Ooooo, look Michael the Kay…maybe David Robertson does have that “special mindset” to get the final three outs in a game! (topples over)
“I was thinking, ‘Don’t blow your first opportunity,’ ” Robertson said. “I was afraid Mo might come back in here and slap me around.” He then managed a smile, because he was then talking about how he was able to rear back and throw three fastballs over the outside corner — maybe a little off the outside corner — that froze Pena. Game over. As he walked in toward catcher Russell Martin, Robertson put his hands to his head, a sign of relief.
“Mo probably would’ve thrown 12 pitches, broken a bat and we’d have all been gone 10 minutes ago,” Robertson said, before talking about what Rivera told the team before he left Kansas City to see the doctors about his torn knee ligament. “He told the team to hold together, to pick each other up, and go from there. That’s what we’re going to have to do.”
...“I think it’s important for David,” Girardi said. “Sometimes he doesn’t seem comfortable until the bases are loaded, but he threw strikes and got the job done. He had a good fastball and a good curveball and those are his trademark pitches. He can handle this. I think as time goes on, he’ll get more and more comfortable. Obviously, the first one at home, where people are used to seeing Mo come in, it was important for him.”
Repoz
Posted: May 09, 2012 at 06:09 AM |
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1. Phil Coorey. Posted: May 09, 2012 at 06:19 AM (#4127151)"I feel like you waste time worrying about what's going on with Mo
Rivera and NOT doing what you need to do around the house. The house
is NOT clean,"
That's hilarious - I was in a similar problem last year after the Sox collapsed - I didn't talk for a week
I was depressed, upset, and angry, but deep down I knew it was going to happen. At some point, it's no longer a surprise when Lucy yanks the football away at the last second.
That's hilarious - I was in a similar problem last year after the Sox collapsed - I didn't talk for a week
Ha. My wife had the misfortune to meet me in January 2004. It must have been just like that movie Fever Pitch for her (we even lived in Boston!). For three months I was nice and normal and then I turned into a swearing, pacing, obsessive nutjob. I'm surprised she didn't leave me the day of Bill Mueller's walkoff when I punched my bedroom door so hard that I bruised all four knuckles. And forget about during the ALCS....
Ah, Yankees/Red Sox baseball will never be like that again. The stakes have never felt as high.
And the worst part is, we lost.
I feel you waste time worrying about the cleanliness of the house and NOT enough time worrying about what's going on with Mo Rivera's knee!
But seriously, she knew who you were when she met you. She doesn't get to complain about it.
I'm also glad I saw Avengers the same night as Mo's injury, because I needed something that awesome to distract me.
Yep, I was thinking the same thing while following the game online.
It's clear enough why this is true for Red Sox fans -- I certainly don't get as bent out shape over any baseball misfortune as I used to thanks to 04 and 07.
But why would Yankees fans feel that way? Shouldn't the emotional stakes be higher the more the Red Sox legitimize themselves as a real rival?
You can always tell when someone has never been married.
Robertson hasn't allowed a run all year, and since the beginning of 2011 he's given up 8 runs in 81 2/3 innings. Yankees fans should be worrying much more about the first 6 innings than the 9th.
My impression is that the average Yankees fan who posts about Rivera thinks that a typical closer is successful no more than 50 pct of the time. Otherwise, the dismay about the regular season is awfully overblown (a different case can be made for the postseason).
It's clear enough why this is true for Red Sox fans -- I certainly don't get as bent out shape over any baseball misfortune as I used to thanks to 04 and 07.
But why would Yankees fans feel that way? Shouldn't the emotional stakes be higher the more the Red Sox legitimize themselves as a real rival?
Because the stakes were forever changing the established order of the rivalry. In 2003, that made the stakes big enough. In 2004, with the 3-0 lead to boot, it made the pressure unbelievable. Torre talks about it a lot in his books how the pressure they felt in both years was Jupiterian.
Yep.
Like all bullies, the Yankees don't really like going up against a target that can actually fight back. They prefer canned hunts.
"I feel like you waste time worrying about what's going on with Mo
Rivera and NOT doing what you need to do around the house. The house
is NOT clean,"
This is why you need to set really low expectations as to household chores.
I made it clear to my wife very early in our relationship, I can do two things in life 1) hold down a job that earns enough to support us, 2) treat you really, really nicely. Anything beyond that she knows to view as a bonus.
Sadly you couldn't be more wrong; the Yankees and their fans respect hard-earned success and honest competition, but sadly the situation we're discussing here is the competition between the team's star athlete and the coach's clubfooted son Beavis. In a fair competition the result is pre-ordained, but the coach knows that if he can just hamstring his star player enough (the player, after all, being born with all those unfair talents, anyone with such natural ability would succeed equally) his favored son will surely prevail and there will be glory all around. The key of course, as our coach (like's call him Buddy) knows, is to make the thumb on the scales unobtrusive, done in the name of "fairness" of course, and that anyone who might object be subject to bribe or sanction.
Then why do they work so hard to perpetuate a system where they have a huge inherent structural advantage, regardless of the actual merits of any of the organizations competing?
