Leeches; Orcs; Johan Santana’s recent talks with the Mets’ PR department; Abe Vigoda’s armpit; C.H.U.D.s; this guy; Newark; the 2010 Orioles; Don Mossi.

What do those things have in common? They’re all prettier than tonight’s steaming pile of an excuse for a ballgame. And yet, in the end… I wasn’t totally sorry I watched. That’s thanks to the go-ahead Curtis Granderson homer in the 10th inning, and Marian River’s ultra-dramatic white-knuckle save to preserve the Yanks’ 6-5 win. But, lord, you did not want to watch them making that sausage.

I began the evening feeling sorry for Dontrelle Willis – a fun, charismatic player who I loved watching in his prime, which feels like it was a long, long time ago now (…but then, the third inning feels like it was a long, long time ago now). An hour or two later I mostly felt bad for myself and anybody else still watching the slow-motion tragicomedy of errors well after 1 AM on the east coast. The fact that the Yankees eventually came back from their self-dug grave and pulled a win out of their caps made it more bearable, of course, but still, all traces of this game should probably be scrubbed from the archives immediately to protect the public.

You will, I hope, forgive me for not giving you a complete blow-by-blow of this game, but it’s late, I’m tired, I had to delete most of the writeup I had ready in the ninth, and this is a family website. Willis went just 2.1 innings, gave up two hits, and walked seven. It was excruciating to watch, and he left, head hanging, after walking Alex Rodriguez to force in a run. The fact that the Diamondbacks got out of that inning with the score tied at 2 is a testament to how sloppy the Yankees were playing all night – numerous outs made on the bases, often dumb ones; swinging at all kinds of things they shouldn’t be swinging at. By the end of the game the Bombers had amassed 10 hits and 13 walks (!) with six runs to show for it; early in the game that ratio looked even worse. Damaso Marte added some nice flourishes in the sixth inning with a balk and a wild pitch. Going into the ninth, the Yankees were down 5-4 and I was not exactly brimming with confidence, despite the reassuring presence of old friend Aaron Heilman on the mound.

“They play 162, and they can’t all be Rembrandts,” someone wrote to me on Twitter while I was bemoaning this festering eyesore. Which is true. But surely there’s plenty of middle ground between a Rembrandt and this, which is really more of a monkey-painting-the-cage-wall-with-its-own-feces sort of a game.

Or at least that’s what I was thinking before the ninth and tenth innings. It wasn’t a Rembrandt but maybe it was, I dunno, a lesser Basquiat or something. In the end, I was glad I’d stayed up for it – it certainly wasn’t dull. That said, as I wrote last night: just because you made it home okay, doesn’t mean it was all right to drive drunk and high on meth, you know?

—

Runner-up titles for this post:

This Game’s so ugly, it couldn’t get laid in a prison with a handful of pardons.

This Game’s so ugly, I took it to a haunted house and it came out with a job application.

This Game’s so ugly, even the tide won’t take it out.

2001: Thus Yawned Zarathustra

Before you freak out, let me assure you that I’m not saying 2001: A Space Odyssey is a bad movie. I’m not saying it’s not well-made, beautifully crafted, and culturally significant. I’m not saying it doesn’t have interesting, thoughtful things to say about human consciousness and technology and the nature of intelligent life.

I’m just saying I don’t like it.

I tried, I really did. I watched it in high school, and was ashamed to find myself bored. I watched it on the big screen in college, as a film major, and fell asleep. I watched it later in college – this time with the help of substances my friend was sure would help me “get it” – and fell asleep much faster. After loving Dr. Strangelove and Lolita I watched it one more time, just to make sure, because I felt my failure to embrace or even tolerate 2001 was one of my greatest failings as a film major.

I still don’t like it.

Partly this is just personal preference – the movies I love most tend to have involving, well-drawn characters and great dialogue, and even Stanley Kubrick’s most ardent admirers surely can’t claim that for this movie. I’m not especially visual, so while I can love and appreciate great cinematography or camerawork when I see it, movies like this (or for example, Solaris) which are almost entirely about their images just don’t tend to grab me, through no fault of their own.

But my issues with 2001 run deeper: I can think of very, very few films that take themselves this seriously. And there’s nothing wrong with being serious about art, but in my view 2001 crosses the line into pompous pretension early on and never makes it back. Any movie that begins with the chyron “THE DAWN OF MAN,” and is not a Mel Brooks comedy, is unlikely to hit the mark for me.

Can I remind you that this movie leads off with fifteen minutes of people in monkey suits hopping around and screeching. Fifteen minutes. God forgive me, but rewatching it today on YouTube in preparation for this post, all I could think of was the Star Wars Holiday Special and its opening 20 minutes, which are nearly entirely in Wookie, sans subtitles.

