No "Cheap Seats" In New Yankee Stadium

New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick laments the staggering increase in prices for some of the tickets to the Yankees' and Mets' new digs next year.

Well, not the price increases per se, but the fact that none of the nationally telecast games feature any discussion of said increases.

But what prevents McCarver and other national commentators who work Mets and Yankees games from adding that the cost of tickets to these new parks will price many longtime and even lifetime patrons right out of their seats and even out of the parks?

What prevents them from simply stating, "By the way, the cost of many of the tickets will be staggering"?

The story's out. And it's a sensational story. So why the silence?

Oh, I dunno...maybe because they don't really care? McCarver or Jon Miller or anyone else who does commentary on a baseball game is supposed to be talking about the game. It's only on the FOX post-season broadcasts that anybody pays any attention to who's in the stands, and then it's only to notice celebrities in the stands, to plug the new season of Lost or The Hills or CSI: Ulaanbaatar.

The announcers aren't paying for their tickets. They're not reporters, and probably aren't even aware of what tickets will cost in Yankee Stadium next year. If Phil Mushnick wants to complain about that stuff, he's free to do so. Or, alternatively, he's free to try to get a job as a color commentator on a national network, so he can air his complaints there. But I think he'll find that there's not much tolerance for that kind of thing. people tune in to those broadcasts to watch and listen to the game, and don't much want to hear how much more money it's going to cost to attend such a game next year.

Think about it: The people watching the game on TV are, by definition, not at the game. Most of them won't attend a game all year. They either live too far away, or can't afford the time or the money or both. And those who do attend games probably already know that their prices are going up. They know the new park is going to be smaller, which means that the prices will be that much higher, besides the normal increase you would expect with a new park. They have to choose whether they're going to

A) pony up the money for the kind of seats they usually buy,

2) spend the kind of money they usually spend for lesser quality seats, or

iii) spring for MLB.tv or satellite television.

There really aren't any other options, and that's true for season ticket holders, too. Well, except that if someone who has two box seats this year decides to go for the satellite TV deal instead, he can buy tickets to a game or two through an online broker and then drive to the game in the brand new Lexus he bought with his savings. What a pity.

I don't have much sympathy for people who can afford to spend half my salary on season tickets but can't afford to spend all of it. I do, however, feel that the casual fan is being squeezed out. I am more than a casual fan myself, but due to my distance from the team I follow, I only attend games at Yankee Stadium once or twice a year, and the rest of the time I have to make do with an occasional Phillies game or a minor league game when I'm on the road for work or something.

My mom's a lifelong Yankee fan, now in her, um...well..she reads this blog, so I can't tell you how old she is. But she 's old enough to remember the one time the Yankees lost to Brooklyn in the World Series. Let's just leave it at that. Anyway, I got to take her to her first game ever about ten years ago, when I was right out of college. Back then, I could afford to go to three or four or five games a year.

While I was still in college in 1994, and almost literally dirt poor, I got to take two friends to a game on a Wednesday night, back when "half price nights" for students applied to any seat in the park, not just the seats that you need a Sherpa to reach. We paid about $12.50 each for (half-price) seats in the Main Section, right behind first base. Those seats cost $100 each now, and no discounts are available unless you have seven grand burning a hole in your pocket and you want to buy a full season plan. Oh, and that's for one seat.

Another time I went with one friend and got seats right behind home plate for $25/each, seats that now cost $400/each.

Now I'm married and my wife and I make almost four times as much as I was making then, but we can only afford to take my mom to about one game a year because the tickets are ten times as expensive. I have no delusions about entitlement. There are much greater problems in the world than how many baseball games per year someone like me gets to attend. I wish things were different, that there weren't so many people these days who wanted to go to Yankee games.

But I also understand that there are market forces at work here about which I cannot do anything. The Consumer Price Index in cities in the northeast has risen about 53% since 1993, while ticket prices have gone up, in some cases, 1500%. Sure, part of that is due to the legalized monopoly the baseball owners have, but most of it is just due to demand. The supply has decreased (since the Yankees don't sell those seats out in the black in center field any more) and the demand has increased because the Yankees have been good, so they can afford to charge more money for the same product.

When I travel to other cities, I find that the demand for tickets there is not nearly as high. I was in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and had hoped to go to a Dodgers-LAnahfornia game. Alas, my work schedule wore me out and I had nobody to go to the game with, so I passed up a chance to see a no-hitter in person, even though the other team won the game. Woe is me, right? Well, me and Jered Weaver.

But I looked for tickets, and if I had wanted to, I could have bought two tickets right behind home plate for the Friday night game. Not from a broker/scalper, but from the Dodgers themselves. Granted, those seats were $400/each, so it wasn't all that difficult to turn them down, but still. There was no shortage of tickets still available at face value, from the Dodgers, just days before the interleague rivalry. In New York, tickets for the Subway Series get snatched up within nanoseconds of when they go on sale. Not just the good seats: ALL of them. Brokers are already selling them for ten times their face value within minutes. The demand is simply higher there, and therefore so are the prices.

Rob Neyer commented on Mushnick's article and had this to say:

Yes, baseball teams are businesses. But they're not run like businesses. Owners routinely lose money on purpose. Owners benefit from being parts of a legally sanctioned monopoly that should, by almost any standard, be illegal. Owners buy teams not because they want to make money, but because they like baseball (usually) and because they want to see their names in the newspapers. Baseball owners derive immense benefits -- many of them falling under the heading of psychic income -- from their teams, far different from those enjoyed by the owners of, say, trucking companies and widget factories.

So, don't tell me it's all about the free market, because it's not and shouldn't be. I don't expect the owner of my favorite team to lose money every year, but I do expect him to have a heart. And that includes somehow ensuring that fans who can't afford $70 for one ticket can still occasionally watch a game without needing binoculars.

I'm not an economist, but then neither is Rob. While I think that what he said about teams losing money may have been true years ago, I doubt very seriously that many - if any - of the owners are actually losing money any longer. Thirty five years ago, when George Steinbrenner's group bought the Yankees from CBS, they were paying another network to broadcast their games! Those guys were losing money. Baseball owners didn't know what they had in baseball, how much money there was to be made. Now they do, and they've spent the last ten years or so making up for lost time.

Today's owners are smarter, at least about the business end of things, if not about how to develop talent. Whether they are obviously making money is tough to determine, because rich people can afford to hire expensive, sneaky accountants and attorneys, but it seems to me that in a monopoly like Major League Baseball, which collects something like $4 Billion in revenue per year, some of which is shared even with inept teams like the Royals, it's hard to imagine that owners would not be in it for the money.

Sure, they like owning a baseball team more than they'd probably enjoy owning a mid-range paper supply company, but they get some money from it, too. Probably a lot of money. Many of the teams are owned by groups of people, and many of those people remain predominantly anonymous. They're not in it for the ancillary benefits. They're in it because they like baseball, AND they like making money, not necessarily in that order.

Ticket prices have gotten to the levels they have because that is what the market will bear. Until people start saying "no" a little more, nothing - absolutely nothing - is going to change. Owners have the right to charge whatever the hell they please, and consumers have the right to tell them to take their $400 box seats and put them where the sun don't shine.

And I don't mean in the back of the Loge in right field.

I Love It When a Plan Comes Together

I'm 30 today.

30. There arrives with the advent of any such milestone a unique opportunity for retrospect upon one's life. Other life milestones I've seen:

17 (driving age in NJ),
18 (Selective Service),
21 (something, I forget...)
25 (lower car insurance!),
27 (the last cubic age before retirement...maybe that's just me)

...but 30 seems like a different animal. You want to be able to point to something and say, "Yeah, I did that before I was 30!" and not have people laugh at you behind your back over it. The "American Dream", according to Trivial Pursuit, is to be a millionaire by the time you're 30. Personally, my dream is to be out of debt by the time I'm 40, but I'll have to let you know how that goes. (Trivial Pursuit should probably update that question, if it's still in the box.)

Actually, I'm fairly happy with my lot in life thus far: I've got a house, a wife, a dog, a college degree and a modicum of success in my profession, having recently had an article I wrote on Scanning Acoustic Microscopy published in a significant trade journal. (The online version is members-only, but if by some odd chance you're interested, email me and I'll send you a copy.) Even my hobby makes me a few bucks on the side. Most hobbies actually cost people money, like paintball or collecting airplanes.

On the other hand, where I have five fingers and a new watch, a "Merry Birth-mas" present from my lovely wife, many of my greater dreams have yet to be realized. For example, I probably have little hope of ever being paid a living wage to write about baseball, and even less of actually playing it professionally. Therefore, I find myself still seeking vicarious joy through a bunch of total strangers, most of whom, coincidentally, are or will be millionaires by age 30: The New York Yankees.

Thankfully, if I had little cause for celebration in mid-October, the events of this offseason have brought be considerably more reason for joy, or at least hope. Let's review some of these, shall we?

* Perhaps the biggest prize, or at leas tthe most accomplished pitcher, of this season's free-agent market, was Pedro Martinez. At one time or another, various rumors had him staying with Boston, or fleeing Beantown for one of about a half-dozen different spots, including New York. New York, of course, is exactly where he wound up, except that he's wearing kinda tacky blue and orange, instead of the classic navy and white. For Yankee fans, this deal represents the best of all possible worlds: Pedro has been excellent throughout most of his career, but seems to be essentially a 6-inning pitcher who's variously described as a primadonna, a jerk, and several other things I wouldn't repeat in mixed company. In Boston, he might have experienced a resurgence that could have haunted the Yankees for years to come, especially if he beat them in the playoffs for once. As a Yankee, there was perhaps even more possibility of catastrophe, as martinez might not have experienced a resurgence in his pitching dominance, but rather in his shoulder injuries, making him a $13 million/year disaster.

