ghost of miles

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):

Saw Mike Reed's People, Places and Things at the Bishop last night in Bloomington and got a chance to talk with both Reed and saxophonist Greg Ward afterwards. Looking back over this thread, I realized that I never posted the sequel to the Night Lights show: Returning the Call: More From the Unsung Heroes of Chicago Hardbop

I'll say it one last time: congratulations to the Rangers. Jsngry's son was exactly right about "they've got something special going on." Last year it was the Yankees that had something special going on, and they had a great ride. This year the Rangers have had a great ride and it may well conclude with a World Series parade, which anybody with any kind of baseball heart can at least acknowledge will be a tremendous, joyous thing for followers of a team that's never even been to the Series, let alone won it. When a team gets on that kind of ride, you can see and feel the love they have for being on the field come out. Last year's Yankees team buzzed with that kind of energy (hence A-Rod's quote the day after winning the WS, that he wished the team could just keep playing, even a pickup softball game, because they had so much fun on the field together...this year's team had that kind of feeling only rarely), and this year's edition of the Rangers sure has it as well. I think the Giants have it to some extent too, which is another reason why a Texas-SF World Series would be a blast to watch. That said: I've been a Yankees fan since 1974. Here's a nice little spiel that was reposted last week at Pinstripe Alley: Incoming rant on Yankees-fan bashers She may go a little over the top at times, but given all the s*&% that gets hurled at Yankee fans everywhere, I don't blame her one bit. The Yankees went through their own more recent sucking period in the 1980s and early 90s, when Steinbrenner was indeed trying to buy a championship. Whatever one thinks of his right to do that, I don't think it's a smart way to build a winner. There's no chemistry, you tend to overpay for players about to pass their prime, etc. And it was not much fun being a fan during those years; at least the late 1970s team had a certain soap-opera entertainment factor to it ("Bronx Zoo" and all that), but the 1980s/early 90s offered little pleasure of any kind, save for watching Don Mattingly. As I've mentioned before, Steinbrenner's suspension in the early 1990s paved the way for the team we're still watching. Gene Michael was able to develop a lot of outstanding young players, and the dynasty team of 1996-2001 was built almost entirely on farm-bred players and shrewd trades. Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera all came up through the farm system. Paul O'Neill, Scott Brosius, Tino Martinez and David Cone all came from trades. That's quite possibly the greatest baseball team of the past 50 years (in terms of success over a multi-year period). I don't know how anybody could hate that team, either--it had a great chemistry, it was successful but not arrogant, confident but classy, and it always seemed to find a way to win. In a way it's almost appropriate that NY lost in Game 7 of the 2001 WS in the 9th inning, because several key players were leaving anyway, and the pop was about to go out of the bottle. As for the ongoing Yankee coverage, blame the media! What the hell are the Yankees supposed to do about it? Part of it's just geography, that New York remains in some ways our most significant cultural center. I'm also tired of watching small-market team owners use the luxury tax not to maintain their young star players, but to stash it into their coffers instead. Sorry, that's not the Yankees' fault either. Talk to Bud Selig (and good luck with that) about it. I don't believe the Yankees are entitled to win the World Series every year, let alone the ALCS or the AL East, but damned if I won't root for them to try. I'll doff my hat without hesitation to the teams that beat us, but I'll be damned if I whine, carry on, bitch, moan, take unseemly joy in the defeat of a rival, and rant/rave with classless, irrational hatred... a hatred that frankly is irrational at this point in baseball history. It's 2010. George Steinbrenner is dead. The Yankees have won one World Series title in the past 10 years. Can we all just move along? *Quick p.s.: Somebody mentioned the lack of hot young players on the current team. What do you call Robbie Cano? (Not to mention Phil Hughes, who will be an excellent pitcher if he ever overcomes this problem he's developed with two-strike pitches.) No, Cano alone can't be the basis for keeping the team at a contender level, and the age problems NY faces are real. Go over to Pinstripe Alley and you'll see plenty of fans hoping that we don't go all crazy on the free-agent market this winter and try to sign Cliff Lee, Carl Crawford, Jayson Werth and whoever else. That's also why many of us did not want the Cliff Lee trade to go through in mid-season this year; we didn't want to lose Jesus Montero, who's one of the most promising hitters in the minor leagues right now. I'd rather see us work on bringing up the generation that will replace the Core 4. Pettitte may retire now. Posada's almost surely gone after next season. Rivera might have two years left; Jeter perhaps three or four. *Dave James: when I say I'll "root" for another team in the postseason after the Yankees' exit, it's a pretty light-weighted term. I just enjoy watching the game itself, and it seems like I inevitably end up pulling for somebody.

Yes, the Lunceford Decca set that had been talked about years ago and then apparently deep-sixed is back on.

Just got home from the Mike Reed's People, Places and Things show and saw the score--congratulations to the Rangers and their fans here. You guys were clearly the better team, and I know this one's been a long time coming. Coming into this series, Phil Hughes had pitched very well on the road against Texas, but yeah, given that it was the postseason, Girardi might have done well to put aside the book for once. Molina's HR in Game 4 was also a huge moment, perhaps comparable in its impact to Damon's double-steal and subsequent run in Game 4 of last year's WS. Basically, though, Texas just outhit and outpitched us in every single game in this series with the exception of Game 5. Not sure who I'll be pulling for in the WS if it's Texas-San Francisco. Normally I tend to go for the team that beat the Yankees (you want your team to have been knocked out by the best ), but the Giants are so damned likable that it's hard not to root for them to take it all. If the Phillies are in, I'll definitely be cheering Texas on--nothing against Philadelphia, just that my AL prejudices will take natural hold. Jsngry, I think each round Texas takes makes it that much more likely that Lee signs with them this winter.

Happy birthday to a most excellent fellow!