(more…)

Two years ago, Emma wrote about Dandy, the Yankees’ short-lived mascot. Today in the Wall Street Journal, Scott Cacciola has a piece on the biggest bust in team history:

In 1979, the Yankees appeared eager to replicate the success of the Phillie Phanatic, the green, pot-bellied mascot that Mr. Harrison and Ms. Erickson created in 1978. In his first two years of existence, according to Mr. Harrison, Phanatic-related products generated $2 million in revenue—and his popularity has not waned.

He made more than 550 public appearances last year, has his own merchandise store in Philadelphia and is on display at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Dandy, on the other hand, got thrown in a dumpster.

He was designed by Ms. Erickson, who had worked on “The Muppet Show” and created Miss Piggy, among other characters. Dandy was marketed as a “dyed-in-the-wool” Yankees fan.

He was blessed with a pear-shaped physique that was almost Ruth-ian. He had a hat that spun, a cartoon-size baseball bat and a big, bushy mustache that evoked Thurman Munson, the team’s star catcher—which was no coincidence.

Above all, Dandy was a New Yorker.

“He was supposed to be sassy,” Mr. Harrison said. “He was supposed to have that Yankee swagger.”

Nah, no mascots. No cheerleaders, no mascots. We’ve got enough nuts and clowns in the Bronx as it is.

[Photo Credit: Wayde Harrison]

Yes, I just used a Counting Crows lyric for the post title. It was the ’90s, I was very young, and this is like the 149th time the Yankees have played the Orioles this year — sue me.

C.C. Sabathia started out a little shaky, throwing too many balls in the early going and allowing too many hits by a team whose best hitter to this point is, probably, Ty Wigginton. This would be no big deal, except that C.C. Sabathia has been shaky a bit more than usual this year… but it hasn’t stopped him from beating the Orioles three times already in 2010, and it didn’t stop him from doing so again tonight. He eventually found his happy place, got a bit of support from his offense, and pitched 7 solid innings for a 4-2 win over Baltimore. I feel I’ve called the O’s”hapless” too often already since April, so tonight instead I will describe them as unpromising, unhappy and ill-starred.

By the end of the third inning, Baltimore had taken a two-run lead, on RBI singles from Garrett Atkins and Adam Jones; they’d hold it for five innings, the longest they’ve held any sort of lead since May 25, which, yikes. In the fourth inning Robinson Cano singled (this was his third straight game with three hits, bringing his average back up to .376 — and over .500 against the Orioles), then advanced on a throwing error and groundout and scored on Curtis Granderson’s sac fly. Two innings later, his bouncing single knocked in Mark Teixeira and tied the game at 2-2. In what was not exactly a powerful offensive explosion, Alex Rodriguez then scored on a Jorge Posada force out, but the Yanks had the lead and, by that time, C.C. Sabathia was in his mental cave communing with his Power Animal. After several strong innings he got into a tough spot in the seventh – bases loaded thanks to two singles and walk, with two out – and extricated himself by striking out Luke Scott. His final line: 7 IP, 9 H, 2 ER, 3 BB, 8 K.

New York’s one extra run came in the 8th, when Gardner pinch ran for Posada, stole second even though everyone in the building knew he was about to try and steal second, and scored on a sharp single by Francisco Cervelli. Joba Chamberlain had a relatively non-terrifying eighth inning (let’s get that ERA below 5!) and Mariano Rivera notched his 14th save with a perfect ninth, just because.

The Yankees will play the Orioles again on Thursday, and also, I assume, the day after, and the day after that, and the day after that, and every single day Michael Kay will discuss the declining attendance at Camden Yards, every day, oh god it will never end, never, not ever!

[Sob]

Ahem… deep breaths… A.J. Burnett starts next time out for the Yanks. I’m fine. I SAID I’M FINE.

Because “Bitter Smell of Vicious, Cynical Self-Loathing” Would’ve Been a Hard Sell at the Box Office

“I love this dirty town.” That’s the only line from Sweet Smell of Success that I quote on a regular basis, but only because I don’t quite have the presence to pull off “You’re dead, son. Get yourself buried.” For that, you need Burt Lancaster.

Sweet Smell of Success is one of the most brutal movies I’ve ever seen that includes almost no physical violence at all; it’s just funny enough to keep you from slitting your wrists afterwards, but with humor so cold and sharp you could use it for a razor blade. Anyone who thinks of the 1950s as a Norman Rockwell era of innocence should be sat down in front of this paean to cutthroat cynicism and soul-destroying ambition, then given a nice mug of warm milk and a hug.

Tony Curtis and Burt Lancaster, two good-looking actors with charisma to burn, have never been less attractive. It was a brave choice by both of them (and the studio was opposed to Curtis taking the role of smoothly sniveling Sidney Falco, a press agent who’s had all the empathy, dignity, and morality burnt out of him by a lifetime of humiliations), but I think especially by Lancaster. Sidney Falco is at least occasionally pitiable, but Lancaster’s Walter Winchell-esque monster J.J. Hunsecker is one of the least redeemable characters ever committed to film. (See his inclusion on the AFI’s list of all-time movie villains, although that is, now I look at it, one terrible list — if you think Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were the “villains” of Bonnie and Clyde, you missed the whole damn point. And “Man” in Bambi as an all-time villain? Please. But that’s a whole separate post).

