Piniella deprived Abbott of his chance to be the modern-day Bill Bevens. So this one came down to the bullpens, two of the best in baseball. The M's Norm Charlton and Jeff Nelson pieced together the sixth and the seventh, putting Yankees on base (Charlton allowing a double to Tino Martinez to end the no-hit bid) but continuing to escape unscathed. The Yanks turned to Ramiro Mendoza, who continued his string of postseason effectiveness. He had put together 8.1 innings of shutout ball this postseason before yielding a solo home run to the Mariners' top RBI man, Brett Boone in the top of the eighth.
Arthur Rhodes came on in the bottom of the eighth to protect the lead, set to face his nemesis, David Justice. He struck out Justice looking (and grimacing) before Bernie Williams took him over the right field wall to tie the game. Mariano Rivera shut the M's down on three pitches, sending the Yanks into the bottom of the ninth to face the Mariners' closer, Kazuhiro Sasaki. Sasaki retired Shane Spencer, then allowed Scott Brosius to reach on a hard grounder which shortstop Mark McLemore speared but couldn't get rid of in time.
The stage was thus set for Alfonso Soriano, the Yanks' talented rookie second baseman. Soriano has had his share of lapses in this series. In Game 1, he failed to run hard out of the box on a fly ball he thought might reach the seats. When it didn't, he was held to a long single, and it took a face-saving steal of second base, followed by a David Justice single, to add the insurance run Soriano thought he'd already banked. He was scolded by his teammates and his manager for that lapse. In Game 4, his failure to cover second base on a force play in the seventh inning caused Mark Wohlers' throw to go into centerfield, setting up another pair of runs.
But those gaffes might as well have been ancient history by the time Soriano stepped into the box against Sasaki. Drawing ahead in the count, he hit a juicy 1-0 fastball just hard enough to reach the right-centerfield fence and give the Yanks a thrilling walk-off home run, their first in postseason play since Chad Curtis ended Game 3 of the 1999 World Series with a dinger prior to snubbing Jim Gray's request for an interview.
So now the Yankees find themselves one game away from ending the Mariners' 116-win dream season and returning to the World Series for the fourth straight year. It's comforting for Yankee fans to note that they have their two hottest starters lined up with a chance to put it away, Andy Pettitte in Game 5 and Mike Mussina in Game 6. Pettitte will face Aaron Sele, a pitcher the Yanks have made a routine of beating on during the last three Octobers. Sele has never won in the postseason, going 0-5 with a 4.73 ERA. Should the Mariners win, the Yanks are faced with yet another cross-country flight and a battle against Freddy Garcia on Wednesday.
Premature jocularity is out of the question. Yesterday's gone, just like Soriano's home run, and as Joe Torre reminded (referencing Earl Weaver), momentum is today's starting pitcher. No one should believe that a 116-win team is vanquished until they watch it melt with their own eyes, a la the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Lou Piniella's team has their backs to the wall, and the Yankee fans have to like their team's odds. But Yogi Berra's maxim applies equally to all those still playing ball at this time of year.
Some more equally than others, perhaps.
[actual date of publication Monday, October 22, 2001, 6 PM]
Now, Knobauch has had a rough season. He's a free agent at the end of the year, and it was long rumored that he had a 2-year, $18 million handshake deal in place as an extension. But his throwing woes at second base necessitated a move to leftfield and his production tailed off to a career-low .339 OBP, 66 runs scored, and a lot of gray hair over his play in left (though not as much as the jury would have you believe). Repeadely over the course of the season, both he and the Yankee brass have denied that a deal is in place. He seems likely to leave the Yankees at the end of the season, though if you listen to him tell it, he hasn't given that prospect much thought.
