Daniel Cabrera.

How do you walk 6 batters in one inning? Even Kevin Brown didn’t do that! And now as second inning starts, he throws three pitches right down the pipe, and Loretta blasts it for a ground rule double. No, I will not be like a Red Sox fan and watch other team games, wishing they would lose. My team is good enough.

Forget the Red Sox for a second, I was surprised how many analysts predict the A’s to win the AL West. That’s awesome news. The last thing the Yankees need is see the Angels again in the playoffs. We just can’t beat them. They are like woodpeckers, they peck and peck and peck, and eventually an entire tree falls to the ground. They bleed you with countless singles. Whatever, the A’s have Frank Thomas and Milton Bradley, they’ll beat them. And I have confidence in the Red Sox to take the Wild Card. Please, if another Red Sox fan complains "How do you know we won’t win the AL East.." I’ll puke. You didn’t win it last year. Or the year after that. Or the year after that. Guess what? You won’t win it this year. Papelbon is your close. Let’s see how the youngster does in the postseason when the pressure mounts on his shoulders. Whatever. He’s no Rivera, he’s just a kid. So let it rain. Let the White Sox take the AL Central. Let the A’s take the AL West. We were 2-2 against the White Sox, and quite frankly, I think we can handle them. The A’s, no matter if they just defeated the Yankees 2 out of 3, we’ve beaten them before, twice. And ofcourse, the A’s GM, Billy Beane has said publically "My **** doesn’t work in the playoffs!" The whole moneyball concept doesn’t take you too far into the postseason. As evident to the A’s amazing success in the regular season, and total flunk in the postseason for the last 5 years.

Well Cabrera leaves the ball game, wow you hear the AL East is loaded, from the powerful Yankees offense, to the immense young talent the D-Rays have. I guess Baltimore is the worst team here. It looks like an easy win for Boston, so we’ll have to win a ball game today. I’m not concerned we’re one game out. Last year we were in first place for a total of 3 days, and you all know how it all ended. The Yankees MUST defeat the Angels. Must prevent them from making the playoffs anyway possible. Just a couple more hours till the Yankees game start; and so does the Lakers game. Against the suns? Expect Kobe to have another monster night.

Wow Matt Clement looks like to have the another easy win. Boy that kid is the Red Sox version of Carl Pavano. He can’t handle big games, while as Pavano just can’t handle any games. Can you say Pussycat?

It’s always hard to accept. The first L of the season. I don’t care if your team starts out 15-0. But this one had loss written all over it. I had bad feelings about this game even more the season started. For some reason, I don’t trust Mike Mussina. He has that hated ability of give up leads as soon as he gets them, and then hold off the offense until he’s out of the game. My brother just woke up, asking the outcome of the game. We lost buddy!

Here it is, my Optimist Report. I will provide these reports after every loss, so be sure to come back. I’ll tell you what’s good with the world, not what’s bad. Speaking of bad, as much as I love Joe Torre for handling all the different personalities, I know for a fact he’s no where near the best in-game manager in baseball. Torre is the best off-field manager in the game. This notion proved correct yet again today. Myers came in. Did his job, getting two batters out. Torre plugged in flamethrower Kyle Farnsworth to get Big Frank Thomas out, and Farns did what he was suppose to do. An great job of pitching and getting out the ultra dangerous Thomas.. hey the Yankees bullpen actually looked good. That satisfaction faded away as midnight drew closer and closer. The A’s threw their best, Huston Street. I knew Cano and Jeter were both 0-2 against the kid, and Damon had not faced him. Street did his job, after giving up a hit to Damon. Now, here I was, waiting for Mariano Rivera to come out for the 9th so this game could go into the overtime but who do I see? Scot Proctor. What? Yes. Okay I understand the A’s threw their closer because after 9 innings the home team can never have a save situation– okay so Rivera doesn’t come out. I guess Torre was waiting for the Yankees to get the lead. Fine with me. But what was Farnsworth doing wrong? The man pitched great, yet he was pulled out for a guy who struggled all year last year. Not to mention that, he had just joined the team after his new born daughter was "seriously ill". The man wasn’t in the right state of mind to pitch a 3-3 game in the 9th inning. Everybody remembers last year’s bullpen failed in part to Torre’s reluctance of trusting anyone other then Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera. Anyone who gave up a run, was shelfed for weeks. With that in mind, if Torre wanted someone out there– why not put Proctor in the 7th.. or even 8th. Put Farnsworth in the 9th. Why would you go from Myers to Farnsworth ..to Proctor? I guess he’s the manager, he knows what he’s doing. Maybe he wanted to kid to have a chance. Hey, it’s a long season. Even great teams that win 100 games lose 62 of them. This game was up and down for each team.. and the Yankees just ran out of innings. Well, here’s the good and the bad on today’s loss.

The Good

I’m loving the Johnny Damon era. This guy works the counts, gets the hits, and is actually doing what he did against us all these years. Who figured? I won’t be quick enough to say I trust him like I trust Jeter on big spots.. but he certainly possess a confidence and game that has made Jeter famous all over the majors.

Kyle Farnsworth and Mike Myers. Farnsworth hit 99 MPH on the radar gun and got a HUGE out in the 8th. Myers also looks awesome. These two people should pitch in game 3 of the series, since they only faced a couple batters each.

Alex Rodriguez. Yes. Even though he left 5 people on base.. this guy is hitting and hitting and hitting some more. Even the great clutch hitters have bad days with men on base. Yesterday A-Rod’s grand slam made the score 3-0 to 7-0. The slam threw all the momentum in the Yankees favor. Opening day Grand Slam to take deter the home team’s confidence, pretty clutch if you ask me.

Small ball. Jeter bunting, Cano bunting– I really support Torre for this decision. You just cannot wait for the 5 run home run. We’ve been waiting for 6 years, it still hasn’t come.

The Bad

Proctor. I’m not going to say it again, but the guy needs to pitch tomorrow if the Yankees have a comfortable lead.. so he knows whatever happened yesterday, was yesterday. No point in sitting him around for a week so he dwells on that performance all week. But please, the 9th inning should belong to either Myers, Farnsworth, or Rivera. Proctor belongs in the 6th or 7th at best.

These 10pm starts are driving me crazy. But baseball is baseball. Glad to see no harm done with today’s loss as Boston lost big against Texas 10-4. Wakefield got bombed yet again. I’m telling you, you can only get so many miles out of one mediocre pitcher! Hanley Ramirez had 3 RBIs and looked great in his first multi-hit game. Renteria is not doing so bad as well. Tsk Tsk, bad front office moves. But hey we lost too. But remember, we’re on the road and we’re facing one of the top 4 teams of the American League. If we finish this road trip 4-2, or even 3-3 I’ll be content. We face another tough team, the Angels but I expect us to have heavy hearts in that series, and we’ll do well in Anaheim. Then we have Kansas City at home.. which should be fun. We just faced one of the best pitchers of the American League, R. Harden. Kansas City, I don’t think so.