I first remember seeing Lancaster in Atlantic City, a favorite VHS rental of my dad’s (mostly for the line “You should’ve seen the Atlantic Ocean back then… it was really something.”). Later I saw him in From Here to Eternity and the cheesy fun western Vera Cruz, with his magnetic appeal on full display, and in the film noir classics Criss Cross and The Killers, where he was a dark, flawed, but handsome and charismatic figure. He is still my definitive Wyatt Earp in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral – which came out in 1957, the same year as Sweet Smell of Success, but takes place in a staggeringly different America. Lancaster was a gorgeous young man, and still quite an eyeful in his forties, but J.J. Hunsucker is too despicable to have even a shred of sex appeal.

Words are the weapons in Sweet Smell of Success (written by Ernest Lehman and blacklisted lefty Clifford Odets, and directed by Alexander Mackendrick), and J.J. Hunsecker is its serial killer; Freddy Kreuger and Mike Myers earn more viewer sympathy. This is all by design, of course, and the merciless screenplay doesn’t pull a single verbal punch:

It’s a dirty job, but I pay clean money for it.

The cat’s in a bag and the bag’s in a river.

Like yourself, he’s got the scruples of a guinea pig and the morals of a gangster.

Son, I don’t relish shooting a mosquito with an elephant gun, so why don’t you just shuffle along?

My right hand hasn’t seen my left hand in thirty years.

Match me, Sidney.

Those last three are Lancaster’s, and only a handful of the movie’s best. (For full effect, of course, the last one needs to be quoted while holding an unlit cigarette). According to rumor the script was brilliantly rewritten by Odets months past deadline, while he was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, and then rushed scene by scene directly from his typewriter to the set.

The movie was shot on location in New York, and I’m not sure you could say it has any affection for the city — really, I’m not sure you could say this movie has any affection for much of anything — but it certainly gets a jolt of jittery energy from its setting. The story could be transplanted to Los Angeles easily enough, I expect, but it wouldn’t be same without the rushing crowds its characters struggle past, or the packed bars and restaurants where glamor and power and desperation and slimy cunning are jostled together.

If Sweet Smell of Success has a flaw, it’s that the female lead, J.J.’s sister Susan, around whom the whole plot turns, is never really developed as a character, at least not compared to the devastatingly etched male leads. But on reflection I believe this is not really a gender issue – not because she’s a woman, but rather because she’s moral and kind. These are not the human facets that Sweet Smell of Success is interested in, and god bless it for that. Nice people are almost never any fun to quote.

With the messy explosion of baseball news last night – from Griffey’s retirement to Galarraga’s excruciating blown perfect game – it was a little hard for me to get my head into the Yankees’ 9-1 all expenses included Royal Caribbean cruise of a win over the Orioles (if memory serves, already the 123rd Yanks-O’s game of the season). Not that I’m complaining: watching the New York hitters tee off while Phil Hughes figures it all out is hardly the worst way you could spend a summer night, and you need to store up games like this one to keep yourself warm during the long cold winter.

I saw the Yankees’ lineup yesterday afternoon and thought: now that’s more like it. No Marcus Thames,  Randy Winn, Juan Miranda or Ramiro Pena; the Yankee outfield once again consists of Swisher, Granderson, and Gardner, as God and Brian Cashman intended, and Jorge Posada made it back from the DL faster than he goes from first to third (even if he’s only cleared to DH for now). But it was Robinson Cano, who’s been here all long, who led the way again, hitting early and often: his single in the second began a four-run rally that set the tone for the rest of the game, though ensuing doubles from Granderson, Gardner, and Swisher [contented sigh] did not hurt either. Cano homered in the seventh, too, with the Yankees in tack-on mode, his 12th of the year – and not surprisingly, he’s got more longballs against the O’s than any other team. Granderson, Swisher, and A-Rod all had themselves big games too, and Posada, so far, is moving better than an aging catcher with a fractured foot has any right to move.

Meanwhile, back on the mound, Phil Hughes looked comfortably in charge. After the game, he told reporters that he realized early on that his cutter wasn’t cutting it, and mostly stayed away from it thereafter – the kind of on-the-fly adjustment that, coming from a young developing pitcher like Hughes or, across town, Mike Pelfrey, warms my cold shriveled heart. His only notable stumble came in the sixth, when Ty Wigginton — the Oriole’s best hitter to date, which says quite a bit about the 2010 Orioles — singled in Miguel “Ty Wigginton is hitting how much better than me?” Tejada. (Perhaps in a misguided effort to overcompensate, Tejada would go on to get thrown out at home plate with his team down 8-1 in the eighth inning).

Chad Gaudin pitched the last two innings, allowing a few hits but no runs and lowering his ERA to… uh, 7.43, but hey, it’s a start. Have a good day, Banterers, and if you can’t manage that, at least be glad that you’re not Jim Joyce right now.

