A few quick hits from around the major leagues:
Was walking to work along a semi-major thoroughfare the other morning. There were two guys wearing bright yellow vests working on cleaning that section of grass—I think it’s called the median—and as they were doing so, I noticed that they were passing a joint back and forth. I thought this was kind of brazen of them, what with the traffic flow, hundreds of people could see what they were up to. At the same time, because of their location, it’s not like anybody could really do anything about it, cops included.
The next day, I saw another group of yellow vests on the way to work. This time they weren’t cleaning up the median, but instead were inspecting the bus station. Among this yellow vested group was a woman who was, with the exception if her yellow vest, dressed in fancy business attire. The others in the group, who all seemed to swimming in her wake, floating on a wave of obsequious deference, included one of the two guys spotted from the day before. The look on his face was an expression of I will do whatever it takes to do my job well, your majesty.
I guess you had to be there. Oh well.
The Phillies have FINALLY crept above .500 and best of all they did so by beating the Braves. Don’t know if I’ve cried you a river about this before, but I don’t watch baseball on teevee because I don’t have cable. Instead, I have the mlb.com internet package. This means I can watch all of the games except the Red Sox and nationally televised games. All but maybe six Red Sox games are on Cable. This has something (a lot) to do with why, despite their respective records, I like the Phillies better than the Sox this year. Yesterday, though I couldn’t watch the Phillies on the internet because the freakin’ Braves have to be nationally televised. I guess that’s one of the benefits of rooting for a team that is part of a corporate behemoth. Anyhow, it’s late in the final game of the series right now, and the Phils are up by ten, so it looks like a sweep in Atlanta. They swept us to start the season, so this is extra nice.
Since the Phillies were thrashing the Braves so hard, I decided to check out some other games. One that caught my attention was the Yankees Angels game. As much as I hate the Yankees, I have to admit that they are so far back now, that were they to get back into the pennant race, it would make for a great story. Before you all start jumping down my throat hear me out on this one, okay. As I type this, the Yankees are about to get swept by the Angels barring a K-Rod meltdown. That means if the Sox win against the Rangers the Yanks will be 12.5 back. Today the fans were booing Joe Torre. That’s how low things are in the Bronx. It is about as low as you can get in baseball. This isn’t some small market team with a bunch of hot prospects that the Sporting News picked to snag the wildcard, this is the freakin’ Yankees. Things aren’t just going wrong, things are going HORRIBLY wrong. It’s as if GOD is against the Yankees. Which is why I think it would make for a remarkably compelling pennant race if the Yanks were to fight their way back into it. How could you not be amazed at that happening? But you know what, it’s not going to happen because the Yankees really do suck this year.
Actually, they are threatening right now. Two runners on no outs in the bottom of the ninth down by two.