The parade today was a pain logistically - to be expected when you cram a couple extra million people into Manhattan on a Friday morning - but I managed to get a couple pretty good pictures (culled from a ton of other shots of other people's hands and cameras) and wanted to post them here.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 2009 World Series MVP.
And Paul Blart, Mall Cop.
Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiichael Kay.
Freddy Sez with his frying pan/sign combo. If I hadn't seen this, I would have assumed that they had to shake him awake on a park bench somewhere to get him to come along.
Alfredo Aceves and his wife (I'm guessing), along with Phil Hughes right behind him and Brian Bruney on the far right.
Surprised they didn't make Bruney walk.
Get it? Because he gives up too many walks!!!!1!1one!!exclamationpoint!
Sabathia and Teixeira with the appropriate signage.
Mr. Derek Jeter, but that's not the best part of the picture, in my opinion. It's that pretty much everyone is holding up a camera.
Jeter with his parents behind him, Minka Kelly on the left and a roll of toilet paper in his hands. Unlike A.J. Burnett, who gunned the one that was thrown to him back into the crowd, Jeter politely tossed it aside.
Me taking a pictre of someone taking a picture of Joba who's taking a picture of us.
/universe implodes
Andy Pettitte and his family. Tell your wife to stop texting, dude.
Mariano Rivera waving a Panamanian flag. He "closed" the parade, you could say.
The scene was... interesting. There was very nearly a big fight that broke out because a group of thuggish kids thought someone "was invading their territory". Word for word, I swear. Guys, there are about 3 people per square foot down here, no one has "territory".
We got of at the Rector St. stop on the 1 line and the cops weren't letting people walk up to Broadway. Instead we had to go all the way down to Battery Park and get to Broadway from there. Coming around the Citi Bank building there was a total human gridlock. Some geniuses were yelling for everyone to "just move" as if there were some people blocking the way who just needed to be reminded of that. Others were encouraging people to "keep pushing", which from my experience with dense pedestrian traffic isn't the safest thing to do.
There were a bunch of little fuckers (maybe 15-16 year old kids) that decided it would be a great idea to bodypaint themselves white with pinstripes and the number 27 on their back, apparently not realizing that they'd be brushing up against people all day. The people behind us had noisemakers and kept running into TGI Friday's to take shots during the parade. If the Yankees have the best fans in the world, they weren't at the parade today.
But that's fine. We saw it. It was awesome. There a couple of moments where I got the chills watching players go by and the ticker tape fall down. And that's about all you can ask for, right?
Good morning Fackers. Have you lost that shit-eating grin yet? Yeah, me neither.
Things are going to be a bit light around here today as both Jay and I (and a cast of thousands) are heading down to the Canyon of Heroes for the parade. For those of you not fortunate enough to go, you can follow along at MLB.com
Yesterday, LoHud linked to this wikipedia page listing all the Canyon of Heroes ticker tape parades in NYC history. A few quick thoughts on all that:
NYC went through about a fifty year stretch where they really liked having parades
Despite that, it wasn't until 1954 that the city honored a baseball team with a parade, and it wasn't the Yankees. It was the Giants, who were honored for winning the NL Pennant before they went on to win the World Series.
The Yankees first parade came for winning the AL Pennant in 1960, despite the fact that they lost the World Series in heartbreaking fashion. And the parade didn't occur that fall, but rather just prior to the start of the 1961 season.
The first Yankee parade for a World Series championship wasn't until the spring of 1962, celebrating the 1961 championship. It was the Yankees' 19th World Series championship, but the first to result in a ticker tape parade.
Even so, the Yankees, the nine Yankee parades through the Canyon of Heroes are the most of any group or individual so honored by the city. It's been like an endless parade for them...
Shortly before Christmas last year - on December 23rd to be exact - I was sitting down for lunch/dinner at my company's holiday party at the 21 Club, cutting into a piece of prime rib when I felt my phone vibrate. I didn't want to be rude but I fished my phone out of my pocket with my non-fork hand and stole a glance at the incoming text message. It was from my friend Joe: "Yankees close to signing Teixeira".
My face must have betrayed something when I read the message because my co-worker Greg nodded his head towards me and went, "What's up?".
I replied, "Holy shit, I think the Yankees are going to sign Mark Teixeira".
