The remarkable thing about baseball in the 21st century is that there really is no break in the action any longer. On the first day after the World Series ended, we had one trade, one near-trade, and the news that one of the top potential free agents, Bobby Abreu, would not be reaching the market. So even as the Yankees celebrate with a parade and the Phillies pack up a season two wins short of their goal, both front offices are looking ahead to 2010 and the decisions that will have to be made to get the teams back to the World Series.
Before the 2007 season, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman had T-shirts made up that read "Mission 27." It was just one more piece of motivation for a franchise that defines itself by a singular annual goal -- winning the World Series -- and a reminder that anything less than achieving that goal is a failure.
You're either with them -- or you hate them. That sums up the way baseball fans feel about the New York Yankees. And that's also why the team, which clinched its 27th World Series on Wednesday night, is the Goldman Sachs of American sports.
The following is a screed about the Yankees' payroll. If you are a Yankees fan uninterested in a screed about the payroll, don't read it. You won't enjoy it. Go out, buy a championship T-shirt, reminisce about this great team, enjoy the victory. I'm telling you: Don't read it.
NEW YORK -- The aroma that one perceived, as one walked off the field and inside toward the home clubhouse in the moments after the Yankees had won their 27th World Series on Wednesday night, was strong. It was one part expensive perfume, and one part expensive champagne, and it was unmistakable. It was Eau de WAG.
The New York Yankees, who became World Series champs for the 27th time Wednesday night, logged the highest payroll in baseball for the 2009 season. This time, they definitely got what they paid for.
NEW YORK -- The unique Yankees foursome of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada probably didn't need to win one more World Series together to prove anything. But they did, anyway. And they did it 13 years after their first one together. No other foursome can say that.
NEW YORK -- The Yankees clubhouse reeked of champagne, it smelled the way you might imagine Don Ho's living room used to smell. Well, this is what you get when you win a World Series. Here Mariano Rivera stood in the doorway waiting for family. There Mark Teixeira wore goggles and talked about how God led him to the right team. Over there two Yankees players prepared to double-team Johnny Damon with a champagne attack. The sound was laughter and happy souts and the popping of champagne corks.
NEW YORK -- The Yankees christened the first season in their new ballpark the same way they opened their old stadium in 1923: with a World Series championship.
"Mr. Steinbrenner deserves another championship." --Joe Girardi, after the Yankees won the pennant
The remarkable thing about baseball in the 21st century is that there really is no break in the action any longer. On the first day after the World Series ended, we had one trade, one near-trade, and the news that one of the top potential free agents, Bobby Abreu, would not be reaching the market. So even as the Yankees celebrate with a parade and the Phillies pack up a season two wins short of their goal, both front offices are looking ahead to 2010 and the decisions that will have to be made to get the teams back to the World Series.
Before the 2007 season, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman had T-shirts made up that read "Mission 27." It was just one more piece of motivation for a franchise that defines itself by a singular annual goal -- winning the World Series -- and a reminder that anything less than achieving that goal is a failure.
You're either with them -- or you hate them. That sums up the way baseball fans feel about the New York Yankees. And that's also why the team, which clinched its 27th World Series on Wednesday night, is the Goldman Sachs of American sports.
The following is a screed about the Yankees' payroll. If you are a Yankees fan uninterested in a screed about the payroll, don't read it. You won't enjoy it. Go out, buy a championship T-shirt, reminisce about this great team, enjoy the victory. I'm telling you: Don't read it.
NEW YORK -- The aroma that one perceived, as one walked off the field and inside toward the home clubhouse in the moments after the Yankees had won their 27th World Series on Wednesday night, was strong. It was one part expensive perfume, and one part expensive champagne, and it was unmistakable. It was Eau de WAG.
The New York Yankees, who became World Series champs for the 27th time Wednesday night, logged the highest payroll in baseball for the 2009 season. This time, they definitely got what they paid for.
NEW YORK -- The unique Yankees foursome of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada probably didn't need to win one more World Series together to prove anything. But they did, anyway. And they did it 13 years after their first one together. No other foursome can say that.
