The weekend that was…

Well, another big weekend in New York sports has passed, and what did we learn? A lot can happen in two days, apparently…

First off, before I get into all the baseball and hockey, I finally checked out 21 with my brother. Everyone’s talking about this flick and with good reason— it’s got a legit plotline, Kate Bosworth supplies ample eye candy (no worries, they hid her anorexia very well), it takes place in Vegas (so you can count on some pointless scenes in strip clubs for even more eye candy), and it’s based on a true story, which adds the always important “I can’t believe someone actually did all this crazy sh*t” dimension to a movie. However, (Spoiler Alert!!! If you haven’t seen the movie yet and plan on doing so, I’d suggest jumping to the next paragraph right about now. Unless you’re like my mom and enjoy having significant parts of/the endings of movies ruined for you. Strange, I know.) that’s a double-edged sword because if you’ve read the book that it’s based on, then that also opens the flick up to all those “Woah, woah, woah, that person never actually did all that crazy sh*t” criticisms— there was no diabolical professor seizing all those poor, naïve MIT kids’ money like an IRS agent on the 2nd Monday in April… along those same lines, no one was counting cards simply as a way to pay their broke ass through Harvard Med. No, these were incredibly cocky, calculating, “I’ll buy you and sell you 20 times in the next 5 minutes” MIT geniuses Vegas was dealing with here… No one got the crap kicked out of them for taking the house for a quarter-million bones… I may be going out on a limb here, but I’d be willing to bet another quarter-million dollars that there were no chicks as hot as Kate Bosworth on the MIT blackjack team, let alone attending the school to begin with… and the Asian dude played a far more significant role in things beyond just saying random funny stuff and being a kleptomaniac, damn bigotous Hollywood casting directors. Still, I had no beef with the flick until I realized that all the supposed shots of the “MIT dorms” and “classes” were really filmed at The Towers and the College of Arts and Sciences buildings at my alma mater, BU. You MIT bastards!!! It wasn’t enough for you to have a frat on our campus that threw the best house parties BU has ever seen? No, you had to go ahead and pawn off our idyllic, city-within-a-city campus as your own too, right? Jerks.

As far as the sports portion of the weekend goes, I managed to intermingle it with some hardcore socializing, which helped me keep a glass-half-full outlook on the respective debacles that the Yanks and Rangers turned in this weekend. Concerning the Yanks—like I said on Friday afternoon, I’m not going to freak out about these early-season series with Boston. Even when we were dropping giant deuces on the baseball world prior to 2004, we would always lose and/or get swept by the Sox in April. What does trouble me, though, is how shoddy Phil Hughes has looked after his hot first outing. I know he’s going to be a borderline ace within the next two years or so, but if this nonsense continues, we’ll all just have to be content with hanging around .500 for the rest of the season.

I’m also aware that people are losing their minds over Girardi’s decision to let Moose pitch to Manny with the game on the line Saturday, but I kinda liked it. No, I’m not crazy and yeah, my judgment was probably influenced (impaired) by the fact that Yellow Angel and I started our pre-game “warm-ups” around 2pm at the Village Tavern, met up with our buddy Chettamos— who knows his way around a beverage or two… or 11 or 12— around 4, and then moseyed on over to Mr. Dennehy’s to catch the rest of the game, but I liked the move for a couple of reasons. For starters, you really can’t take a guy out when he’s only around 80 pitches and he just got done making Big Papi look like a mannequin for an entire at-bat. I don’t care how badly Ortiz is struggling, Moose was dealing and, for the first time in forever, I was actually confident that he could get Manny to expand his zone. It didn’t happen, but still, everyone has to like what they’re seeing from #35 this year. The other thing that sold me on it was how Girardi showed confidence in him there. Last year, Torre would’ve taken Mussina out in that spot, and with someone as delicate as he is, that could easily lead to a boatload of walks and home runs in his next few starts. Now don’t get me wrong— I’m not saying it was the right move, ‘cause it obviously cost us the game, but I didn’t mind it and I actually think it’ll do Moose/us some good down the line.

I will lose my mind over the Rangers’ Game 3 crapfest though. Just when it looked like we had finally put all that regular season inconsistency behind us (not sure why I even entertained the notion that we had), we go ahead and give a game away to a team that plays from behind about as well as the Knicks play period. The stupid penalties just have to stop, even if it means giving guys healthy scratches in the playoffs to get the point across. I know, I know, some of the calls were total BS (the goalie interference on Sean Avery is the first one that comes to mind), but seriously, when you’re dictating the flow of the series the way the Rangers have been, you almost have to beg the referees to blow the whistle on you, and that’s pretty much what they did. I mean seriously, if you catch the puck with your right hand, throw an outlet pass up ice that would make Jason Kidd proud, and then you put on the “What, me?” face when you get sent to the box for a hand pass, then you deserved to be fined and/or suspended for a game in my book. It’s just inexcusable. I still think the Blueshirts will make good on my prediction, but if they don’t, they’ll only have themselves to blame, which would be fitting considering that’s been the story with them all season long anyway.

So what’s the silver lining in all this? In another two days, the Yanks will get a crack at redemption against the Sox, as will the Rangers against the Devils. Let’s hope for the best…