But now, as a Met, even if Pedro's great, it won't likely affect the Yankees, as the Mets collectively aren't good enough to make it to the postseason, at least not yet. And if his shoulder craps out? Better yet, if only for all the "I told you so"s that Yankees fans can dole out to their cross-town rivals.

* Considering the dearth of left-handers in the Yanks' rotation in 2004, the Yankees had been considering signing 39-year old Al Leiter, who hasn't pitched in the AL since 1995, for something like $8 million bucks, possibly for two years or more. Leiter's certainly not the worst pitcher on the market, but his impressive ERAs have been helped significantly by Shea Stadium, and he hasn't exactly been the consummate workhorse throughout his career, pitching over 200 innings only once since 2000. Thankfully, the Marlins are now on the hook for that money, so he's not the Yankees' problem if he flops.

* Another lefty, and another aging ex-Yankee, David Wells signed with the Boston Red Sox. Wells was another possibility to fill the Lefty Void at Yankee Stadium, but at his age, and in his shape, he's a pretty high risk to flop as well. Amazingly, Wells somehow got the same $8 million that Leiter received from Florida, but for two years at $4 mil each. And he's two years older than Leiter is! David ought to fire his agent and hire Al's. Once again, not the Yankees' problem.

* The Yanks actually did sign Jaret Wright, who got three years and $21 million, essentially that Jon Lieber received from the Phillies. Sure, Wright's got a history of arm trouble, but so did Lieber, and he's six years younger. When you look at it that way, it's not so bad.

* New York also reeled in one of the biggest catches of the Free Agent market, ex-Fish Carl Pavano. Coming off an 18-win, 3.00 ERA season in 222 innings of work, Pavano was clearly the best bet of the market, and the Bronx Bombers got him. Also 28 years old, Pavano and Wright shave off quite a few years from the Yanks' rotation, considering that they essentially replace the 34-year old Lieber and the 59-year old Orlando "Old Duque" Hernandez, who thankfully rejected the Yanks' arbitration offer last week.

This helps the Yankees' future considerably, especially given the fact that Kevin Brown is still a Yankee, and will be 40 next year, and that 28-year old but kinda sucky Javier Vazquez is likely to be on the next plane to Los Angeles, where he will undoubtedly experience a Weaver-esque resurrection to his career, or at least his strikeout rate. Ironically, Vazquez was the Yankee rotation leader in innings pitched, wins, starts, assists, double plays and strikeouts, but they're getting rid of him. This is because he also led the team in losses (10), homers allowed (33), runs (114), earned runs (108), wild pitches (12), hit batters (11), balks (2) and partriges in pear trees (1). The other irony, and perhaps the more amusing one, is that Vazquez had roughly the same type of season as Phillies' lefty Eric Milton, as my colleagues at the Replacement Level Yankees Blog pointed out a few weeks ago, when the Yankees were actually considering trading for Milton.

Vazquez's departure is predicated upon the Dodgers' front office people getting up off their butts and submitting the paperwork for the deal that everyone already knows about, which will send Randy Johnson to the Yankees, Vazquez to the Dodgers, and half the population of Los Angeles County to Arizona, which as I understand it is where they wanted to go in the first place.

First place, however, is something the Diamondbacks will not be sniffing for a very long time. Despite spending $78 million over four years on Troy Glaus and Russ Ortiz, the D-Bads are, well, bad. Really bad. Their 111-loss season in 2004 marked the worst season in the National League since 1965, and the second worst record in either league in that 40-year span. A thirdbaseman and a pitcher will not make up for that, especially if you're about to trade away a much better pitcher you already had.

That too, however, is not the Yankees' problem. The Yankees' problem is getitng this deal done so that they can go buy the best centerfielder on the free agent market, Carlos Beltran. Beltran will give them perennial All-Stars at every spot in the lineup except 2B, where rookie Andy Phillips, who hit .318 with 26 homers playing 3B for AAA Columbus last year, and apparently has hit well at virtually every level of the minors. The only other question mark in the lineup is Jason Giambi, and it seems that they can afford to carry him, if it takes a while for him to regain his form.

And so it appears that the Evil Empire is once again poised to make a run at the World Series, and to begin the long run of success that will eventually merit them the title:

Team of This Century, Too.

Game 101 100: Yankees @ Royals

New York Yankees (53-46) vs. Kansas City Royals (43-56)
Mike Mussina (4-7, 4.97) vs. Gil Meche (7-6, 3.63)
25 July 2007; 8:10 PM @ Kauffman Stadium

Brief Editorial Note: The Yankees currently sit at 53-46, and 53 + 46 = 99, not 100, which means that somehow the game count got off a little, but we're back on track now.

Speaking of "back on track" ...how about them Yankees??!! They've won five in a row, 8 of their last 10, are 11-3 since the All-Star Break and 16-6 in July. In fact, since they hit 7 games below .500 on June 4th, they've gone 29-15, for a 65.9% winning percentage, which is the best in MLB in that span. The offense deserves most of the credit for that success, as they've averaged over 6.3 runs/game for the last six weeks. They've gained three games in the AL Wild Card standings and are only 4.5 games behind Cleveland for the lead there, and have picked up five games in the standings on Boston in the AL East race, which is probably still out of hand, given that they're 7.5 games out with only about two months left to play.

The Royals, for their part, are 22-19 in that same stretch, though I'm not sure I agree with ESPN's Buster Olney that they've turned things around just because they took two out of three from the Tigers over the weekend. Losing by a combined score of 18-6 to the Yankees the last two nights sure put a damper on any hopes they may have been entertaining.

Starting Pitchers:

The Yankees will throw Mike Mussina out there tonight to face the Royals. Moose is only 1-3 on the road this year, though his 4.46 road ERA is considerably better than the 5.40 he's compiled at The House That Moose Didn't Build. Worse yet, he's 0-2 with a 6.48 ERA in July, though that does include two "Quality Starts", (6-innings, three earned runs) against Tampa Bay and Minnesota. His 4.2-inning, 6-run performance against Tampa Bay on Friday night was his worst start since his debut on April 6th (4 IP, 6 ER, hosting Baltimore). In his career against KC he's 15-7, 3.02 in 220+ innings, including 8-2, 3.12 at Kaufmann Stadium, though admittedly Moose was a different pitcher when most of those numbers were compiled. Here's hoping that tonight he's a different pitcher from the one who compiled those lousy numbers against the Devil Rays last week.

The Royals will start Gil Meche tonight, their $55 million man. Olney says that he's "earned every bit of his salary" (about $11 million for this year, just like Moose), though I'm not sure I agree. Meche has been good, but inconsistent this year. He's 4-2 with a 2.97 ERA on the road, but only 3-4, 4.17 at home. Before 2007, he never had a streak of more than four consecutive Quality Starts. This year he had seven Quality Start streak in which he went 2-0, 1.15, but otherwise has been just as mediocre as everybody expected, with a 5-6 record and a 4.97 ERA. With that said, he did make quick work of the reigning AL Champion Detroit Tigers last week, going 7 innings and allowing only 2 runs, so he'll probably make mincemeat out of the Yankee bats tonight and make me look like a fool. He threw a season-high 119 pitches in that start, but that wasn't much more than his average of about 104, so I suppose it's too much to ask that he feels some ill effects from the long outing and can't get out of the fifth inning. Meche has had some success against the Yankees, going 3-2, with a 3.88 ERA, including 2-0, 3.30 vs. the Yanks away from Yankee Stadium.

Bullpens:

KC’s bullpen is 14th in the majors with a 3.77 ERA and features six regulars or semi-regulars with relief ERA’s between 2.31 and 3.57, so the Royals don’t have the soft underbelly in their bullpen that most teams have. If anything, you’d imagine that they want to get their starters out of the game as soon as possible, though that’s not a wise long-term strategy.
The Yankees’ bullpen is about as good, with a 3.71 ERA, and more wins, which were vultured from all those short-winded starting pitchers. If Moose falters, there’s every reason to think that the bullpen can keep them in the game and give the offense a chance to bludgeon the Royals into submission.

Offense:

The Yankees’ offense has been on fire lately, scoring 63 runs in their last five games. Overall, they’re second in the majors with 572 runs scored in 100 games, second only to Detroit (576 runs in 99 games). Alex Rodriguez was the first player in the majors to compile 100 RBIs in 2007, and he continues to lead both leagues in homers (34), RBIs (100), Runs (95), slugging percentage, OPS, Total Bases, Runs Created, touchdowns, and partriges in pear Trees (1). Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada have both been hitting about .335 this season, and have stayed consistent in that. Hideki Matsui has recently turned on the power, with a MLB-leading 9 homers in July, and Robby Cano is hitting .423 since the All-Star Break. Bobby Abreu is on a hot streak as well, hitting .372 in July with 24 RBIs (2nd in MLB in that span), while Melky Cabrera is hitting .345 this month. Andy Phillips, finally given a chance to play when Joe Torre woke up to the fact that he couldn’t keep running Miguel Cairo out there every day, is hitting .338 in 20 July contests. Note that most of those are not likely to continue, but they’ll be nice while they last. The Yanks could still use another bat (like Mark Teixiera or Adam Dunn) to supplant Phillips or the rotating DH in the lineup.

The Royals have hit .285 as a team this month, but nobody has more than two homers in that span, so they’re seemingly no real threat with the long-ball. Rookie Billy Butler is hitting .382 in July, with 20 RBIs, and veteran/journeyman Mark Grudz131@n#7 is hitting .424, albeit with ZERO homers. Esteban “The Good” German is hitting .419 this month, but somehow has driven in only three runs in 14 games.
Prediction:

The Yankees’ winning streak ends at five. Moose stinks up the joint for four innings and change, then gives way to Kyle Farnsworth and Luis Vizcaino, who follow suit. Yanks fall, 10-4.

