Frodo never went on the DL

So, I've been playing Lord of the Rings: Battle for Middle Earth II, which I picked up for the reasonable price of $24.99 used at Gamestop.

While Andy Pettitte was getting whiplash from the Detroit Tigers, Marcus Thames and Placido Polanco took him yard (and hit another, not surprisingly off Kyle Farnsworth), erasing an early, very shakey 2-1 Yankees' lead, I was happily laying siege to Dol Guldur, the digital version of one of Sauron's strongholds.

I won't bore you with the details, but its walls fell to my relentless assault. I know you're all happy for me and my dwarven and elven allies.

About the time those walls were falling, the Yankees were meekly, despondently giving up the second game in their first series at home in what seems like forever. The pinstripers had one day off in April. One. I'm shocked this didn't become a union issue. They've been on the road for most of it, and I'm willing to blame at least 5 losses directly on the pope and his visit to the Stadium.

Michael Kay suggested this was just the baseball gods smiling elsewhere, perhaps Tampa Bay. Or, maybe it's something else, such as an organization that wasted too much money on overpriced free agents in the last decade instead of cultivating the talent that put them on the path the four World Series titles.

The Yankees have looked DOA in previous seasons, but that was the Joe Torre years, when you still had some hope the team would right the ship and get into the playoffs, if not better. This year, the pitching is worse than ever, and they aren't scoring. At all.

I've never channel surfed during Yankees games. Last night, a fat lady passing out while making a cake was more appealing. And boy was that cake amazing.