The Yankees limped into this series, but it hasn’t mattered much; if the Twins didn’t have bad luck against the Yankees, they wouldn’t have no luck at all. Minnesota lost two one-run games in the space of an evening – the second half of last night’s suspended Scoreless Wonder, which ended up a 1-0 Yanks win thanks to Derek Jeter’s solo home run (and lead-preserving nifty defensive play), and then tonight’s 3-2 duel, which saw Andy Pettitte prevail over Francisco Liriano. Mariano Rivera saved both games, and if he didn’t quite radiate moonbeams and rose petals and ride off the field on a pegasus like he normally does, it was at least a step in the right direction.

I figured on the bullpen being a minefield today (as just getting through nine innings has proved plenty tough enough for those guys recently), but David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and Mo staggered through to the end of the first game unscathed, and Andy Pettitte gave everyone a break tonight by throwing 72 of his 94 pitches for strikes — “attack-tastic,” as my friend put it — powering through eight relatively smooth innings with a little help from his good friend the DP grounder. Safe to say he’s showing no ill effects from his recent elbow issue (…well, safe to say, but I’m knocking on wood anyway, just in case). He hit a few speed bumps: in the first inning, when my guy Denard Span doubled, stole third, and was delivered to home plate by Joe Mauer; and in the seventh, with Delmon Young’s RBI double. Beyond that, though Pettitte allowed eight hits, he walked no one, struck out four, and was generally able to keep his anguished, muttered self-criticism on the mound to a minimum. When he induced Joe Mauer to hit into the Twins’ third DP of the night and end the eighth inning, his fist pump was downright Joba-esque.

With the Yankees still staging their community theater adaptation of Waiting For Godot, starring Mark Teixeira’s offense (“We are all born mad. Some remain so”), they patched together a few runs from the bottom of the lineup. In the fourth Francisco Cervelli went all speed-demon on the Twins, beat out a potential double play throw, and scored from first on Kevin “Strong Island” Russo’s double; Russo himself scored in the seventh inning when Brett Gardner tripled. (“Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late!”).

Each team had two runs and eight hits when Nick Swisher came to the plate in the top of the ninth to face Jon Rauch and his neck tattoos. The third pitch of the at-bat was a ripe fastball, and we can only hope its violent death was quick and painless, as Swisher absolutely creamed it. It soared over the right field wall and gave them a 3-2 lead that they held onto, thanks to a much more Mariano-like Rivera appearance than we saw in the first game. Take a deep breath, the Yankees won another series.

There was time to kill between doubleheader games yesterday, and half the Tigers’ roster – including the entire bullpen – killed it by giving themselves mohawks. A bored baseball clubhouse is a dangerous, dangerous place. We have only a small sample size to go on but, so far, advanced scientific analysis suggests the move may have backfired; in the nightcap, Phil “Phew” Hughes edged out Jeremy Bonderman in a tight duel, and a ninth-inning Yankee offensive renaissance gave New York a pleasant 8-0 win.

Hughes is probably due for a bad start one of these days – or at least a mediocre one – and for a little while I thought this might be it; he was getting good results, but laboring a bit, running up a high pitch count in the first few innings. Instead he got better as the game went on and ended up with another gem: 7 innings, 5 hits, no runs, 8 strikeouts, 1 measly little walk; he threw 71 of his 101 pitches for strikes. Phil Hughes is not messing around. Going by almost any statistical measurement (as well as by your lyin’ eyes) he’s been one of the best starters in either league this season – though of course he doesn’t have as many wins as MLB leader Tyler Clippard of the Nationals. You just can’t predict… oh, never mind.

Anyway, the Yankee hitters seemed to be nursing a hangover from their punchless day-game loss, but they did manage to eke out a couple of runs early on, which would have been enough by themselves – in the first inning, Alex Rodriguez singled in Brett Gardner, who was hitting second tonight (and ended up making that seem like a wise move with three hits, two runs scored, and RBI and the obligatory stolen base). And in the third, Bonderman walked Derek Jeter and lived to regret it when Jeter stole second and scored on a Mark Teixeira double.

But it wasn’t until the ninth that the Yankee batters really woke up, when old buddy Phil Coke stumbled and Alfredo Figaro couldn’t get the last two outs without considerable bloodshed. More than half an hour later, after a flurry of singles and walks, the game arrived at its misleading final destination of 8-0. It stayed that way in the bottom of the ninth, of course, because Mariano Rivera is back; and seeing him on the mound again (albeit in a very non-save situation) is deeply comforting in a primal sort of way. Mo’s in his bullpen, all’s right with the world, as the man said.

Notes:

-Jay-Z and Eminem’s visit to the booth in the 4th inning (to promote their planned stadium concerts in Detroit and New York this fall) was one of the most gloriously awkward only-in-America culture clashes I’ve seen in some time. I hope one day we get to watch Dallas Braden chat with Yo-Yo Ma. Or perhaps we can arrange a coffee klatch between Carl Everett and Philip Glass.

