ghost of miles

Speaking of the bullpen, a profile of closer Brian Wilson: Fear the Beard What a great team of characters the Giants have!

I predict both starters out of the game before the end of 5 and a half!

Is this going to be one of those vaunted "battle of the aces" matchups that ends up 10-8 or some such?

Tweet from Jack Curry: Ouch! This was the kind of game the Yankees needed to have in Game 3 of the ACLS--and clearly didn't have in them. But hell, I wouldn't even write off Game 1 just yet. A couple of three-run shots would tie it...stranger things have happened in baseball. EDIT: whoa! Now 8-4. Yep, don't write this one off just yet...

Assuming the Giants hold on to win tonight, I think this will be a tougher loss to bounce back from than the 8th-inning collapse against the Yankees in the ALCS. In that game Texas outplayed NY; tonight their ace got blown off the mound. Plus they'll be coming back for Game 2 still on the road & not in the friendly confines of Rangers Ballpark. So yeah, it'll be a tougher test than the ALCS, but they're at the ultimate level now. I'd say pretty much what I said after they lost Game 1 of the ALCS--focus on winning Game 2 and nothing else, because then you'll be headed back to Texas for three games in a row, including another start from Mr. Lee that will surely go much, much better than tonight's did.

I think this series goes at least six, no matter who ends up winning, and Cliff Lee has a helluva start in Game 5 at Texas.

No way I'd count the Rangers out of the series (see ALCS), but Game 1's starting to look a little precarious...

Wow, incredible--I never would have predicted that the Giants would score 5 runs off Lee and chase him before the end of the 5th. Jsngry, I wonder if the long layoff (8 days' rest) threw him off his rhythm somewhat. The vibe of that San Francisco crowd, too! Watching the Giants against both the Braves and the Phillies, I found myself really admiring SF's fans, and again so tonight.

Based on the reports I've read, Lee was truly excited about going to the Yankees when it appeared as if Seattle was going to deal him there. He's good friends with C.C. and he obviously respects NY as a team that does everything it can to realistically be in the hunt every year. But I think his odds of becoming a Yankee began to decrease from the time he set foot in Texas. Hey, I'd love to see him in New York's rotation next year, but there are actually reasons to be wary (in NY's case) of giving him a long-term deal, given his back problems and NY's heavy, existing payroll commitment to players already 30 or over (Tex, C.C., A-Rod, A.J., and, presumably for 3-4 more years, Jeter). If Andy Pettitte decides to come back, that will make not landing Lee a little less problematic for the rotation--but not much. (And I'd probably bet on Pettitte's retiring at this point.) Moving on to a more pleasant topic for a Yankee fan (because I do think the rotation's going to give them fits again, especially without Lee), there are two very good catching prospects in the pipeline: the already-mentioned Jesus Montero and Austin Romine. Montero probably comes up around June 1 of next year, to keep the arbitration clock running for another year; 2011 will be Posada's phaseout year. Catcher IMO is the least of the Yankees' worries. They're set at first with Tex (who is still relatively young at 30) and Robbie Cano at second (Cano just turned 28 and will almost certainly be in the running for MVP when that vote goes down). Shortstop and third are more problematic, as others have pointed out, with Jeter's defense increasingly becoming a liability (A-Rod's holding up pretty well at third base, though). My guess is that Tex, A-Rod and Jeter all come back with marginally better seasons next year than they had this year, though Jeter and A-Rod are clearly beginning to decline overall. The Swish/Grandy/Gardner outfield may well stay status quo. Swish and Grandy are both right around 30 years old and Gardner's 27. It's a fast, defensively strong outfield in left and center, and Swish and Grandy both put up good HR numbers, while Gardner creates lots of havoc and opportunity on the basepaths (though he has little power and may not ever be more than a .270-.280 hitter). DH is one place where I think NY needs to make a big improvement. Yes, they'll want to rotate Posada, A-Rod and Jeter through there more and more, but they really need another good hitter along the lines of Matsui to give them 400 or so AB in that position. Nick Johnson was an absolute bust (as many predicted he would be over at Pinstripe Alley--not like it took any great foresight to wager that he'd get injured again) and Lance Berkman was too little too late. The bullpen might be an issue again as well. Marte will be out most of next year after having surgery, leaving us with Logan as the only leftie. Not sure if we'll be able to retain Kerry Wood as a setup man or not (his option is pretty high iirc), and Mo will be another year older, still very good, but most likely continuing to be a little less lights-out than he used to be. So those would be my priorities--pitching (both starting and relieving) and DH. Like it or not, I think Jeter stays at shortstop for at least another year. The Yankees just have to hope that he, A-Rod and Tex all change up their workout routines this winter, make whatever adjustments they need to make, and come back strong over the course of next season.

We re-aired Claude Thornhill: Godfather Of Cool this past week, and it remains archived for online listening.

Book it: Cliff Lee will not sign with the Yankees this winter and will in all likelihood remain a Ranger, even if Texas doesn't win the World Series. Note the "Rangers or Yankees?" part of that article. Yes, reprehensible Yankee fan behavior (though behavior of a kind certainly not restricted to New York), but it's everything else that's mentioned about Lee's current circumstances that confirms for me the hunch I've had for the past couple of months that culture and geography are going to play as big a part in his decision as money. If Texas can make an offer that's even remotely competitive with what the Yankees put forward, it's over.