Book Review: The Yankee Years, by Joe Torre and Tom Verducci

As the field manager of the New York Yankees from 1996 to 2007, Joe Torre epitomized class and dignity on the baseball field, so it's fitting that even his book's title and cover are classy. A simple title, with no ridiculous subtitle that's four times as long as the title itself. The authors should really be listed as Tom Verducci with Joe Torre, as it's clear that Verducci does the writing in this relationship, and that Torre is mostly there to narrate and provide quotes.

The front cover is graced by a simple, dim picture of Torre in the corridor at Yankee Stadium, en route to the locker room, his well known number six on his back, shoulders slumped a bit with age and all the years of turmoil in Yankeeland, but still proud and determined.

The back cover shows him being carried off the the field by his players, presumably after the 1998 World Series, waving to the crowd, recent tears still wetting his deep set eyes. The photo, a little out of focus, hints at the fleeting nature of this one-of-a-kind run in Yankee history, this one-of-a-kind manager's tenure there, and suggests that perhaps there was more to Torre and those great Yankee teams than we knew.

And there certainly was.

Not that this is a tell-all book. For one thing, Torre has too much class to dish out juicy details of other people's personal lives, or compromise people's standing in the game, or otherwise make a quick buck at the expense of others. There's no shortage of interesting anecdotes or good quotes, both from Torre and others, but this is not a ground-breaking tome like Ball Four was 40 years ago.

Verducci starts the book with the story of how Joe became the Yankees manager, the idea that he was the Yankees' fourth choice, and that even after he was hired, there were rumors that George Steinbrenner was still trying to convince Buck Showalter to return. What a way to start a new job, right?

From there he moves on to how Torre helped inspire a work ethic, a "desperation to win" in those players in the late 1990's, how he got them to play ball the right way and to work at winning, every day. His young shortstop, Derek Jeter, was a big part of that, leading by example right from the start, teaching everyone around him how to play baseball the Yankee Way, how to carry yourself, how to act, and how not to. Torre and Jeter naturally became very good friends, and Jeter earned the respect due a team captain even before he bore the official title.

The following paragraph, about the famous "Flip Play" in the 2000 playoffs against the Oakland A's, demonstrates both Jeter's amazing baseball instincts and Verducci's writing prowess:

"Jeter made a play that only could have been made by a player with supreme
alertness, the mental computing power to quickly crunch the advanced baseball
calculus needed to process the trajectory and speed of Spencer's throw and the
speed and location of a runner behind his back, and the athletic and
improvisational skills to actually find a way to get the ball home on time and
on target while running in a direction opposite to the plate."

OK, so it's kind of a run-on sentence, and he lays it on a little thick, but it's still solid, informative, colorful writing that paints the picture he wants. Besides this, the run-on nature of the sentence conveys the urgency of the play much better than more traditional punctuation choices would have.

For Torre's part, of course, teaching a bunch of guys how to win consistently is a lot easier when you've got so much talent with which to work. Teams that include Jeter, Jorge Posada, Tino Martinez, Paul O'Neill, Bernie Williams, David Cone, David Wells, Roger Clemens, Mariano Rivera and others ought to win all the time. Right?

But even at that, they never seemed to consider themselves entitled, never rubbed it in their opponents' faces, never took winning for granted. As Billy Beane said,

"And one thing about getting beat by the Yankees: They did it with class. It was
as if they beat you in rented tuxedos." (p. 51)

Torre also addresses some of the controversies of that era, specifically the steroid issue and how it affected the Yankees' clubhouse. Because Tom Verducci is really the one writing this, he can paint a picture of the era with broader strokes than Torre could have by himself. He discusses the happenings in baseball as a whole, how records were falling both left (homers) and right (attendance), how everyone was making money, and how nobody took the issue of performance enhancing drugs too seriously.

Though I don't remember ever having heard of this at the time, apparently former Texas Rangers pitcher Rick Helling was one of the first to blow the whistle on the steroid issue, at a players' union meeting in 1998. He challenged his fellow players to crack down on PEDs, to help make sure the game was played the right way, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. He repeatedly stated that, at least in his opinion, the increasing prevalence of steroids in baseball was forcing some otherwise clean players to consider using PEDs themselves, just to remain competitive.

Which of course was exactly what was happening. Unfortunately, Verducci includes three nearly identical quotes from Helling on the same page to make this point, despite the fact that they read like a skipping record. And Major League Baseball and the MLBPA ignored Helling and others who were sounding the PED alarm at the time, and we all know how that turned out.

For his part, Verducci states, Torre was innocent of the whole thing. "You had two guys from New York doing all the talking in the Mitchell Report. That's why you have more information on New York players."

"Steroids?" Verducci asks, innocently, "He [Torre] knew nothing about them. He never saw them." Torre indicates that he didn't want to go probing, uninvited, into the players' lives, and so he never asked those questions, presumably content that whatever they were doing was working, and decided to leave "well enough" alone.

You can believe that if you want to, and it's Torre's privilege to present himself how he wants to in his own book, but he and Verducci must take the baseball watching public for fools if they think many of us are buying that explanation. Even if it is true, it makes Torre out to be a little too naive, a little too "hands-off" to truly be an effective manager. The players would never respect and follow someone they thought could be so easily duped.

The book contains a great many anecdotes about the normally private and confidential rituals of the clubhouse, including this gem about Roger Clemens' pre-game preparation:

Clemens lost himself in his usual pregame preparation. which typically began with cranking the whirlpool to its hottest possible temperature. "He'd come out looking like a lobster," trainer Steve Donahue said. Then Donahue would rub the hottest possible liniment on his testicles. "He'd start snorting like a bull," the trainer said. "That's when he was ready to pitch." (p. 132)

Listen, I'm as open minded as the next guy, but if I never have to read another story about one man rubbing liniment on another man's balls as long as I live, it will be too soon. Some things just shouldn't be shared, OK? Like balls.

In addition to all the material from Torre, Verducci mines a wealth of information from bullpen catcher Mike Borzello, pitcher Mike Mussina, and several other players to whom Torre was close. He discusses the ways in which George Steinbrenner would try to micromanage and manipulate people, how different people on Steinbrnner's staff, such as Randy Levine or George's sons, behaved toward Torre, how Brian Cashman, in the end, chose to cover his own ass rather than go to bat for Torre.

He also relates not a small number of stories on Torre's dealings with different players. He talks about how Gary Sheffield's efforts on the field varied with his mood, how David Wells was constantly causing trouble of one kind or another, and how the Yankees were warned about Carl Pavano:

"Tim Raines told me, 'Pavano? He's never going to pitch for you. Forget it.' Borzello said. I said, "What?" He said, 'The guy didn't want to pitch in Montreal. There was always something wrong with him. In Florida, same thing. He didn't want to pitch except for the one year he was pitching for a contract. I'm telling you, he's not going to pitch for you." (p. 319)

The Yankee Years, while not entirely chocked full of these kinds of tidbits, certainly has no shortage of them either, plenty to make the chapters interesting. There's not much earth-shattering stuff here, not any really, but there's plenty of inside gossip and other information that we all wish we could have known at the time.

We all know the baseball side of things. What happened is in the record books for all to see. But a book like this offers us some rare insight into the reasons for why things happened or didn't happen, at least in one manager's opinion. The Yankee Years is a worthwhile read for this reason and more, for Yankees fans and Torre fans and anyone who rooted against them all those years.

Santana Trade to Mets: Best for Yankees

I realized this morning that in my haste to get something out there about the Santana deal last night, I entirely forgot to mention how this affects the Yankees:

It's GREAT!

Why? Why would losing out on an opportunity to acquire the best pitcher of the new millenium come as welcome news to Yankee fans?

Because he didn't go to the Red Sox.

Much like the Pedro Martinez deal in the winter of 2004, the trade of Santana to the Mets represents the best of all possible worlds for the Yankees and their fans.

Of course, the best scenario for the Yankees, when you consider all non-possible worlds, includes that universe in which the Yankees can trade Carl Pavano, Kei Igawa, and, oh, let's say Jacoby Ellsbury and Jon Lester (hey, this is MY fantasy world...I can trade other teams' prospects if I want!) to the Twins for Johan Santana, who not only thrives and wins a dozen Cy Young awards in Yankee pinstripes, but also works for the MLB minimum, does community service, and saves a flock of nuns from a burning building on his way to Yankee Stadium for Game 7 of the World Series, whereupon he throws a perfect game. And also war and disease and poverty come to an end and Jesus returns. And I have hair.

But back in this universe, this is really the best we Yankee fans could have hoped for. No, we don't get Johan Santana. But neither do we have to give up any of our prospects for him, only to have them win MVPs and Cy Young awards forother teams later. Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain and Ian Kennedy are all still Yankees, at least for now.

Along the same lines, even though Santana is a great pitcher, he's going to be very, very expensive, likely making $20-$25 million per year for the next 6 years or so. That's a helluva lot of money to invest in one player. That would mean that between Alex Rodriguez and Johan Santana, two players on the yankees would make more than 5 or 6 entire MLB teams did last year. That's a huge risk, even with a pitcher as good as Santana.

Of course, if he's awesome for the next 6 years or so, the Yankees would gladly pay that kind of money to have him on their roster, but there's not guarantee that he won't get hit by a bus or something, not to mention the kind of general erosion of skill that comes with age anyway. So, on the flip side, because the Yankees' closest rival and only real competition for the annual AL East crown did not get Santana either, there's no conceivable way in which Santana could come back to bite the Yankees in the ass that way either.