I put down my knife and fork and stared at the middle of the table shaking my head. I honestly couldn't believe it. Maybe it was just a rumor. They had already locked up CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. Did Brian Cashman and the Yanks really have the balls to orchestrate an eleventh hour coup for the most coveted position player on the market? Over the next hour or so, the texts kept flowing in from friends and cousins and college roommates, each one more certain than the last.
After the party, the other big Yankees fans from my office and I huddled up at the bar downstairs, having drinks on the company tab as groups of people would stand up and take turns belting out Christmas carols printed on a Salvation Army pamphlet they must have been handing out in exchange for donations outside. Between the renditions of Frosty the Snowman and sips of Macallan 18, we tried to get our heads around the fact that, amidst the faltering economy, the Yankees had just sent a message to their fans and to the rest of baseball: "We want to win a World Series that badly"
I got up early the next morning to head back upstate for Christmas with the family. I loaded up my car in the near-freezing rain, drove up the Westside Highway and crossed the George Washington Bridge, thinking I was going to beat the traffic upstate. I turned onto the Palisades Parkway and was met with a sea of taillights which bluntly informed me that this wasn't going to be a smooth getaway I had envisioned. The highway was a sheet of ice.
After 15 minutes of not moving one inch, I put the car in park, unbuckled my seatbelt and took out my iPhone to thumb through my Google Reader. At that point I needed something - anything - to keep my mind off the fact that I was hungover and stuck in standstill traffic in New Jersey to which there was no end in sight.
One of the first posts I came across this one from Shysterball and suffice it to say, it sort of blew my mind. An incredibly poignant blockquote from Will Leitch about Dock Ellis' no-hitter on acid and two beautifully dovetailed paragraphs from Craig summing up what writing about sports should really be about. It couldn't have been more up my alley.
And that's when I decided that I was going to start a blog. Well, I had technically already started one. I reserved a domain name wrote one post about trying to decide who to root for when the Red Sox played the Rays in the ALCS a little while back but that was the only thing on there.
Then on Christmas Day, after our visiting relatives had departed, I sat down and pounded out 1000 words on the Yankees most recent acquisition on my laptop. I drafted an email entitled "The Fack Youk Manifesto" to five or six of my friends informing them of my intentions, and said:
I realize that there is like an 85% chance that this never really goes anywhere, then dies a slow death from neglect, but there's that 15% that we can carve out this little space for our thoughts, all contribute and make it interesting/entertaining enough for some other people to check it out. I talk enough sports with you guys and hear interesting stuff worthy of a blog post and it makes me think that we could put that stuff to use and concentrate it here.
A lot has changed since then. Joe and Will don't really contribute much anymore because of the demands of studying for the bar exam and fascist corporate internet policies. I got unimaginably lucky to find Matt in the comments section, who, is not only a talented writer with a great sense of the history of the Yankees, but a great dude with similar musical tastes.
On the shortest of notice, I handed him the reigns to the blog for almost a full week back in May when I left for a road trip, which coincided nicely with a 9 game winning steak by the Yanks. He didn't miss a beat - which was far more than I had any right to expect - and the site has been markedly better ever since.
In the months since then, we've previewed and recapped every game (except for the three against the Blue Jays 4th of July weekend) and churned out almost 800 posts between us, which is very nearly 5 per day, including weekends.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a huge sense of personal validation involved in the Yankees winning the World Series for me. Since the playoffs began, our work has been recognized by a lot of people and we've more than doubled our average daily traffic. We've received even more kind emails and insightful comments from you guys than usual, which makes this all seem worthwhile. We've got some other recognition from well-respected baseball writers that I really couldn't have imagined when I wrote that first post on the signing of Mark Teixeira.
I've devoted what can only be described as an unhealthy and perhaps inadvisable amount of time reading about baseball in order to make my writing for this site as good as possible.
Unfortunately, that not-so-indirectly led to me getting laid off from my last job - the one that brought me to that company party in the beginning of this post. I wasn't going to regret the decision either way because I've spent the last six months doing something that makes me want to get out of bed in the morning as opposed to smothering myself to death with my pillow like my last job.
I highly doubt I have a career ahead of me as a writer, but seeing someone like Craig, whose work I have a lot of respect for, make that jump just two days ago is quite inspiring. Regardless of where it goes from here, I'm incredibly proud of what we've managed to do with this site in terms of traffic and recognition but mostly in terms of content. 105,000+ unique visitors and 270,000+ pageviews later (and counting), here we are.