An unusual situation! Molina will get a World Series ring no matter what

RCA did a Glenn Miller Army Air Force band box in 1955.

On the other hand at least you get a chance to play for the title with less than the best record. The 2000 Yankees had the 5th record yet made the playoffs and won the title over the Mets. In the pre-wild card days there have been clubs that played .600 ball and never got a chance as there was one team that was better. Though I'm not sure which side I fall on. In a short series anything can happen. However it's also damn hard to win the season year after year with no "back door" to the World Series. That's a good point re: 2000, Quincy, and goes some ways towards compensating for the extra rounds NY had to go through in 1998 and 1999 (they also would not have made the WS under the old system in 1996, either). OTOH I'll offer up that the World Series winners of 1996 and 1998-2000 went 16-3 against their opponents and won 14 consecutive World Series games (which surely is the record, though I haven't been able to confirm it yet). Between 1998 and 2000 NY was 13-1 in the World Series. From a purely won-loss POV, I can't think of any team that piled up a World Series record like that over a span of several years in the past five decades.

Big Al, thanks so much for your comments. Really looking forward to this World Series, and if MLB hypes it right, I don't think it will be a TV ratings disaster at all. The West Coast and Southwest audiences will sure be drawn into it, and as I said above, both teams have a lot of interesting and/or sympathetic stories and players that could easily pull in fans from all around the country.

Regarding Jamal's famous use of space, would it be wrong to give a small nod of potential influence in Claude Thornhill's piano-playing direction?

Cliff Lee vs. Tim Lincecum, Wednesday, 4:30 p.m. in San Francisco. Probable Game 5 rematch in Texas on Monday, Nov. 1 at 8 p.m.

Unfortunately those days are behind us. We're now in the days where anything is sold for money. For example, on the Mets radio telecasts, when they reach the 15th batter, a certain insurance company sponsors it. Don't think the Rangers will be immune to it either, especially as they transform into a more successful franchise. They just signed an extremely lucrative extension of their TV contract with Fox...and say, Jsngry, who was that fellow sitting next to Nolan Ryan during Game 1 of the ALCS?

We'll never know and all that since you can only hypothetically game those teams against one another--I'm just saying that my belief is far from a laughable claim, especially if you use one of the only relatively objective measuring sticks you can find, which is how the teams fared in postseason play. Consider also that the 1996-2000 Yankees had to advance through two rounds of playoffs just to make the World Series, a challenge that no team before 1969 faced in any form--and even the teams following that had to get through only one round, not two (with the wildcard and two-round league playoff system not being instituted until 1995). The winningest team in modern baseball history, the 2001 Seattle Mariners, got knocked out in the ALCS by the Yankees (coincidentally enough, the team whose 1998 edition had had its modern best win-loss record displaced by the Mariners). It's just another element that makes repeating now so tough, let alone winning the WS three times in a row. As far as the best single-season team that I've seen in my lifetime, much as I'd like to say the '98 Yankees, who were certainly formidable, I'd probably have to vote for the 1976 Reds.

And two teams with interesting narratives and characters, whom few would have predicted to be meeting in such a fashion this October.

Wow, congratulations to the Giants! That was quite a dramatic ending...torture indeed! Should be a fantastic World Series.

That's a smart move. Hopefully it backfires. Nearly did, but the Giants got out of it. Jsngry, wasn't this a bullpen day for Lincecum? They probably thought he'd be good for an inning.

Ah yes, another arrogant a&*&(le Yankee fan, pulled off the comments page at Yahoo: What a jerk. Every single team in the MLB has classy fans and arrogant, loud-mouthed, boorish provincial fans. I'm sure you could find obnoxious comments from Yankee fans anywhere you looked online (and if you want to find really obnoxious comments, go take a look at Lonestar Ball while you're at it). You'll also find comments like the one above.

I'd put the 1996-2001 Yankees up against the 1975-76 Reds, the 1972-74 A's, and whoever else you want to throw into the mix, and say you can make a strong argument that they're the best team of the past five decades for sustained success over a multi-year period. (If you want just a barebones argument, nobody else in the past 50 years racked up 4 World Series titles and 5 appearances in a six-year period.) How that comes off as a "Don't make me laugh" statement, and how ANYTHING I've ever said in any post at any time whatsoever on this forum confirms such an ugly stereotype of Yankee fans is way, way beyond me. Any fan wants his or her team to win; why Yankee fans are demonized for doing so is beyond me too. Live and let live, and haters gonna hate for whatever reasons they hate, but that doesn't mean you have to let them define you. Back to Jsngry's son's comment about the Rangers having "something special" this year: Lots of teams have had magical seasons throughout baseball history, and any time you see it, it's a remarkable testament to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts, to what a group of people can achieve working together. Hell, I'd go so far as to say it's something of a work of art--growing up in Indiana, that's how I felt about several of the basketball teams Bobby Knight put together (and Knight's a troubled case for sure, but boy, when he got the pieces put together the way he wanted them--as he seemed to do every several years the first two decades he was at IU--his teams were a beautiful thing to watch). This is an excerpt from the article I wrote earlier this year to which I linked above--and you could apply it in slightly different ways to this year's Rangers (there's a redemption narrative at work in Texas' season too, what with the failed ownership/bankruptcy situation and Ron Washington's personal struggles):