-Years ago an Eephus Pitch commenter pointed out that Jeremy Bonderman bears a distinct resemblance to Alice the Goon from Popeye. One day I may be able to watch him pitch without thinking about that, but today is not that day.

-It wouldn’t be an official game unless a Yankee strained something, so Nick Swisher is now day-to-day with sore biceps.

Nick Johnson is still coming to bat to the Miley Cyrus earworm “Party in the USA” (a song so insidious that even our own Cliff Corcoran, normally a pillar of taste and decency, could not stop humming it at Monday night’s Yankees game, until I threatened to stab him with a pencil). But I will not make fun of Johnson for that today, because he got on base all five times he came to bat, with a home run, a double, and three walks. The Yankees ended up needing every run they could scrape together, as seven innings of fairly stress-free cruising turned into a nail-biter thanks to Andy Pettitte’s early exit (with elbow stiffness) and the twitchiness of the Mariano- and Joba-less bullpen; New York held on by their fingernails for a 7-5 win and a sweep of the Orioles.

The Yanks are increasingly banged up, and today it was Battlecat Pettitte’s turn to leave the game early with stiffness. This came shortly after the fourth inning, in which he loaded the bases with one out, got Matt Wieters to strike out, walked in a run, and then wriggled out of further trouble with a Craig Tatum groundout – the quintessential bend-don’t-break Pettitte of recent years. Early reports are that his subsequent MRI indicated mild inflammation, which doesn’t sound too bad… but then, who knows – multiple members of the 2009 Mets left games with a mild inflammation and were never seen again.

The New York hitters never exactly bludgeoned O’s starter David Hernandez, but they knocked him around for a few innings, much like my friend’s cat behaves when it has a spider cornered. He wasn’t helped by a number of sloppy plays and lackadaisical baserunning on the part of his teammates, and neither, I’d wager, was Dave Trembley’s blood pressure. Nick Johnson hit a booming home run in the first; Nick Swisher homered in the second; Alex Rodriguez singled Jeter home in the third. In the fourth the Yankees put together a messy rally through walks, singles, a bunt and a fielder’s choice, knocking Hernandez out of the game and putting the score at a then-comfortable 6-1.

Sergio Mitre kept things under control for several innings after Andy Pettitte’s departure – and maybe earned himself a spot start if Pettitte needs to miss a game – before giving up a two-run homer to Ty Wigginton (ASIDE: I only just realized I have been incorrectly writing “Wiggington” for many, many years). Damaso Marte got New York out of the eighth, but Joe Girardi’s Reliever Roulette luck ran out in the ninth: Dave Robertson was awful, giving up two homers and swelling his ERA to 14.21, and Boone Logan could not staunch the bleeding, getting one out but walking two Orioles, and leaving the game with the go-ahead run at the plate. Finally, Alfredo Aceves came to the rescue and induced a fly ball from Wigginton. No harm, no foul, but nothing shakes up a baseball fan’s soul like a terrifyingly unpredictable bullpen — and for Yankees fans, pretty much any bullpen that does not have Mariano Rivera available qualifies as terrifyingly unpredictable.

***

Meanwhile, it seems Dallas Braden has still not recovered from the emotional scars he received when his pitching mound was stepped on several weeks ago. He also actually said the words “We don’t do a lot of talking in the 209,” with “the 209” apparently referring to Stockton, California. This is now officially the most inane, ridiculous baseball story we’ve had in quite some time, and I have to say I’m enjoying it immensely.

A couple weeks ago, the closed captioning at Yankee Stadium translated A.J. Burnett as “A.J. Burning Net,” and I decided that’s how A.J. would be known in my household from now on. It also prompted me to check for A.J. Burnett anagrams*, which turned up, among other gems, A Burnt Jet and Nut Jar Bet. Being a natural pessimist, I tend to fixate on Burnett’s unpredictability. But when he’s on, he makes you forget all about those kind of jokes, and tonight was one of those nights; the Yankees strapped themselves on the back of the sizzling-hot Robinson Cano and cruised to a 4-0 win over Baltimore, winning the series and getting back on track after a few minor early-season blips.

Cano continued what I like to think of as his “Oh, You Didn’t Know? You Better Call Somebody” tour of the AL with two more home runs, a double, and a killer defensive play in the third inning  – ranging way over to his right, then hurling the ball against his momentum right to Mark Teixeira’s glove, throwing out poor Nolan Reimold with one step to spare – that left A.J. Burning Net standing on the mound with his hands on his head in disbelief, and Derek Jeter staring at him like he’d just grown an extra head. He provided plenty of offense all by himself, but the Yankees also scattered 11 hits and a walk against Orioles pitching throughout the game; Baltimore starter Brian Matusz did pretty well in limiting the damage to three runs in six innings.

