If Giambi is to be held accountable, fine, but it’s a stupid ritual sacrifice if no one else is going to be treated this way (and to put through the ringer like this one of the few people on the players’ side that’s actually acknowledging what we all already know — so silly). It’s times like this when I wished there was a standing bill to revoke baseball’s antitrust exemption ready to be voted upon at any time, a sword of Damocles to keep them honest.

It’s time someone give Bud Selig an ultimatum to come sit down and be grilled as to why MLB has gone kicking and screaming into opening up about performance-enhancing drugs, and still does its best to avoid making any truly meaningful gestures rather than putting on a display and saying “Oh, yes, look, we’re doing something about it, see? Just look at the serious expressions on our faces when we say, ‘drugs are very, very bad.’”

As for Johnny Damon, I love the guy. He’s a gamer, plays hurt, gives 100% all the time. But his 100% is now at about 50% of normal, and he’s got to just bite the bullet and not fight being on the DL. It’s apparently a matter of pride to him that he’s never been on the DL, but it is clearly hurting the Yankees for him to be playing hurt this year. It looks like the injuries this year are not the kind you can play through; or maybe, simply, his body is crying out for mercy — “Put me on the DL — puh-leeze!” It should have been done a month ago, at least.

The season continues, though, and if they win more than they lose the rest of the way, this will be a blip on the screen. Onto SF. Let’s go Kei.

You have to do a better job than that.

The guy had a great year last year and is hurt right now.

Just DL him. I don’t understand why the Yankees aren’t doing it.

Ripping on Damon is just foolish. Its all that foolish Red Sox paranoia. The Red Sox would take back Johnny Damon TOMMOROW. You think they like Coco Crisp??

Carl Pavano gets killed by Yankee fans for not playing through his injuries. Now, we are going to kill Damon for trying?? Makes no sense to me.

Its up to the team to stop the player from hurting himself and the team by playing when he is hurt. Damon being in the lineup today was the mistake of Joe Torre, not Johnny Damon.

Damon is not the reason why they got swept. They lost because the entire team doesn’t do the little things well enough to win close, low scoring games.

With this team, you can pretty much tell within th first 2-3 innings what kind of a game it’s going to be. Sure, sometimes, they’ll surprise you, but, really, if they start slow, they mostly end slower. Andy collapsed yesterday under the pressure of having to pitch a shut-out to win, but for the most part the pitchers did not give up an awful lot a runs. They did not hold their small leads, and aggravatingly gave those leads RIGHT BACK, but this team was “in� every game, so far as not being many runs behind (except for late last night, when Andy imploded, or as he said, “stopped pitching.�) Did Alex Rodriguez even hit a ball in the air in 3 days? Not that I’m blaming him, I’m not—the whole team was pretty awful, if not with the bats, then on the basepaths. Humidor or no humidor, the temperature here was up and they Yankees are a team capable of putting the ball out of that place. Someone said Rocket threw only fastballs today because his breaking ball wasn’t breaking because of the altitude. And the other team? Did they throw only fastballs?

There’s no one player her to put the “blame� on. It’s teamwide. When they hit, they ALL hit; when they don’t, NO ONE does. It’s not good. And they don’t play situational baseball on a consistent basis. The seem to stop being the team they should be whenevern the opponent is a running, small-ball team (like the Angels). The lose it against young pitchers who are good, but not great, if they haven’t seen them before.

The last three games were just not fun to watch, and it’s not because they lost. It’s because of the way they played (or didn’t).