Afternoon Baseball

Call me unconvinced. Randy Johnson still hasn't proven that when the going gets tough, he gets going. Yesterday's ejection was silly. Even his personal catcher, the usually impotent John Flaherty, said that Randy more or less deserved to be tossed. Although Flaherty did hit a HR afterward.
Today, however, Shawn Chacon, who looked scared and pitched that way against Boston last Saturday, was a dominant man who wanted the ball every inning. He went eight with no runs, winning a 1-0 decision, as Gordon closed it out for Rivera, who has been pitching long innings on high pitch counts a lot lately.
Chacon and Small keep showing up and taking care of business. That's wonderful, honestly. But if Johnson can't do the same in the most important of moments, then the Yanks are just fooling themselves. And with the way the Red Sox and Indians are playing, it might not matter anyway. That's a real possibility. The Yanks have no advantage here -- they need to win and get help. It's week 17 of the NFL season for them, and they are not controlling their own destiny.

By the way, somebody please tell Jason Giambi to never stretch a single again. Twice in one week watching his terminally slow "sprint" into a waiting tag at second is more than enough.