If the Yankees actually were inherently better-run somehow, that'd be one thing, but they aren't. They just have the money to buy themselves out of more mistakes than anyone else. Paying a little more money into a slush fund so their competitors will shut up and let them enjoy their unfair advantage doesn't change that fact.
Who, the Mets? I don't think their structural advantage is so daunting.
They'd have 50 championships? 100 pennants? Have players mentioned in every Hemingway story plus a few Faulkner's?
Of course, just like the team's star athlete has the reflexes and explosive strength to compensate for poor pitch recognition, dismissive approach to practice, and a nasty hangnail. How unfair to Coach Buddy's son Beavis, who, if nothing else, plays the game the right way.
So much for the lofty Budshovik propaganda in favor of "fairness" so widely and piously proclaimed in the late-90s; even the most shameless redistributionists openly endorse institutionalized graft these days. What your ilk really crave is a return to the reserve clause to keep those uppity jocks from seeking a free and fairly-offered wage. Seeing as how that won't be happening, you'll happily support rigging the game until the right people end up with the right results.
Assuming this was addressed at me, I'll freely admit to being fairly terrible at every sport ever devised, save swimming. The only sports I managed any sort of competence in are those where supreme effort and a tolerance for pain alone can contribute mightily to success, those being boxing and basketball. And yet, it never once occurred to to me that I might appear more successful by crying for rule changes to benefit my limitations.
I once found myself in the ring with a future state amateur boxing champion and make no mistake, he boxed my ears mightily. His innate talent was fearsome to behold in such close proximity, so quick, so accurate, so slippery and filled with guile. If only the referee had forbidden infighting I might have had a chance with my vastly superior reach, but alas, I had to take my beating.
Objection overruled as irrelevant.
Market size isn't a genetic advantage. The proper comparison here would be between the son of a rich guy with all the money in the world for trainers and nutrition and equipment, and the equally-athletic son of a poor guy who gets one square meal a day and shoes held together with duct tape. If they both had the same resources available to display their talents, we'd have an interesting race... but Yankees fans don't want interesting races. They want turkey shoots.
What that I said was an endorsement? I want a level playing field, where the Yankees could compete on fair terms with every other team in baseball, rather than crushing them to death under an over-stuffed wallet bloated by an unfair territorial advantage.
Bud doesn't give a #### about small market teams, unless they happen to be owned by him or his daughter.
Not really, no. There's nothing wrong with free agency - just with the fact that some teams were unfairly given the ability to spend five or six times as much on free agents as other teams. That's not the fault of the players.
Cashman's so obvious he should wear a sign:
"I am TOO a real GM!!"
Well demographics isn't genetics, I don't think anyone is arguing that. You can't combine Boston and Los Angeles and get a fanbase that shows up in the third inning already drunk.
So Young Master Loria?
It's funny, your apologia recalls a scene from Giardino's "A Jew in Communist Prague." A Communist Party official is explaining to a college professor why young Jonas, a brillaint young scholar whose test scores were exceptional, will not be allowed to attend University. "The boy grew up in a bourgeois Jew home filled with books and reading, of course he will do better on tests than the son of a worker." So you trod on well-beaten grounds here.
But of course they do - the problem is you don't want races at all, you want results. The "right" results. If the system doesn't produce the "right" results, you demand the system change until it does. You want all the children of the proletariat to attend college and all the bourgeois fancy lads to toil in the fields as a life lesson, regardless whether this merely yields poor students and sickly crops.
No, I want a level playing field, you want institutionalized commitment to producing the "right" results. You want David Stern's NBA transported to a sport enjoyed by non-pituitary freaks.
Well that's about the most preposterous thing I've ever read on BBTF, and I've read most of Jack Keefe's posts.
So there's nothing wrong with free agency, provided it isn't too free.
And yet, they're the ones who will ultimately suffer the effects of your pursuit of utopia, will they not? But of course, they're all rich anyhow, we shouldn't worry about any lost revenue on their part. It's the owners who are the real victims of predatory mercenaries here, and we need to protect their investment.
Don't panic, it's time for Leskanic.
The last pitch he threw in the bigs was past Cairo for the final out of the 12th. I don't remember if he was warming up, but he might have been the next man to pitch in Game 5 if Ortiz didn't take of business.
One more reason Amazing GF is Amazing GF - her place is a mess now, it was a mess when I met her, and she doesn't give a #### if my place is a mess, too.
(both her parents have messy houses and aren't real good about keeping up with chores, so there's none of that running-around-to-clean when they visit, either)
Brad Ziegler began his career with 29 games, 38 scoreless innings. Rivera's Wiki page states: "Rivera finished 1999 by pitching 43 consecutive scoreless innings across the regular season and postseason"--turns out 30 2/3 of those innings were in the regular season. Robertson is at 26 1/3 innings including last year.
Between innings of Opening Day in 2005 they showed him on the scoreboard. No one really recognized him so he flashed his WS ring and the place went crazy.