Now I'm back in Albany, not far from where I grew up, living with two of my good friends from high school, doing something that's barely profitable at all which in no way shape or form is a real job, despite the fact that I treat it like one. In some ways, it has come full circle.
Tomorrow, Matt, a few of my buddies and I are going down to the parade, so if you are going to be there and want to meet up, use my email address on the left side of the site.
After that, I don't know. This blog isn't going to disappear regardless of what happens, but we're going to have to scale back the content here if I ever want to get my shit together. There will be still be posts - probably much more off-topic material - but they won't be going up at 9:00, 11:00, 1:00, 3:00 & 5:00 all offseason, obviously.
If you've made it this far, I'd suggest you subscribe to our RSS Feed via Google Reader (164 people can't be wrong!). It will tell you when there is a new post so you don't have to come to the site to check. It will hurt our pageviews but help your sanity.
So thanks for reading this year. Thanks for your great comments and signed baseballs and for filling in the gaps where our knowledge is lacking. Thanks to those other bloggers who were kind enough to link, especially Joe from River Ave. Blues, Craig, Jason from IIATMS, Kevin Kaduk from Big League Stew, Ross from New Stadium Insider, Pete Abe, Rob Neyer (once), and even A.J. Daulerio, you know, back when Deadspin used to link to other blogs. A big thanks to Cliff who helped me a lot behind the scenes and Boston Bren who is mostly responsible for the site layout. There are others I'm forgetting, so I apologize for the omissions.
So, before we all disperse, there of course has to be a song. And it's only fitting that what is probably the de facto band of Fack Youk provides the soundtrack to this post.
See you around.
Jay
Say you want to be a rolling stone, Get your sail out in the wind, Get out on the highway and let 'er roll on, Roll on back to someplace you ain't never been.
When I was younger I was hard to hold, Seem like I was always goin', Whichever way the wind would blow, Now that travelin' spirit calls me again.
The Yankees had been tortured by the own high expectations for 9 long years. Not by the supposed "Championship or Bust" mantra that for the most part is wildly overplayed, as much as their actions as a franchise. Even if they had pretended like they didn't care that much about winning, it would have been painfully apparent that they did.
Since 2000, the Yankees have spent over $1.5B on player's salaries, let alone the amount paid to coaches, training staff, front office personnel, scouts, minor league operations and countless other employees singularly dedicated to assembling the best baseball team possible. And last night, it's seemed like it was all worth it.
If the last nine years have taught us anything, it's that you can't buy championships (despite the common Yankee-hater refrain). You can certainly try. You can buy extended streaks of regular season success. You can come pretty close to buying a playoff berth. But you still have to run the gauntlet of a three-tiered playoff system which was a lot harder than it seemed back when Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez, David Cone, Bernie Williams & Co. were still wearing Pinstripes.
This year, it seemed easy again.
The Yankees cruised through the second half of the season, didn't face elimination once in the playoffs, and the Phillies didn't have the tying run on base at any point after the third inning last night. After Damaso Marte impossibly mowed down Chase Utley to end the 7th inning and Ryan Howard to begin the 8th with 2 strikeouts six pitches, we could relax and savor the moment.
Last night was a coronation of the a team who, despite what Jimmy Rollins wants you to think, was the best team in baseball for most of this year by a considerable margin. It was validation of the last 9 years of aggressive free agent spending and high-upside drafting.
It was a celebration for Hideki Matsui and A-Rod and Sabathia and Burnett and Cano who will never have the fact that they haven't won a World Series held against them again. And probably just as sweet for the guys who played supplemental roles and ended up in the right place at the right time. It was a culmination for Jeter, Pettitte, Posada and Rivera who amazingly won a 5th title together 9 years after their last. This is as good as it gets.
We were all in vastly different places in our lives 9 years ago. I was a 16 year old kid who was a Yankee fan but didn't really know that much about baseball. I couldn't have told you what OPS meant or who Bill James was. The Yankees had just won 4 out of 5 years and if you had listed the players the Yanks were going to acquire and told me it would take until now to win again, I would have thought you were batshit insane.
But it did take that long. Which makes it that much sweeter.