The Yankee scoring began in the first, when Jeter came home on Alex Rodriguez’s sacrifice fly. Cano’s first home run, a booming no-doubter, came in the fourth; he followed it with a double in the sixth, and Marcus Thames knocked him home with a double of his own. Finally Cano burned Alberto Castillo for his 8th homer of the year, and this one wasn’t cheap either (Ken Singleton: “I’ll have what he’s having”). We’ve seen Cano do this before for a few weeks at a time, usually later in the season, and obviously he’s not going to hit .407 all summer; but it’s spring, and for now I think I’ll just enjoy the many pleasant possibilities.

The Orioles threatened only mildly against Burnett, who eased through eight innings and 116 pitches (77 of them strikes) even without much of a curveball, and Mariano Rivera polished them off with 13 pitches, fava beans and a nice Chianti in the ninth. It all looked easy tonight.

—

*That same (very productive) evening, I discovered that Curtis Granderson has by far the best anagrams on the Yanks, including but not limited to: Corianders Strung, Transcends Rigour, Scarred Tonsuring, Crusader Snorting, Sardonic Restrung, Contrariness Drug, Unerring Cad Sorts, Graced Rosins Runt, and Rug Torn Acridness.

Also, one anagram for Michael Kay is: Lama Hickey. You’re welcome.

I remember watching Phil Hughes’ great, painfully cut-short start against Texas three years ago*, and thinking it was the most depressing 10-1 Yankees win I’d ever seen. Last night’s game was not nearly such a bummer: Hughes pitched the best game of his career, took his no-hitter into the eighth and was finally derailed by a comebacker bouncing off his glove, not by a key muscle making an unhappy popping noise. The Yankees won 3-1, and the Phenom/Phranchise nicknames would seem to be back in business.

Hughes walked Daric Barton on four pitches in the first inning, but put away the next 20 A’s he faced, 10 by strikeout, a career high. He got himself all the way into the eight inning with no hits and barely any drama – none of those dazzling close plays that Sabathia got in his no-hit innings of a few weeks ago. Everything was moving in exactly the way you’d want it to move, and while I don’t think his fastball topped 92 or 93 mph, that’s evidently plenty fast enough.

The Yankees scraped a pair of runs together in the fourth, when Alex Rodriguez tripled, and made it look like such a good idea that Robinson Cano decided to do the same immediately afterwards, later scoring on Posada’s groundout. Meanwhile, Hughes was being ostentatiously ignored in the dugout until the eighth, where with his pitch count still quite low and mostly made of strikes, he promptly allowed a hit to Eric Chavez. Well, kind of – the ball hit off Hughes’ arm and glove, and while he wasn’t hurt (PHEW… hey, can that be Hughes’ new nickname?), he also couldn’t find the ball for a few very long seconds. He regained his composure but as he reached 100 pitches with several runners on base, Girardi brought in Joba Chamberlain; one run scored before the Yanks could turn the game over to Mariano, who made things slightly more interesting that was strictly necessary in the ninth but, as usual, remained in control.

Pre-Mo, the Yankees got an ultimately unneeded but reassuring insurance run when Brett Gardner dunked a single into left to score Curtis Granderson (who, in case you were wondering, has been adjusting just fine to NYC off the field, too). Ken Singleton had just been saying, as Gardner faced a 3-1 count, “one more ball out of the zone and Jeter will come to the plate,” and I was thinking, hey, there is a chance Gardner will actually get a hit, you know. (I watched the Mets-Cubs game earlier in the evening and let me tell you, there is nothing like it to make you appreciate the Yankees’ lineup. The Cubs happened to win tonight with plenty of offense, but then they were facing Oliver Perez, and Lou Piniella still spent most of the game looking like he was watching someone strangle a koala… or, perhaps, like he would like to strangle a koala himself).

Anyway, as much as we all wanted to see a little history, it seems ridiculous to call this game disappointing. Hughes’ no-hitter interruptus didn’t bother me much, because it was just beautiful to see him pitch so well… and then to be available again in five days.

Now excuse while I go knock on all the wood within a mile radius.

—

*Holy crap, was that really three years ago?

Photo courtesy of the NY Yankees

The Yankees got their shiny new rings today, and they were just as subtle and understated as you might expect. But if the swelling music and the giant hunks of ice were not exactly humble, the ring ceremony itself still managed to be lovely – because of the presence of Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, the glee of the crowd, and the obvious joy on the players’ faces as they jogged out to collect – and a perfect prelude to a 7-5 win.

The highlight was the reception for Hideki Matsui, now the Los Angeles Godzilla of Anaheim, who was given a ring, a huge ovation from the fans, and hugs on the field from all his teammates. I can hardly wait for the inevitable squawking about the horrors of fraternizing with the “enemy.” This may be the most amicable player-team divorce I can recall, and it was nice to see the uber-professional Matsui reap the benefits of that. Even the many Yankee-haters of my acquaintance find it hard to work up any bile for the guy.

(Less fuss was made over current Padre Jerry Hairston Jr’s presence, but I like that he flew all night to be in the Bronx for this moment – without even asking permission, because he was afraid someone might say no. It’s always nice to get a sense that the players care as much or more than the fans; it helps us feel less silly).