But damned if Knoblauch hasn't been the Lil' Bastard of old in the postseason, probably making the Mariners wish the Yanks had been willing to complete the deal (which Yankee GM Brian Cashman reportely nixed) if only to get him out of the way. He hit well against Oakland and keyed a run in Game 5 on a single and a Jason Giambi error on a botched pickoff . And in the LCS he's been as pesky as a scorpion in a sleeping bag, going 5-for-10. In Game 1, he scorched a hard grounder off of Mariner third baseman David Bell's glove, driving in Jorge Posada with the game's first run. In Game 2, his blooper into centerfield just barely eluded Mike Cameron (who tried to sell a catch, though the umps--as replay confirmed--got the call correct), allowing Scott Brosius to score the third and final Yanee run.
On the other side of the coin is the Mariners' designated hitter, Edgar Martinez. Martinez has owned the Yankees ever since he drove the game-winning run in Game 5 of the epic 1995 ALDS saga between these two teams. He is one helluva hitter, with a career .319 AVG/.425 OBP/.530 SLG--as tough an out in baseball as you could want. His stats against Yankee some Yankee pitchers coming into the series were unreal:
vs. Mike Mussina: .377 AVG, 1122 OPS
vs. Andy Pettitte: .382, 1147 OPS
vs. Orlando Hernandez: .364 AVG, 1136 OPS
vs. Mariano Rivera: .818 AVG, 2492 OPS (no, that's not a misprint)
Pettitte struck out Martinez in the second inning, allowed him a single in the fifth (the clearly hobbling Martinez came around to score on Mike Cameron's double and John Olerud's groundout. But in the seventh inning, with the M's down 3-1 and with a runer on first, Pettitte struck out Martinez again before Cameron grounded into a double-play, ending the inning and the Mariner threat. In the ninth, Edgar came up again, this time against Rivera, with a runner on second and still a two-run defecit after the Mariners had gotten a ninth-inning run back. He grounded to first baseman Tino Martinez, ending the game. Amazingly enough, the embarrassingly bad Fox TV crew of Steve Lyons and Thom Brenneman (a.k.a. "Psycho" and "The Other Dumb Guy," respectively) made no mention of Martinez's history against Rivera.
In Game 2, Edgar's woes played a huge role again. He grounded into a double play with two on and one out to end the first inning, flied out to end the third inning, and struck out leading off the sixth. He managed a single in the eighth, after which manager Lou Piniella lifted him for a pinch-runner whom Rivera erased on a forceout. For the series, he's now left five baserunners on, more than any other Mariner. Clearly, he looks to be struggling with lower-body woes; it's possible they're affecting his swing. As writer Jeff Fogle, subbing for Jim Baker in the daily Baseball Previews mailing list, writes, "[B]ecause hes nursing a groin injury, Martinez runs like Greg Luzinski carrying Boog Powell on his back." Ouch.
Still, the Yanks are obliged to treat him with some well-earned respect; sooner or later, he'll probably come through with a big hit. The 38-year old has hinted at retirement several times over the past two seasons, though he did sign an extension earlier this year. The Yanks will have to settle for retiring him three or four times a night. Right now, the story of his missed opportunities is one of the key stories of the series.
The New York Yankees completed their comeback against the Oakland A's in the AL Division Series Monday night, taking their third straight game from the A's and coming from two runs down against the man who baffled them in the Series' opening game. By now you know all this, and if you've been reading this web log for any length of time, you must know that I'm a happy man today.
With the vultures circling their dynasty, the three-time defending champions won their third game in as many days, enduring a cross-country red-eye flight before the final game and luring the upstart A's to the killing-est floor in all of sports, Yankee Stadium. The White Elephants' graveyard, if you will. In the deafening roar of the Bronx, the A's imploded with three errors in the early innings, all of them because the Yanks kept the pressure on the A's defense to make the plays.
