him outright.
3) The New York tabloids will be entertaining for another year, especially the evil one. Evil and obsessive...all they do is think of you, Alex:



4) Scott Boras will be the first agent to negotiate himself OUT of the negotiations for a high-priced client! Brilliant.

But then, there's the problem:

5) A scary fucking (regular season) hitter would return to the Bronx.

Well, scary and hilariously competitive.



Yeah, come to think of it, sign him, New York. Sign him for fifteen years.

New York Yankees 1, Geography and the Divisional System 0

Now that is true greatness. The Yankees' greatness transcends SPACE! Say what you will about the Yanks' impressive run from below .500 to the Wild Card, but the plotline we never saw coming was their entry into the AL West race.

Somewhere in a third-world country where shirts like this get dumped, there's some guy with an amazing collection, including Buffalo Bills World Champions gear and Boston Red Sox 1986 World Series Champions shirts. Mercy, mercy, mercy. (R.I.P. Joe Zawinul.)

(Oh, and thanks to Jim.)

GAMES 133-134: And let us never speak of that series again.

Just leave New York. Don't think about how Roger Clemens shut the lineup down even when he couldn't find the strike zone and Chien Mien-Wang then confirmed with even more no-hit innings that yes, it's not you, it's us. Don't think of how wasted Curt Schilling's outing was, or how if it wasn't for Kyle Farnsworth (best picture ever of him here) we would have been shut out twice, having wasted our offense on the White Sox. Don't consider the fact that a sweep was the ONLY outcome that could constitute genuine failure, and just like that, it's 5 games again and Yankees fans are taunting me all around my cubicle. And don't let me keep thinking just how long indefinitely is. Just leave this magical city. There's nothing for you here right now:

GAME 132: The Legend of Joba Chamberlain!

Good game last night: Andy Pettite remains the Yankees' best starter, Daisuke frustrated the hell out of me with that first inning but settled down thereafter and was just left in a little too long, and my feeling that this was the game of the series the Sox were going to lose came true, but when you're 7 games up, you can concede when the better team for the night won. The Yankees capitalized on their opportunities. They were the better team.

I actually listened to the last few innings on the radio because I was tired, have no TV at home, and didn't really feel like buying another beer to hang around the Boulevard Tavern for the last innings after the Damon home run. As such, I didn't actually see Joba Chamberlain get himself in and then out of trouble with that tremendous fastball/slider combo (I have watched him pitch before, for the record, and yes, his stuff is filthy), but did hear John and Suzy repeatedly talk of this as another inning in "the legend of Joba Chamberlain."

Legend? Legends aren't true, usually involve people who are long dead, and are retold in shitty CGI. Joba Chamberlain has pitched a grand total of 10 innings, two less than there were labors of Hercules. Those ten innings have included 17 Ks, and yes, this kid could be good, but Legend, John and Suzy? Combined with a new annoying catchphrase ("Nice job-a, Joba!"), the evidence seemed to point to a foregone conclusion, namely, Sterling's douchery. What legend?

But lo, my ceiling opened and from the skies came a scroll. This is the true legend of Joba Chamberlain. Read only if you dare tempt that the prophecies may not come true:



...and O!, in a summer where the actress Julia Stiles doth star in a fine 111-minute chase sequence so too there will come a Pitcher of similar heavy brow, a mammoth being, a paragon of action and masculinity, a human manifestation of a large Plate of Ribs, a Native American playing the American Pass-Time.

He could hurt a Horsed Hide through a ring of arrows and past the behemoth David Ortiz, or at least cause the beast to hit a weak fly out! Woe to the three-headed Beast Eric Hinske, the snarling but Docile J.D. Drew, and all the other Monsters of the Eastern American League, for this Fire-balling Hero Slayed them all, for upwards of One inning every two days!

Away, you Banshee Blue Jays!

To Hades, you Devilish Rays!

Begone, Bloated Boston and Diseased Baltimore!

And the Bronxians did rejoice, and Wankerias, Royal Jester, did add a new Pun to his list, which his most ardent and true audience, himself, did find much delight in. Young Joba was slain fighting a mighty dragon and the Bronxians still finished Two Games behind Neptune's warriors but a Legend was Born!

And they lived happily until they died. Which was five minutes after this sentence was typed.