The Long Count

It was pleasant while it lasted. And yet we never quite trusted the team's early season penchant for winning close games.

We know that close games rest so much on chance, so we won't read too much into it, or offer any kind of recap of what was a painful loss. That's what beat writers are for: to remind us that no matter how bad it appeared on television, it was actually more irritating to watch it unfold in person. And this is the only explanation for the infantile quality of some of the questions asked by beat reporters after the game. Kudos to Girardi for showing flashes of impatience. At the very least, it's a mark of stubborn pride and a refusal to offer trite answers to trite questions, which is something his predecessor had no qualms about.

Lest we go too far in our praise of the manager's ability to undress banal questions, it's worth noting that Girardi also remarked, without a hint of detectable irony, that Olendorf's had pitched "better than his numbers indicates".