2M1207
As a wise man once said, "...in all its Heavenly Glory".
What? You thought I was going to post up another picture of Orlando Hernandez? p'uhlease! :)

- Art Neuro

'El Duque' The Slayer
Our Favourite Magic Cuban Orlando Hernandez continues to surprise with his comeback season, beating the Baltimore Orioles for his 8th win. Hernandez pitched 7 innings of 5 hit ball, giving up only 1 run on a solo homer; he struck out 4, walked 2, whihc are not great numbers in of themselves, but the Yankees got their 5 runs and the rest went into the record books for yet another win in El Duque's loss-less season. Runs this amazing don't come that often, so we should stop to consider this pitcher was wanted by nobody except the Yankee family as he came into the 2004 season.

"I knew when we signed him in the spring that if anybody's going to be able to make it back, he's going to do it,'' Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "He's been terrific, he really has.''

Hernandez has proven to be a savior to a rotation that had to endure injuries to Kevin Brown and Mike Mussina; New York is 11-1 in games he starts.

"He certainly has picked up the slack with Brownie down and with Moose down for a time,'' Torre said.

Even the New York Times who have expressed nothing but doubt have concceded that Hernandez is the man on the mound right now.

Hernández is not too proud to avoid the most dangerous hitters in a lineup, pitching them carefully enough to concede a walk and go after a hitter less likely to hurt him. He walked Mora on four pitches, but standing in next was Tejada, one of the most productive hitters in baseball.

Tejada does not hit Hernández especially well, with 6 hits in 24 career at-bats after grounding out in the second inning. Catcher Jorge Posada went to the mound before Tejada hit, and with a 2-2 count, Posada made another visit. Hernández spun a slider and Tejada swung and missed for strike three, ending the threat. It brought about
the burst of excitement from Hernández, who again showed the kind of survival instinct that seemed missing with José Contreras.

What's interesting about this described scenraio is how Hernandez works himself into a 2-2 count on Tejada. Posada goes to the mound to remind or check with him that Hernandez has to throw his 'money pitch'. Hernandez does not hesitate to throw his one big amazing pitch, his slider on the outside low part of the plate even if Tejada is looking for that pitch. The chutzpah of the guy is astounding.

And Now For the Space News
A group of European astronomers have released the first photograph of a planet outside of our solar system. The article is here.

"Although it is surely much bigger than a terrestrial-size object [like Earth], it is a strange feeling that it may indeed be the first planetary system beyond our own ever imaged," said Christophe Dumas, an astronomer at the European Southern Observatory.

Otherwise, all the other known planets, which now number 120 have been detected indirectly.
NASA also has an image of a distant object that could be a planet, but they have not confirmed.
Still, it's exciting to see 2M1207, so I'll post up the pickie shortly.

- Art Neuro

Taking Delight In The Suffering of Others
I know, it's not dignified, it's not good, it's not polite, it's not even about space exploration. However, it's somewhat of an endearing sport. Like dwarf-throwing or wet-T-shirt competitions or female mudwrestling. It's called, Watch Red Sox Nation Cry. The Red Sox have gone on a 22-2 surge, closing the gap with AL East leaders (and Perennial Red Sox Nightmare), the New York Yankees. Last year, the two teams met in a record 26 occasions, and in the game that mattered (ALCS Game 7), Aaron Boone hit that legendary homerun in extended innings to go into eternal baseball folklore; he will forever be a hero in the Empire State area, and he will always find a a new middle initial that he shares with Bucky Dent. Ah, the joyous memory of that one.

So in the spirit of laughing at the Red Sox, Jim Baker at Baseball Prospectus had this to say:

About a month ago I was punishing myself mentally and physically for having picked a Boston/Houston World Series. Now I do not feel so quite ashamed.

