Steven Goldman’s special installment of The Pinstriped Bible has some excellent analysis regarding these Yankees in the ALDS. He points out how fickle the media has been, questioning their questioning of this Yankee club’s shortcomings: “Here we are in October, and some still don’t know the team they have been watching since February.”

Goldman dispels a couple of myths about this Yankee team: that they’re not patient at the plate (they led the majors in walks by a wide margin, and drew more than all of Torre’s other Yankee teams save the ’99 model), and that they’re a bottom-feeding team (any team that wins 100 is). He also explores the Yanks’ frighteningly bad defense:

The Torre/Cashman Yankees take a lot of chances with their defense to improve their offense…T he only problem with this formulation is that if you’re going to be matched up against a team that is not running a walks and power offense… but puts the ball in play, you’re going to have unusual pressure put on the defense. All of the shortcomings, additionally magnified by the pressure of the postseason, come oozing out. This is what killed the Yankees in the 2002 playoffs and it is hurting them now. The key is to out-hit the mistakes, and the Yankees have not.

Spot on. Goldman goes on to point out that in the long run, the exposure of the Yanks’ defensive woes is a good thing: “The question that this ALDS is forcing the Yankees to evaluate is where they have crossed the line from good hit/some field to good hit/no field. This is a good thing, especially if it means they will spend the offseason confronting the 2004 disposition of Bernie Williams.” Good stuff.

Also on the Yankee tip, but from a different angle, is Replacement Level Yankee Weblog‘s Larry Mahnken, who’s feeling a bit jaded these days. Comparing the hopes of this Yankee team to seeing his first World Series champ in ’96:

Now, it’s not the same. It’s hardly even fun. Sure, if they win the World Series, I’ll be happy, I’ll float for weeks. But if they lose… they’re not supposed to lose, just like they weren’t supposed to win in 1996. Thursday night’s game, as good a game as has been pitched by any Yankee in this postseason run, was not an exhilirating experience for me–not until the bottom of the seventh. I sat there watching, expecting the worst, waiting for the defense to blow the game. The win was relief, not joy.

After a while, winning does get boring. Oh, poor Yankees fan, you’re thinking to yourself sarcastically–and rightfully so. I’ve experienced more joy in the past decade than the fan of any other baseball team has, because my team has been more successful in the postseason for past decade than any other baseball team. I’m lucky. But after awhile, the joy of winning lessens, because you start to expect it.

I cannot relate to a Cubs fan. Ninety-five years. This isn’t the Red Sox, failures in the World Series for eighty-five years–this is the Cubbies, who haven’t won a postseason series of any kind since 1908. And if a 19-year old kid had thought to touch second base, they might not have won that series either.

They’re one game away from ending that streak. One game away from advancing to a higher postseason round for the first time ever. And for Cubs fans, that would be pure joy. Even if they lost the NLCS, even if they were swept, Cubs fans would finally have something to celebrate. It wouldn’t be their fondest hope, but for this year, it would be good enough.

About the Cubs and their fans, I agree with Larry and wish them nothing but the best — who wouldn’t love to see Dusty Baker stick it to the organization which let him go? I mean, besides Barry Bonds.

But about getting bored of winning… um, no. I’m lucky enough to have been blessed with a couple of World Champion Dodger teams in my youth (my first champs were actually the 1978-79 Seattle Supersonics of DJ, Gus, and Downtown Freddie Brown). Having grown up rooting against the Bronx Zoo, I didn’t come around to the Yanks until ’96 when I had been in the city for a year and a half, and Torre’s eminently decent bunch won me over. If that makes me a bandwagoneer unworthy of your time, hey, I’ve heard it all before.

But the ’98 team was like no other, and their championship was something special between me and my friends; it was the first year we took up our partial season ticket package, spent a good chunk of summer at the ballpark together, and attended our first World Series game. In ’99 I was actually at Yankee Stadium for the clincher, singing Frank Sinatra with 56,000 fans, and that’s the Top of the Heap; I wish that every baseball fan (except the ones from Boston — tee hee hee) got to experience its equivalent once.

The 2000 Subway Series brings back some unpleasant personal memories — a breakup, a lovers’ triangle in the midst of my friends — to the point that I recall the Yanks’ loss in 2001 with a bit more fondness. After all, that team was all about healing the heart, and even though those Yanks came up short, they did more for this city than even the previous three winners did.

The sensation of winning isn’t quite as heightened when it’s repeated, but anytime your team wins after a drought, it all feels new again, and it doesn’t matter if that drought’s two years or twenty-five. So while I won’t throw myself under the 4 train if the Yanks don’t win, I say this to the Sox fans and the A’s fans and the Twins fans pining for a breakthrough in the AL, and to those fans of the four long-suffering NL teams as well: with all due respect, I hope my team crushes yours.

As I relearned last year, even if my team falls by the wayside, I love the tension of October baseball. Butterlies in the stomach, cold sweat in the commercial breaks, living and dying with every pitch, waiting with anticipation for the next game, soaking up every victory like it’s the world’s best pasta sauce. Some things never get old.