It would be nice to just focus on Phil Hughes right now.
After a disaster of a start in Atlanta, Hughes got back onto the track he was riding over the last few weeks against the Indians at the Stadium on Tuesday night. He threw eight shutout innings, struck out six and kept the ball in the ballpark for just the second time all season.
Hughes finishes June with a 4-1 record and a 2.67 ERA , his best work in a long time and an extended enough run of success to make you think that his work in Tuesday's 6-4 win was the kind of thing we should get used to seeing over the rest of the season. But we can't just talk about Hughes.
We'd love to talk about the Yankees finally seeing their luck with runners in scoring position moving in the right direction as balls skittered off Indians defenders during a three-run first inning that provided much reassurance that things usually wind up evening out over the course of the season.
We'd also love to talk about Curtis Granderson going opposite field to score two runs in that inning and what it might mean for him going forward, but we can't focus on that either.
Forget about making this a canary in the coal mine piece about Cory Wade, who got strafed in the ninth to turn a 6-0 laugher into a game that required Rafael Soriano for the final out. Wade's now allowed nine runs in his last 6.2 innings of work, which makes you wonder if the bloom is off that rose after some terrific work helping the bullpen survive David Robertson's absence.
Alas, we can't even satisfy the dark heart of many Yankee fans who like a note of negativity in the face of a four-game winning streak. Instead, we have to talk about umpiring and, more generally, baseball's refusal to accept that it isn't 1915 anymore.
With two outs and a runner on third in the seventh inning, Indians third baseman Jack Hannahan skied a ball toward the seats in left field and Dewayne Wise dashed over to make a play on the ball. The ball went into Wise's glove as he crashed into the seats, the umpire ruled Hannahan out and the game moved on.
Sports
Except Wise was running back to the dugout without a ball in his glove and a fan was dancing around in the area he just left with a ball he picked up off the ground after Wise dropped it upon impact. This didn't seem to bother umpire Mike DiMuro, who didn't even bother asking Wise to open his glove to confirm that there was a ball inside of it.
It's a brutal job by DiMuro and any credit he gets for admitting the mistake after the game is tempered by the fact that he threw Hannahan out of the game for pointing out that you actually need to catch a ball for it to be an out. DiMuro should be suspended for his behavior with Hannahan, but he should never have had the chance to make the error in the first place.
You could see the ball falling out of the glove before Wise hit the ground on television and you could see the guy who picked it up trying to shove it back into his glove, but baseball doesn't care. They'd rather have the games decided by people who have proved time and again that they are neither very good at their jobs nor concerned with getting better.
Why baseball prefers to open itself up to this kind of mockery is one of the great mysteries of life, but the mystery of why baseball players and teams happily agree with this is an even greater mystery.
The fact that the Indians had two outs is a real shame because it would have been great to see DiMuro try to make that call while Wise has to ask a fan for the ball to try and throw a runner out at the plate.
Perhaps that kind of humiliation would get someone in baseball to wake up and realize that the game could actually be better and more honest than the one currently being played. Given baseball's happy relationship with humiliating moments, that's probably a long shot but we can still dream.
London 2012 is right around the corner. Get the top Olympic news, including what to watch, results and features on our local athletes at NBC's Olympic Zone.
Josh Alper is a writer living in New York City. You can follow him on Twitter and he is also a contributor to Pro Football Talk.
