there's so much to unpack from today, so i'll just start listing them.
tuesday was devastating for oakland, today was twice as devastating for the yankees. they had just started to play better. they're in real jeopardy of not making the playoffs.
yankee twitter can't decide if the lede is "oh lookie loo, guess altuve can have his jersey ripped off now" or "fucking christ why can't we close a god damned game?" first off, the only reason they ripped his shirt off today is to tell yankee fans (and the media) to shut the fuck up about it.
lol at people looking at a small tattoo that looks like it's in mid-removal and say "i thought he had a tattoo but where is it?!?" as for the closer situation, they're proper fucked. they have one good starter and ~1-2 good bullpen pieces. chapman is junk. green is junk. britton is junk and injured. superteam my ass. they are a long way from being a ~good baseball team. we walked them 14x today and won. i'd say we'll see them in oct, but maybe we'll just see them in 2022.
judge was a whiny bitch in 2017 and he was a whiny bitch yesterday, and was probably so happy he got to perform his little touchdown dance celebration that he planned ahead of time. machete laughs at him, and altuve got the last laugh, again.
momentum is a real thing, and it would've really sucked to lose 4 in a row, get swept by the yankees, and have the only discussion for the next 4 days be about the astros who weren't in denver. though i still haven't heard anyone say shit about mookie, who's in the midst of his hottest stretch of the year. or any of the other opt-outs.
and while we're on the subject, fuck the media for making it into an astros story. trout has been out forever, acuna is now out for a year, glasnow is out, tatis keeps missing chunks of games (though is still a monster). bregman has been out for a month. injuries are crazy right now and i'm fine with all 25 guys sitting in a cryo-chamber until friday.
we haven't hit worth a shit since tuesday, but somehow went 3-3 this week. felt much worse a few hours ago.
explaining to my wife the unlikelihood of today unfolding exactly the way it did was a whole separate headache. baseball is not like other sports, where you know mj or kobe or elway or brady is going to have the ball and a chance at the end. this could not have been professionally scripted any better from the chapman bomb, through the scandal, all the buzzer bullshit, through the past 2 games, the judge jersey pull, the nonsensical reporting by fox yesterday, to a 7-2 deficit, to altuve coming up with a chance to walk it off. story-fucking-book-shit.
g5 of 2017 world series was probably the best postseason astros game ever, followed somewhere by g1 and the tuve blast from 2019. but i'm having trouble remembering a more satisfying regular season (pre-july 15th too) game.
how can you not be romantic about baseball?