Weekend Sports Wrapup

Yankees
In their series against the Blue Jays, the Yankees started the 2nd half of the season slowly as they dropped the first 2 games. On Thursday, it was a 7-16 blowout. Colon got knocked out of the 1st inning as he fell into a 8-0 hole. The worst part of this is that it wasn't all earned runs. In fact, only 3 were as there were also 3 errors in the inning. The game wasn't out of reach yet, but then the bullpen made their contributions. Noesi, Logan and Mitre combined for another 5 runs. That night, everyone was bad! Friday's 1-7 loss was more of the same… errors, failure to hit with RISP and a bad start. This time, it was Garcia giving up 6 runs in the first. So the Yankees lost 2 games in a row all in the first inning. On Saturday, they sent out CC Sabathia when they needed him most. He's the new Yankees stopper now that Andy Pettitte is retired. CC did his job with an impressive 4-1 victory. Fortunately, this was a 4-game series, which gave the Yankees an opportunity to tie things up 2-2. Phil Hughes pitched his best game of the season, going 6 inning with 4 hits and the only 2 runs of the game for Toronto. Wade, Robertson and Logan closed things out and gave Rivera the day off. In this series, Gardner was the most notable player as he's on a hot hitting and stealing streak. He beat out so many infield hits that would be outs for any other player. It's like if he touches the ball and it falls fair, it's going to be a hit. And then he's been stealing 2nd and 3rd too.

World Cup
This was probably the first soccer game I ever watched. I figured that since the Yankees game ended early, and people would be talking about this all day Monday, I should watch. The US had their chances early in the game as they had a lot more shot attempts than Japan, but all of them were either a little off or were deflected by Japan's goalie. Late in the 2nd half, the US finally scored the first goal of the game. I seriously thought that would be the final score, but Japan returned the favor a few minutes later. The US scored first in overtime as well, but Japan tied it up again. So it came down to penalty kicks where Japan won 3-1. So in the end, the physical strength and size of the US team was no match for skill and defense of the Japanese. Of course I wanted the US to win, but I'm also in favor of skill over power. And it was also a great storybook ending for a country that endured the huge earthquakes recently.