Don't smart me!  See, I wanna watch you squirm; I wanna see you sweat a little, and when you smart me... it ruins it.
                                                                      - John Turturro as Bernie Bernbaum in Miller’s Crossing

         Sometimes a breeze picks up and carries something just a little bit farther than it would normally go.  And so it was with the BPS the past few days.  On Saturday when me & the boys were watching game four at Bri Rumble’s, I was pacing the floor, ranting about how crazy it is for people who hate the Yankees to complain.  “How could they complain?” I said.  “Why would they complain?  This is the golden age for Yankee-haters.”  At that point Sean calmly sat on the couch and said, “You know, with the Yankees it’s always public-execution style…”  That line connected instantly.  I told them I was going to work it into the BPS, and they all nodded, but most of them don’t really read it anyway, so that didn’t mean a whole lot to them.  The resulting paragraph ended up being reproduced on some external sites, and the reaction was pretty evenly split along party lines, as you might expect.  My only regret was that some of the sites that reproduced the paragraph left off what were probably the most important three words.  “And that’s okay.”   

         Some cleanup on the Joe Torre situation.  The Yankees are always about winning.  Except when they’re not.  Which isn’t often.  But this was one of those times.  I don’t know George Steinbrenner.  Although it is true, what you may have heard.  The one and only time I was in a luxury box at Yankee Stadium, four years ago, he walked past me after the game, patted me on the back and said, “Nice to see you again.”  But I’m not going to pretend that that qualifies me as “in the know.”  So it is merely my own personal opinion that George is not the guy he used to be.  I’ll leave it at that.  I think others are calling the shots.  And we know that Howard Rubenstein, PR man extraordinaire, is currently in his employ.  Put all of that together, and I think the greater good won the day here.  And by greater good I mean the Yankee tradition, and Joe Torre’s place in it.  Joe Torre will, most likely next year, pass Casey Stengel for second place in victories as Yankee manger, right behind Joe McCarthy.  He also has a real shot at the Hall of Fame.  But he will most certainly get his number retired, a plaque, and all the trimmings from the Yanks.  To clip him for poor performance with one year left on his contract would have put a big black mark on all of that.  It would be much easier to let him finish next year, retire on his own terms, and start fresh in 2008.  This way he gets to retire with dignity, the Yankees don’t have blemish on their legacy and tradition, and regardless of what happens next year, they don’t have to deal with the distraction of “will Joe be fired,” because everyone knows he’s retiring at the end of the season.  Or, it could be that since the boss may or not be thinking clearly, no one had the cajones to be the guy who clipped Joe Torre.  Or maybe they really do think he is the best man for the job going forward.  Where do I come down?  Not sure.  But I found myself glad that he was still around when the smoke cleared, do I guess on some level I think it’s the right move.  But if you see Joe Girardi hired as bench coach for next season, you know what’s coming next October.

        Quick point on our new friend Scott Tobias.  We’ve had fans of all stripes here at the BPS, and we welcome them all.  Come on in, let us know you’re thoughts, do your thing.  But you need to avoid making a fool of yourself.  So, Scott, here’s the problem.  You came in and posted the quintessential “your team is crazy over-hyped, and my under-appreciated team is going to spank your bunch of overrated, overpaid babies” comment.  Fair enough.  But the problem is you came in and posted well after the Tigers had already won the series.  See how that’s a little mixed up?  Here’s how it works, dude.    If you come in beforehand and talk smack, and then your team backs you up, kudos to you.  But coming in telling us why your team is going to win after they’ve already won, well, do I even need to finish that thought?  Just a note for next time. 

        So boys, you know how this goes.  I’m going to go away for a while.  Maybe it’s because I have nothing more to say, and maybe it’s because, by nature, I’m one of the laziest guys in America.  Either way.  Once again, the BPS has allowed me to get all that comes along with this, my crazy obsession, off my chest.  I have to thank the BPS crew, the guys that come out and post regularly.  As I’ve said many times, I don’t know how many people read this thing.  I don’t have a stat counter, and I don’t do a lot of trolling myself.  I try to judge what kind of quality we end up with by the amount of comments we get.  So, in no particular order (and anyone who notices that I forgot someone, please post a comment and throw it out there), a special thank you to the regular crew – Happymeds, Lucky, Ras, Rocco, Nick, Umair, JD, Raoul, H8n, level, gjp, and guava.  And a thank you to saif, showa, myp, eric, fkay, nyangel, Mannino, Stevie D, amber_11, sunny615, soxfax, csjulien, Jeff Meltzer, Steamboat Bob,  yankeegirl123, redsunkt,  bb6coach, and yes, even Kaylee.  And thanks to fellow bloggers Reid, Gabe, Lola, Felix, Beth, Jason, Jonathan, Mollie, Matt, Michael Norton, and Cyn.  And of course, thanks to my compatriots, Acc, Mikey Juice, Mike Sherry, Tony Sherry (thanks for skimming the first paragraph once a week to see if you’re in it, Tony), Petey Goods, the Rumble brothers, Chris Woy, Sean, Ruddo, Vino, JJ, Triple J, Grossman, and the LT.  And whoever I forgot.  Thanks for taking the time to post a comment.  I appreciate all of them.  You guys are what make this blog fun and entertaining.

       I posted the Wifflemania ’06 pictures – take a look when you get a minute.

        I’m not much on predictions for the rest of the playoffs.  I prove to myself every day just how little I know.  The way I see it, if Detroit keeps doing what they did to the Yanks, they will be unstoppable.  But I have to say, the Mets have just had that magic all year long.  And you need the magic. I’m a New York guy, so I’ve got some stake in the Mets winning, I guess.  Grossman will be psyched, of course.  As will Big Joe (father-in-law), a lifelong Met fan who’s never been anything but cool putting up with his jack-*ss son-in-law’s obsession with the Yanks.  And there was this old New York (baseball) Giants fan turned Met-fan I knew growing up, who threw ticker-tape out onto Broadway in ’69 as Tom Terrific and the boys strolled down the canyon of heroes.  I remember when I was a kid in ’86 when he leaned out the front door banging a wooden spoon against a pan on the night the Mets won the World Series, because that’s what you did to celebrate something where he grew up, in Manhattan.  Maybe somewhere that guy is smiling…

        I’ll be back from time to time.  Until then, feel free to post a comment when something’s on your mind.  April will be here before you know it.  And when it comes, me & the boys will be back in section 24, wearing gear, hanging on the edge of our seats, believing, and bleeding pinstripes…

In the clubhouse...