By now, the Red Sox have put themselves in a position where not making the playoffs seems unlikely. What that means is this: as we speak, the following memo is
going around the corporate headquarters of The Fates:

Colleagues:
I am assuming that most of you haven't noticed that our frequent past project Boston Red Sox have gone on a 20-2 run. Because of that, we must begin planning immediately for their ultimate undoing. It's much too late to dash their hopes à la 1978 during the regular season. Clearly, we are going to have to come up with something for the playoffs, instead. Last year's work was extraordinary but we don't have a Grady Little on hand to make our jobs easy, so this is what we need:

I want the boys down in R & D to give me four scenarios of doom. I need marketing to gauge the level of expectation of the Red Sox nation. How high is the cynicism factor? What can we do to overcome it, in order to maximize heartbreak?
Creative: Your thoughts? Can we top Bill Buckner without making it too obvious?
You have your assignments. I need your preliminary ideas on my desk in one week. In terms of priority, put the Cubs aside until further notice.

It's only funny because it's happening to somebody else. This may be the year the Red Sox go all the way. Then again, it may be just another year where they fall on their faces. History is either in the making or the repeating. :)

The Steve Bartman Seat
If 1918 seems like a long time ago for Red Sox Nation, try 1908. Yes, that's how long the World Series drought has been for the Chicago Cubs. Last year, the Cubs were 5 outs away from beating the Marlins and going to the World Series when disaster struck. Steve Bartman, an ardent Cubs fan stuck his hand out to catch a foul ball, interfering with a play Moises Alou had on it. Had Alou been able to catch the foul ball, the Cubs would have been out of the inning. Insted, the inning turned ugly and the Cubs lost. In fact, the Cubs lost the series and bowed out in the National League Edition of 'The Big Tragedy'.

Sine then, the seat Steve Bartman sat in that night has turned into a shrine of sorts, according to the New York Times. It's a nice article about a guy who at the right place at the right time, but managed to stick his hand into the wrong place at the wrong time. Poor Fella.

After the fateful play in Game 6, he was showered with abuse, with obscenities and beer, and was escorted by security out of Wrigley Field, his jacket covering his face as if he were on a perp walk. He received telephone death threats at the financial consulting firm where he works in suburban Chicago, and his home was patrolled by police cars. He issued one statement on the morning after Game 6, and has not been heard from since in any type of public forum.

The governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, knocked him. The governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, perhaps adding salt to the wound, offered Bartman sanctuary in Florida.

Now that was a bit much, last year. Seriously folks, if Steve bartman got in the way of the Cubs winning, how good could the Cubs have been anyway? isn't that an insult to your team? Anyway, maybe this will be the year the Cubs face off against the Red Sox in the all-bad-karma World Series? Or maybe it's just another heartache in a long line of heartaches that reaches back to the days before World War I. It's this kind of morbid fascination that keeps baseball so interesting.

- Art Neuro

Mo' Moneyball
Here's another article, this time from the New York Times regarding 'Moneyball' main character, and Oakland Athletics' General Manager Billy Beane.The small-market miniscule Budget A's are winning in the AL West once again with an 81-58 record. On the subject of becoming the subject in the book, Billy Beane has this to say:

"Sure, I became the subject of criticism, and there were people who said my ego
had run amok," Beane said. "I went through the whole thing. But I didn't really care because those people talking about me didn't even know me. I still say that it was a great experience, a grounding experience, and I wouldn't trade it for anything."

It's a soft piece mainly because the New York Times was originally the paper who commissioned Micahel Lewis to write an article about the suprising Athletics three years ago. Even so, it's nice to know that the organisation is still running strong on its philosophies. The proof of any team is in the winning

- Art Neuro

How To Get Ahead In Politics
O-o-o-o-kay, so there's a Federal Election going on. One of our readers sent in this link that seems to indicate that it's all in the head.

A Catastrophe By Any Other Name Is A...
The NASA boffins are trying to extract something or anything from the Genesis probe wreck. It's a bit like trying to figure out the lifestyle choices of a car accident victim after they've been smeared across the road.

The capsule's outer layer broke open like a clamshell but survived mostly intact. The damage was far worse for an inner cylinder, which also ripped open and was left grotesquely twisted. The brittle atom disks inside were packed together so tightly that it was hard to assess the damage.

"There's a lot we still don't know about the contents of the capsule," he said.
The capsule held billions of charged atoms — a total haul no bigger than a few grains of salt — captured from the solar wind on five disks during the 884-day mission.