NEW YORK -- The Yankees clubhouse reeked of champagne, it smelled the way you might imagine Don Ho's living room used to smell. Well, this is what you get when you win a World Series. Here Mariano Rivera stood in the doorway waiting for family. There Mark Teixeira wore goggles and talked about how God led him to the right team. Over there two Yankees players prepared to double-team Johnny Damon with a champagne attack. The sound was laughter and happy souts and the popping of champagne corks.
NEW YORK -- The Yankees christened the first season in their new ballpark the same way they opened their old stadium in 1923: with a World Series championship.
"Mr. Steinbrenner deserves another championship." --Joe Girardi, after the Yankees won the pennant
1. So the World Series comes down to this: the old and familiar. Stop me if you have heard this before: a Yankees team with Andy Pettitte, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera trying to get through Pedro Martinez to a world championship. Game 5 barely was over in Philadelphia when even Jeter, rarely reflective, immediately understood that the World Series is reduced to a most familiar confrontation, an old narrative well told.
PHILADELPHIA -- While the Yankees have to be considered a fairly heavy favorite with only one win needed as they head back to the Bronx, the Phillies still have some characteristically serious fight in them. Until last rites are read to the Phillies, they should be assumed to have plenty of life.
PHILADELPHIA -- The biggest catchphrase in this World Series, besides instant replay of course, is short rest. Who's getting it? Who's giving it? Who's refusing it? Charlie Manuel did not ask Cliff Lee to pitch on short rest in Game 4 and the Phillies lost. Joe Girardi did ask A.J. Burnett to pitch on short rest in Game 5 and the Yankees lost. Both managers exposed themselves to criticism even though they made exact opposite moves.
Mr. October is taken. So is Mr. November. Chase Utley will have to settle for a historic hot streak that has helped push the World Series to a Game 6 for the first time in six years.
The World Series may not be over, but many fans of the defending Philadelphia Phillies are apparently giving up, leading to a plunge in the asking price for tickets being sold through ticket reselling Web sites.
PHILADELPHIA -- For opposing pitchers, the Yankees offense must seem as unwelcome and inevitable as the onset of winter. It's going to arrive sooner or later, and when it does, it's going to last a long time, it's going to be brutal and it's going to send you scurrying for cover. The Yankees 8-5 win in Game 3 of the World Series on Saturday night brought the 2009 baseball season ever closer to its winter slumber. That the end seems near is due largely to the way Yankees bats finally emerged from their own somnambulant state to take a 2-1 lead in the Series.
Andy Pettitte gave up more runs than he had in any of his first three starts this postseason but got them back by singling home the tying run and scoring the go-ahead tally.
The pair treat World Series fans - and players - to a raucous rendition of "Empire State of Mind"
So let's start here: I don't buy it. I don't buy that a person with a beating heart and fully operational stomach and sweat glands in his palms could pitch his first World Series game and not feel nervous. Not at all? And this wasn't just any World Series game. This was Game 1 of the World Series, and this was against the New York Yankees, and this was at Yankee Stadium. Not nervous? Ridiculous. Inhuman. I don't buy it. Heck, I'm nervous writing this column.
NEW YORK -- Even when he caught a ball behind his back, Cliff Lee merely shrugged.
Back in 1977, when the New York Yankees won their first World Championship in 15 years, they had a team filled with ex-Cleveland Indians. Or anyway, it felt that way as a kid growing in up Cleveland.
NEW YORK -- Star Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, an amateur Jimmy the Greek, says his Phillies are going to win the World Series in five games. Rollins is on a few-year roll with his predictions, although the Yankees generally seemed more amused than concerned about Rollins' latest. "Nostradamus,'' Jorge Posada called him, though it was hard to tell whether Posada was lauding or mocking Rollins.
To read Lee Jenkins' five reasons the Phillies will win, click here.
To read Ben Reiters' five reasons why the Yankees will win, click here.
Before the ALCS and NLCS, I identified the players on each of the four teams who had underperformed in the opening round of the playoffs and thus needed to step up their performance to help their teams win their respective league pennants. With another round in the books, here are the players on the two pennant winners who remain concerns heading into the World Series.