As for the game itself, it was about as low-stress as Yankees-Angels games ever are. Is there any Major League player we know better, at this point, than Andy Pettitte? How many times over the last few years have I tried to find a new way to describe a start like this? He got himself into trouble and then he got out of it; he was not dominant or overwhelming, but he was enough. Pettitte’s demeanor and persona do not seem to fit the word “crafty” (more like “aw shucks”), but he has gradually turned into one of those lefties; I wouldn’t necessarily say he strikes me as a deep thinker, but he knows what the hell — “the heck”, he might say — he’s doing. Today’s final line was six innings pitched and no runs allowed, despite five hits and three walks, aided by six strikeouts.

The offense was provided by Nick Johnson and Derek Jeter, who hit solo homers early on, and the Yankees tacked on gradually via a slew of infield singles, walks, and doubles, which never quite coalesced into a huge inning but came out to the same thing in the end. It was a good homecoming for Johnson, who came through in several key moments (and managed not to lose any limbs), as did Cano, an ultra-patient Swisher, and the usual suspects – Jeter, Posada, and of course Mariano Rivera, who saved Chan Ho Park and David Robertson from themselves with his usual easy flair.

So far, so good.

Our own Emma Span is part of Gelf Magazine’s Varsity Letters series tonight. If you are around, troop over to Dumbo and check, check her out. As you know, we think the world of her because she’s one-of-a-kind. And funny…In the meantime, dig the interview she did for Gelf:

Gelf Magazine: Many of us have our own generalizations about Yankees fans and Mets fans. You mention that your father accused you at a young age of having an inner Mets fan inside you, even though you grew up a Yankees fan. What are these most predominant generalizations, and how true do you find them to be? Are there a lot of Mets fans trapped in Yankees fans’ bodies, and vice versa?

Emma Span: For the most part, those generalizations are a myth. With millions of Yankees fans and millions of Mets fans, they obviously aren’t all the same. That said, I think people do take on certain influences. It’s easier for Yankees fans to be a little arrogant because they’ve had so much success. The team itself also has a kind of pompous arrogance about its history: the greatest sports franchise ever, blah, blah, blah. I think the generalizations, though, are mostly bullshit. I do ask in the book, however, that if you grow up as a kid watching Mariano Rivera as your closer, if that has a slightly different effect on your personality and your outlook on life than if you grew up watching Armando Benitez. I think somehow it might.

Gelf Magazine: I think an interesting litmus test, at least for the nature of the Mets fan, was, who they would choose to cheer for in the Yankees-Phillies World Series last year? What does it say? Who are the Mets fans cheering for the Phillies and who are the Mets fans cheering for the Yankees?

Emma Span: There was a serious debate about it. Mets fans actually got pissed because they couldn’t believe that certain people would support the Phillies or that certain people would support the Yankees. Obviously they weren’t really supporting either team, but when you watch the World Series, it’s always more fun to have one team you’re rooting for. I think a slight majority—and this is based just on personal observation—but I saw a slight majority pulling for the Phillies. You know, because Mets fans live amongst Yankees fans and deal with them constantly, and the depth of anger against the Yankees is really pretty serious—obviously with the understanding that it’s just a game and most Mets fans have at least one Yankees fan in the family, but still there’s a serious anger there.

To fantasize, or not to fantasize?

I have an on-again, off-again relationship with fantasy baseball. The first few years I did it – 2003, 2004, somewhere around there – it was downright valuable; for someone like me who was used to just watching the Yankees and Mets, it forced me to familiarize myself with the mid-level players on other teams that I otherwise wouldn’t have known much about. Willy Taveras, whatever his flaws, will always have a place in my heart thanks to his unexpectedly non-sucky 2005 season; Aaron Harang remains a target of my misplaced resentment ever since his 6-win, league-leading 17-loss 2008 season crippled my Brooklyn Excelsiors. (Pretty much my favorite part of fantasy baseball, of course, is naming my team. My Little Lebowski Urban Achievers had a particularly successful run in the middle of the decade).

Too often, though, I’ve been That Person: the one who gets busy or forgetful or just frustrated with a lousy roster or bad luck, and abandons her team sometime in late July, allowing it to float gently to the bottom of the standings. Nobody likes That Person. But when I get stressed out, or just distracted by a shiny object, my fantasy team will be the first thing jettisoned. So perhaps, this year, I should leave it to those with more devotion, or at least longer attention spans. Maybe I can convince someone else to let me name his or her team.

Even if it may not be for me anymore, it would seem to go without saying that there’s nothing wrong with fantasy baseball. And yet, last night I came across Ron Shandler’s Huffington Post piece about a new fantasy baseball documentary:

There is a segment in the new documentary film, Fantasyland, when several esteemed baseball media veterans rail against fantasy baseball….

Mike Francesa of WFAN, Phil Mushnick of the New York Post and Hall of Fame writer Murray Chass are classified as “The Naysayers.” They think fantasy baseball is “foolish” and “ridiculous.”

