Who’s your daddy, Pedro?

The highlight of Game 2 for me, the fan sitting in the recliner in front of the 36″ screen in his family room, was the Yankees fans chanting “Who’s your daddy?” to taunt Pedro Martinez.

The self-proclaimed most influential man ever to set foot in Yankee Stadium took the loss.

This is a fun series.

 

The Phillies take Game One, but there’s hope for the Yankees

Cliff Lee pitched brilliantly tonight as the Phillies defeated the New York Yankees 6-1 in Game One of the World Series. The only run Lee gave up was unearned, in the ninth inning when Jimmy Rollins made a throwing error that allowed Derek Jeter to score.

The New York media will go into convulsions, blasting the lineup for being unable to hit in clutch situations and the bullpen for allowing the Phillies’ lead to expand. But the Yanks can turn it around quickly with a victory in Game Two. I note that Jeter got the Yankees moving in the ninth inning tonight with a single that fell at the feet of hard-charging Shane Victorino.  The Yankee hitters will produce. Count on it.

Besides, I don’t put too much meaning into a Game One victory. In 1982, the Milwaukee Brewers creamed the St. Louis Cardinals 10-0 in Game One, only to lose the series in seven games.

As Lawrence Peter Berra has been known to say, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

What exit? Yes, It’s the Jersey Turnpike World Series!

1985: The Cardinals and the Royals meet in an all-Missouri matchup, and it’s the I-70 World Series.

1989: The Giants and Athletics endure an earthquake to play in the Bay Bridge Series.

2000: The Bronx Bombers rumble with the Metropolitans of Queens in an all-NYC Subway Series.

This is 2009, Yankees versus Phillies, and there’s only one possible name for it: The Jersey Turnpike World Series!

It’s time the Garden State gets its due with a World Series of its own. New Jersey connects Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge in the north to Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the south. In between, millions of baseball fans from area codes 201, 609, 732, 908, 973, et al. are passionate the Yankees, Phillies or (rarely) both. From the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May, the people of New Jersey will be watching these games intently.

So come on, America. Recognize this series for what it is: A celebration of New Jersey!

Ex-Indian vs. Ex-Indian in Game One of the World Series

 

Cliff Lee warming up

Originally uploaded by DDay209

Fans of the Cleveland Indians (count me among them) will be in a rueful mood when the World Series opens Wednesday night in New York. Not long ago, the starting pitcher for each team sported an Indians’ cap.

Cliff Lee, who gets the start for the Phillies, has put together two consecutive spectacular seasons. I watched him carve up the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum early in the 2008 season. (The photo shows him warming up in the bullpen before the game.) He was a terrific acquisition by the Phillies this year.

Starting for the Yankees will be C.C. Sabathia, who left Cleveland for Milwaukee late in the 2008 season and dominated for the Yanks this year.

Cleveland fans are accustomed to watching players they’ve seen traded away shine for other teams in the post-season, and the Yankees seem to have benefitted particularly with players like Roger Maris, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss.

Perhaps one of these years an ex-Yank or ex-Philly will make a difference for the Tribe.

 

 

The baseball gods are angry

There’s only one plausible explanation for the rainout that postponed Saturday’s American League Championship Series game between the Yankees and Angels: The baseball gods are angry.

They’re angry that the mere mortals who run Major League Baseball would show such hubris to schedule the playoffs so late into the year. Assuming no weather delays and a seven-game series, the World Series this year is scheduled to finish on Nov. 3.

That’s right. In November, when the NFL season is headed toward its own playoffs and the NBA and NHL are well under way.

Baseball is the summer game, and it’s supposed to wrap up with the “Fall Classic.” November is technically in autumn, but it’s simply too inclement then in most major-league cities for the games to be played as scheduled and without significant disruption from the weather.

Major League Baseball needs to change its way. The gods demand it.

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.

So long, Rockies, and yo, Phillies!

Things can sure turn around in a hurry in a baseball game, particularly at Coors Field in Denver. As I drove home from work tonight, the Rockies were leading in the top of the 9th with closer Huston Street on the mound. I pulled into the driveway as Jimmy Rollins scratched out a single, then turned the engine and radio off.

