Royalty w/o 6/14 in review

This week was not quite as eventful as the previous week but I still kept myself busy nonetheless.

After recharging the batteries Monday night, I was already to spend the rest of the week at Yankee Stadium watching interleague baseball with a ride to Coney Island to see the Brooklyn Cyclones Home Opener.

Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday the 2009 World Series was revisited.

The Philadelphia Phillies who lost to the Yankees in six games last October into early November came to back to the Bronx to play the Yankees.

It looked like a continuation by the Yankees when their ace CC Sabathia went to the mound against newly acquired ex-Blue Jay ace Roy Halladay. CC dominated and Roy Halladay struggled in this one. The Yankees went on to win 8-3!

The next night the ageless wonder 47 year old pitcher Jamie Moyer tamed the Yankees for 8 innings. He was hitting the spots with his off speed pitches. I believe his fastball tapped out at 82 MPH. The Yankees managed to get 3 hits including home runs by Robinson Cano & Jorge Posada. Outside of that, Moyer was untouchable. As a result, Moyer become the oldest pitcher to ever beat the Yankees. In the process, he recorded his 265th career win. The Phillies won, 6-3!

They survived a scare from their closer Brad Lidge who came in to get an inning of work. He was awful but fortunately for the Phillies they hung on for the victory.

Thursday night Kyle Kendrick who started for the Phillies picked up where Jamie Moyer left off. Kendrick pitched well as the Phillies took 2 out of the 3 from the World Champions. The Phillies won, 7-1! Andy Pettitte who started for the Yankees had a rough night. He took the rare loss as his record fell to 8-2 this season.

Friday night the Subway Series resumed at Yankee Stadium after the Mets took 2 out of 3 at Citi Field last month. The Mets were looking for their first win at the new Yankee Stadium. They were swept by the Yankees last year.

This year turned out to be different at least on Friday night despite pitching well Yankee pitcher Javier Vazquez took the loss due to no run support. He gave up a run in the first inning which proved to be the difference in this one as the Mets added runs in the 8th & 9th innings to hold on to win, 4-0 as K-Rod their closer did his best Brad Lidge impersonation.

Saturday the Yankees beat the Mets 5-3 despite the 2 home runs off the bat of Mets shortstop Jose Reyes. Reyes led off the game with a home run on the second pitch he saw off Phil Hughes. Hughes won the battle of the 9-1 pitchers as he went on to beat Mike Pelfrey who suufered his second loss of the season.

After that game, the King & I took the D train from the Bronx to Coney Island which is the last stop on the train. We arrived there at 5:15PM. We were going to see a minor league game between the Brooklyn Cyclones and the Staten Island Yankees. It was the Home Opener for the Cyclones at newly named MCU Park. It used to be called Keyspan Park. They play in the NY-Penn League which is Short Season A minor league baseball. Most of these players come right out of high school and/or college. This was a very sloppy played game with a comedy of errors. Staten Island committed 5 and the Cyclones had 2. The Cylcones wound up winning this mess, 9-6!

Today we were back in the Bronx for the Subway Series finale. CC Sabathia was facing Johan Santana. CC once again pitched like the salary he was given. Johan on the other hand, failed to match zeros with CC. He did for a few innings then the Yankees loaded the bases with no out in the third inning then Mark Teixeira delivered a "Tex" message that barely cleared the fence over the State Farm sign in leftfield for a grand slam which turned out to be all the scoring in the game.

Game, set, match!

The Yankees prevail again, 4-0!

The victory was the 9,500th win in the storied franchise's history since 1903.

Another week of attending baseball live is in the books.

Stay tuned for a post with the week ahead.

Yours truly,

Gary Herman