Posting with consideration that certain comments, alebit meant with no harm, may, still, perhaps, in some way, offend others is playing nice in my book.

Bailey, try growing up. And not permitting the Lord’s name to be taken in vain is hardly censorship. Which is all I asked for Steve, this has nothing to do with ‘playing nice’.

FWIW, I do agree on the comments about Murcer. I love the guy. He’s a great member of the Yankees family. But, he knows as much about baseball as a tree knows about performing heart surgery.

I nearly tossed my cookies on Friday when he went on about the “AWESOME” job that Bernie’s doing this year.

“Surprising” would have been acceptable – because Bernie has been better than a normal person would have expected – albeit still not very good. “Awesome” means means Murcer is watching the games through Yankees blinders.

I will ask everyone to play nice with each other – please, and, thanks.

Jesus Christ, Don — oops! I live amongst a family of Catholics — my brother-in-law and his clan are real Bible-thumpers — so I appreciate your annoying sensitivity to anything you perceive as an insult to your god. But I think you log this one as a “get over it,” since I obviously meant no offense, it’s simply a saying, and censoring the posts would be a higher crime than some strive toward an aching PC conscience.

Steve, could you please institute a policy of no taking the Lord’s name in vain permitted. I am personally offended by that part of the above diatribe. It is not necessary on this board, which is of course your property. But this is, to me, beyond the pale.

Thank you for your consideration.

Jesus Christ on a fucking cross, Steve. Chill out. You’re a passionate fan like myself, which is why I like reading this blog so much, but I think you tend to get too bent out of shape over individual losses.

Yeah, this was embarrassing. My God, what a humiliation. Giving up 19 runs to the DEVIL RAYS? I really wanted to just turn away and shut the game off (of course I didn’t, because I’m an obsessive little bastard).

You mention that 22-0 beatdown by the Indians. Which happened a month later than this game. And you know what? We won the division that year and came within a few outs of getting to the World Series. And that Indians team wasn’t anything special. So I wouldn’t say this one game portends our doom.

This was last year’s Randy Johnson. The guy we hadn’t seen much of this year. He simply had NOTHING. What was frustrating is that he got shelled twice with two outs. So with just a little bit of luck he could have avoided either big inning. But he didn’t — he walked Gomes twice and he got rocked two straight innings.

I didn’t stick around for the post-game so I didn’t hear if Randy was hurt or not (I actually just got home a little while ago and didn’t hear any news on him). He had a decent fastball, but no control. And when he has no control, he gets blasted. If he’s not hurt, I still feel that Randy can be an effective third starter. Though it’s imperative for the Yankees to finally ‘fess up and CALL him a third starter. Moose is one. Wang is two. Randy is three. And I doubt they can set up the playoff rotation, but that’s the way it should be.

Here are some of the things that bugged me about this game:

1) Andy popping up with a man on third just as it looked like we would rally.
2) A-Rod hitting the first pitch he saw and grounding out when we had the bases loaded and the game was still more or less close enough to come back (here’s a situation where he deserved to get booed; it was maybe one of his worst at-bats as a Yankee).
3) Myers coming into the game and giving up a double to Crawford and then a home run to Lee. I know he hasn’t pitched in a while, but did he forget how to pitch to lefites? That inning was the real back-breaker. When it went from a blowout to an embarrassment.

And I hate to get on a guy who’s so nice, but could the YES Network PLEASE get Bobby Murcer out of the booth? It’s like he’s been stuck in a closet for three years and doesn’t even know what team is on the field. He continues to talk about how the Yankees can run such an amazing lineup out there and how from top to bottom they can drive the ball out of the park. Bobby, LOOK AT THE LINEUP! Andy Phillips, Aaron Guiel, Cairo, Melky. Wake up. He said if you look at the Devil Rays players and looked at the Yankee players, obviously the Yankees should beat the Rays. Um, hate to tell you this, Bobby, but on the offensive side, the Rays stack up real well.

He also repeats himself endlessly — repeating the same shit about Randy Johnson that he was last year. He says Johnson has no zip on the fastball as the gun shows 94. With Seo pitching, he’s calling fastballs changeups and changeups fastballs. He also called the radar gun a “clock.” Jesus…

Anyway, the guy really drives me nuts. He said the GM of the Devil Rays “asked” B.J. Upton if he WANTED (!) to move to third base because they were trading Huff and it “might be a quicker trip to the big leagues.” Upton has been playing third base all year because he was an error machine at shortstop. This guy talks right out of his ass.

If the Yankees win tomorrow behind Moose and then win a few more, this will be forgotten.

I want to thank K-Rod and the Angels for rolling over and letting Big Papi and the Red Sox violate them. They can’t beat us enough, but when it’s the Sox, they can’t grab their ankles fast enough.

Plz retire after this season Randy… arragh.

What was particularly disappointing was the poor performance Johnson and Chacon. The Yanks have a pretty good bullpen, even without Beam or Chacon. The bullpen will hopefully get better when Dotel joins the team.

But, the Yanks have just 2 reliable starters, 2 mediocre starters, and no fifth starter. And, what happens if Moose or Tiger gets injured?

I don’t know the answer.

I guess I’m going to agree with Steve and say that this was an embarassing loss. And I’m going to disagree also and say that the Yanks are a legitimate play-off contender. They’re only 1.5 games from the AL East lead and .5 game back in the wild card without the services of Sheffield or Matsui. I think they’ve played their hearts out.