Battle of Thermopylae v.2006?

When I was a freshmen in college I had this great professor - Dr. Anderson - who I took as many of classes as I could from, including a major course on Ancient Greece.

Now Anderson, who was a British fellow but as I recall a pretty big Orioles fan (appropos of nothing), talked about this movie The 300 Spartans all the time when talking about Thermopylae.

For those who don’t know much about history, at Thermopylae Leonidas, the king of Sparta, ordered his men to hold off the advancing Persian armies of Xerxes.

Hopelessly outmanned, the roughly 300 Spartans, backed by a few thousand other Greeks from varying polises around the pennisula held off literally millions (so writes Herodotus) of Persians for several days (most of it just waiting for the Persians to attack) before succumbing and being overtaken.

However, the week of prelude and battle gave the Athenian navy time to prepare and eventually they defeated the Persians at the Battle of Salamis.

I thought of that as Jeter “jump threw” from deep in the hole tonight to nail Lowell at first.

The Yankees, banged up this series (no Sheffield in the first game, no Damon tonight, Posada having an MRI, Jaret Wright expected to miss a start, the pen aching, Terrence Long on the roster, The Useless still not right, Giambi slumping, Matsui broken, the list goes on and on...) yet in three pretty ugly games from pretty much every perspective, the Bombers perservered and took two of three in Fenway.

They are now 2-0 with Sheffield back and have gone 3-3 versus two teams that fancy themselves World Series contenders on the road.

Melky Cabrera has hit in seven straight (not counting when Joe inexplicably benches him), Wright was ok for most of his start, The Useless settled down after a rough start (but still couldn’t get deep into tonight’s game), A-Rod hit what turned out to be a very clutch homer last night and Ortiz got rung up with the bases chucked to essentially end tonight’s game in the eighth (but he’s the clutchiest clutch that ever did clutch, right?).

Anyway, a full week in review is coming, but after 16 games in 16 days (all against serious contenders: Boston, New York, Texas and Oakland) when the Yanks went 8-8 as the world collapsed around them - I think this team might just be alright.