Sure, they play the Mets twice a year, so Santana might conceivably pitch against the Yankees twice in the regular season. Last year, the Yanks faced Curt Schilling five times(!), and Daisuke Matsuzaka and Josh Beckett four times each. Back in 2005, Tim Wakefield made six starts against the Yankees. can you imagine having to face Santana six times in one season, not to mention the possibility of meeting him again in the playoffs? On a scale of one-to-ten, that would suck.

So, things being what they are, the yankees are now in a good position to let their young pitchers demonstrate what they can do, as Yankees, and the Red Sox are no better off than they were two days ago. A resolution has been reached. Balance has been restored.

Short of the Rapture and/or my hair growing back, this is a darn good outcome.

Spinal Tap Baseball

It seems that there's some cosmic force out there,working behind the scenes, to make sure that the Yankees-Red Sox games don't end at a reasonable hour. Prime-Time, drive-time, nine-innings, extra innings, it doesn't matter: this is the series that goes up to Eleven. PM, that is.

I need some sleep.

A week ago, my job necessitated me getting up at 2:30 AM to go with my boss as he made a presentation to the Navy regarding a research contract we were given. We spent about six hours driving to the facility in Maryland (roughly twice as long as I slept the night before) and spent a few hours in the meeitng itself. I got home about 7:30 on Tuesday night and then stayed up another three or four hours watching the Yankee-Red Sox game, which we won, 10-7, largely thanks to Curt Schilling's bum ankle. A game in which we were up 6-0 after two innings, and in which our own pitcher had been perfect through six innings, would not require me to stay up to watch the inevitable outcome, but as we now know, you'd have been wrong to think that. The Sox rallied to as close as 8-7 before the Yanks put them away for good, and despite only three hours of sleep and a 17-hour work day, I saw the whole thing, all three hours and 20 minutes of it.

Then, the very next night, still recuperating from the Needless Business Trip From Hell, another nail-biter (I may need to start with my toes soon...), another 3:15 game time, but a 3-1 victory. Saturday night, fans in Boston and around the country got to witness the longest nine-inning post season game in history, four hours and 20 minutes, a 19-8 laugher that looked like it might be competitive until about the third inning. I watched all of that one too, figuring that it was Saturday and that I wouldn't have to get up as early for church as I do for work. Sunday's game started at "Prime Time" and ended well into Monday, after five hours and two minutes, the longest post season game time ever, this time a Yankee loss, 6-4 in 12 innings. I missed most of that, having gone to bed at 11:00 or so, with the score 4-3 Yanks in the sixth, I think. No problem, New York was still up, three games to one in the Series.

And then Monday night, not to be outdone by, well, themselves, the Yanks and Sox played almost SIX HOURS, and ended with another Yankee loss, 5-4. Amazingly, this game started at about 5PM EST, and when my friends left after Monday Night Poker at about 9:30, I still got to watchan hour and a half of edge-of-your-seat baseball. This game was so long that I could have watched Patton twice! Then I could have rewound the tape to watch General Montgomery's embarassing entry into Palermo a third time, and still turned the game on i time to see David Ortiz single into center field to win the game, almost exactly as the clock struick 11:00. PM, that is.

By my count, that's a total of 21 and 3/4 hours of baseball in a week. Posada's and Varitek's knees must be killing them.

So the Yanks are now clinging to a 3-2 lead in the series. Assuming that they don't get rained out again, I expect the Yankees to wrap it up tonight. Here's why:

1) Jon Lieber is pitching for New York. Including the postseason, he's 12-3 with a 3.55 ERA at Yankee Stadium this year, compared to 3-5, 5.19 on the road. I don't understand it, but heck, it seems to work.

B) Curt Schilling is pitching for the Red Sox. Schilling's ankle, as you may recall, apparently consists of a lot of bailing twine and chewing gum, not unlike Curtis Leskanic's shoulder or Manny Ramirez' hair. I don't care if he wears the damn Ruby Slippers on the mound tonight, he won't be able to pitch well.

iii) Jeff Kellogg won't be behind the plate. There are few things that irk me more than an umpire with a Kleenex-sized strike zone that floats around home plate as erratically as, well, a Kleenex. Late strike calls is one of them. Kellogg does both. Enjoy that foul line assignment, Jeff! Can't say we'll miss you.

d) No one has ever, in the history of professional baseball, come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a 7-game series. Ever. And it's not gonna start now.

V) The Curse. No, not the stupid Curse of the Bambino. That's just an excuse for poor performance and/or bad luck. I'm talking about the Curtis Curse. No team with two pitchers named Curtis has EVER gotten to the World Series. Curt Schilling and Curtis Leskanic can wrap their bodies in as much duct tape and super glue as they want, it won't erase 100+ years of baseball history!

You could look it up.

*********************************

By the way, I stumbled across a new baseball blog today, Fall Classic. Go check them out.

Fool's Gold

Andy Pettitte is on the brink of changing the course of history, and he doesn’t even know it.

Rumors out of Houston yesterday, and subsequently all over the country this morning, indicated that the erstwhile Yankees left-hander was on the cusp of signing a contract with the Houston Astros. These rumors are not new, only recently solidified, and unless King George pulls another multi-year, multi-million dollar trick out of his hat (as he did when it appeared that Bernie Williams would soon become – horror of horrors – the Boston Red Sox centerfielder) Pettitte has thrown his last pitch as a Yankee.

This is where history comes in. You see, Pettitte’s not really that good. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of other teams would love to have a pitcher who’s “not that good” like Pettitte, but the fact of the matter is that the guy is a little overrated because

A. He’s left-handed, and

2. He’s a Yankee.

Or at least he was. Yankee Stadium is not as biased to left-handed pitchers as it used-to-was, back when the left-centerfield fence was 461 feet from home plate and Joe D. or The Mick got to everything hit in their general direction, but it’s still comparatively kind to lefty pitchers, not to mention pitchers in general. As Pettitte is not predominantly a fly-ball pitcher, he may not benefit from this advantage as much as someone like Roger Clemens or David Wells would, but it still helps.

The other, and in my mind, more significant factor, is that the Yankees have been all but spectacular during Pettitte’s tenure in Pinstripes. Since 1995, when Pettitte began pitching essentially full-time for the Yankees, they’ve won 79, 92, 96, 114, 98, 87, 95, 103 and 101 games in his seasons. Pettitte’s own 149-78 record gives him a stellar .656 winning percentage (21st all-time), which is even better than the Yankees’ .602 winning percentage in that time. There is not a long list of teams that could reasonably be expected to win 60% of their games over the next decade (only Atlanta and the Yankees have done so over the last one), and Houston certainly isn’t on it. This fact brings Pettitte’s legacy into jeopardy.

Now as I mentioned, Pettitte is quite good, with a very high career winning percentage, owed largely to the fact that the team he’s played for has scored runs for him pretty consistently throughout his career, and won a lot of games in its own right. But his career park-adjusted ERA is only 17% better than average, right between the likes of Al Leiter/Chuck Finley (15%) and Jose Rijo/David Cone (20%).

None of these names are particularly high on the list of expected Cooperstown enshrine-ees, and Pettitte probably wouldn’t be either, if ERA were the only number anybody in the BBWAA examined while they’re pondering their Hall of fame ballots. But the baseball writers like wins. They always have, and they’re probably not going to just abandon that tendency within the next decade and a half. Which means that by the time Pettitte comes up for consideration, the best thing he could have going for him is his wins and his winning percentage. Say what you want about the irrelevance of such statistics in measuring the true worth of a pitcher, and I’ll probably agree with most of it, but in the end, you and I don’t get to decide who is Hall-worthy, the baseball writers do. And they like their wins. Three hundred of them is a sure ticket to Cooperstown, and Pettitte’s chance at such an accomplishment essentially dies with the demise of his career as a Yankee.

Lee Sinins pointed out in his Around The Majors report this morning that Pettitte has the fifth highest difference between his expected (.573) and actual winning percentages, behind Vic Raschi, Johnny Allen, Allie Reynolds and Jack Coombs. You might notice something about those names: three of them spent significant portions of their careers as Yankees too, and won a lot more often in Pinstripes than out. The fourth, Jack Coombs, spent a lot of his career pitching for the very good Philadelphia Athletics and Brooklyn Dodgers of the early part of the last century. Winning teams breed winning pitchers, and ain’t nobody wins like the Yankees wins.

Making a lot of BIG assumptions, finishing his career in Pinstripes might have afforded Andy another 130 to 150 wins, if he remains healthy and reasonably talented for the next ten to twelve years (a big if for anyone). He could average something like 16-11 with a 4.30 ERA for nine or ten years and end up with almost 300 wins at the age of 40. That gives him a good shot at serious consideration for the Hall, though he may need to wait quite a few years to get enough of the vote. The BBWAA is sometimes dense, but not blind to the fact that those win totals have a lot to do with the players around him.

In Houston (no laughingstock of a baseball organization, but one that can hardly hope to be as consistently competitive in today's economic climate as the Yanks will) those numbers might be something more like 13-12 or even 12-15 on average per year, which makes a difference of about 40 wins over the course of his career. Perhaps his career won't be as long either, if he's not winning as much, further reducing the possible win totals at the end of it. There aren't many pitchers with career numbers like 240-200 in the Hall, especially if they don't have some other spectacular numbers, lemme tellya.

