THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY

***THE GOOD***
12-4 seems pretty good to me. The Yanks seem to do everything right last night: they hit, they pitched & they fielded. They also had three home runs among their 14 hits to increase their MLB leading total to 98. Justin Verlander is a power pitcher, who blows people away, whereas CC Sabathia is a pitcher, who just finds ways to win. Again last night, he didn't seem to have overpowering stuff, yet Texas couldn't seem to do much against him.
Oh, and Boston lost, which is always good news.

***THE BAD***
Jeter went on the 15-day DL because of a grade1 calf strain. He joins 10 other Yanks already on the list, among them:
Joba Chamberlain
Phil Hughes
Bartolo Colon
Rafael Soriano
Pedro Feliciano
Damaso Marte
Eric Chavez
...along with lesser known players like Colin Curtis, Amauri Sanit and Reegie Corona. I almost added Nick Johnson just out of habit. Not wishing anyone bad luck, but add a couple of outfielders and a catcher, and this team could compete in the AL West.

***THE UGLY***
Matt Meyers writes for ESPN. In his latest article, he says the Yankee pitching staff is suspect because, now stay with me, their swing and miss percentage is 7.6%, which is 26th in the Majors. The Giants are first with a 9.6%. How does this relate to anything? I can't see that it does. The Yanks currently have the 2nd best record in baseball and they strike out an average of 6.9 guys per game. Is that good? Well, here are the averages for some well-known pitchers:
Andy Pettitte - 6.2, Whitey Ford - 5.5, and Greg Maddox - 6.0.
Matt, please don't write too many more articles.

***THE FUNNY***
The best picture of the night occurred during a Nick Swisher at bat. The pitcher throws a pitch down at Nick's ankles and he fell on his stomach at the plate to avoid getting hit. In the meantime, Ranger catcher, Yorvit Torrealba, shifted over to stop the ball, got his feet tangled and ended up on his stomach, lying right next to Swisher. ESPN should have that one of it's Top Ten Plays.

As Vod noted, the NBA Finals are over and the NHL plays the last game of it's Finals tonight. That means that outside of a few major events in other sports, the Wimbledon tennis finals and golf's US Open, to name two, baseball will be the main focus of the sports page until August. That's when pro football will begin training camps. No, I don't mean the NFL. I'm talking about Ohio State and USC and the like. Car dealers across America eagerly await the influx of cash from the college boosters.

***IT AIN'T SPORTS, BUT...***
"Willie Nelson has been fined $500 after he was arrested for marijuana. Texas border guards smelled marijuana coming from Willie's tour bus. The bus was in Ohio at the time."
- Brad Dickson

CP-