1 Down, 3 To Go

• The Monologue:
• The person of the week is Susan Finkelstein, who not only became the butt, so to speak, of a lot of jokes, she also landed herself tickets to the game. And she didn't have to sleep with a stranger to get them!
• Here is the text of the now famous Schwarzenegger letter. It would be a lot more impressive if he could have made it spell verpiss dich (NSFW).
• Random Pop Culture:
• It's all about Game 1. Some notes below, although there isn't much to say other than Cliff Lee was brilliant and the Yankees have some serious bullpen issues.
• Lee's behind-the-back snag of a grounder was great, but I'll take this catch any day. Maybe the funniest non-blooper I can remember since Chuck Knoblauch duping Lonnie Smith back in 1991.
• I still can't quite figure out how Lee made that lineup look that bad. A-Rod looked completely lost and the Yankees were coming up empty all night. Eric Karros pointed out on the postgame show that nine of Lee's ten strikeouts were swinging. Yes, Lee locates as well as anyone and, yes, his spiked curveball (the grip looked similar to Mussina's knuckle curve to me, but I'm sure I'm wrong about that) is super nasty, but still.
• Girardi strikes again. It doesn't help when his bullpen pitches so poorly, but he totally wasted Phil Hughes by having him only face two batter, both switch-hitters. How did he not have Marte come on to face Rollins and then go to Hughes for Werth? He got very lucky when a) two Marte pitches to Utley were called strikes when they were way off the plate and b) Raul Ibanez rolled over on a 3-1 pitch with the bases loaded.
• For all of the deserved crap they've taken this postseason, great job by the umps to decipher that difficult double play when Rollins almost let the ball drop. The big goat on that play is Hideki Matsui, who took a couple of steps towards second then hung his head and slowly walked off the field, letting himself easily be tagged for the second out.
• Why didn't Ronan Tynan come out in the 7th inning stretch to sing his twenty-minute-long version of "God Bless America"? I asked this question on Twitter and someone replied with this story -- he was fired for an Anti-Semitic remark.
• It's only one game, but Yankees fans can't be feeling too good right now. Trying not to get too excited about that.
• Random Music Video:
• It's all about baseball right now. Did you ever want to see Orel Hershiser dance? Ladies and gentlemen, your 1986 Los Angeles Dodgers!