Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
You Oughta Know ... That the Braves have their longest winning streak of the year.
OK, it's only four games. But before Thursday night, Atlanta was the only team that had not won four straight at some point this season.
And where has it gotten the Braves? Not out of fourth place in the NL East – yet within two games of the first-place Phillies, their victims the past three games.
In a kinder, gentler world, one without cell phone cameras and the insatiable desire to know everything about everyone, here's what would be relevant: Alex Rodriguez is in a brutal slump, the Yankees are in a bit of trouble and most of the pertinent details can be found in the latest box scores.
In a Jon and Kate world, here's the, ahem, rest of the story: Behind closed doors, Yankee executives argue about and stress over what they call "the A-Rod situation." They wonder if his awkward flails with the bat, his slowly swiveling hips, are merely expected by-products of the surgery he underwent during the spring, or a harbinger of much worse? They wonder how he can be caught shamelessly canoodling with actress Kate Hudson at nightclubs in the wee morning hours, while his employers who pay him $30 million a year decide he needs days off, to rest his weary body.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead. You Oughta Know ... That the Rays seem to be putting it all together. The reigning American League champions left New York with a series victory over the Mets thanks to a big Sunday afternoon from B.J. Upton, who homered and had four hits. Tampa Bay is now 12-6 in the month of June and two games back of the Yankees in the AL wild-card race.
Upton has played a big part in the surge after slumping for the first two months of the season. The center fielder came into June hitting .204, but he's hitting .329 this month.
After furiously fighting his way back onto the field May 8 -- from a hip injury some thought would keep him out until June -- Alex Rodriguez recently appeared to be tiring. At least, that's what some of his New York Yankees bosses thought. In his last 10 games, the polarizing slugger we call A-Rod was just 3-for-34. We learned Friday that he'd get the next two days off before re-entering the lineup Sunday.
Saturday, Jon Heyman of SI.com reported that sitting Rodriguez down was not only requested by the front office, but ordered. Apparently there was a conference call where Brian Cashman -- accompanied by Hal Steinbrenner -- informed his star third baseman that he would be on the bench for Friday and Saturday's games in Florida (Update: A-Rod did wind up playing in Saturday's game as a pinch-hitter.)
FORMER BASEBALL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD -- There is a Subway Series this weekend.
There is one again in two weeks.
There will not be one in October.
Friday night's game at Yankee Stadium, which both teams deserved to lose, showed us that.
It will be remembered forever, at least in the five boroughs and surrounding areas, as the Luis Castillo game. The Mets second baseman dropped Alex Rodriguez's popup with two outs in the ninth, allowing two runs to score and the Yankees to win 9-8.
The Yankees shook up their starting rotation on Wednesday by announcing that Chien-Ming Wang will move into the starting rotation. Wang will start on Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium against the Rangers, pushing CC Sabathia back to Friday against the Rays and Phil Hughes into the bullpen.
The move comes after a pair of strong relief outings by Wang, who is recovering from a trip to the disabled list and three awful starts to begin the season. Joe Girardi told reporters that they chose to start Wang tomorrow instead of Friday because he wanted to get a right-hander between Sabathia and Andy Pettitte, who starts on Wednesday night.
NEW YORK -- Over the past few years, I have been to a lot of Yankees games. They keep it interesting, but there are a few things you come to count on. The YMCA. "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch. And horrendous defense by the home team. This last has become as much a constant as the first two. The Yankees, for the past several years, have been a terrible defensive team.
So imagine my own personal surprise Monday night when I learned that the Yankees, those same bumbling pinstripers who've spent the early part of the 21st century scraping the bottom of the statistical defensive rankings, had set a major-league record by going 18 games in a row without an error.
The Yankees? Setting a record for defense? That's like LeBron James setting some kind of handshake record. Or Lindsay Lohan setting a record for consecutive days sober. There are certain things the Yankees do well. Defense is not one of them. Something must be amiss. I went to Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night to investigate.