A gift from McHale. Sure, he spelled Acclestick wrong, but he means well.

Kicking things off....

Sean was still hurling tough, right to the bitter end.

Robbie Wonderful and Dollar Billy or "Big Bird"

Sean delivering the pitch to Marshall

The defending champion Bombers. It was not to be in the finals in 2006.

Looking over the draws. Schedule can make or break you at Wifflemania.

"Thunder" making it happen. Mikey Juice getting ready to deliver the pitch.

Paddy B. delivers to Spiff in a game that took four extra innings

MVP Stevie C. getting ready to deliver to Mike Sherry

Jeremy's Wig

The 2006 Wifflemania at Acclestick Park Champion "Blue Balls"

The Blue Balls ready to do battle

Bird Bird getting it started. Spiff delivers...

Down time in between games. Yes, that is Petey Goods in a Yankees tank top...

Robbie Wonderful, aka Handsome Rob, aka the hairless assasin.

To the victors go the spoils...

Mikey Rumble models the 2006 uniform jersey. Holding a football, apparently.

The playing of the National Anthem.

Play ball....

         As I sat on the couch in Bri Rumble’s living room late Friday night after game three, feeling like I just got punched in the stomach by Kenny Rogers, I looked to my right and saw a stuffed animal sitting up against the wall.  It was actually a stuffed “Big Bird” from Sesame Street.  A pretty nice one; official and everything, with its elongated beak and familiar bright yellow hue.  It belonged to Bri’s 8-month old daughter, Emma; a gift from her Uncle Mike.  I picked it up and held it on my lap.  I was not feeling good about having to come back the next day and face an elimination game on the road.  “You know what?” I said to Mrs. Bri Rumble, “It really does make you feel better.”  She giggled at the ridiculousness of a grown man holding Big Bird like a little kid.  “You can borrow Big Bird if you want,” she said.  “No thanks,” I said, “Emma won’t ever go near it again.”  Bri, picking up on where I was going, finished my joke; “Yeah.  It will smell like hate…” 

         I have no words to soothe anybody on this, by far my least favorite day of the whole year.  I wish somebody had words to soothe me.  I’ll do one more post after this to clean things up, and I’ll post the Wifflemania pictures like I promised.  Then I’ll shut it down for a while and try and get some sleep, like the big boy is always telling me to. 

        By way of analysis, I don’t have a whole lot here.  I really don’t have a good handle on what happened, exactly.  Tony Sherry said it best today, as the game was going on.  “I just don’t get it,” he said.  “It just doesn’t make any sense.  How is this offense that’s so good all of the sudden this bad.  This is mind-boggling.”  Tony was right.  You can go two ways with it.  The first way is to say that they just ran into an unbelievably hot team that absolutely brought everything together at exactly the right time.  It’s tough to argue.  I said at the start of this series that the biggest thing to watch out for was the pitching; that these guys had three exceptional starting pitchers, any one of whom had the ability to rip off a premier game at any time.  They hadn’t really ever all put it together at the same time, but they had the talent.  The fourth pitcher, by the way, was Kenny Rogers, who did not, in my opinion, have the ability to do anything well in the postseason.  Well, this team put on a pitching display the likes of which I have absolutely never seen before.  Not in ’01 with Johnson and Schilling.  Not the ’03 Marlins, and certainly not the "big three” in Oakland in the late nineties.  I have never seen any pitching staff do what those guys did to the Yankee lineup in this series.  Not ever.  I could cite any number of examples, but I’ll pick one that stuck out to the point where it was almost comical.  Jeremy Bonderman, as he took a perfect game into the fifth inning, had only thrown 37 pitches.  And of those, 30 were strikes and only 7 were balls.  You almost have to laugh.  Only seven balls through five full innings!   

         The other argument you could make is that Brian Cashman has put together a team built for speed in the regular season, which sputters when the stakes are high.  I was never a big proponent of this one, but I’ll admit it warrants discussion.  When your game is patience, bleeding pitchers, and waiting for your pitch, you also need to have a "plan B” for when the pitcher is throwing strikes.  We thought we had that covered, as we have a lot of guys who will pound the ball and make you pay for throwing it down the middle.  Well, maybe we didn’t have it covered.  It’s tough to kill the Yankees for not hitting here, though, because the Tigers pitchers were all painting the corners and dropping balls right on the edge of the strike zone.  They were truly phenomenal.  Were the Yankees too aggressive?  Did they swing too early in the count and not take their pound of flesh?  I don’t know.  I do know one thing.  The Yankees didn’t pitch like they needed to.  Wang is a reliable starter, and Moose is going to keep you in the game.  But we don’t have anybody who is going to go out there and make you look silly for seven or eight innings.  Our guys just aren’t going to do that.  We need a few of those guys, so that when we run into a hot pitcher we don’t find ourselves down 5-0 in the fifth, getting too aggressive because we need to score runs in big bunches.  Those games need to be 1-0 or 2-1 in the sixth, so that we can stay on our game.  Do the current personnel have the fortitude to win in the playoffs?  It’s tough to say, but I’m not exactly convinced they do, at this point.  Was it any wonder that the only guys who had anything going today were Derek Jeter, who showed again why he deserves whatever accolades they shower him with, and Jorge Posada, who pulled out a sidearm and put one in Jamie Walker’s throat, just so he didn’t walk off the mound in the ninth feeling unscathed?  And the closest we came to scoring runs on Friday was a ball off of Bernie’s bat, just inches foul.  The old guard never stops fighting.  I just wish some of the other guys were paying attention.