(both her parents have messy houses and aren't real good about keeping up with chores, so there's none of that running-around-to-clean when they visit, either)
How did that old song go? "If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a slovenly woman your wife...."
(both her parents have messy houses and aren't real good about keeping up with chores, so there's none of that running-around-to-clean when they visit, either)
But, it's even more amazing if wife/girlfriend does keep the place clean. That way you get both the low effort, and a clean house.
The difference, of course, being that Jonas will never have a chance to compete for the position. Which is kind of an important departure from my example.
No, that's not true at all. If the Yankees competed on a level playing field and won, I'd be fine with it. I mean, I'd always prefer that my team win, of course, but if someone beats you fair and square you have to accept that they're better and hope for a different result next year.
The problem with baseball is not that the Yankees make the postseason every year. The problem with baseball is that the game's structural financial inequalities virtually guarantee that the Yankees will make the postseason every year, whether their front office's performance merits that result or not.
I know next to nothing about the NBA, so I can't speak intelligently about that.
What's not free about that? Players would still be free to sign with whomever they want, and the amount of money spent on player salaries would be about the same, give or take. The only difference is that some players would be freely choosing to sign with a different team - the same essential choice that they're already making.
Why would they be suffering? They'd still be getting paid the same amount of money, and the same number of games would be being won and lost.
A league in which every team has the same payroll, and wins about the same number of games/Championships (over the long-run) will generate less revenue, and the players will make less.
The Yankees have more fans than the Royals. It is financially bad for baseball (as a whole) for the Royals to win as often as the Yankees, since more people are made happy by (and will spend their money to see) Yankee wins and Championships.
The revenue maximizing outcome for the sport is for bigger markets to win more in proportion to their size, but not win so much that the competition suffers. i.e. if the Yankee's fans represent ~20% of MLB's revenue base, you want them winning ~20% of Championships.
Well, OK, that's fair.
But we both realized a long time ago that neatness results in not being able to find anything when we need it.
Two words have changed my life;
Cleaning
Lady
Seriously, for a few bucks every couple of weeks my place looks great. About the only thing I have to remember is not to leave anything especially important and mobile laying around and I'm good to go.
Duh, we're lazy.
Before I was married, I had a cleaning lady come in once a week, b/c I hate cleaning and laundry. Now we have a cleaning lady one day every two weeks, and my wife is free to increase that frequency if she gets sick of cleaning.
I tend towards messiness though as I often have room-mates I contain the mess to my room. I've lived with a girlfriend before, we were both fairly messy so there was no friction. One of my best friends is a bit of a neat-freak and he lived with a girl for a while who leaned towards the messy. It was a constant source of disgust for him "she had a bowl of soup and then just left it there for two hours!".
A cleaning lady may actually help keep the house tidy, though in an indirect way. I'd probably do a massive clean up immediately before she showed up so she wouldn't think I'm a slob. But in the end I think I'd still feel too weird about having someone (non-friend or family) in my house. The idea that she (are there cleaning men?) would see what books I read or movies I watch and think I'm a knob would be too much!
Everyone pack it up. Internet's overwith. Not going to top that one.
My wife does a little of this, mostly just to keep things from getting misplaced (like bills she's left on the kitchen counter).
It was never much of an issue for me when I lived alone, b/c I'm not sloppy, I just don't like to clean and do laundry. Without the cleaning lady the apartment wouldn't get meesy, just filthy.
Pfft. My duties are limited to: a) taking care of the cat b) putting dishes in the dishwasher when I'm done with them and c) putting dirty clothes in the washer (which doubles as our hamper.) Sometimes, I vaccuum. I do most of the cooking, though.
I still manage to be fairly messy. FWIW, I am ardently opposed to a cleaning lady. I'd rather just hunker down and clean for a bit before company (i.e. a party.)
That said, I take pride in a clean apartment. If we had a cat, though, well, I wouldn't help with that mess.
But then, yes, I'm not lazy. I cook most of my own meals too (and if not, I eat out). All the commercials with the slob husbands, I cannot relate to that stuff.
We, that being the Yankee Belle and I, do the exact same thing and it's been a wonderful decision. The person we bring in is college student who works like a whirlwind and practically clicks her heels in glee on her way out the door with a pocket full of cash. We still take care of routine housekeeping chores on a daily basis but it's been a revelation to have our floors mopped, windows washed, etc., twice-monthly. Y'all married folks who still struggle over the division of household labor should consider a similar arrangement, I ain't kidding when I say it reduced our petty bickering 50%.
But not his second.
The guy just isn't cut out for the Ninth Inning. He isn't a Closer.
primey for Post 14
Robertson's one weakness is his control, which leads to high pitch counts even when it doesn't cost him any runs. Throwing 25 pitches last night wasn't going to help him be in top form tonight.
That said, I still think that the bullpen problems pale in comparison with the starters. This loss tonight was the first one since opening night that could be attributed to the bullpen, while meanwhile they've had one bad outing after another from the bottom 40% of their rotation.
True, Andy, although the Rays batters deserve much of the credit. Robertson ought to have an easier time this weekend when the Mariners show up in the Bronx.
I say yes.
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