This is Oakland’s Josh Donaldson, scoring on a wild pitch by Yankee CC Sabathia Tuesday night, on the West Coast. Sabathia went 6 really bad innings and was ejected. Say it ain’t so, CC. Over the past few years, the hefty, reliable Sabathia has been one of the main supporting beams of the team, and watching him doing badly, and in his home town, too (he grew up in Vallejo, Solano County, California), gave me that familiar Yankee fan ache.
Ours is very different from the Met fan ache, in that losing, especially the big games, especially at the last minute, especially after you’ve practically tasted victory, only to end up with a mouthful of the ashes of defeat – that’s practically second nature to Met fans. Yankee fans, on the other hand, are feeling the shame and humiliation of the first born child, the one who was given everything, who is expected to win and win big, with a margin. The one who is expected to steal second base every time he gets to first, the one who must hit a home run when the bases are loaded. The one who has to leap into the opponents’ dugout to catch that rogue fly ball.
I’m having Yankee ache these days. It’s not easy to catch Yankee games in Netanya. Fox Sports is all we get over here, and they’re more likely to offer a downhill grass slalom than they would a Yankee game.
MLB.com offers one of those play-by-play interfaces, which is just one step above reading the tickertape data and making bat and ball sounds with your cheek and tongue. Not very satisfying. But I’m not about to buy an online subscription to the games, what am I, made of money?
As of today, the Yankees are on their way to dropping to 3.5 games behind Boston, which would put them on a par with Baltimore in second place. Baltimore! Of course, they could come from behind in Oakland (right now, Oakland is leading 3-0 in the fifth).
It’s 8:35 PM in Oakland, Ca. right now. It’s 6:35 AM in Netanya. Two cities on either side of the night, with a game in progress between them. That’s so poetic. You get a lot of that in Netanya.