Hey there Fackers. Well, this might be the most expensive post I've ever authored here. As I mentioned last week, I've been in Chicago since Saturday. Since my swanky hotel charges $15 a day for internet and I've been trying to keep expenses down, I've been off line since writing the Game Three recap (thanks for carrying the weight Jay - great job this week). But in the euphoria of winning tonight I decided the company can spare an extra $15 and get me online - it's cheaper than having to pay for a superstitious flight reschedule and extra hotel night had the Yankees lost tonight.
I want to share a quick story that bends a bit from the logical, rational type of thing we've tried to do all season long. As I mentioned last week, the Yankees have never won the World Series with me being at home. In the story I told earlier this year, the first time the Yankees won the World Series in my lifetime, 16 year old Matt was on a field trip to Washington, D.C., being held hostage at some lame ass dance in Washington, D.C. After courageously escaping several times to watch Game Six over the course of the night, the chaperones finally held me hostage where I was supposed to be. With no hope of escaping, I was left to find out that the Yankees won the World Series when the DJ cut in to Billy Idol's "Mony Mony" to make the announcement.
Flash forward 13+ years to tonight. Instead of a high school leadership conference dance I'm trapped in a sales meeting when the first pitch is thrown. As I anxiously await for it to end, I follow the first two innings on my phone with GameCast. As the meeting wraps and I begin walking to the hotel bar, I get notification of Hideki Matsui's home run. By the time I settle in with a few Fat Tire Ales, the Yankees are up 4-1. As Robinson Cano stepped into the box to lead off the bottom of the fourth, a familiar tune came on as the bar music. Billy Idol's "Mony Mony". The same song from 13 years earlier. No joke.
I'm not a superstitious man, but I do believe that sometimes life taps you on the shoulder as it tries to get your attention. At that point the cautious optimism I had as I finally got watch Game Five starting with the top of the ninth, the same optimism I've felt the past two days knowing my favorite and most-trusted starting pitcher from my years as a fan was taking the mound tonight, turned to a cool confidence. Stupid, I know. The very idea of which is something I'll surely scoff at in the years to come. But at that moment, short of the Almighty Himself offering me a glimpse to the future, I don't think there's anything that could have assured me of the future more than that.
I suppose it's only appropriate that after combining music and Yankee baseball here all season long that the final night of the longest baseball season ever would end with a bit of throwaway music enveloping me in a sense of assurance. I'm not sure what more to say at this point. I just have a dumb smile across my face that won't seem to go away, and for lack of the YES Network out here in the Windy City, I'm stuck watching ESPN over and over again.
Thank you to Jay for extending the offer to me to join this little party back in May. Thanks to all our blogofriends all across the internets for all the links and the help in growing our readership here. Most of all, thanks to all of you Fackers for reading and commenting and giving us a reason to keep doing this day after day. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be much point to this. Thank you, and we promise to do what we can to keep stoking the hot stove until we can utter the second sweetest sentence I know: "Pitchers and catchers report".
Update 12:53: For tonight, I'm just a fan. Matt will be here in a second with his take. There will be plenty of time to recap tomorrow. Just some quick thoughts:
Congrats to Hideki Matsui. With the three separate 2 RBI hits he had tonight - a homer, single and a double - tied the record for most RBIs in a World Series game previously in possession of Bobby Richardson (Game 3 in 1960) and supplanted his legacy with an incredible effort in the biggest game of his MLB career.
How appropriate that Mariano Rivera (with the greatest non-save of his career), Derek Jeter (with three hits and two runs scored) and Andy Pettitte (benefactor of the official decision) all played major roles in the clinching victory.
How about Damaso Marte, who threw six pitches and got two strikeouts against the Phillies' 3 & 4 hittters?
Sorry to Mike Mussina who found the worst possible 8 years to be a Yankee. (h/t Mike)
And last but not certainly least, good for A-Rod. He carried the Yanks to the World Series and made his hits count when they got there.
Thanks a lot for reading this season. Feel free to commiserate in the comments.
Tonight the World Series shifts back to Yankee Stadium. This was a position that pretty much any Yankee fan would have signed up for when the season began, at any point during the season, when the playoffs began, at any point during the playoffs, when the World Series began or anytime before the Yankees won Games 1, 2, 3 or possibly 4. To paraphrase Louis C.K., "How quickly the World owes us something that we didn't know was going to exist 3 days ago".
