I’m not able to give a thorough rehashing of Wednesday’s ALCS Game Six as I’ve been doing lately; I’ve got a job interview tomorrow morning and I’m completely drained right now. Suffice it to say that while I’m disappointed the Yankees lost that see-saw battle in the Bronx 9-6, I think they have to feel better going into Game Seven on the broad shoulders of Roger Clemens than the Red Sox do about riding the fragile arm of Pedro Martinez. It’s only fitting that these two meet again to decide the series; neither pitcher is a lock against their nemesis, which is why they’ll have to play the damn thing after all.

High winds played a big factor in Wednesday’s game, particularly on well-hit balls to the outfield. But the Yanks’ big bugaboo was their bullpen. By failing to get a stellar effort out of starter Andy Pettitte, the ‘pen’s underbelly was revealed for what it is: soft and vulnerable. Jose Contreras looked sharp in the sixth in relief of Pettitte, but he imploded in the seventh, unable to protect a two-run lead while the Yanks were nine outs from the pennant. Jeff Nelson and Gabe White made the problem worse in the ninth by giving up two more runs, but if anyone was surprised by then about the Yanks bullpen, they were the only ones.

I take little solace in the fact that I was right about Boston’s big bats finally showing up. Nomar Garicaparra went 4-for-5 with a triple that became a Little-League homer on Hideki Matsui’s errant throw into the stands, David Ortiz went 2-for-5 with 3 RBI, and the Don’t Call Us Millers (Bill Mueller and Kevin Millar) combined for five hits. The Sox bullpen did a better job of patching things together in relief of starter John Burkett than the Yanks did in relief of Pettitte, and that’s why they’ve all got an invitation to the big ball in the Bronx tomorrow night.

Speaking of invitations, I’ve passed up two to go to the ballgame, in part because I’m 0-2 in the postseason, and in part because I’ve got my cousin in town tomorrow. But my girlfriend is going, and so’s my pal Nick, so in addition to thinkng about the game all day long, I’ll be there in spirit with them. Particularly after seeing how well Clemens kept his head on Saturday while others around him lost theirs, I feel good about the Yanks’ chances.

Which is more than I can say about those of the Cubs. The tenacious Florida Marlins stormed out of the gate in the NLCS Game Seven with a three-run homer in the top of the first off of Kerry Wood, and though Wood tied the game with a two-run jack of his own, he just didn’t have his stuff tonight. Though the Cubs staked him to a 5-3 lead by knocking out starter Mark Redman, Wood ended up getting clipped for seven runs. The Marlins, meanwhile, got an inspiring four innings of stellar relief from Game Five winner Josh Beckett, who tossed a 2-hit shutout on the Cubs on Sunday, and ended up winning by the same score the Red Sox did, 9-6.

So it’s the pennant for Jack McKeon and the Fish, and pure heartbreak for the Cubs and their fans, another in a long list of futility going back to the billy goat in ’45. But anyone who wants to point a finger at that poor Cubs fan who went after the foul ball in the eighth on Tuesday is an idiot. The players — and their manager, Dusty Baker — lost that game, not the fan, and anybody who’d so much as harm the hair on that poor bastard’s head for doing what every single one of them would have done in the same position deserves to be beaten senseless with a fungo bat until the Cubs finally win a goddamn pennant. And screw the Chicago Sun-Times for releasing the identity of the fan so that people can now make his life miserable, and for all of the other “journalistic” outlets which followed suit. What a disgrace.

My heart goes out to the Cubs fans in the blogosphere, particularly Cub Reporter Christian Ruzich, who had this to say about the fan in question:

I still think he was 100% in the wrong, and should have gotten out of the way of Moises, but the more I learn about him the worse I feel for him.

By all accounts, he is a huge Cubs fan. What that means, as we all know, is that he feels sick about last night’s game. And I’m not talking about his part in it — I’m talking about the same sickness that all of us felt last night and continue to feel today. Think about how bad you feel, and then think about how much worse you’d feel if you had contributed to the loss. Whether he was just not thinking, or whether it was a selfish attempt to catch a foul ball, or whatver the circumstances were, the fact is that he had a hand in helping his favorite team lose a game that they had a very good chance of winning.

Everyone’s talking about how much blame this guy deserves… In my opinion, he deserves some small part of the blame, but not nearly as much as the players who didn’t execute and the manager who didn’t put his team in a position to win.

Everyone is also talking about what punishment he “deserves” (myself included, in last night’s heat-of-the-moment post) but I think he’s punishing himself more than enough. I don’t doubt for a second that this guy feels worse than anyone in Chicago who isn’t in the Cubs clubhouse.

Well put. I could go on about all of this, but I’m tired, and it’s a big day tomorrow. No, make that a Big Day. Go Yanks!!!