1. Let's be honest: The Angels didn't show well in New York. In three games at Yankee Stadium, Los Angeles went 0-3, committed seven errors, walked 17 batters and looked jittery. I am starting to believe that there really is something to my East Coast Baseball theory. West Coast teams went 1-6 this postseason in New York, Philadelphia and Boston. That makes West Coast teams 3-19 (.136) when they come to the Northeast for postseason baseball since 2003, and 10-38 (.208) in the wild-card era. The advantage may be that Northeast teams play in postseason-type environments all year long, where baseball means so much to the fan base that every 0-for-12 streak is a two-hour talk radio rant.
NEW YORK -- This Yankees team is a lot like many past pin-striped champions, with its emphasis on pitching, power and payroll. And although it'd been six years since the storied franchise's last trip to the World Series, in another reminder of past champions, Mr. Steinbrenner recalled the usual script. Only this time it was the young Mr. Steinbrenner, Prince Hal, who sounded in celebration like he was impersonating his father.
1. As the postseason began, Cardinals pitcher John Smoltz gave me a stunning piece of advice about how to stop the Yankees this October. Remember, it was the powerful New York lineup that knocked Smoltz clear out of the American League and very nearly all the way into retirement with a resounding thumping back in August.
It was 12:01 a.m. when the clock struck midnight for the Los Angeles Angels. It is, of course, somewhat ridiculous to cast a club with the game's seventh-highest payroll ($116.7M), and one that won the second-most games (97), in a Cinderella role. But there was a sense that if the Angels somehow won two in a row and took the series, it would be a shocking accomplishment. Not the equivalent of the Red Sox' recovery from a 3-0 deficit to win the 2004 ALCS, perhaps, but something close to it.
NEW YORK -- The pitching line could have been from nearly any of the past dozen Yankees' postseasons: Win, Andy Pettitte; Save, Mariano Rivera.
Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman will be at ALCS Game 6 at Yankee Stadium as a guest of the Yankees, sources said.
Phil Coke and Mariano Rivera wrapped up their pregame catch shortly before 6 p.m. As Coke descended the steps of the Yankees dugout, he saw David Cone and stopped to talk, telling the former pitcher and team broadcaster, "I'm excited, I can't wait to get this game going."
In the minutes after the Angels' stunning 7-6 Game 5 victory over the Yankees Thursday night in Anaheim, the Yankees' clubhouse attendants were busy resealing with thick gray duct tape the several large cardboard boxes filled with hats and T-shirts that advertised an ALCS title. The boxes had been cut open, perhaps, after the top of the seventh, in which the Yankees all at once stormed back from a 4-0 deficit to take a 6-4 lead.
1. The Phillies suddenly are big fans of the Angels and The Weather Channel. It's not that Philadelphia would rather play Los Angeles than New York in the World Series. It's that the Phillies would benefit from both teams extending their pitching and, if rain in New York washes out Game 6 on Saturday, giving the American League champion less time to set up its pitching for the World Series.
ANAHEIM, Calif. -- You could see it in the faces of the Yankees and Angels players and managers in those moments after this game ended: They didn't know. Whatever people had to ask, they didn't know. What were they thinking? Didn't know. What did this mean? Didn't know. What were they feeling out there? Didn't know.
PHILADELPHIA -- The Toronto Blue Jays won the World Series in 1992 and 1993, but it was not until their final act that they earned true acceptance and appreciation. They had 96 wins one year, 95 the next, a very good team that fell just short of great. Then Joe Carter came to the batter's box in the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series, sent a moonbeam over the left-field foul pole, and took his delirious lap around the dirt cutout at Skydome. By the time he reached home plate, the Blue Jays were a dynasty or at least something close to it.
1. Yankees catcher Jorge Posada made his answer doubly clear when asked why the Yankees are on a 5-1 postseason run after going 4-13 in their previous 17 postseason games. The difference? "Pitching. Pitching," Posada said.
