The Big Book of Bitter Defeats OUCH! Put Game 7 of the 2001 World Series in the Big Book of Bitter Defeats. The Arizona Diamondbacks rallied from down 2-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning against Mariano Rivera to dethrone the three-time defending World Champions and bring the title to a four-year old purple-wearing …
Archive of entries posted by Jay Jaffe
All the Marbles Here it is. One game for all the marbles. There’s no tomorrow. This is do or die. Championship or bust. All the money’s on the table. This is it. This is the reason they play the…. Sorry. My cliché monkey got carried away while I was finishing my coffee. I could write …
The Biggest Hurdle The Yankees are within one game of their fourth straight World Championship, but they may be facing their biggest hurdle of all. It stands six foot ten, has a wicked fastball, a mean slider, and a nasty scowl, and answers to the nickname The Big Unit. If you need to come up …
Déjà Vû All Over Again On Wednesday night, Bob Brenly left his young closer in long enough to turn into a pumpkin, and the Yanks found some late treats in their Halloween bags. Last night the Diamondbacks’ manager was still in the festive spirit; like Santa Claus, he delivered Byung Hyun Kim to the Yankees …
Hat Trick “Ugh. That half-inning may well be the series.” Those were my words on the in-game web log over at Mostly Baseball, where I’ve been involved in a running commentary of nearly every Yankee postseason game. The Arizona Diamondbacks had just scored two runs in the eighth inning of Game 4 to go up …
The Weird Series Very weird game last night, and an even weirder odyssey to get there. I left work on the waaaay west side of Manhattan, walking past Penn Station and Madison Square Garden, where several fire trucks had their sirens blaring. “What now?” I thought to myself. Anthrax, bomb scare, the return of the …
That Purple Team That purple team, the one with the Escape from Taco Bell uniforms and the most lethal pitching duo to reach a World Series since Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, has got the New York Yankees by the throats. Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson of the Arizona Diamondbacks have throttled the three-time defending …
The Buck Showalter Alumni Classic I suppose I ought to tear myself away from reading my brand-new copy of The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract for long enough to jot down some thoughts about the World Series before it actually starts, especially given that the team I spend so much time following (and writing …
One Man’s Ballot I finally managed to find the time to vote in the just-completed Internet Baseball Awards and wanted to put my ballot on record. I did it very quickly, though I’d given a fair amount of consideration to each award in the recent weeks. I’ll admit that postseason peformance may have seeped into …
Bring Us Your Finest Grilled Meats Those of us who gather under the warm pink glow of the Chow Mein sign in Manhattan’s East Village to watch the Yankees annual playoff run are a quirky lot. Since the 1998 season, my friends and I have assembled in some combination or other to share in the …