         We returned to Bri Rumble’s house on Saturday to watch game 4, mostly because we felt that lightning wasn’t going to strike twice in the same spot.  This time it was Bri Rumble, Mikey Rumble, Mikey Juice, Sean, Tony Sherry, and me.  Sean made some great points as he waxed philosophical about Yankee-haters.  This is the golden age of Yankee haters.  They really couldn’t have asked for a more perfect few seasons.  Aside from the fact that the Yankees have kept their teams from making the playoffs on a few occasions, these past few iterations of the Yankees have allowed for some of the most satisfying moments in Yankee-hating history.  An excruciating bottom-of-the-ninth comeback loss in game seven of the World Series in 2001.  How many times in history has that happened?  One or two maybe.  That’s about it.  A blown 2-games-to-1 lead in the World Series against the ’03 Marlins, a team who most still believe didn’t belong on the same field with them.  They became the only team in the great century of professional baseball to blow a 3-0 lead in a postseason series, against their archest of rivals.  They have watched those same archrivals win a World Championship when they could not, and could very well watch another this year with the almost-as-archrival Mets.  And in four of the last five years, they have been washed out of the playoffs by losing three (or more) games in a row.  And finally, this year, with a lineup that was touted as one of “the best ever” (although that was certainly trumped up, due not in small part to Yankee-haters who knew that the bigger the hype, the more brilliant the crash), they were humiliated to the tune of zero runs in twenty straight innings of baseball. 

        The Yankees and their fans are never eliminated as an afterthought.  They are always taken down in a public execution.  They are led to the gallows to the raucous cheers of the gathered crowds.  They are read the charges of high crimes and misdemeanors against them, and they are always the same.  Their misdemeanor?  Gluttony.  Their high crime?  Nobility.  And then they are very publicly hanged while the throngs roar with approval.  The masses will not be denied their opportunity to watch the mighty fall.  And that’s okay.  It’s part of what we Yankee fans sign up for.  Some of us make a choice.  Some of us are born into it.  But all of us wouldn’t trade it for the world.          

        The crowd at Bri Rumble’s today was defeated early.  It was clear before long that there was to be no celebration.  By the late innings, when the game and the season were drawing their last few breaths, most of the boys had ceased watching the carnage.  Bri and Sean were out by the barbeque pit in the backyard, smoking cigars and commiserating.  Mikey Juice and Mike Rumble were in the kitchen with the girls, eating a fifth meal and playing with the babies.  Tony Sherry had already started on his way back to Staten Island.  But in the living room, still in front of the TV, sat exactly one lone figure, his secret hopes for a miracle dwindling moment by moment.  He sat wearing his lucky hat and his Bernie Williams jersey, the one he was not yet ready to give up on.  And cradled tightly in his arms was a stuffed bird, with an elongated beak and familiar bright yellow hue…

         Okay, how do you want me to do this.  Yesterday I was Mr. Brightside, sort of.  Today I’m afraid I don’t have a lot that’s going to make anybody feel better.  First things first.  Last year I admitted before the playoffs that the Angels were the right pick on paper.  The same could not be said of the Tigers this year.  Until now.  Tomorrow, the Tigers are the right pick on paper.  It’s very rare that a team gets up off the map to win an elimination game on the road when all of the momentum is in the other team’s favor.  It’s even more rare when the pitching matchup sits squarely in favor of the other team.  I was going over the last 11 years of Yankee playoffs, and they’ve played in five elimination games that were not a deciding game five or game seven.  In other words, games in which the Yankees could lose the series but not win the series.  Two when they had gone down 0-2 to Oakland in 2001, game 4 in Anaheim in ’02, game 6 against Florida in ’03, and game 4 at the Stadium last year against Anaheim.  Surprisingly, they are 3-2 in those games, and 2-1 on the road.  The bad news is that they’ve never won the World Series in a year when they’ve been faced with one or more of those games.  Practically speaking, most teams wilt when they are faced with an elimination game.  The pressure sits squarely on the other team, and the team that’s a game up can relax with the knowledge that they will play another day no matter what.  In short, conventional wisdom says you would have to be crazy to bet on the Yanks tomorrow.  But the Yanks have two things going for them.  Maybe they’re enough to get past the momentum, and maybe they’re not.  I’ll get to them in a minute. 

        I said yesterday that I was very uneasy following yesterday’s game.  This was why.  I smelled this coming, as I think a lot of us did.  It was just so d*mned familiar.  This was ’02 and ’05 all over again.  Win the first game, blow a lead in the second game to lose a close one, and watch the wheels fall of from there.  Game two is so important.  It’s been the exact same formula.  That’s what made me so uncomfortable yesterday.  I also said yesterday that in a series like this, both teams have “their night,” and then it’s up to one of the teams to win two other games.  And as I said yesterday, one of the things that bothered me about yesterday was that the Tigers had not yet had “their night.”  Well, now they have.  Kenny Rah rah, of all people, comes in and pitches the game of his life.  And it’s not like he didn’t get any help.  He got a huge blown call in the Tigers favor in the second inning that gave the Tigers two extra runs.  Walking back onto the mound in the third inning he had a nice three-run lead.  When you have a guy with questionable mental fortitude like Josh Beckett or Kenny Rah rah, who was saved until game three so he would not have to pitch in NY, a crooked-number lead allows them to settle down and pitch without a lot of pressure.  And the Tiger hits happen to string together consecutively in order to score him six runs.  And Bernie and Posada both missed two-run bombs by inches.  But Kenny pitched a monster game.  Let’s give him credit.  But my point is; this was the Tigers night.  Quite clearly.  Was game one the Yankees night?  Or was it just a manifestation of the fact that they have a better lineup?  Tough to say.  But that brings me to my two pieces of good news. 