Indeed.

'Key Psycho' Update
Principle Photography is finally finished. We still need to shoot second unit scenes, but the actors are all 'done'. Hooray. Thank you for all your support.

Jobsearch Update
I thought I had a gig going into September, but it has seemed to have vanished into the clouds. Consequently, I am back on the search. It's really disheartening crap.

Knee Update
"I'm waking here, I'm walking here. " Now I know why Ratso Rizzo gets so angry with that driver as he hobbles across the intersection in Midnight Cowboy. I'm getting better, but I discovered this week that I'm still weak when it comes to climbing.

- Art Neuro

Freaky Story 1
The guy I'm sharing house with is an audiologist. He comes home with stories of deformed kids who need to have their hearing checked out in the public hospital. Sometimes, he finds they have a lot more wrong with them than hearing. 'Pineapplehead' was such a case. 'Pineapplehead' had some strange disorder of bone growth which meant his skull was growing more bone tissue than was necessary. There was a bone growth on the top of his head that resembled a pineapple. The doctors in Samoa couldn't diagnose what his condition was so he was sent to Sydney, arriving with a medical carte stating his case to be 'Pineapplehead'. The doctors in Sydney found out that at the rate his bone growth was taking place, his eye-sockets would close and pop the eye-balls out. The vestibule was not functioning, so the poor baby was in constant vertigo. needless to say, he was deaf as they come.
"But I guess if vertigo and nothing else is all you ever know through your senses, then you must get used to it," my housemate says.

A few weeks ago, my housemate saw a baby whose shrunken head was exactly like an orange, with dimpled skin. The baby was born that way. He too was deaf and blind. There seems to be a bit of a fruit theme developing here, but my housemate says, "When you see these kids, you either laugh or you cry; and really I can only laugh because crying is too hard to do in a workplace."
Surely he sees some normal kids I asked. He told me of the mother who brought in her son who she claimed had hearing problems.
"He just doesn't clean up his room when I tell him to"
"Really?"
"It's obvious he can't hear me"
So he checks the kid who turns out to have absolutlely no problems with his hearing.
"Are you sure?"
"Completely."
"There must be something wrong, because he just doesn't seem to hear a word I say."
The kid pipes up and says "That's because I hate you mum. I can hear every word you say. I'm not deaf. I just hate you."
"No, check him agian... I'm sure he's deaf..."

Freaky Story 2
My other housemate works in Mental Health. The latest person he tells me about is somebody who was made King of Australia in 1972 when the late Queen HRH Elizabeth II abdicated in favour of this fellow who is now King George VII. And if the folks at Mental Health Centre won't listen to what he says, they will all be tried and shot for treason. Needless to say this person was tackled by a bunch of guys in white coats. The guy seems to have been the victim of a psychosis induced by ecstasy tabs. As more people do ecstasy tabs, the more he sees the psychosis created by the drug. My housemate thinks in the future, the streets will be filled with nutcases who have done too much ecky. They are nothing like the casualties of acid from the 70s and early 80s; they are nothing like guys with advanced addiction to THC; they are genuinely psychotic.
"Craziness is on the rise," he says. "The future wil be psychotic."

Like my other housemate, his case folder just keeps expanding. There are positions in the mental health system, that cannot be filled because it doesn't pay enough and nobody wants to do that work. When you add it all up, the future of our society is looking far more psychotic than we have imagined to date, with nobody to look after them.

Freaky Story 3
My good friend Casey has a relative who is a Psychiatrist. He was given a case by another shrink who was retiring from the business. The case involved a teenage Chinese girl. In the first session, he went through the case history and found an overachiever who had given up on academia through her inability to beat everybody at a selective school. Her traditional and conservative parents are worried sick about her, but what is there to say now that she is out of school? Now she has a boyfriend with whom she lives, and an oddly vague manner about her. The Psychiatrist thought she was a sweet girl who probably needed some minor counselling until he noticed some burn marks on her wrist. He asked her what the marks were. She said:

"I got them at the brothel where I work as a masseuse. I wasn't getting any customers even when all the other grils were busy getting customers. I got bored so I wanted to go home, but the madam wouldn't let me. So I decided to burn myself."
The brothel thing came out of the blue, as her case notes had nothing written down on the matter. The Psychiatrist asked how her boyfriend saw her work. She said, "he works in a gay brothel. In fact I'm depressed because he gets more customers than I do. I'm thinking of going into full service soon".
Well, that was something her praents had no idea about. As the Psychiatrist told it, she was borderline personality with a strong , competitive desire to be liked; hence her competitiveness with her boyfriend who was getting more customers.