Nevertheless it's feels like a bit of a let down to be in this position after taking three straight from the Phillies and having the tying run at the plate in the 9th inning of Game 5. Going to sleep Sunday night and then sitting through an off day filled with rehashing and second guessing and going to sleep again last night and waiting another 12-13-14 hours after you got up this morning was pretty excruciating. But that's almost over now.
There's a good chance that the Yankees are going to do something tonight that you're going to remember for as long as you live. There's also a decent chance that the Phillies are going to ruin our plans and take hundreds of years off our collective lives with a Game 7. Either way, don't forget that we are in a better position than fans of any other team in baseball right now. Twenty-eight teams have already packed up their lockers for the season and the other one not named "The Yankees" is starting Pedro Martinez tonight and praying their season doesn't end before they get a shot at the World Series.
Martinez wasn't great in Game 2, but he was a lot better than most (objective) people expected him to be. Had Charlie Manuel pulled him at the beginning of the 6th inning like most armchair skippers would have, Pedro would have had more strikeouts (8) than baserunners (7). Had Hideki Matsui not taken his 9 iron to a 1-2 curveball with two outs in the 6th, it might have been even better than that.
Pedro has had an unbelievable career and has put up statistics that would be remarkable even if they weren't accumulated during one of the greatest offensive eras of all-time. It's very possible that we see his very last outing this evening; only fitting that would be on the biggest of stages: At Yankee Stadium, in a possible deciding game of the World Series against the best offense in baseball. Will Pedro squeeze one more memorable performance out of his magic right arm? I sure hope not, but I wouldn't bet against it.
For the third time in his career, Andy Pettitte takes the mound in Game 6 of a World Series. Neither of those turned out particularly well, but as they say, the third time is a charm. Ben K. at River Ave. Blues examined all 4 of the Game 6's Pettitte has started in his career (World Series or ALCS) and the results aren't too inspiring, save for the most recent one.
If you are the superstitious type, which we all are at this point in the postseason to some extent, this next part probably won't provide you with much comfort. Pettitte has started two World Series-clinching games, but both have been on the road: Game 4 at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego in 1998 and Game 5 at Shea Stadium in 2000. But who better to be the first to do it at the New Yankee Stadium?
Also at River Ave. Blues today, Mike broke down how Pettitte rebounded from the high stress starts he has made this season so as to guess how he might fare on short rest tonight. Andy's numbers are pretty close to his season marks, so that should be of some comfort to those like me who are somewhat nervous about a 37 year old on three days rest.
So here were are. Back in the Bronx and back on the doorstep of baseball glory; hopefully only 17 half innings away from the ultimate prize. A whole season of observation and dedication and subsequent analysis - and nine more of waiting - all piled up behind us, ready to be expunged with elation.
Come on boys, it's time to bring it on home.
Let's go Yanks.
Baby, baby I'm gonna bring it on home to you. I've got my ticket, I've got that load. Got up, gone higher, all aboard. Take my seat, right way back. Watch this train roll down the track. I'm gonna bring it on home, bring it on home to you. Watch out, watch out, man move. Try to tell you baby, what you tryin' to do?
Given the lack of newsworthy items yesterday, one of the hotter topics of conversation in the baseball blogosphere was whether or not Chase Utley should win the World Series MVP even if the Phillies lose. I linked to Dan Levy's post at the Sporting Blog last night but wanted to take a closer look at the idea today.
We're only 5 games into the Fall Classic and Utley has already smacked 5 home runs - 2 in each of the Phillies wins. He's hitting .333/.429/1.222 in front of Ryan Howard, whose OPS isn't much higher than Utley's OBP. There's little question that Utley's has had the best World Series so far. Cliff Lee singlehandedly won Game 1 but was mediocre in Game 5. A-Rod has had 6 huge, tide-turning RBIs but a meager batting line otherwise. Mariano Rivera's most important innings have yet to be pitched. Utley's showing comes with no asterisk.
As Levy points out, the only other player to win the World Series MVP from a losing team was also a second baseman - Bobby Richardson of the 1960 Yankees. In the first 11 years that the World Series MVP was awarded, Richardson was the only position player to win the award. It was an unlikely honor perfectly fit for one of the most improbable World Series ever played.
The Yankees outscored the Pirates 55-27 in that 7 game series. They out-hit them 91-60, out-homered them 10-4 and had a team ERA twice as low (3.54 to 7.11). But nonetheless, the Yanks lost on Bill Mazeroski's walkoff home run, still the only one in a Game 7 in World Series history.