ANAHEIM -- CC Sabathia's 89th pitch on Tuesday night came on an 0-2 count against Angels catcher Mike Napoli, with one out in the top of the seventh inning and Sabathia's Yankees leading 5-1. The pitch was significant not only because of its result -- Sabathia struck out Napoli on a foul tip to Jorge Posada -- but because it put Sabathia's transcendent performance into stark relief against that of the Angels' starter, Scott Kazmir, who threw 89 pitches of his own. Whereas Sabathia's first 89 pitches resulted in 20 Angels outs, Kazmir's 89 pitches produced just 12 Yankees outs, and manager Mike Scioscia pulled him after he allowed a single to the first batter he faced in the top of the fifth.
ANAHEIM -- You probably know that the New York Yankees hit their best in the late innings. Here's a little chart that shows the numbers of the Yankees offense this season:
ANAHEIM -- As dusk turned to night on Monday in southern California, one thing was clear about the Yankees' Joe Girardi as a manager: he is very, very brave. Girardi made so many questionable and unconventional decisions during Game 3 of this ALCS, and meddled with his talented club so much, that he had to know that if his Yankees somehow lost the game that he'd be lambasted by New York media and fans who don't exactly react well when unconventionality leads to failure. The Yankees lost the game, 5-4, on an RBI double by Angels catcher Jeff Mathis with two outs in the bottom of the 11th. Let the lambasting start.
The ball soared high into the misty air, reached its apex and, with two outs in the bottom of the first inning on Friday night, began to fall back to the earth where the infield at Yankee Stadium ends and leftfield begins. Angels third baseman Chone Figgins was certain that shortstop Erick Aybar would catch this routine pop-up off the bat of Hideki Matsui. The ball kept falling. Aybar was certain that Figgins would catch it. The ball kept falling. Figgins looked at Aybar. Aybar looked at Figgins. The ball kept falling. A moment after a look of panic registered on each of their faces, the ball was on the ground and Johnny Damon crossed home plate for the Yankees' second run of the inning, which would prove to be all the runs they would require to win this first game of the ALCS by the ultimate score of 4-1.
NEW YORK -- It was cold, but not freezing, and it rained, but only a little and never hard.
NEW YORK -- Well, at least the umpires have to be feeling a tiny bit better today. Turns out they aren't the only ones who are human in this mistake-filled October.
1. Even without a rainout, the Yankees or Angels could become world champions by playing 11 games in 28 days without ever being scheduled to play three days in a row. Springsteen would be embarrassed by that schedule, and he just turned 60. That's why if you're a baseball fan, you root for rainouts the next two nights in New York.
The Yankees' on-field celebration after sweeping away the Twins last Sunday night in Minnesota was among the more stilted in recent memory. In the seconds after Brendan Harris' groundout to Derek Jeter ended both the game and the series, most of the Yankees jogged to the area behind the pitchers' mound and more or less stood there, before someone decided that they should probably jump up and down for awhile. So they did that in a huddle for perhaps 30 seconds. Then they stopped and shook hands and gradually retreated into the visitors' clubhouse.
1. How is Mariano Rivera looking right about now? Not that we didn't already know that the Yankees closer is the best all-time at what he does, but the Division Series, in which closer after closer blew up in the ninth inning, showed why Rivera has been the team's ultimate weapon all these years.
MINNEAPOLIS --- About forty-five minutes after Mariano Rivera induced the weak groundout from Brendan Harris that ended this American League Division Series, a few Twins fans lingered in some hidden corner of the Metrodome, testing, for one last time, the stadium's acoustics. "Let's go, Twinkies!" they yelled, their voices echoing throughout the ballpark, well after workers had dug up home plate and had begun to pull the advertisements down from the outfield wall. It was the last time that those words will ever be shouted here.
The baseball is compelling, the umpiring dreadful.
This was the one, the Minnesota Twins were thinking. This had to be the one. Five times this season, before Game 2, the Twins had raced out to leads at Yankee Stadium, and five times the Yankees had ultimately broken their hearts. Never before, though, had the Twins had so many chances. Never before had the heartbreak been so agonizing.
NEW YORK -- A.J. Burnett is the key to the Yankees' postseason.
If the baseball playoffs are truly a crapshoot (as some contend), well then the 1996-2000 Yankees got awfully lucky. And nobody gets that lucky. Good fortune is always a help, of course, and few figured that the 2003 Marlins or 2006 Cardinals would prevail. But that doesn't mean those teams won on luck. Perhaps we just need better prognosticators. With that in mind, here are my seedings from one through eight (as you can guess, my first-round winners are the Yankees, Red Sox, Phillies and Dodgers).
