i just called to say I love you.
I'm a breaking-ball junkie, so pitchers who win my heart * are the ones who leave the heat at home and bring, instead, the tricky stuff -- the hard sliders, the dropping spliiters, the funny forkballs, and above all, curves. I love Barry Zito's slow 12-6 yellowhammer; I adore Orlando Hernandez's 58 MPH dropper, and I love, love, love unto breathless disctraction Mike Mussina's knuckle curve. It's so sharp and clean and has such a tight little vertical drop that it makes me weep with happiness when it's working, and boy, oh boy. It was working today.
And when he threw in a little splitter just for variety towards the end? Around the sixth inning, just to show that he could do it? Glaring in at the umpire even when it was patently obvious that he was taking away the corners in retaliation? Throwing a fastball down the heart of the plate -- first inning, second pitch of the AB -- to Manny Freakin' Ramirez, just daring him to hit it, and Ramirez taking it for a strike and supsenquently going 0-4 on the breaking stuff you used after your fastballs?
So much with the badassery, and really, Moose you won my heart all over again today.
***
Also: Gary Sheffield with that laser shot into left in the first inning, just a few rows in front of where Boone's ball landed. I started screaming and slamming my fist down on the table so hard that the side of my hand went numb. Gary Sheffield digging into the box after that home run, settling in with great deliberation and stepping out at inoppurtune moments to let Pedro know that he wasn't intimidated by a guy who could only dial it up to the low nineties. Jorge Posada with his personal fuck-you, "the gods of baseball love me better than they love you these days" two run homer. Pedro being so rattled that he walked the next batter, Olerud, on four pitches.
That big high New York sky. Paul O'Neill in the broadcast booth making fun of "Jorgie's" baserunning, and Jeter giggling about it fifteen minutes afterwards and, also, making Posada give him their handshake in the dugout. It consists of them knocking knuckles in the traditional Yankee way, and Jeter then leaning back to touch his ear and Posada brushing one of those giant elephant-sized satellite dishes that get all red from being pressed down in his catcher's helmet.
Jeter bunting his way aboard, and the pitcher, Timlin, then plunking the next-batter, A-Rod, because the Yankees were up by six at that point and it'd been a four run inning already, and here was the cock-sucking captain of the Yankees bunting his way aboard. So disrespectful. He plunks A-Rod, then brushes Sheffield off the plate.
Sheffield grounds into a DP, yeah, but brings home another run. A few innings and two pitchers later, A-Rod hammers a two run, no-doubter into center-left.
At dinner, a Red Sox fan invites me over to eat with him, and we end up talking about our differing memories of Game 7 of the ALCS. He says that he'll wear his JETER SUCKS A-ROD shirt someday, and we bitch about those stupid little whiteboys who are not from New England and have no real claim to liking the Red Sox.
Yeah, I coulda wanted the Reds to win, but the Athletics took the last game in Seattle, and Arizona beat the Cardinals. It's a good baseball day.
* Except for you, Rich, baby. Keep tossing that rising 98 MPH riser with your easy BP action, and I'll keep on loving you even if your so-called curve makes Barry Zito giggle in the dugout.