BALTIMORE -- Good news was not in short supply for the scuffling New York Yankees Friday night. Alex Rodriguez got the oohs and aahs, the adulation and the jeers, at Camden Yards, homering on the first pitch he saw from Jeremy Guthrie to give his team a lead it wouldn't relinquish in a 4-0 win over the Orioles.
It was CC Sabathia who made that edge stand up, though. A-Rod or not, that might be the best news of all for the Yankees.
"He wants to be the guy who's the stopper," manager Joe Girardi said of Sabathia. "That's exactly what he was."
BALTIMORE -- Where they make oversized Styrofoam syringes, I'm really not sure. But several fans were waving them Friday night as Alex Rodriguez, charter member of the ever-swelling Superstar Juicers Club, stepped to the plate for his first real at-bat since confirming he used steroids. The home crowd stood, booed lustily and rooted passionately for a strikeout, which qualifies as a keepsake ballpark thrill in the performance-enhancement era.
Need I remind you that a dreaded Boston Red Sox jersey, bearing the name and number of David Ortiz, was buried in concrete inside the new Yankee Stadium? And that construction workers last spring had to use jackhammers to remove it, lest the poison linger like salmonella in a service corridor at one of the ballpark's many chi-chi restaurants?
I can't help but think a curse was effectively planted. Because since the Yankees moved into their $1.5-billion pinstriped palace, they've been haunted by non-stop reminders of their greed, arrogance, bad karma and spending foolishness.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
In a kinder, gentler world, one without cell phone cameras and the insatiable desire to know everything about everyone, here's what would be relevant: Alex Rodriguez is in a brutal slump, the Yankees are in a bit of trouble and most of the pertinent details can be found in the latest box scores.
Starting Five is our wrapup of the previous day's baseball action, with a quick nod to what is ahead.
After furiously fighting his way back onto the field May 8 -- from a hip injury some thought would keep him out until June -- Alex Rodriguez recently appeared to be tiring. At least, that's what some of his New York Yankees bosses thought. In his last 10 games, the polarizing slugger we call A-Rod was just 3-for-34. We learned Friday that he'd get the next two days off before re-entering the lineup Sunday. 
FORMER BASEBALL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD -- There is a Subway Series this weekend.
The Yankees shook up their starting rotation on Wednesday by announcing that Chien-Ming Wang will move into the starting rotation. Wang will start on Thursday afternoon at Yankee Stadium against the Rangers, pushing CC Sabathia back to Friday against the Rays and Phil Hughes into the bullpen. 
NEW YORK -- Over the past few years, I have been to a lot of Yankees games. They keep it interesting, but there are a few things you come to count on. The YMCA. "God Bless America" during the seventh-inning stretch. And horrendous defense by the home team. This last has become as much a constant as the first two. The Yankees, for the past several years, have been a terrible defensive team.
BALTIMORE -- Good news was not in short supply for the scuffling New York Yankees Friday night. Alex Rodriguez got the oohs and aahs, the adulation and the jeers, at Camden Yards, homering on the first pitch he saw from Jeremy Guthrie to give his team a lead it wouldn't relinquish in a 4-0 win over the Orioles.
BALTIMORE -- Where they make oversized Styrofoam syringes, I'm really not sure. But several fans were waving them Friday night as Alex Rodriguez, charter member of the ever-swelling Superstar Juicers Club, stepped to the plate for his first real at-bat since confirming he used steroids. The home crowd stood, booed lustily and rooted passionately for a strikeout, which qualifies as a keepsake ballpark thrill in the performance-enhancement era.
Need I remind you that a dreaded Boston Red Sox jersey, bearing the name and number of David Ortiz, was buried in concrete inside the new Yankee Stadium? And that construction workers last spring had to use jackhammers to remove it, lest the poison linger like salmonella in a service corridor at one of the ballpark's many chi-chi restaurants?