NEW YORK -- Near the end of the Yankees' one-hour-and-45-minute workout on Tuesday, as workers swept and power-washed new Yankee Stadium's concourses in anticipation of its first-ever playoff game on Wednesday evening, a driving, drum-heavy rock song blared over the ballpark's P.A. system. Some quick Internet research revealed the song to be something called Uprising, by a band named Muse. "Rise up and take the power back," the singer bellowed melodramatically, while the Yanks shagged fly balls and took batting practice. "It's time the fat cats had a heart attack/ You know that their time's coming to an end/ We have to unify and watch our flag ascend."
Like many non-New Yorkers, I root against the Yankees. It's been a losing proposition in recent years -- last season was the first time they missed the playoffs since the 20th century.
I have no idea who's going to win the World Series. To end the year dancing on the field, all a team has to do is win 11 of 19 games, and no team in baseball is so bad that it can't do that. The Kansas City Royals, a miserable club, won 12 of 19 earlier this month during a run that included two series with the Detroit Tigers and one each with the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Angels, playoff teams all. Enter the Royals in the postseason tournament and their chances of walking off with gaudy jewelry wouldn't be all that worse than those of the mighty Yankees.
None of baseball's certain playoff entrants are playing great except the win-a-day Yankees now. The powerful Cardinals have slowed to a crawl, while the stacked Red Sox and Dodgers, in particular, have appeared to be trying to perfect the art of backing in.
As close a race as is the American League Central, a winner already has emerged as the Tigers and Twins battle to the wire: it's the New York Yankees, the winner's Division Series opponent.
In each installment of Diamond Digits over the last two regular seasons, we have anointed the players with the titles of Best and Worst Stats of the Week. When making these selections, we look only at the previous seven-day period stretching from Monday to Sunday, and in virtually every case, season statistics play no factor. This edition is a little different. In the final installment of the season, we looked not just at the last week, but at the full bodies of work over the course of the past six months. Instead of doing best and worst, we skipped the negativity and broke the yearly honors up into the best position players and pitchers.
The biggest-market, biggest-spending Yankees just wrapped up the AL East crown and appear to be a threat to steamroll teams in October. The Red Sox, the Yankees' only slightly poorer rivals to the north, are in such fine overall shape that they showed only marginal interest in a series in which two wins would have guaranteed a playoff spot, and one would have prevented a Yankees divisional clinch.
Many key personnel who contribute mightily to playoff-bound teams go unheralded and unsung throughout the baseball season. But that doesn't mean they are unimportant. Oftentimes coaches, scouts and typically uncelebrated front-office folks are true behind-the-scenes MVPs. Let's celebrate some of this year's greatest unsung heroes, baseball people who aren't necessarily all that well known to folks outside the sport's inner circle but are nonetheless making vital contributions to their team's success.
Three knocks in one night, and the crowned king of Yankeeland is tied with Lou Gehrig for career hits by a Yankee and that much closer to passing Harold Baines, Al Oliver and Vada Pinson among the all-time hits leaders. These are good times for Derek Jeter.
Thank goodness for the wild card.
Thoughts and observations on the Yankees and Red Sox after watching New York salt away the division last weekend by winning the series at Fenway Park ...
BOSTON (AP) -- Derek Jeter hit the first pitch of the game for one of New York's five homers off Josh Beckett, CC Sabathia became the majors' first 15-game winner, and the Yankees beat the Boston Red Sox 8-4 Sunday night.
Not too long ago, I achieved a brief burst of infamy for inventing a new word: Jeterate. The official definition of the word -- which has not yet, as far as I know, been picked up by the Webster's or New Oxford people -- is "To praise someone for something of which he or she is entirely unworthy of praise." The word is obviously inspired by Derek Jeter. And for some reason, this has led a few people to believe I do not like Derek Jeter*.
The batter's box is where hitters are supposed to go to come alive, not where they go to die. But on Aug. 16, 1920, a pitch from Carl Mays of the New York Yankees smashed into the temple of the Cleveland Indians' Ray Chapman, crushing his skull. Chapman died in the early morning hours of Aug. 17.