Just wait, it gets worse: Houston's ballpark (whatever they're calling it this week) is not kind to pitchers in general, as Baseball Prospectus' 2003 edition labels it a "Severe Hitters' Park", increasing offense by over 5%. That number may drop a little, as 2003 marked the second year in a row that the JuiceBowl did not significantly increase offense for Houston's opponents, but it's still generally regarded as a bad place to be on the mound. So now maybe Pettitte's typical ~4.00 ERA becomes 4.30 or 4.50, and maybe over 5.00 in a bad year. Take those higher ERAs, toss in a few losing seasons (for the team and for Pettitte), a healthy dose of late-inning pinch hitters to lower his innings totals, and a dollop of missing the playoffs (in which Andy's career record is 13-8, and where a good record could have been the tie-breaker for Pettitte's Cooperstown candidacy), and you've got yourself a formula that will appease any critics of Pettitte's Cooperstown credentials: He hasn't any. And Andy's OK with that.

Or at least he won't now. The official word came this morning that Pettitte's definitely signed. Three years, $31 mil, about $8 mil less than the Yankees offered him, but we all knew that Andy never cared much about the money. A reasonable man realizes that there's not a whole lot of difference in the lifestyle you can lead making $13 million a year compared to $10 mil, and that if your relationship with Jesus is priority #1, you can have that anywhere. If your family is priority #1a, then they're limited by existing in our current time-space continuum, and can therefore only be in one place at a time. If that place happens to be close to a different employer who's willing to pay you (slightly fewer) gobs of money to do what you love, then you'd be a fool not to take them up on that offer.

If Pettitte knows God like he says he does, then he realizes that it's about God's glory, not his own, and that a piece of bronze with his mashed-down likeness in a small town in upstate New York is not going to last as long or reward him as much as his family, and his Lord, will. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. In the end, all George Steinbrenner had to bait him with was fool's gold. And Andy wasn't biting.



Good for you, Andy. We'll miss you. God Bless.

Noted baseball/history author Harvey Frommer, for whom I have done several book reviews, and who is in the midst of conducting an e-interview with me, to be published next week, has two books coming out soon. I hope to have reviews of these available for you as they become available, but for now, here are the plugs:

*Coming Spring 2004
New York City Baseball :
The Last Golden Age, 1947-1957
By Harvey Frommer
At one time New York City had three major league teams: the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers. In the days after World War II, the New York teams owned baseball. Relive the golden days of the 1950s in this amazing account.
When the lights came on again after World War II, they illuminated a nation ready for heroes and a city--New York--eager for entertainment. Baseball provided the heroes, and the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers--with their rivalries, their successes, their stars--provided the show.

"We shall not have such an era again except in such loving books as this one." --RED BARBER

“No red-blooded baseball fan will want to be without it. A genuine social history of New York sports in 1947 to 1957. A compulsively fascinating book.” - - NEWSDAY

“A look back at the heyday of Big Apple baseball when at least one New York team appeared in the World Series in 10 of the 11 years. - - “USA TODAY

”Lovingly described.”- - -NEW YORK POST

*New edition with an introduction by Monte Irvin

****COMING OPENING DAY 2004
*******************
THE GREAT RIVALRY:
THE BOSTON RED SOX VS THE NEW YORK YANKEES
By
** HARVEY FROMMER AND FREDERIC J. FROMMER **

Covers nearly a century's worth of epic battles on and off the baseball field between these age-old rivals.
Featuring exclusive interviews with former governors Mario Cuomo of New York and Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, former press secretary Ari Fleisher, congressmen, reporters, broadcasters, and especially players, coaches, managers and front-office execs from the Red Sox and Yankees including Don Zimmer, Nomar Garciaparra, Derek Lowe, Jason and Jeremy Giambi, Lou Meroni, Dwight Evans, and Theo Epstein.
Two unique features of the book are a Rivalry Timeline and a "Talkin' Rivalry" section, a free-for-all in print among fans, journalists, players who all have something to say.
Other chapters include Marker Moments, In-depth Profiles of Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams, Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium.
More than two years in the making, this coffee-table book will have nearly 400 pages of text and more than 125 photos, some in color, some archival.
A perfect book for Yankee fans, Red Sox fans, and all baseball fans.
***************************************************
Harvey Frommer is the author of 34 sports books,
including "The New York Yankee Encyclopedia, "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime Baseball," "Growing Up Baseball" with Frederic J. Frommer and "Rickey and Robinson: The Men Who Broke Baseball's Color Line," "A Yankee Century: A Celebration of the First Hundred Years of Baseball's Greatest Team."
Frederic J. Frommer is an Associated Press correspondent based in Washington, D.C. This is his second book.

“Scooter” Retrospective: Phil Rizzuto Dies at 89

Phil Rizzuto, erstwhile New York Yankees shortstop and 40-year Yankees radio and TV broadcast announcer, died last night at age 89.

To quote the Scooter, "Well, that kind of puts the damper on even a Yankee win."

Obviously, a lot more people mourned the passing of Pope Paul VI in 1978 (about whom Rizutto uttered that line) than will cry for the Scooter, and rightly so, but in his own niche, he was just as beloved.

Phil Rizzuto's major league playing career started when he was 23 years old. A Brooklyn native, and only 5'6" tall, when he was called up from the minors in 1941, he supposedly had a hard time convincing the guard at Yankee Stadium that he was on the team and should be let inside. When he went to try out for his hometown team in 1937, he was told by then-Dodgers manager Casey Stengel to go and shine shoes for a living, but later became one of Stengel's favorite players when Casey helmed the Yankees in 1949. One story Rizzuto related about Stengel dealt with a death threat he had received in the mail before a series against the Red Sox in September of 1950, the year he won the MVP. The letter supposedly said that he, Hank Bauer, Yogi Berra and Johnny Mize would be shot if they showed up in uniform. When Rizzuto showed the letter to his manager, Casey gave him Billy Martin's uniform to wear, and sent Martin in with Scooter's #10 on his back.

Not surprisingly, Scooter's diminutuve size prevented him from exploiting the game the way most of his peers did in the late 1940's and early 1950's, a time when walks and homers dominated the game, and an average team stole only about 40 bases per season. Scooter frequently stole 15-20 bases all by himself, finishing in the top 6 in the American League eight times in his 13-year playing career. He also ranked in the top 10 in triples three times, another testament to his speed, inspite of his short legs. His brand of slap-hitting, aggressive base-running and self-sacrifice brought a breath of fresh air in an otherwise boring era for baseball. Rizzuto led the AL in sacrifice hits four times and is third on the Yankees' all-time list, and ranks 10th among Yankees with 49 hit-by-pitches. He was widely regarded as one of the best bunters in baseball history, and later would try to impart his knowledge on the subject to Yankee players as a special instructor uring Spring Training, after his own playing career had ended.

A patient hitter with a keen eye (he walked 651 times in his career but only struck out 398 times), Scooter was not a sabermetrician's favorite type of player, but his skills clearly helped the Yankees to the nine American League pennants and eight World Series championships they won with him on the team. The sportswriters of his era recognized this, voting him the AL MVP in 1950. He placed second to Ted Williams in 1949 and got MVP votes six other times, ranking as high as 6th, in 1953. Though he hit only .246 in postseason play, he ranks among the top ten in hits, singles, walks, stolen bases, at-bats, and times on base, mostly because his 52 World Series games rank 6th all-time. He made the All-Star team five times, four of them after WWII, though he was never the same hitter he had looked like before he went into the service.

Much of Scooter's value as a player owed to his prowess as a defensive shortstop. Long before Cal Ripken proved that a man built like a Greek god could play short effectively, Rizutto was the quintessential defense-first, any-offense-is-gravy shortstop that most teams employed. Contemporary Hall-of-Fame shortstops like Pee Wee Reese, Arky Vaughan, Lou Boudreau and Luke Appling were all better offensive players...and were all at least three or four inches taller and weighed 15 or 20 pounds more than the Scooter. That he got as many hits as he did out of his wiry little fram is fairly impressive. And in spite of that, his defense, at its best, could rival many of the best defensive shortstops in history. Baseball Prospectus gives him four seasons with 20+ Fielding Runs Above Average, while Ozzie Smith, widely considered the best defensive shortstop in history, has only six such seasons, despite a much longer playing career.

Rizzuto, like many of his contemporaries, lost much of his career to the Second World War, playing three years (1943-45, his age 25-27 seasons) for the U.S. Navy's baseball team instead of in the American League. Certainly he could have compiled more stats if he had those three seasons in the prime of his career back, but more important, he might have helped the Yankees not to finish 3rd in 1944 and 4th in 1945 as he and his star teammates Joe DiMaggio, Joe Gordon, Charlie Keller, Tommy Henrich, Red Ruffing, Johnny Murphy and others were off contributing to the war effort.

Scooter's playing career ended in 1956, when he was apparently called into the general manager's office to look over the roster and help them decide who on the roster they should cut to make room for the recently acquired Enos Slaughter. After suggesting several names and having each one opposed for one reason or another, it became apparent to Rizzuto that his was the expendable name, and he was let go. Nevertheless, at the insistence of Ballantine Beer, one of the Yankees' biggest sponsors at the time, Scooter was almost immediately hired to do broadcasting, a job he held for about 40 years.

Rizzuto became a fixture on WMCA radio and in the WPIX broadcast booth, working with the likes of Mel Allen, Red Barber, Bill White, Bobby Brown, Bobby Murcer and many others during his long career. He became famous as an almost unabashed homer, more than occasionally lapsing from announcing the Yankee game to actually rooting for them. He famously always referred to his broadcast partners by their last names, as he had his former teammates. (The reason Bill White jokingly gave for why he was leaving the Yankees' booth to become president of the National League in 1989 was that after 18 years of working together, his partner still didn't know his first name!) Fans loved his humor, his "Holy cow!" exclamations during broadcasts, and toward the end of his career, his general lack of ability to follow the game itself. Though it became a challenge to follow the game when even the announcer would admit to lapses of attention (Rizzuto would mark his scorecard "WW" for "Wasn't Watching" whenever he missed a play, which was often), the genuineness and endearing nature of his broadcasts made him the longest-tenured and most loved announcer in Yankees history. His monologue full of baseball/sex-related double entendres, on the recording of Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light", continually introduces new generations of horny teenagers to his style as they hear the song at parties and on the radio, even if they don't know it's the Scooter.