        The first one is pretty simple.  The Yankees are better than the Tigers.  They just are, and a good hard look at both teams tells you that.  But unfortunately, that doesn’t mean a whole lot when you need to win two out of two and they just need to win one out of two.  The other piece of good news, for keen Yankee watchers, is that they are statistically due.  I make no bones about the fact that I am a pretty big loser.  Meaning, I watch every single game and I know most of the Yankees tendencies backwards and forwards.  And there is one glaring anomaly that is sticking way out right now.  The Yankees haven’t scored a run in 14 innings.  That is extremely unusual for the Yankees, against any team and any pitchers.  They are at the extreme end of the normal standard deviations of run-less innings.  Usually they will go max 15 or 16 innings before they start hammering the ball.  Law of averages.  Now the one counterpoint to that is that tension and anxiousness due to the playoffs and being on the brink of elimination might skew their tendencies.  It’s very possible.  It has probably already exacerbated the current situation, to a certain extent.  But it’s not like they’re not getting opportunities.  They were 1-16 with runners in scoring position the last two days, and 0-18 with runners on base tonight.  They’re a good team.  They’re great hitters.  If they were to be shut out again tomorrow, we would be talking about 23 straight scoreless innings.  They didn’t come anywhere near a streak like that all year.  What’s even more interesting, only one swing (Damon’s bomb yesterday) in the last 18 innings of Yankee baseball has produced any runs.  Doing some extremely rough calculations, I figure each team probably takes around 80 or so swings per game.  So of 160 swings in two games, only one has driven in any runs.  Again, that’s a tremendous outlier.  Something’s gotta give.  I have to believe they’re going to get their runs tomorrow.  I’m not saying Wright’s going to be any good tomorrow, so it may be a 7-5 game, one way or the other, but I am saying the Yankees will score runs, and probably early.  I do think that Bonderman will be excellent tomorrow, as he’s pitching relatively pressure-free.  But if Wright can hold serve for a while, we’ll have a shot.  Because tomorrow it’s all hands on deck.  Mo, Moose, Wang, Randall, whoever.  They’ll have a lot of time to rest otherwise.   

        One thing that occurs to me is that we are paying the price right now for the years of extraordinary success we had in the late nineties.  I know everybody always wants to come up with reasons why that team won and this team hasn’t in a while, but it’s always a guessing game.  There were so many crazy breaks we got back in those days that went our way, and we’ve seen so many breaks go against us the last few years.  One or two can change the course of a series.  It’s probably true that it all evens out in the end.  Although there are also certain valid arguments to be made for the successes of those teams.  From ‘96 through the 2001 ALCS, the Yankees won fourteen of fifteen postseason series’.  That’s an astronomical percentage, and there isn’t a whole lot of logical explanation.  The odds are way against that, regardless of how good the team is.  Since the Aaron Boone bomb, we’ve won just one of the next four series, and we’ve got our backs squarely against the wall in the fifth.  Since game three in Boston ’04, when the Yankees were peppering balls off the green monster left and right and winning by fifty runs, they have lost nine of their next twelve playoff games.  Yup.  Nine of twelve.  For the Yankees to lose ten of thirteen playoff games would also be an extreme anomaly.  What I’m saying, boys, is that we’re due.   

        As I sit here right now at 1:38 am, I’m in a bit more of a nothing-to-lose state of mind.  Don’t get me wrong.  I am entirely miserable and devastated.  Just ask Brian or Mike Rumble, Mikey Juice, Petey Goods, or Sean, who were all wishing they hadn’t invited me to watch the game with them by the second inning tonight.  But now the Yanks are the heavy underdogs.  Believe it or not.  Like I said, conventional wisdom says you would have to be an idiot to bet on the Yankees tomorrow.  But maybe our outburst of runs is enough to get us over the top.  Or maybe tomorrow will be “our night” (day, in this case).  We’re not done yet.  Although we’re in a pickle, without a doubt.  All in all, I think Ras said it best.  Now we see what they’re made of.   

         The general convention is that when you’ve got good news and bad news to give, give the bad news first.  People want to end on a high note.  Most of the time it’s the right approach.  Sometimes it creates a syntax problem.  For instance Joe Girardi’s agent might have good news and bad news.  The bad news is that the manager-of-the-year award that you just got won’t save you from getting fired.  The good news is that you just got the, well….you get it.  And sometimes the news is redundant.  What’s the good news?  Allie boy’s up.  What’s the bad news?  Allie boy’s up.  So in the spirit of that old logic, I have good news and bad news, and I’ll give you the bad news first.

         The bad news is that you need to win this game.  Championship teams rarely lose one-run games by failing to score in the last five innings of a game, against the other team’s bullpen, essentially.  The bad news is that this wasn’t a game in which the other team “had it” and you “didn’t have it.”  The Yankees did what they do.  They bled the starter, who pitched very well, and got him up over 100 pitches through five and a third innings.  They got to the bullpen early, and saw four different pitchers during the course of the game.  Every series can and probably will feature a game in which one or the other team has “their night.”  This game wasn’t it.  This was an eminently winnable game.  The bad news is that we’re now looking at a best-of-three game series, with two games on the road, in which we will be starting an extremely vulnerable Randall and a never-know-what-you’re-going-to-get Jaret Wright.  The bad news is that the Tigers have been everything the media said they would not be in this series, following their slide into the playoffs.  Tough, tenacious, never-say-die, opportunistic, and poised.  The bad news is that Allie-boy let the media get to him, as they exaggerated a 1 for 4 night in which he scalded the ball three times into “another playoff failure.”  Please.  If Polanco doesn’t make a spectacular play at second, Allie is batting .500 in the series coming into today.  But the media, as they have all year, forced a story, and now Allie of the lesser mental fortitude is going to be useless for a while.  The bad news is that the Tigers have been hammering the ball, pounding out twenty hits, twelve of them for extra bases, against our top two pitchers.  The bad news is Joel Zumaya came 100% as advertised, and was utterly unhittable.

         So what’s the good news?

