Busy sports day in this Squawker household. First up, I watched my man Vince Young beat the Giants. Yes, I rooted for the Tennessee Titans over the home team. VY is the greatest Texas Longhorn of them all, and my favorite current NFL player, so I chose rooting for his team over Giants. Sorry, Big Blue fans.
There was one point during the game, when the Titans got their last touchdown to make the score 29-10, when Eli Manning had a really pathetic look on his face. It was the Manning Face, as Bill Simmons would say.
After that game, Squawker Jon and I yakked on the phone while we watched the Mets spoil the Phillies chance of clinching at home. We saw when Jimmy Rollins pinch-hit; the ovation for the crowd was so loud, you would have thought Mike Schmidt or something had come back in to play!
Anyhow, on to the Yankees. I’m glad Joe Girardi had Phil Hughes pitch; it was the right thing to do. Enough with this resting everybody for October, when they haven’t clinched anything yet. But the first six innings were frustrating, with the Yankees making Dice-K look like unhittable. Fortunately, A-Rod came through in the seventh, hitting his 29th homer of the year, to put the Yankees ahead, 2-1. I like how happy Alex was; his homer felt like it came in a playoff game.
But I am soooooo sick of every time A-Rod comes up big against the Red Sox, some idiot fan acts as if it’s the first time it’s ever happened. I saw some fan’s tweet listed on the YES Network postgame which said something about A-Rod finally getting a clutch hit off the Red Sox. Child, please, as Chad Ochocinco sez. How many times are we going to hear this nonsense? Six of A-Rod’s 29 homers this season have come against Boston. He’s hit 29 homers against the Sox since becoming a Yankee. They weren’t all meaningless stat-padding dingers, you know.
Back to the game. I had a bad feeling that something might happen with Mariano Rivera’s second inning. But I certainly wasn’t thinking of 2004, like some in the media were. However, I wasn’t that worried, even though Mo blew the save, (with a huge assist from Jorge Posada’s throwing miscues), because I knew the Yankees had a secret weapon — Jonathan Papelbon! Is there any Sox fan who had faith he would hold the lead? I haven’t met anybody. We were debating on Facebook with Boston fans about who would get the big hit against Paps to win the game. Would it be A-Rod? Or Teixeira?
I also knew the Yanks would get to Papelbon because I called Squawker Jon to tell him to watch A-Rod’s at-bat, and he hung up on me!
As it turns out, Papelbon technically didn’t get the loss — Hideki Okajima did. But it was effectively over as soon as Cinco Dopo came into the game. Juan Miranda’s walkoff walk made it “Juan in a Million”!
In the meantime, I was flipping back and forth between the Yankees and the Jets games. (Yes, I rooted for the Jets, even thought the Dolphins have Texas Heisman Trophy winner Ricky Williams on their team. Ricky is no VY, though, not after he quit on his team a few years ago to, um, smoke!)
So I missed seeing if Juan Miranda got a pie in the face. Did it happen?
What do you think? Tell us about it!
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