He retired from broadcasting for the last time (after threating to do so for years) after the 1996 season.



Rizzuto was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994, by the Veterans Committee, after years of waiting, even though he had what most knowledgeable fans consider sub-par numbers. Despite that, and despite the fact that Bill James used him as a frequent illustration in his book Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame?, James ranked him as the 16th best shortstop in history when his Historical Baseball Abstract was re-published in 2001.

Phil (Fiero Francis) Rizzuto
25 September 1917 – 14 August 2007

A Tale of Two Pitchers: Yankees' A.J. Burnett

The Yankees maintained their loose grip on first place in the American league Eastern Division Monday night despite being handed an embarrassing, 10-4 loss to the last-place Arizona Diamondbacks. Since the Tampa Bay Rays and the Bostons did not play, the Bronx Bombers retained a slim, 1/2-game lead on their division rivals.

That contest marked the fourth straight poor performance - and fourth straight loss - for starting RHP A.J. Burnett, whose once-sparkling 6-2 record and 3.28 ERA have ballooned to 6-6 and 4.83, respectively. Having a streak of four starts in which you allow nine homers and 23 runs in just 20 innings will do that for you, it seems.

The Yankees signed Burnett last winter, despite my impassioned pleas not to, though to be fair, my skepticism was based on Burnett's health, not his skills. In any case, in my frustration with Burnett's apparent inability to either throw strikes (at all) or throw strikes that batters would actually miss, I began wondering how it's possible that this man once won 18 games in a season. For that matter, how is it possible that the man won 13 games last year, when it seems that every time I watch him pitch, he allows six runs in five innings or something like that?

Burnett's troubles - or at least his inconsistencies - have been pretty well documented. The broadcast team on ESPN last night started describing their perceptions of Burnett, who seemed to be "frustrated" and "having mechanical issues" and "not on the same page" as catcher Jorge Posada, and so on.

Lack of focus, front shoulder flying open, bad karma...whatever. It seems that everybody has an explanation for how a guy who can consistently throw a baseball 94 miles per hour and has a curveball that dives toward the plate as though being suddenly pulled by an electromagnet can be so...so...mediocre.

They mentioned the supposed difficulty Posada and Burnett had last year in connecting with each other, though they didn't mention the specifics: That Burnett had a 4.96 ERA when Posada caught him in 2009 and a 3.22 ERA for anyone else. Granted, he pitched badly a couple of times in the playoffs with Jose Molina catching him, too, but still, that's a big difference. This year's even worse: 6.06 with Posada, 3.63 with Francisco Cervelli. (For the record, Burnett didn't seem to connect with Chad Moeller all that well either: 5.21 ERA).

There are other bizarre splits as well. Burnett is 3-2 this year with a 3.47 ERA when he gets five days of rest, but on normal four days' rest or on 6+ days, he's got an ERA well over five and a half. He's got a 3.46 ERA at home, 5.85 on the road. Last year's split was not quite as pronounced: 3.51 at home, 4.59 on the road. And this despite New Yankee Stadium's reputation as a hitter's park.

Or, here's a fun one: He's 3-0, 1.23 in day games, but 3-6, 5.97 at night. Maybe 7:05 PM is past his bed time? Probably just a fluke, since last year that split was reversed (5.38 ERA during day games, 3.14 at night). Most pitchers tend to do better at night overall, since hitters can't see the ball as well.

But perhaps the most glaring disparity is the one I mentioned first: How can a guy who wins about 15 games a year seem to be so terrible whenever I get to see him pitch? The answer is a simple one: Because he is.

Let me explain. I live in Pennsylvania, outside the usual area of the YES network, which means that I only get to see Yankee games when they're either on national TV (like FOX, TBS or ESPN) or when they're on the local New York stations that happen to get broadcast in eastern PA, like WPIX and WWOR. That means that I only see a handful of Yankee games each year, perhaps 20 or 30 at most. And, as I mentioned, it seemed to me that every time I saw Burnett pitch, he was terrible.

If it seemed that way, that's only because, well, he was:

2009-2010 National broadcasts (ESPN/TBS/FOX)      
GS   Dec   IP      H  ER  BB   SO  HR   ERA  IP/GS   H/9  K/9  BB/9  HR/9
12   2-6   66.0   85  61  38   47  15  8.32   5.5   11.6  6.4   5.2   2.0

2009-2010 Local NY Broadcasts (YES/WWOR/WPIX)      
GS   Dec   IP      H  ER  BB   SO  HR   ERA  IP/GS   H/9  K/9  BB/9  HR/9
36  17-9  232.1  206  81  94  215  23  3.14   6.5    8.0  8.3   3.6   0.9

If you include his postseason performances, which are all nationally broadcast, his numbers improve very slightly, to 3-7 with a 7.44 ERA, which, on a scale of one to ten, is still awful. Overall, Burnett has been more than twice as likely to surrender a home run on national television as he has been on local TV. He walked two more batters per nine innings, struck out two fewer and gave up about three and a half more hits per game. And of course he allowed more than twice as many earned runs.

Including his postseason outings, that makes a total of 93.1 innings on national television, 17 games. It's not a small sample size, though perhaps not as large as I might prefer. And he was only able to provide a Quality Start in seven of those 17 games. Compare that to his locally broadcast work, where he made 23 Quality Starts in 36 outings, and you can see why someone like me may have gotten a skewed impression of his pitching acumen.

In short, Burnett looks every bit like a Cy Young candidate on local New York TV, or at least he looks like the $16.5 million workhorse the Yankees thought they were getting when they signed him last winter. But if you see him on national television? Well, let's just say they'd be hard pressed to justify letting him keep his rotation spot over, say, Kyle Davies.

Why is all of this important? Well, for one thing, Burnett's next start is scheduled for Saturday.

On the road. (@ the Dodgers)

On national TV. (FOX)

Since becoming a Yankee, Burnett is 2-5 with a 9.88(!) ERA in nationally broadcast road games. Lots of minor league clubs do fireworks after the game on the weekends. This game should have plenty of fireworks before that.

Texas Rangers Showing Promise against the Oakland A's

I had the distinct privilege to see a Texas Rangers' game in person Wednesday night.

The AmeriQuest Rangers Field BallPark at Arlington, or whatever it's called these days, is really a heckuva nice place to watch a game. It opened in 1994, which means that this is its 17th year, and frankly, it still looks brand-spanking new. The Rangers and their fans have done a great job of keeping the place in pristine shape, and there's no reason to think that this Texas baseball cathedral should ever be as decrepit ans outdated as, say, Yankee Stadium used to be. On the other hand, I'd be willing to wager a BetUS bonus code that another 60 years might put a few cracks in the facade, both literally and figuratively.

I understand that there are all sorts of cool things to do in the ballpark, such as a huge baseball museum, a walk of fame, a picnic area and other stuff, but I missed all of that, since I got there right as the game was starting. I sat in the box seats between first base and the right field foul pole, and found that I had a pretty good view of just about everything, a comfortable seat, and a cool breeze for most of the game.

In the last three innings or so, the cool breeze gave way to some fairly impressive swirling winds, presumably caused in some part by the steady, straight winds coming directly into the ballpark from the outfield, keeping the pennants as straight and stiff as writing tablets for a solid hour. How tiny little Eric Patterson managed to hot a home run into that is beyond my understanding of the laws of physics.

Unfortunately for the Oaklands, that was their only run. The Rangers, though they took a few innings to find their stroke, managed 10 of them, including five homers of their own, mostly before the winds started. Josh Hamilton and Vlad Guerrero hit back to back homers off starting pitcher Gio Gonzales and (not much) relief pitcher Chad Gaudin.

Yes, that Chad Gaudin. Fortunately for Yankee fans, the Yankee brass were not fooled by Gaudin's two months of smoke-and-mirrors pitching in Pinstripes toward the end of last season, perhaps thanks to the info they found at Pinnacle Sportsbook Review, and they let him go as a free agent. For his part, though he had not been good this year, Gaudin was at least striking out about a batter per inning in 2010.

Entering a game with an ERA of 6.23 and making it worse is no easy feat, but don’t tell Chad that. No siree. After giving up that homer to Vlad, Gaudin allowed two more homers, also back to back, in the next inning, making this the first time in his major league career he’d ever surrendered three homers in a so-called “relief” appearance. One of those was to catcher Max Ramirez, only the second of his brief major league career, and the other was to Michael Young. No, the Yankees don’t miss this guy.

The Rangers, cheered on by 26,682 of their fans, managed to take over first place in their division by a game, this after a tough, extra-innings loss to the Oaklands the night before. The loudest and most obnoxious of these fans happened to be sitting about 15 feet in front of me, the realization of which initially annoyed me – how do I always manage to find these people? – but later gave me an appreciation for the fact that baseball games are meant to be enjoyed, and that this man was doing little more than enjoying himself. A lot.

Having seen more games in New York and Philadelphia than anywhere else, I’m no stranger to obnoxious fans. But this guy was not like those. Primarily, he was sober. He may have had a beer or two, but clearly was not drunk, as evidenced by the fact that every time, and seriously, I mean EVERY time the organist played something on the loudspeaker, this guy got up and danced to it, or ran in place, or mimicked playing the organ himself, or whatever.

I briefly even considered sitting next to him myself, if only to save me from the dead-fish middle aged woman on my right and the two hipsters on my left who were too cool or jaded or apathetic to bother talking to me.

