OH BOY!! Oh....crud...

ESPN got my hopes up this morning, with its headline: "it all happened so fast." Since I went to bed in the bottom of the 7th (my love of baseball finally lost out to my circadian clock), my head filled with marvelous fantasies: "They must have come back," I thought, "They probably scraped one off of Sabathia, and tacked three more on the relievers and then they tied up the series and it's just three games left, and they could still do it!!!"

Then I glanced at the score banner on top of the page: Yankees 7 Phillies 4. Yankees lead the series 3 games to 1

So...that hope I was feeling? Yeah, gone.

So, apparently, Johnny Damon, he of the "I-love-the-Red-Sox-Nation-so-much-I'll-write-a-book-about-it, but-I-love-money-so-much-I'll-leave-those-fans-in-a-heartbeat," yup he stole two bases on one pitch and made the previously frightening Phils look as lost as we were, and the Angels were, and pretty much everyone who has played the Yankees has been this season.

I am becoming Gloomy McDrearyson, prognosticating Doom and Woe and an entire year worth of "Can the Yankees Repeat and Start a New Dynasty" stories. I will watch tonight, but my body may once again force me to bed before the worst comes to pass.

Here's my thing, (and I'll let Stinky expand on this in another post), this feels unfair because it feels like we're playing on an unequal playing field.

It feels like we were on our own playground, playing kickball with the kids in our 3 grade class and playing pretty well. Curtis made some catches and Mark threw some good balls, but we (particularly our bestest buddies Joe M. and Michael and Nick B. and Joe N.) were playing best, hitting and throwing and what not. Then the big dumb bullies from the middle school stopped by and threw bouncy pitches and used their more developed muscles to kick the ball and shoved us around the bases and we couldn't win and when we complain that it's not fair the big bullies (led by Alex, the one with the cold dead eyes) said: "you could do this if wanted to..."

"But, but...but, but!"

"You could, you could through bouncy pitches and try to shove us off bases and do extra workout stuff to make your muscles bigger!"

"but, butbutbut....!!! NOT WHEN WE'RE SMALLER THAN YOU YOU STUPID FACES!!!"

Then they punched us for calling them stupid faces, laughed and went off to torment the slightly bigger kids, including Torii (who was so smart he got moved up a grade) and Jimmy and Ryan.

Could we spend the money the Yankees do? Well, the Pohlad's are richer than the Steinbrenner's so theoretically, yes. Practically....I think not. Why, I can't put it clearly (I needed a playground analogy to explain my thinking so far). My brain for business is no where near as good as Stinky's so, if the wonderful world of Grad school ever gives her a break, I hope she'll explain to all of us (me included).

In the mean time just remember: sticks and stones may break my bones but a 260 million dollar payroll can't hurt me...except in my soul.