Richardson's performance was pretty spectacular. He had a batting line of .367/.387/.667 which included a grand slam, 2 triples and 12 runs batted in. But he wasn't even the best offensive player on his own team. Mickey Mantle hit .400/.545/.800 with three homers and drove in 11 runs. By all accounts, Richardson was an excellent defensive second baseman, but Mantle was a legendary defender in center field and a much more recognizable figure at the time.
Richardson was in only his second year as the Yankees' primary 2B and Mantle had just made his 10th consecutive All-Star team. For regular season awards like Gold Gloves and MVPs, voters usually lean towards established stars over one year flukes (see: Zobrist, Ben), but that doesn't seem to be the case with World Series MVPs. In recent years, for example, writers have chose guys like David Eckstein (2006), Troy Glaus (2002) and Scott Brosius (1998); scrappy underdogs (slightly above average baseball players) who saved their best for the big stage.
The timing of the RBIs in the 1960 Series was a major contributing factor to the result of the voting. All but one of Richardson's 12 RBIs came in Yankees' victories. It's hard to stand out offensively when your team wins 3 games by an average of nearly 12 runs, but that's exactly what Richardson did when he drive in 6 runs in a 10-0 victory in Game 3. By comparison, Mantle blended in by knocking in five in the 16-3 domination in Game 2 and two on top of Richardson's 6 in Game 3. He added 2 more in Game 5, which the Yankees won 12-0 and two more in Game 7, which they ultimately lost.
It should have in 2002 when Barry Bonds had an OPS of 1.994, more than 1.100 higher than the winner, Troy Glaus. The fact that he was Barry Bonds certainly didn't help, but Glaus did drive in the tying and go-ahead runs on a double off of Rob Nen to force a Game 7.
But back to Richardson. Perhaps there is a simpler explanation as to why he is the only World Series MVP out of 53 to come from a losing team. The writers thought they were picking a guy from the winning team.
According to Mike Emeigh over at Baseball Think Factory (post #39), World Series MVP ballots had to be turned in before the beginning of the 8th inning of Game 7. Well, at the end of the 7th inning, the Yankees were leading 5-4. They had turned a 0-4 deficit into a 5-4 lead in the 5th & 6th innings and appeared to be in line for the victory.
But they didn't win. The Yanks expanded their lead to 7-4 in the top of the 8th, but gave up 5 runs to the Pirates in the bottom half. It might not have happened if a grounder that hit shortstop Tony Kubek squarely in the throat took a more predictable hop and ended up as a double play. However, the Pirates rallied to take the lead 9-7. The Yanks plated two in the 9th inning to barely stay alive, with Richardson scoring the 8th run.
It was their last breath, however, as the first batter Ralph Terry faced in the bottom of the 9th was Bill Mazeroski.
As another poster at BBTF (#43) argued, it doesn't really matter that the 1960 World Series MVP vote might (or might not) have been skewed by a procedural issue. The precedent for the writers select a an MVP from the losing team exists and it's unlikely that the people voting on this year's award know or care about that.
Does Chase Utley deserve to win the MVP at this point? Yes, in terms of value to his team, he probably does, although WPA thinks otherwise. But there are still games left to be played and there are a couple of Yankees who, if they factor directly into a victory, have a good chance to take it from Utley. But if push comes to shove, I'll give Utley the MVP in exchange for the Yankees' title. Deal?
Here is Jonah Keri on "something called Dave Dameshek's" podcast. It's a a few minutes of circumcision talk, and about 40 more of breaking down what's left of the World Series. Dameshek is a little insufferable but Jonah is good enough to make you forget that.
Go. Listen. But come back around 3:00 for the post I've been working on all day about Chase Utley, Bobby Richardson and the 1960 World Series. It's not like anything else you've read on the subject. I promise.
My mom, Michele, is one of the nicest people in the world (I'm admittedly a bit biased, but this is true). She finds the good in everyone. Well, just about everyone. She cannot stand the New York Yankees! This does not make my mom unique. Throughout the Major League Baseball playoffs, I have encountered only one person who wants the Yankees to win the World Series.
With an tiny niche fanbase like the one the Yankees have, I find this statement to be totally believable.
