Last night’s official attendance was 50,993, though I am going to go out on a limb here and assume that’s how many people bought tickets because I was at the game and the stadium was half full, if not less. The weather last night was terrible, and honestly I am surprised there were no delays because I’ve seen games called for less.
Anyway, if you’ve ever wanted to experience angry Yankee fans I recommend showing up to a game where it’s raining and there is horrible defensive play. During games like that there are two kinds of people there: season ticket holders and crazies (I fall under both umbrellas as do many). When Damon and Abreu made their defensive blunders (Abreu’s two in a row being much worse), what you got was 20,000 very angry people booing at once. It’s an amazing sound, louder than 57,000 mildly happy fans at a normal game. The whole (Yankees fans) crowd was in unhappy unison. It’s tough, because on the one hand I really love Bobby Abreu at the plate. As a hitter he is pretty much my ideal. On the other hand, he turned what was a tough but definitely makable catch into a triple and a base hit into a two run scoring double that probably could have been a triple as well. My mind went on autopilot because I was so livid at that point.
It was too bad about those flubs because Kennedy looked rather good for most of the game, but he just came apart when that happened. He still seriously needs to cut down on his walks but he got visibly shaken and stopped leading off with that first pitch strike though he got away with it. He probably could have closed out the 5th, I would have given him the chance but I’m not the manager.
One strange observation I made was that until it was time for him to go, nobody came out to talk to Kennedy. I think it’s appropriate for the pitching coach or catcher to come out and talk to a young pitcher who is obviously affected by the defensive flubs that happened behind him. Just to help him clear his head or whatever. It just makes me miss Jorge that much more.
…
Phil Hughes is actually hurt, which makes me not only sad but very concerned. He has had a number of injuries the last few years and I hope he does not turn into the Ben Sheets type.
Ian Kennedy though he looked okay for the most part probably still needs some AAA time to get his head together. The only problem is that now that Rasner has joined the big league roster the only person who would be an obvious person to call up is Igawa and I don’t care how good his AAA numbers are I don’t trust him. Unless he is keeping the ball down and not depending on high strikes that don’t get called in MLB, which I have not heard anything about so I assume he is not.
Lastly, help me Chien-Ming Wang. You’re my only hope.