I'm only writing this down because if I don't write it on my blog, I'll forget these freaky stories. As you can see, they have absolutely nothing to do with Space Exploration, but they freak me out all the same.

- Art Neuro

The Best Laid Plans Of Mice And Men
...didn't work, as the Genesis probe crash landed in the Utah desert.

The catastrophic descent left the Genesis capsule buried halfway underground and
exposed its collection of solar atoms to contamination. The capsule held billions of atoms collected from the solar wind during a mission that was designed to reveal clues about the origin and evolution of the solar system.

Scientists were hopeful they could salvage the broken disks that held the atoms, and perhaps still unravel the mystery of the solar system. "This is actually not the worst-case scenario," said Andrew Dantzler, director of NASA's solar system division, noting the capsule embedded itself in soft desert soil and avoided hitting anything harder that would have made it a "total loss."

Oh yes of course. Somehow it still does feel like it wasa botched effort and they are putting a smiley face on the ctastrophic disaster. Aiyah. The thing is, it's not as if they rehearsed the manoeuvre prior to the mission. They seem to have done it based on the notion of 'we could do it so we would be able to do it'. How did they expect it to suddenly work on the day?

- Art Neuro

Here She Comes, Here She Comes
The Genesis probe is returning, the world is watching, two stunt helicopter pilots are standing by.

All systems are go," Don Sevilla, Genesis payload recovery leader, said Tuesday when the capsule was 134,000 miles above the Earth's surface. If all goes as planned, the mid-air capture was to take place Wednesday.

The capsule's charged atoms — a "billion billion" of them — should reveal clues about the origin and evolution of our solar system, said Don Burnett, Genesis principal
investigator and a nuclear geochemist at California Institute of Technology.

"We have for years wanted to know the composition of the sun," Burnett said. "In some cases we will be analyzing it one atom at a time."

- Art Neuro

Viking Burial Site Found
No, it's not on Titan; nor Mars, as you would expect from a vaguely space related blog as ours. Archaeologists have uncovered this amazing archaeological find in a place called Cumwhitton near Ingleby in England. I report this as I know some of our readers have an avid interest in Viking history and cultural customs and so on.

The burial ground was unearthed when Adams found two copper brooches. The grave of a Viking woman was found underneath, and further excavation led to the discovery of the graves of another woman and four men.

Among the items found in the graves were weapons, spurs, a bridle and a drinking horn, as well as a jet bracelet and a copper alloy belt fitting.

Adams described it as "the find of a lifetime."

Which is great to read. This find may turn out to be as significant an event in our learning more about the Vikings in England, as the ship burials found at Sutton Hoo that shed light on the early Anglo-Saxon kings.

Monkey See Monkey Do
Yeah. There's this report that says the more kids watch TV, the more likely they are to have sex compared to kids who don't.

The study covered 1,792 adolescents aged 12 to 17 who were quizzed on viewing habits and sexual activity and then surveyed again a year later. Both regular and cable television were included.

"This is the strongest evidence yet that the sexual content of television programs encourages adolescents to initiate sexual intercourse and other sexual activities," said Rebecca Collins, a psychologist at the RAND Corp. who headed the study.

"The impact of television viewing is so large that even a moderate shift in the sexual content of adolescent TV watching could have a substantial effect on their sexual behavior," she added. The study found that youths who watched large amounts of programming with sexual content were also more likely to initiate sexual activities short of intercourse, such as oral sex.

"Oh My God!!! Teenagers are having sex!!!"
For heaven's sakes, I wonder where all this energy comes from in trying to stop teens from having sex. If I had teen age kids, I'd want them to have sex and to make sure that they have it safely. Who funds research like this?
And, no, I couldn't find any space news today.

