i spent most of sunday's game in bed, half-listening in a sleepy haze, a mostly happy one til That Thing happened, and being a baseball Thing of the painful variety of course the next day i avoided sports media altogether... browsing through the blogroll this morning i came across this perfectly apt description of our wanger and had to share:

First, let me say that the most shocking thing I saw yesterday was not Ryan Zimmerman hitting that home run, but Chien-Ming Wang throwing his glove in anger afterward. I'm not quite sure the best way to explain how unlikely it is to see Wang, you know, do anything at all really, but here's my best attempt: You know how sometimes people have dogs who do nothing except sleep? Like, the dog will wake up in the morning, go outside, find a sunbeam and lie down in it for like 10 hours? And nothing you can do will make it wake up until there's no sun? Not even throwing a ball or poking it with a stick or laying big hunks of raw meat down a few feet away?

Okay, now imagine that one day, you're walking by and the dog suddenly leaps up, immediately begins foaming at the mouth and attacks you like you'd just casually mentioned that his collar made him look fat. Aside from being concerned about your gaping wounds, you'd probably think to yourself, "Man, that's weird - that dog never does anything" and that's sort of how everyone reacted when Wang got heated - in other words, it's unusual.

Because of that, the feeling in the clubhouse afterward was a little different. The players weren't demoralized - it was more like they felt sorry they couldn't do more for Wang, as though they'd let him down.

Say what you want about how important Randy Johnson and Mike Mussina are to the Yankees - and they're very important - but Wang figures to be here for a long time and I don't think anyone would be surprised if he's their No. 1 at some point soon. He put in a heroic effort yesterday and his teammates recognized that. "He didn't deserve a fate like that," Johnny Damon said and he was right. [sam borden]

Labels: yanquis