         The good news is that the Yankees did what they do.  Neither Nate Robertson nor Justin Verlander could get out of the sixth inning.  They are out-hitting and out-scoring the Tigers through two games, just as they should be.  The good news is that the Tigers averaged 3 extra-base hits a game during the regular season.  They are averaging six extra-base hits a game in this series.  This is good news because the law of averages says that this trend will not continue.  The good news is that the Yankees got a good long look at Joel Zumaya today, twenty-plus pitches worth, and if he comes back out with that attitude and thinks he’s going to get the same result two nights in a row, he’s misguided.  The Yankees see enough of him, the Yankees will get him.  I guarantee it.  The good news is that the Tigers, true to form, are not scoring a lot of runs.  Four per game will not get it done in a five-game series against the Yankees.  The good news is Kenny Rogers is opposing Randall, and he’s one of the biggest mental cases out there.  The good news is that the Tigers still need two consecutive wins to complete the three-in-a-row they need to avoid playing a game five back in the magic house in the Bronx.  The good news is that the Yankees are still better.  A lot better.

         But the best reason not to panic is because when you look at the Yankees, they are playing exactly to their script.  This Yankee team, as good as their line-up is, does not bash your brains in.  The ’02 Angels would bash your brains in.  They are not a never-out-of-it, last-second-miracle type of team.  The ’06 Mets are a little bit like that.  Some of the Yankee teams over the last ten years have been like that.  The strength of this Yankee team, as un-sexy as this is, is that they will outlast you.  That’s what they do.  That’s how they won the division, and that’s how they ended up with the best record in baseball.  Over the course of a series, they will get to your bullpen early and put enormous pressure on your relievers.  And even if those relievers pitch well, when they are constantly being trotted out game after game, they start to wear down.  This Yankee line-up will put guys all over the bases and give themselves opportunities to score.  Sometimes you can slip out of jams, but you only get a few of those.  The Yankees are just extremely solid one through nine, and if you keep them down today, chances are they will get you tomorrow.  I said early on that the Tigers had one thing that nobody else in the postseason had.  A reliever who scares me.  Say what you will, but Joel Zumaya won that game for the Tigers today.  The truth of the matter is; there probably aren’t any other playoff teams that could have survived three late innings with a one-run lead against the Yankee lineup.  So kudos to him.  But again, you can’t trot Zumaya out for two innings in three straight games.  Not that he couldn’t do it.  But eventually, they’ll get him.  And they’ll get Todd Jones too.

         I’ll be honest.  I was left with a real bad taste in my mouth after this loss.  It was a blown opportunity to put the clamps on the series, of course.  And it was winnable.  And it shattered the illusion of this varsity/junior varsity mismatch, which I really would have liked to believe, if it’s all the same to everybody.  But most of all, it felt too much like the ’02 and ’05 Division Series losses to the Angels.  In both of those series, we won the first game and had a lead halfway through the second game.  We had home-field advantage in ’02, and never made it back.  Last year we lost game five on the road.  The good news is that we have never lost a Division Series at home.  I would love to win the next two, of course.  But I’m looking for positives.  And the positive here is that we just need to win one of the next two games to get it back here.    And Randall, who ordinarily would be a real precarious proposition, is actually the more stable pitcher of the two starters tomorrow, even with three or four of his vertebrae in his shorts.  And we’ve got Lidle if we need him.  Who do the Tigers have if Kenny Rah-rah bites it?

         The last piece of good news.  Me and the boys are not playing around tomorrow.  We’ve got a crew getting together at Bri Rumble’s house that will bring mojo to a new level.  And Mikey Juice is bringing a secret weapon, which I won’t divulge just yet.  All I will say is that the secret weapon has a very formidable track record.  Play ball.

         “Big Joe...”  I pulled the phone out of my pocket just as the thing was going to voicemail.  I missed him, but I figured I would call him back when we got back in the car.  It was about 9:30pm, and Tony Sherry and I were at the Neptune Diner in my old stomping grounds in Astoria (voted best diner in Queens three years running). 

        As soon as we were walking up to the Stadium, we heard on the radio that they were pulling the tarp on the field.  It was curious, without a doubt, because it was hardly raining.  Raindrops were falling, definitely, but nothing that would ever stop a game.  It didn’t make any sense.  And what was worse; everyone kept saying that the delay would figure to be 2 or 2 1/2 hours.  Which would pretty much be a lifetime.  So there we were, getting wet, standing right outside the stadium.  “What do we do now?” asked Tony.  It was a brilliant question.  We had a few choices.  We could go inside the Stadium and stand around inside, which was not a good proposition.  We could walk down to one of the local establishments, which would all be completely jammed, hot and sweaty.  Mikey Rumble was already calling us from Stan’s with Jimmy D and the Red Bull guys.  Also not a great proposition.  That’s when I pulled out a big-time idea.  I get them, every once in a great while.  “Dude, I say we get in the car and take the eight-minute drive to the Neptune Diner in Astoria.”  Tony did not need to be convinced.  “Let’s do it.”  Anything was better than standing in the rain like a jerk.       

         Astoria, interestingly, is right about at the halfway point between Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium.  As a matter of fact, when I lived on 24th St. with Mike Sherry, Chris Woy, Marshall, and McHale, I could get to or from Yankee Stadium in eight minutes, even getting over the Triboro Bridge.  Shea used to take me about fifteen.  In any case, when Tony and I walked in, we were seated right next to a table of four Met fans, all geared up, who had obviously been at the Met game.  They looked at us; we looked at them; neither group saying a word.  A great New York moment in what is now another golden age in the capital of baseball.  Then we sat down and ate our souvlaki like civilized human beings.