- Art Neuro

David Turns 500
The most famous sculpture at the hand of Michelangelo Buonarotti turns 500 this week. Michelangelo sculpted this work from a single slab of marble that was considered not good enough for such exquisite work. 500 years later it stands in the Academia Museum, sheltered away from the elements, but Michelangelo originally conceived this work to be shown in public in the Piazza Vecchio outside the Palazzo Vecchio. Of course his contemporaries, Leonardo DaVinci and Sandro Botticelli disagreed that such a great work should be left to the elements and so it got stored indoors.

Since then, the Florentines have created a facsimile of the work which now stands in place where Michelangelo conceived it; but there is also a bronze version which stands above the city of Florence across the Arno River. What's more, you can see an exact duplicate in a shopping centre on the Gold Coast; which is disconcerting to say the least because when you sit by it, hardly anybody seems to care or notice what the big white nude bloke is meant to be. I guess you might call it a post-modern experience, but I found it more tragic than anything else.

When you encounter a work of art you have studied as a student, there is a strange ripple of recognition as well as a feeling of alienation. Florence is full of that weired conflicted feeling. When I saw the three "Michelangelo's Davids" in Florence, I was struck by the feeling that, wow, they have three facsimile's of the statue of David on the Gold Coast. That is to say, authenticity in of itself seemed utterly meaningless. Then, of course they try to sell you little statuette replicas as souvenirs all over Italy whether you are in Florence, Milan, Rome or Naples; and so one wonders what 'authenticity' in of it self is, as a critical 'value'.

Anyway, pardon the personal observation about such an important work of art turning 500. It's been a good half-millennium for the boy in the nude. Happy Birthday Dave.

Another Kind Of Genius
Our favourite Magic Cuban won again, this time against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Okay, it's only the Devil Rays, but a win is a win even if you get ejected arguing strikes and balls with the umpire; and he now El Duque has an astounding 7-0 record since coming back. The Yankees are 10-1 in the games he has started. He is the top dog, the pillar of strength, the dependable Ace in the very shaky Yankee rotation.

- Art Neuro

Catch a Falling Star
I've been following this story for a few weeks now, but I don't know what to make of it. In a nutshell, the Genesis probe is coming back with extraterrestrial matter, so NASA wants to collect it falling out of the sky before it touches down. To this end, they have hired stunt pilots from Hollywood. I guess this is one of those moments where fact and fiction-making start to blend into a weird zone.

The return of the Genesis probe will mark the first bits of extraterrestrial matter retrieved from space by human means since the 1970s, when moon rocks were carried back to Earth by manned U.S. Apollo and unmanned Soviet Luna missions, NASA said.

If successful, it also will make aviation history as the first man-made object captured by aircraft as it entered Earth's atmosphere from space, said Roy Haggard, an aerospace research executive hired by NASA to design the Genesis retrieval project.

He said helicopters were used in thousands of missions to grab parachuted canisters of film shot by spy cameras over Vietnam and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Which goes to show it's not as crazy as it all sounds.

What Separates The Morons From Men
The Yankees are now in the thick of the penant race, faced with the challenge of holding off the charging Red Sox. Of course Kevin Brown, the man they really need to pitch to form punches a wall in frustration after a bad outing and breaks his left hand. Now they say he is vowing to return this season. If this isn't silly enough, he has this to say for himself:

"I don't know how much you want to know. I've pitched in more pain than I have right now," he said sternly.

And of course inevitably:

When asked what made him throw a left at the wall instead of a right, Brown said: "Years of experience.''

Now where was I in the process of separating Morons from real men?
Is it really an issue of chooosing to punch the wall with your left hand rather than the right?

- Art Neuro

More Planets in Other Systems
As you can see, science suddenly decides to release results after the Olympic Games finish. Here is another report on more discoveries of planets in other systems using the Doppler-shift method:

The planets were found using a Doppler-shift method that notes a wobble in a star caused by the gravity of the orbiting planet. No pictures are available. The two newest discoveries were led by Geoff Marcy of the University of California, Berkeley and Paul Butler from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, this globe's most prolific planet-hunting duo, and will be discussed in papers to be published in the Astrophysical Journal.