After the third inning I went to get something to eat and decided to take full advantage of Wednesday Dollar Dog Night, buying three of the generic pink tubes of nondescript ground up what-not. And a beer. Some dark, local brew that was pretty solid.

The dogs, I’m convinced, must be brought in especially for dollar dog night, as I can’t imagine that a major league baseball team that once spent $55 million on Chan Ho Park would be able to sleep at night charging $3.50 for hot dogs that clearly where not worth the effort to remove small pieces of bone, or gristle, or, for all I know, polycarbonate from them before turning them into franks. Seriously, all three of them had something in them that I was forced to remove from my teeth and examine further, a texture consummate not with food but with perhaps sand or a rough polishing compound.

Upon my return I took a different seat and ended up near some friendlier fans, and closer to the loud one, who by then had recruited at least two other young men and a boy of about eight to remove their shirts and sing and chant and dance around the aisles with him. At least until the Fun Police showed up in the form of a Rangers security guard. At one point, during the 7^th inning stretch, as two of them were square dancing in the aisle, he ordered them back to their seats, which was lamentably understandable, as concrete stairs are not exactly the safest environment to go running around in circles.

But later, when they were doing nothing more than cheering and chanting and yelling and pumping their fists, the same curmudgeonly member of the F.P. came back and ordered them to sit down and (I assume) stop having so much fun. This is a baseball game, dammit, not an Irish wake. Now sit down and think about what you’ve done, mister.

And then, to make sure they complied with the official F.P. Decree Against Having Fun at Baseball Games, he sat down right behind them. This was possible because, of course, there was nobody behind them. For, like, five or six rows. Which means that they were blocking the view of exactly nobody, were not drunk, were not throwing anything or hitting anybody or picking fights. At worst, they could be accused of yelling too loud. At a ballgame. Fanatics, indeed.

They did, at one point, encourage the crowd to boo a fan wearing an Oakland jersey, which isn't unusual. What was unusual was that the guy wore a garish yellow replica jersey that said "RUDI 26" on the back, which means that this particular fan was old-school and knew his stuff, and didn't particularly care that few people would remember or appreciate his favorite player. I imagine that someone showing up where the Red Sox are the visiting wearing a George Scott jersey might be similarly regarded, and similarly underappreciated.

But besides the cheap-ass hot dogs – which I can hardly complain about because, as everyone knows, you get what you pay for – and the F.P., there wasn’t much wrong with the Rangers or their ballpark on this night. Well, they for some reason forgot to set off the fireworks when Ramirez hit his homer, even though they did so for all of the other Rangers’ bombs, the fifth and last of which came smoking off the bat of rookie firstbaseman Justin Smoak.

A Wave got started late in the blowout game, and though I’ve been at dozens of games where this was attempted with some success, none of which ever made it around the ballpark more than three times, the origins of the movement had never previously occurred to me. There’s probably some Official Story as to when and where the Wave first started, and who thought of it, but whomever is responsible could thank one and one thing only: boredom.

There are few things less exciting than a game that’s way out of reach, even if yours is the team that’s winning. And of course there’s little to do, if you don’t want to leave early, other than start some kind of chant, except that only maybe a hundred people can hear even the loudest voice in the midst of a large ballpark, even a relatively quiet one. Even if you got a chant started, who would know? And how long would it last? Only til the next batter struck out or got on base or whatever. But the Wave? Sheer, simple genius.

All it takes is standing up and sitting down, throwing your arms up in the air in sequence with 27,000 others, and maybe a loud “Oh!” or “Hey!” when you do so. It could go on like that for an entire inning or more. And everybody can do it. Everybody knows exactly what to do and when, and there’s no worry that your initial chant of “Julio Borbon, Julio! [clap, clap-clap] will sound on TV like “Here we go, Morons, here we go!” [clap, clap-clap]. Or vice-versa.

Anyway, the Rangers.

Additionally, they managed to get prized pitching prospect Derek Holland a Win in his first major league appearance of his sophomore season. Holland had been pretty terrible in his rookie year, amassing an 8-13 record and a Gaudin-esque ERA of 6.12. But on this night, after having torn up the PCL for a month, Holland was very good, striking out seven and walking only one in six scoreless innings.

He was followed up by Darren O’Day, for whom both the obnoxious fans and, when he got out of the inning, the public address system, sang a chant of “O-DAY o-dayo-dayo-DAY, o-DAY, OH-oh DAY!!!” Doug Mathis pitched the last two innings for Texas, allowing the homer by Patterson, but little else, despite the fact that he only threw strikes about half the time.

Not that it should be so difficult to dominate a team like the Oakland A’s. Their cleanup hitter had a slugging percentage of about .350 coming into the game, and two thirds of the lineup was hitting about .250 or worse, generally without any power either. Heck, even their designated “hitter”, Josh Donaldson, was hitting .071 coming into the game, and his 0-for-4 dropped him down even further into the abyss.

I saw Donaldson a few years ago, when he was a hot hitting catching prospect in the Cubs' class A short season team in Boise. He was sent to the A's in the Rich Harden trade almost exactly a year after I saw him play. Back then I'd have put a few bucks down on him to pan out as a solid major leaguer, especially if I had a bookmaker bonus code. He's cooled down quite a bit since that hot season in the high Idaho desert, but still shows glimpses of the keen batting eye and doubles power he displayed last season in AA, such as last night, when he singled in the tying run in the 4th inning. Maybe he's better when he catches.

Catcher Landon Powell looked promising as he laced a ball into the left-centerfield gap and then dragged his lumbering, 6’1”, 260 lb frame around the infield, stretching a double into a double, as they say. He singled again later, less dramatically, but other than he and Daric Barton, nobody else on the team got on base more than once.

I expect the A's to more or less disappear from contention as the year wears on, that's my second half betting advice. Unless something truly special happens, like the King of Bradenia hurling another dozen or so perfectos, they just don’t have the bats to keep in the race. The Rangers may have both the bats and the pitching, if Holland is the real thing. But the Texas heat has caused many a Rangers team to fade over the course of the year, and this one is not above that fate.

At least the ballpark is still nice.

Why the Yankees Dominate the Minnesota Twins

The Yankees completed a four game home sweep of the Minnesota Twins last night, stretching their current winning streak to six games, four of which were won by only one run. This improves the Yankees' overall record to 21-17, bringing the team within 4.5 games of the Blue Jays for first place in the American League East division.

A brief look back at the four games:

Friday - Yankees 5, Twins 4: In a game started by two youngsters of whom much is expected, Phil Hughes and Felipe Liriano were both gone by the end of the sixth inning, leaving the game to be decided by the bullpens. Justin Morneau hit two homers and Derek Jeter and Joe Mauer each hit one, as did the scrappy Brett Gardner, his second in two days. This one was an inside-the-park job, though, more his game than the one he hit in Toronto the night before.

Down 4-1 in the 6th, the Yankees scored a run in the 7th and then three more in the bottom of the ninth, the last two on a walk-off, bases-loaded, two-out single by Melky Cabrera, who's gone a long way toward redeeming himself from both his horrid 2008 season and my skepticism of his value to the team. Twins closer Joe Nathan took the loss, while the Yankees' best reliever never left the bullpen, which came in handy for...

Saturday - Yankees 6, Twins 4 (11 innings): Nick Blackburn and Joba Chamberlain started, and each pitched reasonably well, but again the bullpens would decide matters in the end. Morneau and Mauer each homered off Joba, and Mark Teixeira hit a three-run jack in the third, his 8th of the year and drove in his 4th run of the game with a game-tying single in the bottom of the 8th to make it 4-4.

Bucking standard closer procedure, manager Joe Girardi brought in a well rested Mariano Rivera in the tied 9th inning, and he threw two scoreless innings to keep the game going. Without their own closer (who had thrown 27 pitches the night before, his fourth consecutive day of work) the Twins were forced to turn the ball over to journeyman lefty Craig Breslow, who walked Teixeira and then allowed a walk-off homer to Alex Rodriguez, his first hit in the new Yankee Stadium.

Sunday - Yankees 3, Twins 2: On the anniversary of David Wells' perfect game against the Twins in 1998, this game was appropriately a pitching duel that remained scoreless until the 7th inning. Twins' starter Kevin Slowey provided the best pitching line of the day, going 7.2 innings with eight strikeouts, no walks, and only two runs allowed. Yankees' starter A.J. Burnett walked six and needed 123 pitches to get through 6.2 innings, again leaving the game in the bullpen's capable hands.

Alex Rodriguez hit another homer, a solo shot off Slowey in the 7th. A double and two sacrifices tied the game at 2-2. Jonathan Albaladejo pitched out of trouble in the 7th and then back into it in the 8th, whereupon journeyman batting practice pitcher Brett Tomko rose up from the ashes to get two outs with the bases loaded and preserve the tie.

Girardi brought in Rivera in the tied 9th inning again, and was not disappointed as he pitched a scoreless inning. Alfredo Aceves kept the Twins at bay in the top of the 10th, which allowed Johnny Damon's one-out solo homer in the bottom half of the inning, for the Yankees' third straight walk-off win.

Monday - Yankees 7, Twins 6: Andy Pettitte pitched 6.2 innings allowing 12 hits, one walk and four earned runs in the only game of the series in which either starting pitcher got a decision. Twins starter Glen Perkins got only two outs and allowed six earned runs in the worst start of his career, and has not had a Quality Start since April 19th. On the plus side, R.A. Dickey provided 4.1 innings of scoreless relief as he continues his comeback as a knuckleballer.

Mark Teixiera homered from both sides of the plate and A-Rod smacked his third bomb in three games, back-to-back with Teixiera in the first. Michael Cuddyer and Denard Span each homered for the Twins, the latter coming in the 8th off Edwar Ramirez. He and Phil Coke made the game interesting in the late innings, allowing the Twins to come within a run before finally capping the game and the sweep with a grounder to second base.