In the third inning, catcher Greg Myers threw wildly to first base as Bernie Williams ran out a dropped strike three, allowing Williams to reach base. Four batters later, third baseman Eric Chavez bobbled a Scott Brosius grounder just as baserunner Tino Martinez entered Chavez's immediate field of vision. Williams scored the go-ahead run on that play. In the fourth inninng, Chuck Knoblauch was picked off of first, but first baseman Jason Giambi's errant throw allowed Knoblauch to reach second with no outs. The Yanks sacrificed him into home on Randy Velarde's bunt and Derek Jeter's fly ball.
The defensive collapse added to the woes of Mark Mulder, whose riddle the Yanks seemed to solve with 7 hits and 2 walks over 4.1 innings. Tim Hudson came on in relief and yielded a pinch-hit home run to David Justice after the A's had narrowed the gap to 4-3.
By then, Roger Clemens, the Yankee starter, had also left the game, lasting only 4.1 innings himself. But Mike Stanton kept the A's at bay, pitching out of the mess the gimpy Clemens had left behind--two on, one out, and Jason Giambi at the plate. Stanton's performance echoed a similar appearance in last year's Game 5 between the two teams, and one of my favorite images of the Yanks 2000 postseason run--the lefty, out of the pen early to protect a slim lead bequeathed by a struggling starter, with all of the money on the table and the fort under siege. Both times, Stanton delivered big. When he and Ramiro Mendoza shut down the A's through the seventh inning, Joe Torre had the luxury of the surest bet in October: Mariano Rivera with a lead. Rivera has now converted 20 consecutive saves in the postseason, 16 of them longer than an inning.
Nearly all of the levers Joe Torre pulled in this game yielded jackpots: the decision to start Velarde at DH and bat him second for his bat-control abilities, the decision to lift him for pinch-hitter Justice in the sixth (a move I was in the process of second-guessing--I thought Justice should sub for Shane Spencer because he could play defense as well and because Spencer's D in the game had already proved dicey--when Justice parked Tim Hudson's pitch in the right-field bleachers), and the decision to suffer Clemens' struggles until he could get through the game with his three most reliable relievers. Contract extension, anyone?
As for A's manager Art Howe, he was left with the knowledge that his pre-series assessment--that the Yanks would have to play at the top of their game to beat his A's--had become bulletin board fodder for the Yanks. It was yet another echo of last year's series, as A's third baseman Eric Chavez prematurely applied the past tense to the Yankees' run in an interview broadcast over the Oakland Coliseum PA before Game 5. Deja vu all over again, anyone? It's worth noting, and somewhat gratifying to Yankee fans, that Chavez looked more lost than any other A's batter during the series, going 3-for 21 (.143) with a 333 OPS.
Howe was gracious in defeat, but the future of his team is uncertain. Jason Giambi is a free agent with a yen for big bucks and perhaps the bright lights of New York City. Centerfielder Johnny Damon is also a free agent, and even if the A's can iron out a contract with Giambi (they reportedly had a tentative agreement on a 6 year-$90 million dollar contract that fell apart over the exclusion of a no-trade clause), there's probably no way they can sign both. Howe and the rest of the A's are also left to ponder whether the result would have been different with Jermaine Dye, felled by a broken tibia in Game 4, in the lineup. Ouch. Still, the A's pitching nucleus of Mulder, Hudson, and Barry Zito has a bright future ahead which includes several years locked in at reasonable salaries. So long as General Manager Billy Beane remains creative (and he resists the overtures for a more high-profile job), this team will be in the hunt.
One more word about the A's. I've watched this team grow for the past four seasons, and have pulled for them to get to this point. Had they beaten the Yanks, I would have had no problem rooting for them to go all the way. Despite their overly brash predictions and their fans' premature jocularity after Game 2, this is a class organization with classy support. Doing this web site has put me in touch with several A's fans whom I've enjoyed chewing the fat with over the course of the year. To them I say, keep supporting your team, especially at the box office. In this age of economic disparity, baseball needs the A's to remind us of the possibilities (and occasionally the limitations) of a well-run, low-budget team. And to them I also say those famous last words: wait 'til next year. Despite my Yankees cap, I know how it feels, both from the twenty years I spent with the Dodgers as my favorite team and the twenty years I've spent rooting for the Utah Jazz in the NBA. Trust me, folks, I know how it feels.