Why do They Call Them Virtual Humans Instead of Androids?

I don't know. But do have a read of this one anyway.

Roll out the welcome mat for the virtual astronaut and enter the 3D space of Peter Plantec, a consultant in virtual human design and animation, as well as a leading expert on visual entertainment. He also initiated the "Sylvie" project -- the first commercially available virtual human interface.And if dispatching virtual humans from Earth doesnt turn on your thrusters, think about this. Its likely that extraterrestrial civilizations might send surrogate entities our way instead of propelling their delicate, soft-shell selves across interstellar mileage.

I'm going down to Canberra for the next few days so I won't be posting anything up in that time.

- Art Neuro

Roll Up For The Magical Mystery Tour, Step Right This Way
The Chinese allowed Western journalists to tour their launch facility for the first time.

It was the first time China let foreigners enter, though officials forbade photographs of the command-and-control center with its rows of computer screens or the mammoth assembly hall where workers built the spacecraft that lifted China's first astronaut into orbit last October.

For the secrecy-conscious national government, Jiuquan houses treasures to be guarded closely. But to local officials, Jiuquan is a blue-ribbon brand name just waiting to be marketed far and wide.

"No matter what products are named after Jiuquan, they will sell," said Hao Yuan, assistant to the governor of Gansu province, where part of the space center is located.

"We welcome foreign cooperation in the fields of aerospace and aviation," Hao said. "We would also like to provide launch services to foreign companies."

At competitive prices, no doubt. Considering China are only the third nation to send a human being into orbit through its own launch facility behind Russia and the USA, it stands to reason that they would like to front a shop in one corner of the burgeoning market place.

The question remains, why can't Australia open shop? After all, we have the real estate and the know-how. Why is it so hard for our government and industries to re-embrace the vision?

- Art Neuro

Slide of the Yankees
The Guy who runs league leader 'Alsorans' in the Jack Kerouac Memorial League is a real wag. He rang me up to let me know he knew how badly the Yankees lost yesterday because he started Jake Westbrook against the Yankees for his fantasy team. Well, I'll let you know that my Yankee hitters, Derek Jeter and Hideki Matsui went 1-for-2 each and were pulled, so stat-wise they did okay by me, even amidst the huge loss. :)
He also sent me the pickie above, for which I thank him; it's quite a work of art.

Alsorans' manager pointed out that the Australian ABC also ran (pardon the pun!) a story on the historic loss; which goes to show, everybody loves an underdog even if they don't know the underdog from a bar of lead piping. Being an ex-ABC man myself, I can see the kind of screwy 'Left-wing-media-bias' (as Mr. Conservative Weasel would put it) in reporting the historic Yankee loss. Afterall, if the said team won 22-0, would they be reporting it? No. You're expected to win EVERY game with a roster featureing the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Jorge Posada, and Hideki Matsui. I don't know what you call that, but blank expectation of the best outcomes with no caution for real-life accidents. The thing is, the Australian ABC wouldn't know any of them if they swung their bats at their heads at fullspeed, but they're happy to report the historic loss. A bit of crappy editorial-ship, no?

Well, here's a bit of history for you. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the worst losses in the 101 year history of the New York Yankees are as follows:

Cleveland 22, N.Y. Yankees 0, Aug. 31, 2004
Cleveland 24, N.Y. Yankees 6, July 29, 1928
Detroit 19, N.Y. Yankees 1, June 17, 1925
Texas 20, N.Y. Yankees 3, July 19, 1987

What sticks out on the list is that two of the worst losses featured in the 1920's were wrought with Babe Ruth (arguably the best player ever) on the roster. Two of them were done unto the Yankees by the Cleveland Indians, and two happened on George Steinbrenner's watch as Owner, while, obviously the other two happened with Colonel Tom Ruppert as team owner. That's not too bad for King George, he's now in vaunted company.

Here's even more to ponder from Larry Mahnken who wrote:

What do you say about a 22-0 loss?Well, you can say it counts the same as a 1-0 loss. You can say it's less frustrating than a 22-21 loss. Um, nobody died.

