In the minutes preceding the Yankees' miraculous, positively 2001-esque, one-run rally in the ninth inning last night against the Phillies, my friends and I attempted to glean any positive developments from a disheartening evening.
The conversation went something like this:
Dan: Um, CC battled through without his best stuff.
Howie: Yeah, definitely.
(Awkward silence)
Howie: Marte did his job.
Dan: Oh yeah.
(Extended pause of sorrow)
Dan: That Jeter can still hit.
(One beat)
Bob: Handsome, too.
(Half a beat)
Dan, Howie, Bob: Oh yeah, definitely.
How bad was last night? Stationed at the Upper West Side bar, Blondies, I was interviewed by ...
There’s an old saying in baseball that has held true from 1909 to 2009–good pitching always beats good hitting.
That saying held true again last night in Game One of the 2009 World Series.
On a rainy, misty night in the Bronx, Cliff Lee dominated a powerful New York Yankee lineup and Chase Utley hit two homeruns as the Philadelphia Phillies beat the Yankees 6-1 to take a 1-0 lead in their best-of-seven World Series.
Lee’s pitching performance last night was very similar to Josh Beckett’s performance in Game Six of the 2003 ...
Old glory never dies—it just repeats itself into oblivion.
The World Series isn’t what it was. It’s also, thankfully, still what it is. As America limps its way out of the Great Recession, there’s reason to doubt whether We the People will ever regain our position of global preeminence—which would be worse news if we couldn’t at least find peace in the praxis of our national pastime.
Habit is what you do without thought.
Ritual, on the other hand, is what you do to stop thinking.
I'm not trying to oversell the Series. Nielsen ...
For many years I wondered why so many people seem to have such a disgust for the Yankees.
You either like them or you don't. "They buy their players," people say, or, "They spend the most." Show-offs. Greedy.
I never believed it—until now.
I, myself, have been a Yankee fan since 1987. I watched them play through terrible seasons, paying over the hill sluggers until the mid '90s. They turned it around and eventually rode their core of players (Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada, Bernie Williams) to a dynasty.
I've ...
When I think back to the old Yankee Stadium, the first thought that comes into my mind is an animal house.
The crowd was extremely loud, extremely rowdy, and the hostile environment they created made playing there unbelievably difficult for visiting teams.
At the new Yankee Stadium, however, those boisterous fans seem to still exist; only now you can’t see them because their seats begin a good 20 rows from of the field.
Throughout the 2009 season, there was much talk about the astronomical prices the Yankees were charging for tickets.
A ticket ...
When I think back to the old Yankee Stadium, the first thought that comes into my mind is an animal house.
The crowd was extremely loud, extremely rowdy, and the hostile environment they created made playing there unbelievably difficult for visiting teams.
At the new Yankee Stadium, however, those boisterous fans seem to still exist; only now you can’t see them because their seats begin a good 20 rows from of the field.
Throughout the 2009 season, there was much talk about the astronomical prices the Yankees were charging for tickets.
A ticket ...
Bill Simmons did it. Then my buddy Tyler Thompson did it. Now, I'm going to give it a shot. Here is my running diary for Game 1 of the World Series.
First Inning
4:50 p.m. (PT): Sitting down at Tom’s Bar in Portland watching an Abercrombie model bang out the national anthem. Someone should tell him that the performer doesn’t have to keep his hand on his heart. He looks like Ricky Bobby. “What do I do with these?”
4:52: The ESPN game preview says the Yankees have a 67 percent chance of winning. ...
It was pitted as the battle of the former Indians aces and they did not disappoint.
CC Sabathia was "off his game" Wednesday night going seven innings and giving up four hits and three walks.
Two of those hits were costly ones to Chase Utley that found their way over the right field wall. The first one might be regarded as a typical Yankee Stadium cheap pop-up home run, but the second was a missile with two strikes on a fastball left out in the middle of the plate.
Regardless of the nature ...
Driving home from work along Route 3 in North Jersey, I got goosebumps when I saw the Empire State Building lit up in Yankee blue and white.
But Phillies starter Cliff Lee quickly turned those goosebumps to shivers as he completely dominated New York's lineup en route to a 6-1 complete-game victory in Game 1 of the World Series.
The left-hander, who somehow lowered his already stellar postseason ERA to 0.81 over four starts, allowed just one unearned run on six hits and no walks, while striking out 10.
He capped off the ...
One word describes Cliff Lee in game one of the World Series Wednesday Night, and that word was "dominate". Lee was chosen to start game one by Charlie Manuel because the Philly skipper was confident that Lee would be able to perform the way he did. Lee put on a show. He allowed no earned runs, struck out ten batters with with zero walks and held the feared Yankee lineup to only six hits. Lee out-dueled his buddy and former teammate CC Sabathia, who started for the Yankees in ...