"Her excitement and cheering are infectious," a source tells PEOPLE as the Yanks keep winning
The Yankees vacuumed any drama out of the AL East race with their four-game sweep of Boston last weekend, a testament to how well they constructed a relentless lineup full of switch hitters and left-handed hitters, not to mention the kind of power pitching they have lacked in recent years. They are a nightmare matchup for opposing managers. The last breath of the Red Sox ended when manager Terry Francona gave a 2-1 lead in the eighth Sunday to rookie right-hander Daniel Bard.
NEW YORK -- Derek Jeter stood at his locker late Sunday night and from the look on his face, the tone of his voice, and the subdued nature of the home clubhouse at Yankee Stadium, it would have been hard to imagine that this was the residence of the team that had just completed a devastating four-game sweep of their archrivals and nearest pursuers that left them with the best record in baseball and the biggest divisional lead in the game.
If there is to be October baseball in the new Yankee Stadium this season, we now know what that will be like. We know how a sellout crowd in this stadium sounds. We know how an electric atmosphere feels. And now we know what a championship-level Yankees team looks like.
Until two months ago, the 23-year-old Phil Hughes had pitched out of the bullpen exactly five times in his entire life, as best as he can remember: twice during the Yankees' 2007 ALDS loss to the Cleveland Indians, and three times in the minor leagues. The Yankees drafted the self-possessed Californian in the first round of the 2004 draft for his potential to start games, and his early professional success in that role led Baseball America to rank him two years ago as baseball's fourth-best prospect.
Given the glaring spotlight that shines with blinding intensity on them at all times and the significance that is attached to their every encounter, it would seem odd at best and sacrilegious at worst to suggest that the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry is not what it once was. But look closer: After their epic playoff duels of 2003 and 2004 and a first-place tie in 2005, the two teams, like partners who have spent too much time together in close quarters for too long, have drifted apart. The heat of the flame has been turned down. Over the past three seasons their late summer showdowns -- which should be the time where they most justify their relentless hype -- have been just that: mere shows, spectacles with little or no real consequence at stake.
Several baseball executives are calling this the "softest deadline ever'' because they anticipate many more players than ever going unclaimed on waivers and thus remaining eligible to be dealt.
A top New York Yankees prospect is not who he claims to be, sources tell SI.com. Two weeks ago, the Yankees signed a shortstop purporting to be 16-year-old Damian Arredondo from the Dominican Republic to an $850,000 bonus. Now Major League Baseball's Department of Investigations has determined that Arredondo is not the player's real name and that he is older than 16.
1) The Seattle Mariners broke loose with six runs on 12 hits on Thursday against the Orioles, which only means the odds of them putting up such an output on Friday night are not very good. (Editor's note: The Mariners lost to the Rockies 6-4 on Friday.) Only once this year have the Mariners scored six runs in back-to-back games. Indeed, the Mariners are a fascinatingly bad offensive team, especially for a team that is playing .500 ball. It's hard to construct a team in this era, in a league with the DH, that has this much trouble scoring runs. They are last in the majors in runs; yes, worse than the Giants and Padres. How bad is it?
The Red Sox beat the Yankees on Wednesday night [Recap | Box], which in and of itself is not an especially remarkable occurrence. But the stunning regularity with which it has been happening this season, the alarming ease that has accompanied virtually every one of Boston's seven consecutive wins over their longtime rivals, and the ripple effect that domination is having on the American League East standings and the balance of power in the game's premier rivalry, has been quite remarkable.
LeBron James leads the Cavaliers to a win in front of a star-studded crowd
Yankees catcher Jorge Posada, who's been out with a hamstring injury, is on the plane to Cleveland and will be activated Friday, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said this afternoon.
This weekend, when the Mets visit the Red Sox and the Yankees host the Phillies, Fenway Park and Yankee Stadium will feature four teams with payrolls totaling $574 million. Allowing for inflation, this is as much as the 10 highest payrolls in baseball in 1997, the year of the first regular-season games between the National and American leagues.
The three best teams in baseball are in the American League East.
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