80. Percentage of yankeee fans who've already figured out where they're going to hide when their team doesn't make the playoffs.

Another cheesy win for them tonight. Always-arrogant Michael Kay couldn't even muster up any fake enthusiasm when announcing that the yanks had won. Not even his pinstriped goggles could hide Gordon's struggles in the eighth and ninth.

Things yankee "fans" have said to me lately (really):

"I don't know what team Don Mattingly played for." Alright, this came from an eleven year old kid. Mattingly retired nine years ago. I don't expect the kid to remember seeing him play at age one, but if you're gonna call yourself a yankee fan, you better damn well know what team Don friggin' Mattingly played for. It's not like we're talking about Don Slaught here.

Here's another good one:

Lady at work: "Doc Gooden's been pitching excellent."
Me (racking my brain): "For what team, now?"
Lady: "For the yankees." Me: "Doc Gooden?"Lady: "Yes."
Me: "Doc Gooden??" (extra question mark indicates further bewilderment)
Lady: "Am I getting the name right?"
Me (after long pause): "El Duque?"
Lady: "Ah, yes, El Duque. That's right."

Most knowledgeable fans in baseball, on the ball as usual. And it's funny how they still think that when they bring up the fact that the Red Sox haven't won the World Series since 1918 (except for one guy in NYC who saw my hat and shouted "1919!" at me), they're the first person to bring it up. Like they were rifling through old newspapers and came up with this amazing fact: "Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I've done some extensive research and I've concluded that your team hasn't won in a long time. So what do you think about that?"

So yankee fans, if you're gonna comment on my site, try using your brain for a couple of minutes, give me some kind of argument as to why you feel your yankee team is better than my team right now. "1918" doesn't count as an argument. The point is, your ALL-STAR team is only five up on us.

If you don't care about highway trivia, stop reading now.

Okay, we weeded out a few people there.

So when I was in Maine last weekend, I couldn't help notice that the state has caved in when it comes to renumbering highway exit numbers to match the mile markers. This trend has taken place all over the country. But my state, Connecticut, as well as New York, Mass, and RI, (I think) has remained stubborn, choosing to stick with the sequential, or "classic," exit-numbering style. Is this because in the northeast, we're such drivers by nature, that we refuse to let our good old exit numbers be crazily renumbered? Then you'd know exactly how far you've gone and how far away the next exit is. What fun is that? And the days of exits 6 and 13 being skipped over on eastbound 84 would be over. And exits 26 and 27 being in reverse order on westbound 84? Gone. Replaced by a robotic, perfectly measured system of numbers that would go way too high. Probably easier for the government to track us that way. Might as well change it to Interstate 1984!
I drive into Pennsylvania, and I'm at exit 376!
Listen Mr. Bush, this will NOT happen in my state! I live at exit 5. And, granted, I'm about five miles from the state border, so maybe I'd still be at Exit 5. But that'd be a tainted 5!

Okay, I've gone and toweled off, but I'm okay now. Maybe we are a little stubborn around here. My real theory is that there are just so many highways and exits around here, that the renumbering would take forever. It's a lot easier to just drive across South Dakota on their one highway with spray paint and some stencils. You could probably do it in a day, and no one would notice or care. But you do a survey around here, and I guarantee nobody wants their sacred exit number changed.

The magic number is down to 41 with our win. Manny better be okay for Saturday's game because I'm going to it.

Note: I wrote this late Friday night/early Saturday, but the whole internet seemed to be down so I'm now posting this at 10:45 AM Saturday. I'd like to add that last night I had a dream that I was looking at the cover of Joe Castiglione's book, and there was a picture of he and Troup' in a crowd of people, and they were the only ones looking at the camera. And they looked like old, pudgy, curly haired men with bulging eyes and crazy smiles on their faces. It was scary.