Mr. Clutch, Again.

         I should have been at Spiff’s.  He was having his annual Fourth of July barbeque tonight.  As the Mrs. and I were getting ready to head out, the thunder and lightning blasted out of the sky.  The storm was imminent according to the news.  Hail, rain, you name it.  So we bailed.  I don’t like missing a good summertime event like that, but it would have been miserable getting there and trying to avoid the rain.  Spiff is a big Mets fan, so I was looking forward to watching the game over there, because I had a feeling all day that the Yankees were going to win tonight.  I just knew it.  So instead of watching at Spiff’s, I watched with the Mrs. on the couch.

         We strolled down to Third Avenue for dinner since we were sticking around.  It was a near ghost town.  Forget that it was miserable out, everybody was at the Hamptons or the beach or wherever.  We stopped in at Mambo Italiano, since it looked decently crowded.  Had Mozzarella en Corozza and Orrichiette Rabe, in case anyone’s interested…

         We got back in time to see that the rain delay had ended.  I was in the “blue room” when I heard the Mrs. flip on the TV.  The first thing I heard was Jon Miller saying that the Mets’ last seven runners had reached base safely.  And the Mrs. was silent.  If the Yankees were winning she would have yelled it out immediately.  So I knew it was bleak.  “How bad is it?” I asked the Mrs.  “Four to nothing,” she said carefully.  I couldn’t believe it.  I was positive they were going to win tonight.  I knew the Mets had a young pitcher going, and that often spells trouble for the Yanks, but I also knew that Soler, that pitcher, had been awful his last few outings, having all kinds of trouble finding the plate.  It must be noted, as the BPS has stated before, that the “Yanks never beat pitchers the first time they face them” rule is null and void if the guy can’t throw strikes.  As a matter of fact, it is quite the opposite.  If a young guy, rookie, whatever, can’t throw strikes out there - he’s a dead man.  Period.  Enter Soler.

         Ron Villone came through again today.  Two wins in one big series against the cross-town Mets.  The biggest out he got, of course, was David Wright in the second inning with the bases loaded and two outs, already down 4-0.  Especially with a full count on him.  To get that out, and have Posada lead off the bottom of the inning with a bomb, vaulted the Yanks right back into this game, both on the scoreboard and in their own minds.    

         But of course the biggest story of this game was A-Rod.  Again.  What a night.  Big spot, game in the balance, all of New York City watching with baited breath.  Kaboom.  Then some whining from Paul Lo Duca, whose attitude has done little to impress me since he got to Shea.  And right before A-Rod’s next time up I was explaining to the Mrs. that he was already a hero tonight.  He had already come through; no one could question his contribution, etc.  So since he was bullet proof, he was going to be a full-blown murderer up there.  And then he pops another one for a convincer.  I’m thinking he was picturing Paul Lo D*uchebag’s face on the front of the black seats as he swung.  How do you like me now, Paul?  So even though the Mrs. knows full well that I haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about most of the time, she acted impressed that I sounded like I knew it was coming.

         Speaking of the Mrs, she and I brought back a win on Friday night, even though I was a bit nervous that perhaps Lucky may have jinxed us by mentioning my sterling record at games this year.  Not to worry, however.  The Mets were one Endy Chavez flair away from being no-hit.  One note about the game.  I was surprised as anybody to hear some boos reverberating in the crowd when A-Rod made an out late in the game.  He had gotten a monster ovation when he came up in the first, his first at-bat after his walk-off job on Wednesday afternoon.  Now I can only speak for section 24 and the surrounding area, but when I looked around here’s what I saw.  Every Met fan in the section booing as loud as they could, grinning devilishly to each other the whole while.  The idea, I guess, was that they could make him continue to think he was being booed at his own house by his own fans, in order to deepen the frustration he had been feeling in the Stadium.  I considered the argument that they just hated him, so they would boo, but you don’t boo a guy you don’t like when he makes out.  You cheer when he makes out.  So this was booing with a purpose.  The looks on these guys’ faces left little doubt what they were up to.  Now I don’t blame Met fans as a group.  I’m not a guy who generally buys into generalizations about fans; Met fans are all this, Red Sox fans are all that, etc.  Every team’s fans come in all stripes.  It just so happens that these guys were donkeys.  And it could be that elsewhere there were Yankee fans booing, but I didn’t see any.  And I looked.

         So while we’re at it.  I think that should just about do it for the “A-Rod isn’t clutch enough” stuff.  These last few games, while the rest of the AL is enjoying a feeding frenzy against the NL, is when we needed him most.  And he was right there, wearing the pinstripes, giving it his all, and getting it done.  Oh, and for the Met fans who had been getting progressively louder about Wright and Reyes vs. A-Rod and Jeter?  You can sit down now.  And you’re going to be sitting for a while…  But I think you’ve all realized that…

         So where are the Yanks?  Well, let’s be honest.  They are not the best team in the AL right now.  They are too beat up for that.  What they are is battle-tested, tough as nails, and very good at winning.  They are a tough out.  But they are not the best.  The Yankees offense has been feeling the inevitable swoon.  Before today, they had scored 18 runs in their last 7 games.  That is completely awful.  I could say that the fact that they won most of those games proves how good their pitching has become.  It wouldn’t be the right story.  The reason they have gotten away with not scoring any runs is that the competition has been truly awful.  It’s no accident that the Red Sox, White Sox, Tigers, and Twins have put together record streaks.  The National League is pure pathos.  The fact that the Yankees have been able to win every series is great, but not when everybody else is winning every game.  This is why the BPS keeps talking about hanging on.  We are not the best team with the line-up we are trotting out there.  We’re close, though.  The Red Sox are good, but they’re not that good.  Not so good that they are going to win every game for three weeks.  Loretta, Lowell, Youkilis all hitting .320?  You have to be kidding me.  In their wildest dreams the Red Sox front office didn’t think those guys would be where they are.  Speaking of which, where is Josh Bard on the NL all-star squad?  What’s that?  He wasn’t on the ballot?  That’s funny, you would think that when the Padres are going to swap Mark Loretta, one of the only all-stars on their team, they would get somebody better than a backup catcher in return.   So now the only Padre on the squad is Trevor Hoffman.  Lucky, where is the outrage in S.D.? 

        Grossman and I were exchanging e-mails the other day, and he asked for my best guess for the disparity in the leagues.  Personally, I just think that it’s a quirky period in baseball right now.  You saw something similar in the NFL in the late 80’s-early 90’s, when the NFC was the far superior league.  There is a small case to be made, I guess, that the free agents want to go where they would have the best chance to win, but I have to think you could pad your numbers better in the NL, so I don’t know if that theory works.  I certainly think it is partly due to the fact that the Yankees and Red Sox have tried to horde every good player in baseball over the last five-six years or so.  But other than that, I don’t see a real good reason.  And it won’t last forever.  It never does.

        So good for Ron Villone, good for Nick Green, who was last seen as one of the endless “Who ?” guys that beat us with a bomb playing for Tamps Bay last year, good for the Yanks and good for me.  Bad for Big Joe (father-in-law), who I know was somewhere in Staten Island wondering why A-Rod had to decide to be Mr. Clutch this week.  But Big Joe was never a guy to bash A-Rod or the Yanks.  He’s a Met fan and a New Yorker, but always with class.  He doesn’t call me when the Yanks lose, because he knows I’ll be miserable.  So tonight, I left the phone on the table.  Figured he might not want to chat….