Google baseball and what do you get?

The top three Google results for “baseball” are mlb.com, the Wikipedia entry on the sport and — drumroll — The Official Site of the New York Yankees.

A mere hour or so after the Yankees fell to the Los Angeles Angels in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series, what’s the lead video highlight on the Yankees’ site? The triple Robinson Cano hit to give the Yankees a short-lived lead in the game. Evidently the Yankees can’t handle defeat, so they settle for a mid-game highlight.

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

The Bay Bridge series: Athletics vs. Giants

I’m on vacation for a week, and I celebrated by watching the San Francisco Giants host the Oakland Athletics in their first interleague games of the season.

I wish I had one of those A’s-Giants combo caps that were available during the 1989 Bay Bridge World Series, the one that was interrupted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake.  A good friend back east still has his, but I can’t even find a photo of one. This ersatz Giants’ cap in the A’s green and gold will have to do.

The San Francisco Bay area is the only market where a twin logo cap could exist. In New York, would any fan of either the Yankees or Mets want to share space on the crown with the other team’s NY? No way.

In Chicago, would a Cubs or Sox fan tolerate such? Never.

In LA? Angels and Dodgers together? Inconceivable.

Around San Francisco Bay, fans have fierce allegiance to their team, but it’s a market that appreciates both franchises. I take the twin logo cap as a signal that Bay Area people are true fans of the game, recognizing the value of both the American and National leagues.

(The Giants won tonight on a 3-0 shutout by Tim Lincecum. I was rooting for the Giants.)

Can a fantasy sports team wreck your love of baseball?

Late in tonight’s ballgame between the Oakland Athletics and the Tampa Bay Rays, slugging Carlos Pena came up with two men on and a chance to break a scoreless tie and give the Rays the victory. I was listening to the game on the car radio on  my way home from work, and I faced a deep philosophical choice.

Carlos Pena

Do I pull for Pena, one of the stalwarts on one of my fantasy baseball teams? Or do I root for the A’s, a team I’ve followed as my “home team” for most of the past two decades?

I stuck with the A’s, who – amazingly – retired Pena, pushed the game into extra innings and won it in the 11th with a rare outburst of four runs.

I’m a casual fantasy player, and oddly I seem to fare worst in baseball, the sport I played the most and know the best. Maybe that somehow underscores the tussle in my psyche between pulling for a real team versus a fake one. Or maybe I just suck at fantasy baseball.

I do wonder how the ballplayers react when a fan at a road game comes up and says: “Dude, I’ve got you on my fantasy team. You gotta start hitting.”

What cheek.

When I was a kid – and I’m just old enough to remember the Los Angeles Angels and Washington Senators as expansion teams – I could recite the starting lineups of the American League teams. I had a fair knowledge of the National League lineups, too. With 30 teams in the leagues today, and with players changing uniforms multiple times over a career, it’s awfully tough to keep track. (Fernando Tatis is still playing, and he’s a Met???)

But trolling the fantasy baseball stats helps me know who’s where in real time, better than the stacks of Topps baseball cards I used to sort meticulously team by team. Managing fantasy hockey teams has certainly deepened my knowledge of the stars and muckers of that great sport, and for that I’m grateful. In fact, it was the EA Sports NHL video games that really helped me get a handle on the players and teams when my interest in hockey surged back full-tilt.

Is fantasy baseball pure and true? No, not even close. But how can anything that brings you a deeper understanding and appreciation for a sport be bad?

A downer day for baseball

This is a downer of a day for baseball, with the tragic death of Nick Adenhart of the Los Angeles Angels.

Baseball is no stranger to tragedy. As the actuarial tables will tell you, get any number of ballplayers or athletes in any other sport and a certain percentage will die unexpectedly. Car wrecks, boating accidents, shootings. They don’t happen often, but when they do, they affect fans of all ages.

Red Sox defeat Angels, thanks in part to blown call

Fool's cap?

The Boston Red Sox defeated the Los Angeles Angels tonight to advance to the American League championship series against the Tampa Bay Rays. One of the key moments of the game came in the top of the 9th inning, when Erick Aybar missed a squeeze bunt and stranded Reggie Willits between third base and home.

Boston catcher Jason Varitek ran up the line after Willits. He lunged at Willits to apply the tag and tumbled toward the ground. As umpire Tim Welke was calling Willits out, Varitek landed and the ball popped out of his mitt.

The play was shown repeatedly on the TBS broadcast, and Angels manager Mike Scioscia argued for a bit before returning to the dugout.

So was the call right? I called a friend who’s an umpire on the NCAA circuit in northern California, and he had no doubt the umpire blew it. To record an out, the fielder must have control of the ball, tag the runner AND make a voluntary release of the ball.

No way did Varitek release that ball voluntarily.

Did the call affect the outcome of the game? Certainly. Did it deprive the Angels of a victory? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know if Willits, given second life, would have scored. The Angels will have a long, bitter winter to contemplate what might have been.

The Angels compile the best record in baseball

The Los Angeles Angels go for victory No. 100 tonight. Even if they lose and lose again tomorrow on the final day of the season, they’ll still have the best record in baseball with 99 wins. No matter the record, no team is a lock to advance even past the first round of the playoffs. But such is the playoff system, where a team that gets hot in September can sneak in as a wild card and win it all. That’s happened four times, including the Angels’ 2002 defeat of the San Francisco Giants — who were the NL wild card winner, incidentally.

Even back in the pre-playoff days, the best record did not guarantee a World Series triumph. The 1954 Cleveland Indians racked up 111 wins in a 152-game season, yet got swept by the New York Giants. So good luck, Angels. It’s been a great season — but a new one starts in a few days.

This Angels cap, by the way, was the one my son wore on his team three seasons ago. Technically, it was an Anaheim Angeles cap at the time, but I won’t quibble. The Angels caps have evolved over the years to this red model, which I like. Disney undertones notwithstanding, I actually preferred the previous “winged A” version of the Angels’ cap. The expansion club’s original LA with the halo circling the crown was also pretty cool. I did not care much for the “CA” logo during the “California Angels” era.

The ecstasy – and the agony – of September baseball

April is the cruelest month, T.S. Elliott said. But he never had to suffer through September on a baseball club eliminated from playoff contention in August. That’s the plight of the Seattle Mariners, who’ve been left in the dusty cellar of the American League West. As I write this post, the M’s are 30.5 games behind the division-leading Los Angeles Angels.

It reminds me of one terrible season when the Cleveland Indians were eliminated very early from the American League race — probably when they finished eighth in 1967 — and the Cleveland Press ran a sarcastic banner headline: “INDIANS LOSE PENNANT.”

So I feel for the Mariners, the San Diego Padres and the other sad sack franchises whose only taste of playoff excitement will be as a spoiler in late September games against the few lucky teams scratching and clawing for the playoffs.

I should note that I picked up my Mariners cap not when I lived in Seattle but while coaching one of my boys’ Little League teams in the San Francisco Bay area. The hat is a basic snap-plastic adjustable model.

I always chuckle a little when looking at the Mariners color scheme. When the caps were redesigned in the early 90s, the team insisted that the colors were navy blue and, absurdly, Northwest green.

If that bill is green and not teal, then my name is Ken Griffey Jr.