The Yankees have the highest payroll every year. This year their payroll is nearly 50% higher than the 2nd highest payroll (the New York Mets)! They play in a stadium built two years ago [sic] for more than one billion dollars. During the offseason, the Yankees signed C.C. Sabbathia [sic], A.J. Burnett, and Marx [sic] Teixeira for nearly half a billion dollars in long-term contracts. It's clear that rooting for the Yankees is roughly the same as cheering for the bully down the street to bloody another nose.
Except that bully hasn't won a fight in 9 years. It's clear that picking on a pop psychology piece for baseball inaccuracies is like picking on a baseball piece for trying to use pop psychology. But that doesn't make it any less enjoyable.
But how should we tell our children to hate the Yankees?
"I hate the Yankees" does little to teach our children lessons about hope, persistence, and teamwork. We ought to focus on the positive characteristics of the underdog, rather than the negative qualities about the evil Yankees. Below are five suggestions for what parents can say to kids about the Yankees while staying away from negativity:
Get your notepads ready:
1) "The Twins never quit, even though they don't have the same amount of money to spend on players as the Yankees." (a message about doing the best with what one has)
Or about making excuses.
3) "Even though the Yankees make a lot of money, watch their players. They hustle, encourage each other, and play great baseball. To win, a team must hit, field, and pitch better than their opponent." (a message that money doesn't get hits, and that substance wins over style)
Except the players on the Yankees make a lot of money because they play great baseball, not despite the fact.
4) "Notice how focused all of the players in the World Series are on each play." (a message about concentration, and how all players can work on this skill)
"But not the Yankees who are only calculating how much money they are making with each passing out".
5) If all else fails, remind your kids that the Phillies won the World Series in 2008 and that the Yankees have not won a championship since 2000.
An important lesson in sportsmanship: It's not whether you win or lose... it's whether you win or lose.
Please, folks, educate your children about the virtues of hating the Yankees. Their fragile little brains can't handle the realities of "free agency", the "size of the market they play in", or " the desire to win being more important than making profit on a sports franchise".
Good morning, Fackers. I think most rational people understand that one of the fundamental concepts of decision making is that you have to make your choice based on the information which was available at the time. Of course, Mike Lupica doesn't fall under the umbrella of "most rational people".
Anyway, in today's Daily News, Mike conveniently smothers Joe Girardi's decision to use only his three best starters in the World Series in a thick coating of hindsight, two days after any other course of action could have been chosen:
Joe Girardi knows the deal as well as he knows his way out to the mound. He's right about using only three starters in the postseason if the Yankees win, tonight or tomorrow night.
I love how Lupica sets up the scenario by saying "Girardi knows the deal". Yeah, he knows that if the Yankees lose, he's going to get second guessed by assholes like Lupica who were so convinced that the Yankees should throw Chad Gaudin in Philly that they... didn't write a word about it despite having a column in a newspaper dedicated to writing about sports.
He's right if Andy Pettitte does the job in Game 6 on three days' rest that A.J. Burnett didn't do Monday night. Or he's right if this thing plays all the way out and CC Sabathia carries everybody across the finish line. Girardi just better be right about three days' rest for these guys after being up three games to one.
So was Charlie Manuel right for holding Cliff Lee back to give him his normal rest even though he gave up 5 earned runs because the Phillies won Game 5? Of course! What did you want to judge the outcome based on his "performance" or "availability in a possible Game 7"? Fools.
Because if the Yankees blow this Series, if the Phillies come all the way back, then Yankee fans are going to wonder how the Yankees could spend $206 million on baseball players and not have enough left under the bed to buy a reliable fourth starter.
No, Mike, they're not. That's what they'd be wondering if the Yankees missed the playoffs. Like they did last year. When they spent $209M.
The Yankees have had a payroll over $184M since 2004 and that year none of the 4 guys who started more than 20 games for them had an ERA under 4. In 2005, their 4th starter was either Jaret Wright or Kevin Brown who both had ERAs over 6 and they needed Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon to patch together their rotation. The following year it was Cory Lidle. In 2007, it was Roger Clemens and we all remember how well that worked out in the playoffs!
You have to be a special kind of stupid to wait until the team is one win away from their first World Series in 9 years to start complaining about their lack of a #4 starter.
Oh by the way, the reason they don't have a #4 starter isn't because they "didn't have enough money left under the bed". It's because Chien Ming Wang, who had been their best pitcher over the previous three years, suddenly decided to suck. And Joba Chamberlain, who everyone wanted to go back to the bullpen (including Lupica, obviously), is back in the bullpen.