Well, LOL yeah. It's not like it's the casualties taken in the War in Iraq. As for King George, I was able to find this:

Yankees owner George Steinbrenner chimed in with another of his statements, part of which appeared on some of the boards. "Sure, we got punished badly last night, but winners never quit and quitters never win,'' Steinbrenner said. ``New Yorkers never quit, and we reflect the spirit of New York."

Sure, George. I'm not sure New Yorkers want to idenitfy with historic losses, but then there's all that stuff about 9/11, so I may be wrong.

All Hail 'El Duque the Stopper'
In the mean time, I'll tell you this much. our favourite magic Cuban Orlando Hernandez pitched 7 strong innings today, striking out 7, walking 2, scattering 3 hits for a run in the first after which, he shut down the Cleveland offense; he got the win in a solid 5-3 Yankee win. Mariano Rivera got the save. So much for that one; and it goes to show life does go on after historic losses, whether it be 22-0 ballgames or 9/11 attacks.

- Art Neuro

Taking It On The Chin
The US 189 million Dollar New York Yankees are in trouble. They lost 22-0 to the Cleveland Indians, setting the franchise record for worst loss. Ever. How did this happen? The mind boggles, but basically, the starting pitching faltered, then the relief pitching staggered and the last guy out of the bullpen, let it all slip into the sea of ink. This is the most expensive roter assembled in baseball history. 8 players on the 9 starting position are All-Stars from the last few years. This is supposed to be a stacked team, and yet one night in September, they found the worst form to drop the worst game in their franchise history on the lap of their owner. The New York Times has this description:

It would be difficult to pinpoint the most teeth-grinding moment for the Yankees owner or for any of the 51,777 in attendance who had to painfully watch this game. Was it Vazquez raising red flags once again about the team's starting pitching? Was it Kenny Lofton staggering after an Omar Vizquel double, misreading the flight of the ball until it was too late? It could have been Hideki Matsui, after scratching out one of the team's five hits, being picked off second base as he leaned too far after Indians' pitcher Jake Westbrook mishandled a Posada ground ball. Was it when Vizquel picked up his sixth hit of the night, in the eighth inning, giving him one more than the Yanks to that point? Or was it just the numbing task of staring blankly at the scoreboard?

Tanyon Sturtze topped Vazquez for futility, giving up seven runs in three innings and Nitkowski allowed three runs in an inning and two-thirds. Then Esteban Loaiza, who was an All-Star a year ago, was handed the task usually reserved for a backup infielder, finishing off the embarrassing loss.

While the Yankees could not find a way to get the Indians out, Westbrook, the former Yankee farmhand, coasted as he retired the first 11 hitters before Gary Sheffield softly lined an 0-1 pitch into the left-field corner for a double. But there was never a hint that the Yankees would mount a rally, much less a comeback. Westbrook pitched seven masterful innings, surrendering just five hits, and never allowed a runner to reach third base.

By the sixth inning, Manager Joe Torre was yanking starters from the lineup, sending the white flag up with the removal of Matsui, Posada and Jeter.

And the tale of the tape says, 22 hits, 22runs to 5 hits and no runs. Ouch. Worse still, Boston gained another game on them, shrinking the Yankee lead down to 3.5games from the once mighty 10.5 games on the 16th of August. Yankee starters have not recorded a win in that period. Is it time to panic? Or was it the dog days of August catching up with a veteran-laden team?

I sure don't want to be in the vicinity of King George right now. I guess this is the day the colossal sporting monster came to a shuddering halt. Something is wrong in the evil Empire, and nobody is able to pinpoint the blame. How did this day come to be? The fall out from this is going to be interesting to say the least; but it's been that kind of year. Even if they had managed to land Randy Johnson, this day would have happened, given the cast of characters out there. Which goes to show, a 162-game season can produce some mighty fine interesting results. Earlier today, I tried to get onto Baseball Think Factory, but their server was overloaded. The simple fact is, the AL East race is back on; the quesstion now is how will this team regroup, with Boston yapping at their heels?

- Art Neuro