As for the Yankees, they now face a series with the Seattle Mariners rich in subtext: a rematch of last year's LCS, in which the Yanks beat the M's in six games, a defense of the 1998-model Yanks' legacy of 125 wins, including a World Championship, and, on yet another personal note, a clash with both sides of my own family tree thanks to all of my relatives in the Pacific Northwest. The early line shows some favorable pitching matchups for the Yanks: they face Aaron Sele, whom they've beaten each of the past three postseasons, in Games 1 and 5; they face the M's ace, Freddy Garcia, on three days rest in Game 2, they've got Mike Mussina, their hottest pitcher, in Games 2 and 6, and their weakest link (due to injury), Roger Clemens, slated only in Game 4.
It promises to be a helluva series. Am I bold enough to pick the Yanks again? The longer the series goes, the better the Yanks' chances. You think I'm ready to jump off the bandwagon? Read every word I wrote about the Division Series and tell me. The Yanks have question marks up and down their offense and their pitching staff. To paraphrase what the sportswriters used to say about the old Dodger infielder Jim Gilliam, they can't do anything except beat you. Yanks in six.
I'm not a Braves fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do think their run of 10 straight division titles is an underappreciated level of success. And since I've always had such great respect for their Big Three, I'm heartened that my favorite of the bunch, John Smoltz, has made an amazing comeback from Tommy John surgery by reinventing himself as a closer. Smoltz closed out all three games in the series, and was reportedly throwing as high as 98 MPH. Thanks to the trade of John Rocker, the Braves now have a bullpen as good and as deep as any in baseball east of Seattle. And while their offense was decidedly inferior to all of the other postseason teams (see the analysis at Mostly Baseball, a brand-new web site run by two frequent contributors to the discussions over at Baseball Primer), they hit the Astros pitching to the tune of .303 AVG/.333 OBP/.545 SLG. Battle-honed thanks to a three-way race for the NL East title (they played the Phillies and the Mets, their competition for the crown, 13 times in their final 20 games), they seem a lot closer to the Braves of old than the less-than-dominant team they resembled this year.
Arizona over St. Louis 3-2. Back in the 1993 postseason, I fell for the Phillies, thanks largely to the gritty performance of Curt Schilling. Shilling won the NLCS MVP award despite not getting a decision in either of the games he started, though he posted a 1.69 ERA in 16 innings and the Phils won both games in extra innings. He got roughed up by the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 1 of the World Series, but with the team down 3-1 in games, he tossed a 5-hit shutout to keep the Phils alive. I never forgot that performance, and so I was pumped to see him pitch in the postseason. He didn't disappoint in his first shot, winning a 1-0 gem of a duel against the Cardinals' ace and fellow 22-game winner Matt Morris. And he almost topped that Sunday, with a 1-run complete game in the finale. He's now 3-1 with a 1.82 ERA and 46 strikeouts in 49.1 innings. Money, man.
I didn't see any of his fellow ace Randy Johnson's performance, or much else of the series except for a few innings here and there. But it did seem to me that the D'Backs made some huge plays on defense--the Game 3-ending 5-3 double play by Matt Williams, those line drives speared by Tony Womack and Craig Counsell on consecutive batters last night, for example.
As for the ninth inning of Game 5, I was glad to see Williams make a positive contribution toward the series' winning run (though technically it was his run that was cancelled out in the form of Tony Womack's missed squeeze play). I've had a soft spot for the man since 1994, when he hit 43 HR in 112 games and had a legitimate shot at Roger Maris's record until the strike hit. He's had his struggles with injuries, but I've never heard the guy complain about missing out on the chance to make history. Anyway, while I didn't think much of Womack's execution on the squeeze, the important part of the play was that the trailing runner, Danny Bautista, alertly advanced himself into scoring position. In the end, Womack's redemptive base hit made for a feel-good story, especially when he dedicated the hit to his late father.
