Absolute classic "I'm afraid of yankee fans" umpiring. You could tell right away. Anything close by Mussina, there's a pause, the dude thinks "Oh no, if I don't raise that arm, I'm gonna get booed loudly," and then the strike is called. On a pitch to Manny, Kaat said "perfect pitch, perfect spot." Then the overhead replay is shown. Pitch nowhere near plate. Silence, then, Kay: A liberal strike zone, but he'll probably give it to Beckett, too." Uh, what? And Mussina tried to throw one even further outside to "test" the ump. It's so ridiculous how this is a part of baseball. The strike zone should be a constant, mind games shouldn't alter it. Then in the bottom of the first, sure enough, an absolutely perfect pitch is called a ball to Damon, he goes on to walk, and a run eventually scores. I'm not making excuses for our defense: Beckett, like mmost pitchers would have, blew the throw to second. And to allow that runner to go all the way around, terrible. But for some umpire to want to have 55,000 people cheer for him because he never got to play baseball always pisses me off. One of the many reasons it's ALWAYS easy to hate the yanks, no matter how mucg the media tells me I have no reason to hate them. If umps were robots, you could tell me I'm crazy. But you know these guys are psyched to take the nationwide stage, and they don't want to be booed. Especially at the one Stadium where you might actually be physically harmed if you disappoint the fans.

Anyway, we'll get some runs tonight. The legitimate way. Top 2nd, 1-0 them.