Morning: Video Day

First, the Devils visited Obama at the White House yesterday to receive their public accolades. Back in early February, I called Obama out for using his powers to make us lose to Georgetown. Now, things have come full circle. Like the Yankee visit to the white house, Obama has a few jibes, and it's a fun watch. Thanks to Nick for the heads-up.

Second, apparently there's an official World Cup anthem. Sometime-reader Wynn, who is down in Haiti doing good work, linked me to the video, saying nobody in America knows about it. It also might be the most-played radio song worldwide. I tend to agree with his assessment: "it's really perfect and great. but terrible."

WHEN I GET OLDER, I WILL BE STRONGER!
THEY'LL CALL ME FREEDOM!
JUST LIKE A WAVVVVVING FLAG!

I'm on board with whatever emotion I'm feeling right now.

Now that you've had your fill of video, time to really crunch some words. First, Javier Vazquez is hopeless. Another game, another average fastball below 90mph. The Twins lineup just annihilated him, and they salvaged game 3 of the series 8-2. Vazquez now sports an ERA of 6.86, and it's time to admit that he's not even a competent 5th starter. Not for the Yanks. I'm not sure what the solution is, but I doubt we can afford to have what amounts to an automatic loss in every 5th game. Against the powerhouse AL teams, he's going to get crushed. He has no confidence in his fastball, for good reason, and because of that he's not even throwing consistent strikes.

Is it time to talk trade? Mitre? I don't know. But the Vazquez experiment won't end well.

It's a bad time for Vazquez to fail, too, because there was no chance the offense was bailing him out last night. Here are our run totals for the last 6 games: 2, 3, 1, 4, 3, 2. It's a combination of slumps, poor situational hitting, and pitchers who throw strikes. A-Rod has nothing to offer right now. Teix might be breaking out his slump (4 hits in the past 2 games), or it might be another false alarm. Cervelli and Gardner are coming back to Earth, like we knew they would. A lot of it amounts to bad timing and bad luck, which happens every season. We were lucky to have two great outings from AJ, Andy, and the bullpen to steal a couple from the Twins.

The good news: Granderson is back tonight. More good news: our schedule for the next month doesn't look too bad at all. It begins tonight, against Cleveland. I'll be heading up with the girlfriend and parents, and hopefully the gf can get back on track after witnessing her first ever live Yankee loss against the Rays (7-1 lifetime).

*Los Suns Los Lost. Now they have to win a home game 6 to force game 7 on the road. I can't imagine Kobe and company going down that way, but I guess stranger things have happened. Los Suns are all about la esperanza, so I'll do them the favor of not losing it yet.

*Tonight, Orlando vs. Boston. Since the NBA badly wants a Lakers-Celts match-up, they reduced one of Kendrick Perkins' technicals so he could play tonight.

*Speaking of that, I made a mistake yesterday when I said that only one team had forced a game 7 in the NBA after trailing 3-0. It's actually happened 3 times, and each time the team that came back had to play game 7 on the road. And each time, they lost. If Orlando can pull off a win tonight against the odds, they'll be the first team to come back from 3-0 and have game 7 at home.

FAX TONER CRISIS AT WORK! GOTTA GO! Later on, some more baseball chatter, probably.