Bring out the brooms

Over the wall of my Dilbert cubicle today came Heidi's mournful voice, "The Yankees swept!" Her lament wasn't directed at me, but at Jeff - our resident sports fanatic and die-hard Mariner fan. Both native Washingtonians, they have an ingrained hatred of all New York teams, and the Yankees in particular. Of course, I dared not snicker out loud, though I couldn't help breaking out into what must have been an evil grin. Good thing for cubicle walls.

I know I shouldn't revel in the misery of Sawx fans, and I'll probably go to hell, or worse, suffer the wrath of the baseball gods by swallowing a late September collapse of my beloved pinstripers. But I have to share this gem of a blog post I found on www.survivinggrady.com

Here's everything you need to know about yesterday's game in a nutshell: In the bottom of the fourth, down 3-0, we came screaming back with two walks and four straight hits -- one of them a Manny home run -- to take the lead, 4-3. We had the Unit scrambling and in the dugout, you could just see Francona snuggling up to Momentum, slowly but craftily working his hands to the buttons of her blouse. In short, everything starting to look our way. Then Kapler comes up with the bases loaded and a chance to blow it all apart... and meekly grounds into a double play to end the inning. Just like that, Momentum picks up her sweater and pocketbook and heads across the field.

Later, in the top of the sixth, the Yanks loaded the bases on three straight walks, and Jorge Posada stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and a chance to blow it all apart. And he does, smacking a triple to no man's land.

See, that's a big difference. Whenever they needed the big hit, they got it. When we did, we didn't. And it hasn't helped that our pitching has suckled the teat of crudliness for the past three games.

I knew it had the chance to be bad, this series, but I'll be honest -- I didn't expect the schoolyard beat-down that's been going on. This has been an embarassment of epic porportions, punctuated by moments of baseball so profoundly bad, I've been forced to wonder how this team has kept my hopes aloft for the better part of this season. Each subsequent game has brought horrors more ghastly and inexplicable than the previous, to the point that if Abreau and Damon simply drove a pick-up truck around the bases, mowing our players down one-by-one, I probably wouldn't flinch. This is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad baseball. Giving up 28 walks to one of the most offensively potent line-ups in the game? No soup for you, my friends. No soup for you.

Despite my sudden urge to booze up and riot, I'll keep myself grounded with the thought that if we win the next two games, we'll be only two and a half games behind the Yankees. And we could still -- mathematically if not realistically -- catch 'em.

But, seriously, if Curt coughs up six runs in the first couple innings tonight, I'm gonna have to wash my hands of this series and just put on some porno.

So delicious.