By the time I got through with the my arrive-at-home ritual and plopped into the recliner, the Phillies had taken the lead. My jaw dropped as I checked the MLB.com app on my iPhone and saw that the game was still going. A quick flip of the channel and I watched as Brad Lidge recorded the final two outs.

It was amazing how quiet the ballpark got. The Phillies move on to the National League Championship Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers, giving baseball a pair of dynamite bi-coastal matchups. The Yankees and Angels, of course, are in the ALCS. Both series should offer plenty of drama.

In honor of the Phillies, I’ve posted above a photo of myself in my Phillies cap, which I picked up while coaching one of my sons’ Little League teams a few years back. The shot is just old enough so that those 1990s mirrored sunglasses are definitely out of style.

The Twins win, and we’re stuck with more games in that horrid dome

Twins win

The Minnesota Twins defeated the Detroit Tigers 6-5 in 12 innings Tuesday night to win the American League Central title, and I’m not happy.

Not because the Twins won per se. They’ve been a terrific story this season, charging from behind to tie the Tigers and force the one-game playoff for the division title.

What irritates me is the prospect of at least one more baseball game being played in the  abomination that is the Metrodome. Although I’ve never set foot in it, I’ve loathed that dome for years.

When the Brewers were in the American League and played there, I hated it on general principles.

When Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek and that generation of Twins were in their heyday, I hated it for the homer hankies the fans waved. (I’ve always hated any team whose fans in an act of mass silliness wave hankies or towels or – please, God, no – thundersticks.)

I even hate the dome in football season, as in the past two weeks when the 49ers and Packers lost in succession to the Vikings.

Why do I find the dome so revolting? I don’t begrudge the Twins and Vikings fans a warm place to sit when it’s freezing outside. But the Metrodome is an over-the-top artificial environment, a chamber of Nordic screams designed to rile and rattle the opposing team. The building is a huge advantage for the home squad, and unfairly so.

There are other domes in professional sports. I’ve been in Skydome or whatever it’s now called in Toronto and the old Kingdome in Seattle (inset), for which I had a minimal, grudging tolerance. I’ve also been in Miller Park in Milwaukee, with the roof open and closed. None of those parks approaches the Metrodome in affecting the outcome of a game.

Quirky differences among ballparks parks add to baseball’s appeal — the Green Monster at Fenway Park, the ivy at Wrigley Field, McCovey Cove in San Francisco, the arches at Yankee stadia, old and new. Those features constitute charm and give the home team a bit of a boost. But they don’t loom oppressively over the game as does the Metrodome.

That the Twins are moving to the new Target Field next season is good news. It can’t come soon enough.

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.

Less than excited about baseball wild card races

We’re in a wild card race. Awesome!!!

Well, hardly. Wild-card races in Major League Baseball have been running for a couple of decades, and I still can’t fully accept them.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take a wild card berth. As I write this post, I’m listening to the Giants and the Dodgers. I want the Giants to sweep LA this weekend as I simultaneously pray for the Colorado Rockies to drop each game in their series with the Arizona Diamondbacks.

But the race for a wild card berth doesn’t nearly get me as excited as someone claiming a league or division title. Way back in the late 60s as baseball contemplated following the NFL into multi-division playoffs, I can remember my father telling me that the playoffs were supposed to be the antidote to the all-too-frequent runaway teams atop the old single-division American and National leagues.

In many years, that vision has come through. But — Yankees and Red Sox fans, don’t hate me — I grow weary of the same teams returning to the playoffs year after year after year. The seemingly endless run of playoff appearances by the Atlanta Braves is a good example. They hoarded playoff appearances, although I must admit my judgment carries the bitter tinge from their only Series victory in recent memory, in 1995 over the Cleveland Indians.

Then there was the ‘97 series, in which the NL wild card team – the Florida Marlins – defeated the Tribe in the series. Where’s the justice in that?

I know I’m fighting the last war by whining about the wild card concept, so let this be my last harangue on the subject. I will now turn my attention back to the Giants, and hope against hope that their stellar pitching and anemic hitting manage to sneak them into the playoffs, on the road to a World Series victory against an AL team that won 20 more games in the regular season.