I know. It was one game. It’s a long season. Nothing lasts forever. Blah blah blah.

So much for platitudes. I’m crushed that the Yankees’ streak was broken, that they lost to the Phillies in the series opener 7-3, that I was forced to watch Brett Myers throw behind Jeter’s back. Myers pitched a great game, not counting homers to A-Rod, Jeter and Tex, and he was only retaliating for AJ’s plunking of Utley. But he earned my undying enmity nonetheless.

Speaking of AJ, he seemed out of sorts all night.

He hung a few and they sailed straight into the seats. And he couldn’t have been happy to watch Damon trying to score on A-Rod’s shot to left in the first inning. I have no problem with being aggressive, but Ibanez and Rollins made perfect throws and Ruiz made an equally perfect tag. The result? Damon was out. The ball game went downhill from there.

That completes the portion of this post regarding the Phillies.

Now a few moments about the Yankees. They looked flat as a pancake.

Maybe it was a natural reaction to coming off back-to-back sweeps. Maybe it was a letdown after learning that Bruney was hurt again and Albaladejo was shipped to Scranton. Or maybe it was that they were playing an interleague series instead of a contest against a bona fide division rival. Personally, I have little interest in interleague games. Sure, they count, but they’re manufactured rivalries. “Oh, but you get to see players you wouldn’t ordinarily see,” say the advocates. Right. But I’d rather see them in the postseason when the best teams in each league go at it for real.

As for Wang, he was pulled from his Scranton rehab start because of the Yankees’ now-extremely-thin bullpen.

It was a weird experiment. He came in for seventh and promptly left one up to Ibanez and got touched up for a couple of runs before settling down in the ninth. Will the outing give him confidence for his next start, whenever that will be? Or will he regress further? All I know is that the YES camera kept showing close-ups of him dripping with sweat, and it was mildly unnerving.

Oh, well. The Yanks will have another crack at a new streak tomorrow. I hope they get a good night’s sleep. Or go partying. Whatever works for them is fine with me even if it’s this.