         Bad job all around by baseball and the Yankees tonight.  What are you doing fooling around with telling people that you’re going to have a 2 or 2 ½ hour rain delay?  Did they ever really intend to play this game?  Even if they did, I’m sure they did at least a quarter of a million in concessions during the delay.  I know it must be tough to do the right thing in a situation like that; eschewing the almighty dollar for the convenience of the fans.  These same fans are going to have to make plans to ditch out of work to go see this game tomorrow.  John Sterling was surprisingly blunt on the radio after the announcement was made.  “Do you know how you know that they knew they weren’t going to play this game?  Because Mussina and Verlander never came out to warm up after the delay.  They must have known at least a half-hour ago they were going to cancel this game.”   He then said that the meteorologists had originally said that they were going to have a window from 10:30 to 11:30 or 12:00 to play this game.  What?!  They aren’t going to get a game played in an hour and a half.  This was a mess.  And one final kick in the pants.  Even after WCBS had announced fifteen minutes prior, and ESPN was scrolling the news across the bottom of the screen, there still had not been an announcement in the Stadium telling the fans that the game had been canceled.  Luckily, Tony and I had not yet pulled into a spot (at 10:03) when we heard the news in the car, so we could just turn around and bolt back to Brooklyn.  “I don’t understand why they haven’t made an announcement,” Sterling kept saying.  “Nor do I,” Waldman agreed.  By the time the radio broadcast signed off back to the standard WCBS news, they still had not yet made an announcement inside the stadium.  Bad job, guys.  Admittedly, I don’t know what external forces were in play here; TV contracts, MLB suits, whatever.  But I do know this - these fans, who set an attendance record this year, deserved better than this.  The New York Yankees need to remember that.

         Grossman’s Mets.  What else can you say?  The Yankees are the most dangerous team in baseball because they are the best team in baseball.  They have the most talent.  But the Mets are going to be right there next to them in the World Series because they have, as the BPS has been saying all year, “it.”  They just have that magic.  They have been cursed with injury after injury, and they have sleepwalked through the last few months, but it looks like they flipped the switch.  I have been saying of late that you will know right in the first playoff game whether or not they still have that magic.  Well, they played.  Magic?  Check.  Best example: they were the beneficiaries of the one of the craziest plays I have ever seen in the postseason, a play in which about five things had to fall just right for them in order for them to have a chance to execute it perfectly, which they did.  Magic.  Personally, when I look at the fact that the Cardinals/Padres matchup tomorrow is going to feature Wells versus Weaver (in game 2!), I have to believe the Mets won the pennant today.  Even with an extremely vulnerable Wagner, which we predicted all along.  They are going to be interesting.

         So we didn’t play any Yankee baseball today.  Here’s hoping the Yankees take care of their business tomorrow afternoon.  I don’t see either team gaining a huge advantage with the rainout.  I’m going to try and make it up there, as is Tony.  We’ll see.  Either way, I’m looking for the nice things to happen.

         Seannie, your boy was up, he sat down, and now he’s up again!   

         “Mikey- I need some runs in the bottom of the sixth.”  By early on in the game, Brooklyn’s Own Mike Dantone and I had figured out the system via text message.  He was up over 1st base, where we used to be, and I was down in section 24.  But the system was working well thus far.  He was responsible for offense, I was responsible for defense.  And I was texting him this note to try and ease the tension of the now two-run lead.  We were both remarkably efficient all night.  He came through when we needed some offense, and I came through when we needed some defense.  Key double plays are always a specialty of mine in that situation. 

         Prior to the game was I was on the Upper East Side with Mikey Rumble, Tony Sherry, and Little Corvetti.  We had some barbequed ribs at Brother Jimmy’s, which will most likely keep me full for the next two days, and set off to the Stadium to meet the Big Boy, Big Ange, and Bri Rumble.  Rumor had it that Mikey Juice was also at the game, although that was never confirmed.  The electricity in the Stadium tonight was palpable.  Everybody was excited about this series, this team, and this magical destruction lineup.  Looking up and down from one through nine, there aren’t a lot of places to catch your breath.  Nate Robertson found that out pretty quickly.  And the crowd was bananas.

         I think what set the tone for the game, as much as anything, was the caught-stealing at third.  With first and second and nobody out, that ****** the wind right out of Detroit’s sails, and really whipped the crowd into a full blown frenzy.  We were really over-the-top in section 24, as we were standing up and high fiving each other after every single Tiger out and Yankee hit.  The Yankee run celebrations were truly a thing to behold, as a few times we nearly threw each other over the wall onto the left field line.  It never gets old.

         A couple of things about the game.  What was Joe Torre thinking taking Wang out of the game….nobody knows.  That one defied logic then and it defies logic now.  Torre is wont to have a quick hook, and often times he over-manages the bullpen.  A great example is Jaret Wright.  So much has been made this year of the fact that Jaret Wright hadn’t made it out of the sixth inning in some crazy amount of consecutive starts.  I think it was even some sort of record.  If you look closely though, a lot of it was due to the fact that Torre had seemed to have decided that he wasn’t going to pitch him past the sixth inning.  Many times Torre came in with the quick hook when Wright was at 80 pitches or less, hardly in the “red zone” for pitches thrown.  For whatever reason, Torre decided he was no longer effective after about one out in the sixth.  Go figure.  We saw it again tonight.  As we drove home from the game, the callers offered only one possible explanation for the removal of Wang.  That Torre might be trying to conserve Wang to start in a possible game four.  Big Ange and I had the thought was that he was trying to get Myers some confidence early in the series, or that he was trying to figure out if he could “trust” Myers.  Both of those were sketchy reasons, we agreed.  Torre’s explanation was even sketchier.  He said Wang was starting to run out of gas, and that the last batter he faced was going to be his last regardless.  That’s a pretty dumb reason, as he seemed to be the only one who felt that way.  It occurs to me that Ozzie Guillen brought a fresh perspective to the playoffs last year, leaving his starters out there late in games to make or break themselves.  Why hand it to second tier guys in the pen?  He figured he would rather have the starters at 75% than the middle relievers at 100%.  Worked pretty well for him.  He only lost once.  Something tells me that something like that might serve Torre well also.  Maybe not to that extreme, however. 