As for history-makers... if it ends here for Mark McGwire, that's a sad thing. The man is, by his own admission, physically and mentally worn down, but no one can say he didn't give us, as fans, our money's worth of thrills. Even looking as bad as he did at the plate during the series, he did seem to make several good defensive plays, and he handled his woes with class. While Barry Bonds has already eclipsed McGwire's single-season HR record, McGwire seemed to bring much more joy to the Great Home Run Race, both in his own demeanor and the hearts of fans. I hope he uses the offseason to recuperate and gives it another go.
Seattle over Cleveland 3-2. I didn't watch too much of this series very closely due to my own schedule. But I rooted for Cleveland in this one, mostly because I'm a spiteful bastard. I admit it, I was looking for the outcome that best helps my rooting interest, the Yankees--the current model and its chances, and the 1998 team and its place in history. Yes, the M's have an awesome team, and yes, I like that team, by and large, especially manager Lou Piniella, and yes, I like the fact that A-Rod and Junior can kiss their collective asses from their second-division vantage points. But if the M's want the World Championship and the "Best Team Ever" moniker (as the '98 Yanks so brashly put it on their rings), they've got to earn it just as the Yankees did in '98, by sweating out one playoff game at a time and seating all comers. And if somebody comes along and bumps them off, well, fair play to them.
Besides, it wouldn't be unprecedented. By now, you've probably seen the following chart, which shows where the M's fit in. Note that two of the top four teams in terms of wins didn't win the World Series:
Team W-L Pct. WC?
1906 Cubs 116-36 .763
2001 Mariners 116-46 .716
1998 Yankees 114-48 .704 Y
1954 Indians 111-43 .721
1909 Pirates 110-42 .724 Y
1927 Yankees 110-44 .714 Y
1961 Yankees 109-53 .673 Y
1969 Orioles 109-53 .673
1970 Orioles 108-54 .667 Y
1975 Reds 108-54 .667 Y
1986 Mets 108-54 .667 Y
I have a large number of family members who live in the Pacific Northwest and who I know are pulling for the Mariners, especially against the hated Yankees (I'm the black sheep of the family with my rooting interests). Should the M's win, I won't begrudge them their happiness, but should they lose, well, that's baseball.
One other note, only tangentially related to the playoffs. Minnesota Twins manager Tom Kelly retired the other day after 15 seasons and two World Championships. As someone who took great pleasure in those two championships (see the Department of Anything Can Happen in a Short Series), I'll drink a few toasts to the man who guided those teams. Any manager with the balls to send his ace out for the 10th inning of a scoreless World Series Game 7, as Kelly did for Black Jack Morris in 1991, has earned my respect and given me a story to tell my grandkids.
The early favorites to take over from Kelly include Twins coaches Paul Molitor and Ron Gardenhire, which brings me to yet another tangent. Back when I decided to do this web site, the phrase "futility infielder" had been kicking around my head for awhile. It was an instant fit in my mind for the name of this site, and an instant hit among my focus group of friends and family. I'd never heard anybody else use the term, which was another plus. I had no visions of an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary, however, and to futher disabuse myself of that notion I did a web search for the term. Two entries came up, one of them this piece on Gardenhire from the Naples (Florida) News, March 12, 2000:
"He bounced up and down between AAA and the big club. In 1986, major-league rosters reduced from 25 to 24 players, and Gardenhire began the season at AAA Tidewater.
"'I was what you call a futility infielder,' Gardenhire said."