They will wonder at the same time about how much they think they could get for a copy of "The Joba Rules" on eBay about now.
How much are your books selling for on eBay, Mike? Let me check. One dollar.
There are still a lot of smart, passionate, grudge-holding Yankee fans who want to talk about all the pitching mistakes that Joe Torre made when the Red Sox started to come back on the Yankees in 2004. But when Torre came home in that American League Championship Series, the way Girardi's Yankees come home now, here were Torre's starters:
Jon Lieber, Game 6.
Kevin Brown, Game 7.
Right, so why are you complaining about the rotation this year?
Josh Beckett went on three days' rest in Game 6 of the 2003 Series, Marlins against the Yankees. Everybody screamed that Jack McKeon was making a huge mistake, that he should wait and pitch Beckett on full rest in Game 7 if it came to that. The Marlins manager went all in with Beckett and he pitched one of the most dominating close-out games in the history of the World Series.
He made McKeon right because he won.
Mike Lupica's decision making rubric: Win = Right, Lose = Wrong.
So Mike Lupica's son is dribbling down the court in a CYO game two minutes into the game and decides to fire up a short from half court. It goes in. From the stands, Mike yells "GREAT DECISION, BUDDY!"
Mike Lupica is playing in a poker tournament. Someone raises in front of him. He looks down at the 2 of hearts & the 4 of clubs and pushes all in. His opponent calls with pocket aces but the board reads 3-5-6-K-8. Mike sees that he made a straight and screams "I OUTPLAYED YOU!"
The best decisions are the ones that are most likely to succeed if the scenario is played out over and over again. And guess what. Feeding Chad Gaudin - who lefties have hit .293/.389/.433 off in his career - to the Phillies in Citizens Bank Park isn't one of those decisions.
After graduating from Blogspot to The Hardball Times and leveraging that into a part-time gig at NBC Sports, the Shyster is quitting his day job and moving to NBC Sports full-time. Like many others, I found Shysterball through Rob Neyer and have enjoyed his work for a long time. A while back, I used him as an example of the kind of blogger we would benefit by paying a small monthly fee to, in order free him from the legal world and make his content even better. Fortunately for us, NBC has agreed to foot that bill, so Craig gets the cash and we get the pleasure of reading a talented full-time writer for free.
So from one bald baseball blogger to another, well done, sir.
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Okay, back to our regularly scheduled linkaround.
Barring any sort of foul weather, this will be the last off night of the season. Of course, off nights will be in no short supply soon enough, but this is the last one where we are going to have anything immediate to look forward to for a very long time.
If the series goes 7 games, the Yankees will have played 16 games in 32 days since the end of the regular season. As Joel Sherman points out today, the Yankees didn't have their 16th day off during the regular season until after their 147th game. And that includes the All-Star break. It's obviously not the intention of Major League Baseball to ween us off our dependence on the game with the spacing of the schedule (that would be to make as much money as possible) but it's kind that it works out that way.
It's official, Andy Pettitte will start Game 6. That's not much of surprise but the fact that Joe Girardi is apparently toying with the idea of starting Jerry Hairston Jr. in RF certainly is.
Rob Neyer wonders if the Yankees' desire to get younger means we're seeing last of Hideki Matsui in Pinstripes. David Pinto speculates that the Yankees might let go of Matsui and Johnny Damon in favor of signing Matt Holliday.
Am I the only one fundamentally opposed to Matt Holliday? I was not high on his prospects at the beginning of this year, and if you'll recall, he wasn't all that great in 400 PAs in Oakland before getting dealt to St. Louis. Yankee Stadium is certainly a hitter's park but he has hit 77% of his career home runs between the left foul pole and center field. That's not where you're going find the easy taters in the Bronx. Oh and Scott Boras is his agent. No thanks.
Not an article, but just wanted to point out that Cliff Lee's postseason ERA is no longer lower than Mariano Rivera's and probably never will be again. Ha.
And finally, on the lighter side of things, Joe Posnanski continues his ABC series which I hope will go on as long as there are mindbendingly stupid advertisements for shitty light beer being shoved down our throats.
Surprised they didn't make Bruney walk.
Surprised they didn't make Bruney walk.
He's the construction worker who thought he cursed the Yankees by 
After graduating from 
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