On a night where the Yanks won despite Randy Johnson's pitching not because of it, they find themselves still in first place in the AL East (percentage points) and not too far off the pace for last year's 95 wins.

It was also a night where Randy reached a major milestone in his career as he became just the third pitcher ever to reach the 4,400-strikeout mark. He's behind Nolan Ryan (5,714) and Roger Clemens (4,502) on the career list and will probably pass Clemens to take the #2 spot sometime next year (depending on what Clemens decides to do this year). While Randy did get the win on this special night, he certainly didn't pitch well enough to deserve it as he was bailed out twice after after giving up the lead. First, a LONG single by Bernie plated Jorge and Cano in the fifth gave the Yankees a 4-3 lead, which Johnson gave up on a Ty Wiggington 2-run home run. In the seventh, a walk to Giambi and a A-Rod HBP both plated runs before Johnny Damon took Dan Miceli (who had to be removed from the game due to injury) deep for a grand slam to effectively put the game out of reach.

By the way, John Sterling's home run call for Damon, "absolutely, positively Damonic" is absolutely, positively stupid. It's embarrassing, annoying and needs to stop. The same goes for the A-Bomb from A-Rod. Is there a petition I can sign somewhere? Please, John, I beg of you, just stop.

I could go on to mention the "interesting" use of Sturtze again but I think that it would be overkill, especially since he did get Johnny Gomes out. Granted, it was a line out but hey, he did get the job done. I could posit on what's wrong with Randy Johnson but Steve Lombardi has already done a fine job of comparing RJ's 2006 start to his 2005 numbers and SG looks at what RJ's done so far. At this point, after last year and considering Johnson's age, I am more or less in line with Mike Plugh from over at Canyon of Heroes; "This is the Randy Johnson we have. Let's learn to live with it." I think at this point, that's all we can do.

Oh, as a side note, the ESPN recap points out that after attracting the two smallest home crowds in franchise history (7,295 and 7,147) against Texas on Monday and Tuesday, the Devil Rays drew 17,059 and 22,164 for the Yankees series. Bad for baseball, indeed.