The other reference was from a Sporting News feature on a baseballl roadtrip back in 1997. One of the writers referred to the Mets' Luis Lopez as a"futility infielder who misplays grounders at every position." That doesn't rate as highly as a good self-deprecating description, so you'll forgive me for reserving a special place for Gardenhire in my personal pantheon alongside Luis Sojo as the standard-bearers of the Futility Infielder brand name, and for rooting for him to get the Twins job over a classy player who racked up 3319 hits and was one of my favorites for 21 seasons.
The team they still call World Champions is in the house, y'all! The New York Yankees, whose dynasty was on the brink of crumbling a mere 72 hours ago, have evened their Division Series with the Oakland A's in emphatic fashion. With literally no margin for error, they won a 1-0 thriller on Saturday night. On Sunday, they pounded the A's for 9 runs in an epic that felt, to a Yankees fan, like an all-day sucker. Four hours? Six hours? Who cares?
I didn't see most of Saturday night's game; my parents were in New York City for the weekend and we had 7:30 PM dinner plans. I couldn't have timed my entry into the ballgame better, arriving home and flicking on the TV to find Mike Mussina in the middle of a matchup with Terrence Long, the A's hottest hitter. On the first pitch I watched, Long lined a shot into the rightfield corner, where Shane Spencer struggled to chase the ball down, then overthrew two cutoff men. But Derek Jeter, in one of the most incredible displays of instinct I've ever seen manifested on a diamond, picked up the errant throw as he cut across the infield toward the first base line. Like an option quarterback, he shovel-passed the ball to catcher Jorge Posada in time to tag Jeremy Giambi as he lumbered into home plate standing up.
As the play unfolded, I was standing in front of the TV. When Jeter got to the ball I started jumping up and down, screaming, "OUT! MOTHER******! OUT MOTHER******! OUT!" so loud that my voice cracked, pumping my right arm (recently strained in some mysterious exercise mishap) so frantically that it was throbbing deep into the night. But what a play! I watched the replays several times, still barely believing what I'd seen. The replays looked conclusive only from the angle where one could see Giambi from the back, tagged on the inside of his right leg by Posada before his left one reached the plate.
Mariano Rivera came on in the eighth inning to preserve Mussina's 1-0 lead, keeping things interesting by allowing baserunners in both the eighth and the ninth. But he shut the door successfully, allowing the Yanks to finally record a win in the series.
That win did more than allow the Yankees to avoid the indignity of a sweep. It put the pressure back on the A's to close out the series or face a long cross-country flight to play the deciding game in the home of the World Champions--a mirror image of last year's series, when the Yanks couldn't close out the A's in Yankee Stadium and had to head to Oakland to play the deciding game.
Having finally caught a break or two the night before, the Yanks appeared much more confident on Sunday. They ran up long at bats against Oakland starter Cory Lidle, who performed effectively as the A's fourth starter this season but who is clearly a notch below their young trio of heralded hurlers. They manufactured not one but two runs in the second inning without benefit of a hit--two walks, an error by Oakland second baseman F.P. Santangelo, and a groundout. Then they added two more on a Bernie Williams double in the third inning, and bled Lidle for another run in the fourth after a Paul O'Neill double and a timely single by Alfonso Soriano.
Coming into the game, the big question was how effective Yankee starter Orlando Hernandez would be. Hernandez started the season 0-5 before missing two months on the DL, but he finished with a strong 4-1, 2.88 ERA September. Still, he was removed from his final start in the second inning, unable to gain command of his pitches, and only four innings of shutout relief on the season's final day guaranteed him a roster spot for the series. El Duque has excelled in the postseason for the Yanks during this run, with an 8-1 record and one of the Yanks' biggest wins along the way (1998 ALCS against Cleveland, down 2-1, he hung a 4-0 shutout on the Indians in Jacobs Field). He didn't have nearly that kind of dominance today; instead he gave the Yanks what my friend Nick Stone refers to as a "Granny Gooden" outing--one watched with all of the trepidation reserved for witnessing an elderly woman navigate an icy staircase, so named for a certain former Yankee starter.
