We Now Return You To Your Regularly Scheduled Programming

Greetings friends and fellow Yankees fans. Long time no talk. I hope you've all been well. I've been doing much better. Life is still crazy, and is about to get crazier, but I'm managing. The reason it's getting crazier is because in a few short weeks, the wife and I will be having our 3rd child (it's a girl) and we'll also be moving into our new home (building new). Both are scheduled to "arrive" within a day of each other. Tack onto that a 3-year old and a 16-month old and you've got sheer pandemonium. I love it.

I must apologize for the extended absence. I really needed the downtime. I did a little blog maintenance here and there. Namely I updated the Swish's Wishes donation total. See upper left. The pledge drive is up to $618. For those new to the site or if you just plum forgot, a couple of us Yankee fans got together and are donating money to Nick Swisher's charity. In a nutshell, for every HR Swisher hits, we're donating $38 to his charity, Swish's Wishes. Want more info? Click here and you'll find it. If you're interested in donating along with us you're more than welcome.

The other big thing I've been doing, and this has been a giant pain in the rump, is I've been deleting all of the spam comments being left by our "friends" in the Far East. It go so bad I had to pseudo-moderate the comments. Any comments left on posts older than 7 days get moderated. I may have to shorten that now that I'm going to be more active. Message to you a-holes: don't waste your time posting spam links in the comments. They'll be deleted pretty quickly. Take that shizzle somewhere else.

I've got a lot of catching up to do as it relates to the Yankees. I've been paying attention but not as closely as I'd like to be. I did post a few blogs recently. I talked about the busted Cliff Lee trade and about the untimely passing of the great George Steinbrenner. Man that still kind of stings. The Boss will certainly be missed. As will Bob Sheppard. RIP.

I'm going to rush through the rest of the catching-up and start fresh tomorrow. Here goes:

• The team is 56-32 and has the best record in all of baseball. They're 8-2 over their last 10, 2 games up on the Rays and 5.5 up on the Red Sox. Not a bad way to come out of the All-star break.
• The starting rotation has for the most part been outstanding this season. They're the biggest reason they're doing so well in my opinion. Hughes, Pettitte and Sabathia could all possibly win 20 games. How nutty would that be? All 3 have exceeded my expectations, especially Phil Hughes. Err, I mean Huuuuuuuuuuughes! Why did I use the letter U 11 times, you ask? He gets 1 U for every W. 11 wins equals 11 Us. I did the same thing for Mike Mussina when he won 20. I've always been a big Hughes guy and figured I'd carry on the tradition. It's insane how good that trio of pitchers has been this year. I'll expand more on them I'm sure as they make their next starts.
• Javy Vazquez is hitting his stride. Finally!
• Robinson Cano (my pre-season MVP pick) has cooled down a little but still kicking some ass.
• Mark Teixeira is finally coming around. His streak happened to start right after I traded him in a computer baseball league I'm in. You're welcome.
• A-Rod may not be hitting it out of the park at his normal rate but he;s driving people in. He'll still finish with 30 HR.
• Nick Swisher is not the rally killer he used to be.
• Joba Chamberlain sucks.
• Mariano Rivera is super-human. He has to be, right?
• The rest of the bullpen needs work and upgrading it should be the main focus at the trade deadline.

And there you have it. It's not as in-depth and as detailed as I'd like it to be, but at least it's something. The plan is to ramp up the blog again. I'm going to do my best to post daily but I make no promises. I may miss something here or there but there definitely won't be any long layoffs. At least that's not the plan. When baby #3 shows up I may be singing a different tune. What did I get myself into?

Peace, love and Pinstripes,

J-Boogie