        In concert with that, Torre made a curious move by announcing that Mo would not pitch more than one inning a game in the postseason.  Why would you ever announce something like that?  It serves absolutely no purpose.  All it does is give the other team a little more confidence and a lot more inspiration, knowing that Mo is not lurking in the bullpen in the eighth.  It’s a tremendous psychological obstacle, I would have to imagine, to know that if you don’t score in the seventh, Torre could bring in Mo at any point in the eighth to finish you off.  So why would Joe Torre take that edge off?  Even if that was the plan, you don’t need to tell anyone.  That way they think they’re going to see Mo.  The only reason I can think of is not a good one for Torre.  By announcing that decision beforehand, it saves him from any second-guessing.  As it is now, everybody knows Mo isn’t coming in, so no one will criticize him for not bringing in Mo in at a crucial point in a game.  I hope that’s not the reason, but I can’t think of anything else. 

         So what did Torre succeed in doing with his bullpen tonight?  He succeeded in giving the Tigers a good long look at Mike Myers, Scott Proctor, Kyle Farnsworth, and Mo; all of the pitchers that they will figure to face often in this series.  Nice, Joe.

         But enough on the negatives.  The magical destruction lineup did its job, and the W was posted.  Abreu had a tremendous post-season debut, and Allie boy smashed the ball three times, getting one hit and getting robbed of two others.  Giambino and Sheff found their strokes, and Damon was his usual catalyst self.  This was a good night for the home team.  But what else can you say about Derek Jeter…  Wow.  A record night for a record guy.  And the admirable thing about Jeter, if he was given the chance to go five-for-five last Sunday (to win the batting title) or go five-for-five tonight in the postseason, he wouldn’t have had it any other way.  Nor would we.

         Fun night tonight.  I’m looking forward to another one tomorrow.  Thanks to JD for giving me the title of the post.

         Seannie!  Your boy is up, bro!

         The lineup is set.  Magical destruction.  The big news, of course, is that Allie boy has been moved to sixth and Sheffield moved up to fourth.  Swapped, essentially.  So what will that do to Allie’s temperament and psyche?  Who knows.  All I know is this.  The BPS has always promulgated the law of averages, and Allie is no exception.  His playoff stats, over the course of his career, have rivaled Jeter’s when looking strictly at the numbers.  But as always, the numbers never end up doing Jeter justice.  Up through the Division Series in 2004, Allie had been money in the playoffs.  Everyone has been so quick to forget that he carried the Yankees through that series in ’04, particularly when he came up with the huge double when they were losing in the 8th inning at home, staring 0-2 in the face on their way to Minnesota for two.  That’s when those ******* at MLB kept sticking the Yankees on in the afternoon, saving the prime-time slots for the tragedy that was the 2003 Cubs.  Even if you look at the ALCS in ’04, Allie boy’s numbers were pretty good.  That’s because he, like the rest of the Yankees, came out smashing the ball in the first three games, padding stats enough to cover up the scar that would be the final four games.  But Allie boy fell into a large pit shortly thereafter.  And he has yet to climb out.  But Allie is not Chuck Knoblauch.  He’s not Mackey Sasser and he’s not Rick Ankiel.  He is one of the most talented players in baseball history.  And the Law of Averages says that he will get his post-season numbers back up to where they are supposed to be, just because it's time.  And that means we need to expect big things from him in the next few days.  You heard it here first (well, maybe not first).

         All of this will be easier if the Yankees can come out and step on Detroit’s throat.  The team could get some confidence early, they can make Detroit start the bullpen, you name it.  But that hasn’t necessarily been the way things have worked for the Yankees this year.  They have had to do everything the hard way.  And I expect that they will have to do this the hard way.  But in the end, I have to believe they should and will win this series.

         Well, I can only hope that the 2006 MLB playoffs are as exciting as the 2nd Annual Wifflemania tournament at Acclestick Park.  The field gathered last Saturday, led by the defending champs, “The Bombers” (Sean, Mike Sherry, and Acc), and joined by returning teams “The Pig” (Sal, McHale, and Wilb), “Big Bird,” (Spiff, Robbie Wonderful, and Billy B.) “Burger Boys,” (Mikey Juice, Petey Goods, and Frito) and “Blue Balls” (Paddy B, Marshall, and Little Corvetti).  The tournament also featured two new teams, “Thunder” (Stevie D, Anthony, and Dave) and “Jeremy’s Wig.” (Mikey Rumble, Tony Sherry, and Slim Richie)  The tournament started out in electric fashion.  “Jeremy’s Wig,” who did not make much of a splash in pre-tournament buzz, pulled off what will have to go down as the most dramatic moment in the history of Wifflemania.  In the bottom of the ninth against last year’s finalists “The Pig,” with two outs, two strikes and down by three with the bases loaded, Slim Richie hit a walk-off grand slam against the reigning Wifflemania MVP to win the game for the “Wig.”  Forget for a minute that it was really one out in the bottom of the third, because the games are only three innings long with two outs a team, because it’s the same difference.  Said Slim Richie after the big bomb, “It was a good pitch and I got lucky.  Other than that he owned me.”  Understanding that Slim Richie was merely being gracious, as he is one of the true “good guys” in Wiffleball, the offending pitcher replied, “Thanks, Rich.  I'll try and work that into my suicide note.”   

         The Bombers continued their undefeated ways early on, although they got a huge scare when Stevie D. of the upstart “Thunder” came out and smashed a double off the house to put the tying and winning runs in scoring position in the third and final inning.  But it was all for naught as Sean came up with the huge K to end the game.

         Meanwhile, a story was emerging as the Blue Balls were throwing up win after win.  Paddy B, one of the star hurlers of last year, was limited to spot pitching duty due to a grotesque arm injury (and when I say grotesque, I mean I looked at it and I almost puked), so Little Corvetti took over most of the pitching duties.  Little C locked horns in a monumental extra-inning duel with Spiffy of Big Bird in the last game of the first round, and Blue Balls walked away with the win to remain undefeated, despite Robbie Wonderful keeping Big Bird in the game with some unbelievable plays in the field.

