Oh, happy day!

As they say, it's only April. There's a long way to go in the 2009 season.

But Saturday was about as fun as baseball gets.

A television happened to be tuned to the Cleveland-New York game at the new $1.5 billion Yankee Stadium. The Yankees took a quick 2-0 lead in the bottom of the first. Then ...

I watched the Indians go to work on Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang, who already was off to a rough start this season, giving up 15 runs in his first two starts. Shin-Soo Choo belted a three-run homer to give Cleveland the lead, then came a bunch more hits to make it 9-2, with the bases loaded. Up stepped Asdrubal Cabrera, who made his first home run of the year a grand slam. Grady Sizemore followed Cabrera's blast with one of his own, before Mark DeRosa finally made the third out. That was OK; DeRosa ended up with six RBI on the day in the Indians' 22-4 win.

Poor Wang. The guy's numbers now look like this for '09: three starts, six innings, 23 hits against, six walks, two strikeouts, and 23 earned runs. That gives him an ERA of 34.50, meaning he's pretty much ruined the season already for anyone who drafted him in a fantasy league.

Relieving Wang was a pitcher named Anthony Paul Claggett, a 24-year-old righty making his Major League debut. The kid probably wishes he'd stayed in Scranton after the pasting the Indians gave him: eight earned runs in 1 2/3 innings. That's an ERA of 43.20.

Whatever the case, it was great to see the Yankees and their zillion-dollar payroll get pounded into the dust in their brand-spanking-new ballpark, where the average seat costs $73. The New Yorkers who anted up on Saturday sure got their money's worth!!!

And while the Bronx Bombers were getting bombed, the good ol' Pirates were winning their second straight shutout over the Braves, this time 10-0.

Come October, the Yankees probably will be in the playoffs, and the Pirates long since will have gone home. But we always can look back on April 18, 2009, and smile.

---

Trivia #6: What team scored the most runs in one inning (post-1900)? For the answer, scroll down and look to the right.