But Granny Hernandez, despite throwing 30 pitches in the first inning and allowing two runs in the third, got stronger as the epic (two hours old in the third inning!) progressed. He allowed only one baserunner in the fourth and fifth innings combined, and when he departed up 7-2 in the sixth with two runners on, not a single Yankee fan could complain that this wasn't the equal of his past clutch performances. Mike Stanton, as he is prone to do with the dynasty's foes at the gate, beat back the A's threat in the sixth, and yielded to Ramiro Mendoza in the eighth inning with the game under control.
So in one afternoon, the Yanks totaled more runs than the A's had for the entire series, and more tripled their own offensive output. Meanwhile, the A's woes with runners in scoring position, an oversight as they raced to a 2-0 lead, have now become dire: 1-for-31 through four games. Worse, they've lost their fine rightfielder Jermaine Dye for the season. Dye, whose arrival in Oakland via trade set the tone for a remarkable 48-14 run (he drove in 59 runs in those 62 games), fractured his tibia in the third inning by fouling a pitch off of the leg, then crumpling awkwardly to the ground in obvious agony. Ron Gant, whose solo home run paced the A's in Game 2, will fill in for Dye, a serious downgrade both offensively and--in the spacious outfield of Yankee Stadium--defensively.
A's manager Art Howe made one questionable change in his lineup, subbing lefty-hitting utilityman F.P. Santangelo at second base for righty regular Frank Menechino. Santangelo's error in the second inning opened the door to the first Yankee runs; it was his first error this season, but it cost the A's big time. On the other hand, Howe managed to spread the workload throughout his bullpen, using five pitchers after Lidle departed, notably sparing both setup man Jim Mecir and closer Jason Isringhausen.
Torre's lineup decisions paid off for him on Sunday. David Justice, batting third once again, reached base three times out of five, battling for walks in the middle of two rallies and hitting a triple to key the Yanks' final two runs. Paul O'Neill, batting seventh after sitting Saturday night, hit the tough grounder which tied up Santangelo for the error, then doubled and scored in the fourth inning. What's more, when O'Neill grounded out in the fifth with the Yanks already up 7-2, he spent the rest of the inning visibly cursing a blue streak at himself, displaying the fiery defiance which had seemed absent in days past.
Suddenly this rematch has achieved the fever pitch we all hoped for. Never mind the broom-speak, here's an elimination game. The big question mark is the health of Roger Clemens. Is the hamstring problem which forced his removal after four lackluster innings in Game 1 sufficiently healed to allow him to pitch effectively Monday night? Clemens' throwing session on Sunday was good enough for the Yanks to send him back to New York ahead of the rest of the team, allowing him a relatively restful night. The Yanks will likely have all hands on deck, including Andy Pettitte, to bail him out should he falter.
As for Torre, the Yanks' resurgence in this series should offer some vindication for the manager's critics. While many folks--Yankee fans and Yankee haters alike--would have liked to bury Torre's future with the team after the first two games of the series, news of a contract offer of a two-year extension worth $10 million dollars clearly shows he's still in the driver's seat. The fact is that Yankee owner Steinbrenner needs Torre now more than ever. With his new network in place to start next season, Steinbrenner needs to protect his flagship property, and that means having Torre at the helm. The economic climate being as lousy as it is means a scramble for advertisers for the new network, and far more advertisers are likely to come on board with the known commodity of a Torre-managed team that looks as if it can still contend for a World Championship. Anything less, especially with the retooling the Yanks appear headed for (likely no O'Neill, no Martinez--two underperforming but popular players), is a less bankable commodity.
So the Yankee dynasty lives to fight at least another day. And after sitting, standing, pacing, high-fiving, wincing, and writing my way through nearly NINE HOURS of intense playoff baseball (a few words about Curt Schilling's performance are certainly in order, but time doesn't permit right now), I can hardly wait for more. Bring it on.