         As Spiffy was unable to come back for the semi-finals, The Bombers walked over them into the Finals, and Blue Balls easily dispatched Jeremy’s Wig to set up the marquee matchup.  Sean was his usual lights-out self in the finals, but in the end, the Bombers came up short in their bid to repeat.  Sean and Acc could only muster a hit each against Little Corvetti, and the usually explosive Mike Sherry could not get any offense going.  With that, Blue Balls were crowned the Champions of the 2nd Annual Wifflemania at Acclestick Park.  As MVP of the tournament, Little Corvetti received two tickets to game one of the ALDS at Yankee Stadium.  He will be joined at the game by Mikey Rumble, whose hair was the inspiration for “Jeremy’s Wig.”      

         There are plenty of pictures, all of which I will post, but you’ll forgive me if there are a few other things going on in BPS land.  Tony Sherry, me, Big Boy, and Big Ange will all be in section 24 for game one.  Time to bring one home. 

        Here we go, boys. 

        This is what we stick around for every year.  The big games, the big weeks, the big time.  A little wrench thrown into things here on the last day, if I do say so myself.  I think the whole world figured the Yankees would be facing the Twins in the first round, and everyone seemed to have decided that the Twins were the more difficult draw in a five-game series.  I’m not sure I agreed then, and I’m not sure I agree now.  First of all, the Twins are 2-2 in games Santana has started against the Yankees in the postseason.  As always, anyone can feel free to call my “quant” skills into question here, but my calculations tell me that that’s not above .500.  I feel the same way about the Twins in a five-game set as I did about the Red Sox in any series in the late nineties/early “oughts”.  If Pedro didn’t win game one, they had absolutely no shot.  And that goes for the Twins against the Yankees in a five-game set as well; maybe even a seven-gamer.  And I was telling everybody over the last few days that I thought the Yankees were going to come out in game one and absolutely smash Santana with their “magical destruction” line-up, sending the Twins reeling for the rest of the series.  It’s so hard to put it all on one guy’s shoulders like that.         

        But the Yanks didn’t draw the Twins.  They drew the Tigers, who have offered their rendition of the law of diminishing returns since right around the all-star break.  But the Tigers could be a formidable draw.  Even though they have not been the same team that they were before the all-star break, there are a few things that make them interesting.  And most of those things relate to pitching.

        The thing with the Tigers is that, unlike the Twins, they don’t rely on just one guy.  They’re going to throw three guys at you, in Robertson, Verlander, and Kenny Rah-Rah, who have an ERA under 4.  And the fourth guy, Bonderman, is at 4.08.  You have to be impressed by that, particularly in the American League.  The Yankees have handled them this year, but the last four games the two teams have played have all been decided by two runs or less.  So it hasn’t been total domination.  And the Tigers feature something that the Twins decidedly don’t, and that is a reliever who scares me.  Joel Zumaya is a flame-thrower who has big-time stuff.  And Fernando Rodney throws gas, although he seemed to come out of nowhere, as he’ll be 30 years old in March.  So for the Yankees, getting to the bullpen against the Tigers, unlike most of the teams in the playoffs, is not a sure thing. 

        But there is also one major positive that the Tigers have.   The Tigers have a huge thing going for them, something that only keen watchers of the Yankees would recognize.  They throw strikes.  I can’t stress how important that is against the Yankees.  The Yankees can hit the ball to blazes.  No one will argue that.  But they are also extremely patient.  If you give them any kind of charity, adding base-runners by not throwing strikes, you are unequivocally dead.  Dead.  All of the Tigers starters average about three walks per nine innings.  That is crucial.  The way to beat the Yankees is to throw strikes and hope they didn’t bring their shiniest hitting shoes on that particular day.  So if the Tigers starters throw strikes and keep their pitch-count down, this series could be interesting.  But they need to keep the pitch-counts down.  If they are turning to Zumaya every game by the sixth inning, the Yankees will get to him.  And Todd Jones certainly doesn’t scare me. 

        Last year before the division series, I acknowledged that the Angels were the right pick on paper.  But I felt like the Yankees would win, and the linchpin of my thinking was that I felt if the Yankees could steal a game in Cali (they did), Randall would pitch a monster game in game three and they would just need to win one of the last two.  Now, they did win one of the last two, but Randall got drubbed, and the Yankees were reeling.    This year, almost everyone thinks that the Yankees are the right pick on paper.  I agree.  Here’s why the Tigers won’t win.  Verlander has been less effective as the season has worn on.  He seems to have a touch of rookie-who’s-never-pitched-this-many-innings-before syndrome.  And Nate Robertson has only managed a 13-13 record on the season.  But with that said, I wouldn’t be shocked if one of them pitched the game of his life and stole a win at the Stadium.  One of them.  Not both.  So here’s the problem for Detroit.  They have Kenny Rah-Rah going in game three.  He’s forty years old, he has slowed down considerably towards the end of the season, and we in New York have seen up close what he looks like in the playoffs.  And he’s facing Randall, who, despite the back issues he’s had recently, has never gotten the taste of his post-season failure last season out of his mouth.  And this Tiger line-up is substantially less formidable than last year’s Angels line-up.  I think Randall will be a monster in that game, and even if he’s not, or if Lidle is forced to pitch in his place, I think the “magical destruction” line-up blows the doors off of Kenny Rah-Rah in game three.  And that will leave the Tigers needing to win the final two games of the series, including a game five at the House that Mystique and Aura Built.  Not happening.  The Yankees line-up is relentless.  They will wear a staff down pretty quickly, because every batter becomes that much more stressful.  The Yankees just have too much firepower.

        As for predictions on the other series’- as always - I don’t care.  I like the Yankees.  They’re why I show up.

        It was a busy weekend, of course.  It’s amazing I had time to do anything, considering how busy I was reading all of the comments that were posted on BPS.  A phenomenal Wifflemania tournament had a number of dramatic moments, as a new champion was crowned and a star was born.  I was going to do that recap tonight and the ALDS preview tomorrow, but I ended up going the other way around.  Go figure…            

        Clear your schedules, boys, it’s going to be a long week.  By Tuesday around noon, Acc will have started adding meals, and I will have started losing my appetite.  That’s the way it goes in October.  And it’s all worth it.