yanks win. I'm pissed. Ho hum.

I met up with Chan down in Chinatown tonight. Our plan was to eat dinner in Chinatown or Little Italy, which are adjacent to each other, and then get ice cream, per BS Memorial's recommendation, at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory.

We looked at some Chinese restaurants, before deciding we'd rather have Italian. So we headed up Mulberry Street, inadvertently walking right into the Feast of San Gennaro. I'd heard news reports about this in the past, but had never been to it. It's a week and a half long street fair/celebration of food and...Italians, I guess. A half-mile of it, at least. It's a good way to hold on to summer now that it's fall. And it's cool to see a ferris wheel on the streets of Manhattan.

The booths with the "Fuggedaboudit" and "How YOU Doin'?" T-shirts are hoky, but you can get some nice, sloppy desserts. I quickly ate a Mozzerepa for "dinner" just so I could get to the dessert. I ended up just getting a cannoli, though, because I wasn't leaving that area without trying some of that Chinese ice cream. Chan got some meat things, and we headed back down to Chinatown. I got banana ice cream. It was very good. Chan got "red bean" ice cream. I asked him what kind of beans were in there. He said "Regular red beans." I said, "As in 'red beans and rice didn't miss her'?" He said it was indeed that kind. Weird. Oh, and I saw a Sox fan testing his pitch speed at one of those booths. He got, like, 51, but didn't seem to be trying very hard. Bit of a short-armer, too. But I was rooting for him. The hat looked moderately- to extra moderately-worn in.

Walking around after that, we passed a bar. We looked through the window at the yankee game. The O's had just put men on first and third, thanks to a ball going through Jeter's legs (I'm sure it was a bad hop that only YOU could see, Michael Kay). After a single made it 1-0 O's, and set them up beautifully, first and second, NO outs, we decided to keep walking.

You know that the whole time between that moment and the time we got home an hour later, I was thinking: Could the Orioles, one time, just one goddamn time, please get at least one more run out of this? And you know I'm optimistic, but I just couldn't convince myself that they possibly could do this for us. I got home, ready to find out about how some Oriole hit into a triple play because everybody thought the ball was foul, but it hit a magical forcefield and took a ninety degree turn, allowing A-Rod to touch third, throw to second, where Cano got it and made a bad throw to first, but since nobody ran, Giambi was able to track it down, pick it up, and throw it to Jeter, who covered first, receiving an award, upon reaching the dugout, for "Best Heads-Up Play that was Actually Just Fundamental Baseball."

I got home, and the yanks had just scored four in an inning, to take a 5 to--that's right--1, lead. So I checked the yahoo play-by-play of the inning when the O's had two on, no out. Not quite a triple play, but a line out, followed by a line out double play. Terrible. Then I tried to guess which Oriole made an error to allow the yanks to have a four-run inning, because there was no dobt in my mind that there was one. I went with Tejada. I was correct.

Later, after the O's came back from a 7-1 lead to make it 7-5, Melvin (cough, cough)* Mora homered with two outs in the ninth, to make it a one-run game. That was cool, because yankee fans had been standing and cheering for the last strike, and were shut the hell up, AND because it gave Tejada a chance. But as if to cap off his crappy series, Tejada grounded out on the first pitch, killing the momentum, and barely even running all the way down the line. For a guy who's supposed to be the star of the team, and who seems to care so much and get pissed when things go run, he sure does FAIL TO COME THROUGH quite often.

Speaking of being pissed, I would like to credit the O's manager for yelling at the umps after the yanks scored the other day on that play where Roberts couldn't move to pick up the ball. I always like to see those rare people who actually care about beating the yanks, especially when their team is eliminated.

And twice in the last two days, Cano has fielded totally normal ground balls, proven by slow motion replays, on which Kay has credited him for making a good play on a "bad" or "tough" hop. I seriously don't know how the guy lives with himself.

Anyway, Peter was saying something about how the yanks still win when they had to. I just refuse to buy it. In these last few weeks, I've seen shit that would turn you white. The walls of the 53rd precinct were bleeding. Seriously, Peter, if the Sox were winning with the blind-ass luck that the yanks are winning with, you'd be saying how we couldn't possibly win the division because we're not that good. I'm just saying, to everyone who says that the Sox have problems: I know. But so do the yanks. Every win of their sweep of the O's could have been a loss. I tried to warn everybody last year. Just letting you know that it's the same crap this year.

Finally, in honor of the Shit Birds getting 0 wins against the yanks in four shots, here's one of those alternate logos I made for them that fits perfectly:

*the coughing is a tribute to the late Doris from Rego park, long-time Mets fan and caller to WFAN, who struggled with throat problems. I think Mora was one of her faves. (Or at least she liked to say the name.)