Overall, the Yankees were not exactly dominant in the series, winning the four games by a total of five runs, three of them in their last at bat. But their starters were mostly solid, the offense scored just enough and the bullpen posted a 3.07 ERA in almost 15 innings of work.

Winning close games in your last at-bat is not a recipe for long-term success, however, as anyone who knows anything about sports odds will tell you. The Yankees have actually been outscored over the season despite their winning record. Most of that is die to the 22-4 drubbing they received at the hands of the Tribe last month, but even removing that game puts them only slightly in the black.

Amazingly, the Yankees have dominated the Twins in this millennium, winning 40 out of 58 contests in the regular season, plus six of eight in the postseason, for an overall record of 46-20 since 2001. This is the second best winning percentage they have against any team in the AL in that span, behind only the dismal Kansas City Royals.

They do have higher winning percentages against some NL teams in Interleague play, though these are only in a handful of games. Oddly enough the Yankees' worst winning percentage is against the Reds, to whom they have dropped four of six contests. Fortunately they only occasionaly play a series in the Cincinnati Reds schedule.

Regardless, the Yankees' continued success against the Twins is quite remarkable. You'd expect that the team with the best overall record in this century would do well against the lowly Royals, who have been the worst team of the 2000's, who have had only one winning record (83-79) in the last decade and a half. No surprise there.

But the Twins? They've got the 7th best record in all of baseball in that time, a .543 winning percentage in spite of their small payroll. They've had four playoff appearances in the last eight years, two Cy Young awards, an MVP award, a catcher who wins batting titles, a continuing influx of young pitching talent...so how are they so terrible against the Yankees?

At Yankee Stadium (either of them) it's even worse. At the Metrodome the Twins are actually somewhat respectable, with only a 13-16 record agains tthe Yankees, but in New York? The Yankees are 24-5 at home against the Twins since their last World Series victory, including a current stretch of eight in a row going back to July 2007. The Twins have not won a series against the Yankees in New York since 2001, and in one stretch went two whole seasons (2002-2003) without winning any games at all against the Yankees, losing 13 straight.

And there really isn't any explanation for it. The Yankees have generally been a better team than the Twins in the last eight seasons and change, but that much better? No, of course not. The Yankees tend to play better at home, just like most teams, but again, not that much better. Maybe it's just a combination of being slightly overmatched and slightly intimidated by the big crowds in New York.

Maybe it's the Yankees' propensity for hitting homers combined with the Twins' inability to prevent them. In the last eight years, the Yankees have never finished worse than 4th in the AL in home runs hit, while the Twins have only once finished better than 8th in the AL in homers allowed. Interestingly, they usually do much better than that in ERA, finishing no worse than 7th each of the last eight seasons, with an average of less than 5th.

But it seems they have kept the team ERA down mostly by avoiding walks, and therefore extra baserunners when they allow all those home runs. The Twins have finished in the first or second in fewest walks allowed each of the last eight years, with the exception of 2002, when they were 3rd. The Yankees, however, generally have fairly patient hitters, having been in the top three in drawing walks seven of the last nine seasons, including 2009. That puts a damper on the Twins' strategy perhaps, and lets the Yankees in the door. And so when the inevitable homers are allowed, the Yankees get more bang for their buck than most other teams do, since they tend to have more runners on base.

But it's really the homers that are killing the Twins. Indeed, the Twins have allowed 90 home runs to the Yankees in the 58 games they've played since 2001, a rate of 1.55 HR/game, slightly above the Yankees' overall rate of 1.34/game in the past eight years and change. Twins pitchers, accustomed to allowing about 1.1 homers per game, must find the Yankees quite a shock. Too bad for the Yankees they only get to play them a few times a year.

A Sad End to Two Careers?

The Yankees pulled out a win last night.

No thanks to Roger Clemens, who lasted less than three innings before giving up the ghost, but not before giving up three runs to the Cleveland Indians.

For his part, if that was the last time that Roger Clemens ever pitches on a major league ballfield,

1) The man who struck out more batters than anyone in major league history this side of Nolan Ryan went out on his own terms, striking out Victor Martinez before he walked off the field forever.

B) He didn't take the loss.

and

iii) He has perhaps stored up enough good deeds in his 24-year career that he didn't necessarily need to be thanked for last night's performance, one way or the other.

His efforts last night reminded me a little of his start in Florida in Game 4 of the 2003 World Series, when he threw nine pitches to Luis Castillo in an effort to whiff him in what was (he threatened) his last major league game. For a guy with more Cy Young Awards than anyone, more wins than any pitcher since World War II, it's hard to begrudge him the chance to go out the way he wants. He's earned that much, and more.

But Clemens may not be the most significant Yankee whose career is coming to an abrupt end.

Manager Joe Torre, as you likely know by now, has been threatened with losing his job if the Yankees don't advance to the AL Championship Series. My initial thought, when I read that yesterday, was something like "Wow, he doesn't have to win the World Series? Steinbrenner's going soft!" But of course, there's more to it than that. I'm not sure I agree with Rob Neyer's assessment that anything King George says is, "little more than the ravings of an old man with little real power and just an occasional grasp of the reality around him. "

Frankly, whether he's got any grasp of reality at all is completely immaterial. Last I checked, George M. Steinbrenner III still owned controlling interest in the New York Yankees, Inc., which means that even if he's gone completely batshit crazy, he can still hire and fire anyone he chooses. Including the manager who brought him four World Series titles and has kept his team in the playoffs every season for 12 straight years.

If this is the end of his Yankee career, I would expect that this also would mark the end of his major league career. He's been threatening to retire for years anyway. With four World Championships, a certain Hall of Fame plaque waiting for him, more money than he could ever spend, and 67 summers under his belt, I doubt that he'll be pounding the pavement this winter looking for other employ. Mark my words: If Torre's fired, then this is it. He's done.

Most knowledgeable fans would suggest that Torre does not deserve to be fired (not that it matters), even if the Yankees do lose.

Game 1: He went with his "ace" pitcher to start the Division Series, Chien Ming Wang, a 19-game winner who came apart at the seams. The offense chipped away at the opposing ace, getting him out of the game after five innings, but they couldn't string together enough hits to compensate for the 8 runs allowed by Wang, much less the other four that the bullpen gave up.

Game 2: The sensible choice to start the game, Andy Pettitte, proved to be a good one, this time. Pettitte gave them 6.1 shutout innings and left with a 1-0 lead and everyone in the bullpen well rested to protect it. Little did he know though that the Indians would sone have several thousand more players on their team, in the form of mosquitoes who happened to be at their worst when Yanks rookie Joba Chamberlain was trying to protect that lead. Torre couldn't have done much about that. Clemens says he would have pulled the team, if the choice were his, but does the manager even have that option? I don't think so.

Later in that game, with the score tied at 1-1 going into the 9th inning, Torre actually brought in Mariano Rivera, in a non-save situation, apparently having learned from the mistake that cost him Game 4 of the 2003 World Series. Unfortunately, he followed up Rivera's two shutout innings by bringing in Luis Vizcaino, who made about as much sense as anyone, given that they didn't have a lefty in the bullpen to face Grady Sizemore and/or Travis Hafner. And who promptly lost the game for them. I guess you could blame Torre for that.

Or you could blame Clemens, if you wanted. It was Clemens who told Torre he would be able to start on Sunday, and so Torre was forced to put Clemens on the postseason roster and leave Ron Villone off. But of course, Steinbrenner doesn't get to exercise some form of power by blaming a departing, retiring free agent for his misfortune.

Game 3: Torre starts Clemens, of course, who told him he'd be able to pitch, but apparently pushed the envelope a bit too much and couldn't get the job done. Rookie Phil Hughes, however, capablypicked up the slack and gave them the bullpen help they needed to come back and win one. A lot has been made of this win, as though the Yankees had been asleep at the wheel for the first two games of the ALDS and their bats finally "woke up" in game 3.

In reality, they just had the good fortune of facing a pitcher who wasn't so darn good as C.C. Sabathia or Fausto Carmona. There's a reason that those two guys each won 19 games and Jake Westbrook won six. Well, OK, there are several reasons, but the biggest one is that he's not that good a pitcher. After he left, they did score two more runs, but they were unearned, thanks to a Trot Nixon error. As I write this, the Yankee bats have yet to score an earned run off the Cleveland bullpen, in 10.1 innings. (Update: Of course, literally as I typed the period on that sentence, I looked up to see Alex Rodriguez hit a homer off Rafael Perez to put the Yankees within three runs.) But still, you get the point. Westbrook, and only Westbrook, was the reason the Yanks won last night.

Game 4: Torre's choice to start Wang on three days' rest instead of Mike Mussina (who had not pitched in 10 days) was a curious one, but again, with the old (if not necessarily accurate) adage about sinker-ball pitchers being better on short rest, and Wang's remarkable superior performance at Yankee Stadium vs. on the road over the course of his career, you could see the logic in it. Unfortunately, logic soon gave way to reality, and the reality was pretty ugly. Wang's sinker didn't, and everybody in the Stadium knw it pretty quickly. Taking him out in the second inning to bring in Mike Mussina made Torre look like he realized his own error and wanted to stop the bleeding as soon as possible, so that even if it wasn't appropriate to blame him for the decision before the game, it looked like it was afterwards.

If they lose this game tonight (and as I write this the Tribe needs to get only six more outs without giving up three runs to eliminate the Yankees) then Torre will have gone out in much the same way that Clemens did: with a sputter and a slow, quiet walk off the field, instead of the glory and granduer you would expect for such an icon.

We'll miss you, Joe.