(Mike Francesa, Phil Mushnik, and Murray Chass. You know that popular interview question, “Name the three people you’d most like to have dinner with”? This reads like the answer to the opposite of that question. Welcome to Brunch in Hell.)

Is fantasy baseball “foolish” and “ridiculous”? Maybe, but then, isn’t baseball itself? It’s no sillier than most of the things we do for fun. (Let’s pause here for a moment to allow Murray Chass time to Google the word “fun”). Obviously you can take a fantasy fixation too far – one of the cardinal rules of sports blogging is: No one cares about your fantasy team. But no one cares about the dream you had last night, either; that doesn’t mean it has no meaning for you.

Anyway, this got me thinking: is baseball really so different from fantasy baseball? I may not have a team this year, but I’ll watch a collection of players perform, and I’ll hope that they hit well and pitch well, and if they do better than another collection of players, it will make me happy, even though the tangible benefits to my daily life are nonexistent. Obviously, given the choice, I’ll choose flesh-and-blood baseball over fantasy baseball any day of the week, but let’s not kid ourselves: fandom is essentially irrational, except insofar as it gives us pleasure. Hell, at least in fantasy baseball, you can win some money.

If I were writing copy for the Yankees, I would probably be contractually obligated to refer to the “Yankee legacy” of Chien-Ming Wang and Hideki Matsui, and even Brian Bruney. But I’m not, so instead, like Alex earlier, I’ll just wonder aloud about if, how, and for how long the various exiting Yanks will be remembered.

Wang and Matsui obviously won’t be forgotten anytime soon – both made huge contributions to the Bombers, and had fascinating cultural implications as well (I think each, in their way, helped affirm every New Yorker’s belief that the world does in fact revolve around us). It seems that technically Matsui didn’t quite earn his salary – but in a metaphoric sense, he definitely did. And Alex already touched on the fabled porn collection and the excellent at-bat music, but I also think of the time Matsui broke his wrist on a freakish sliding-catch-gone-wrong, back in 2006. He managed to throw the ball in before collapsing in pain with his wrist held at a gruesome angle, but no sooner was he back from the hospital than he apologized, profusely, to his teammates, the Yankees, and his fans. For having a broken wrist. Try to imagine any American player ever doing that. Hell, try to imagine Ichiro doing that. Yes, I will miss Matsui… and to a slightly lesser extent I will miss his translator, Roger Kahlon, who (now it can be said) is one good-looking dude.

I’m not sure how much to eulogize Chien-Ming Wang’s New York career – because, who knows? He may yet be back, if not next season then somewhere down the road. He’s still young enough that if his shoulder actually heals properly, he could pitch for years and years. That’s the optimistic view of course, but even if he’s never again a top-flight starter, Wang’s isn’t a truly sad story: he threw two-plus excellent Major League seasons, which is a lot more than most people get to do, and became a truly massive and beloved celebrity in his home country, which ditto. But still.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that in ten, twenty, or thirty years Yankee blogs (or whatever has replaced them) will still mention Matsui and Wang from time to time, but I wonder about another suddenly ex-Yank, Brian Bruney. I wrote enough game summaries featuring the guy that I’m certain I’ll remember the name, barring any degenerative brain diseases, plus I spoke to him a few times during my brief tenure in the clubhouse. How often will I think about him, though, as the years go by? And what about the average fan? The Yankees were able to snatch Bruney from the Diamondbacks because Arizona felt he had some attitude problems, was the word on the street back in ’06, and whether or not he ever really overcame those I couldn’t say; he had a bit of a meathead look about him, but a sensitive streak too.

Bruney had good games and bad, but it’s hard for me to think of any really iconic moments – there’s not really a Bruney equivalent of Chien-Ming Wang’s virtuoso performance against the Mets at the Stadium, or Matsui’s playoff heroics and walk-off homers. Such is the nature of middle relief, I suppose. I can’t pretend to have any strong feelings about the guy, but I spent so many cumulative hours watching him pitch that maybe I should. Is there anything bittersweet about the fact that he will likely be greeted among baseball fans, upon reemerging from the swamps of memory, mostly with indifference?

What do you guys think – in 2039 or so, will there be any spring days when your fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Brian Bruney?

Photos from ESPN/Getty Images

Andy Pettitte clinched the AL East, the Division Series, and the ALCS for the Yankees this year, so it only makes sense that he’d be on the mound for the the last game of the 2009 World Series. He looked bone-tired tonight, more than 220 innings and seven months into his age-37 season, muttering darkly into his glove; but as you probably should have expected by now, he figured out a way to pitch just as well as he needed to. Hideki Matsui, your Series MVP, provided all the necessary offense, and the Yankees earned their 27th Championship with a 7-3 win over the Phillies.

Tonight, for a change, was not about Pedro Martinez – who, even more than Pettitte, seemed to be pitching on fumes and experience. He worked slowly and painstakingly, never hit his stride, and when he made mistakes he did not get away with them. It’s funny – I thought Matsui had hit Pedro well throughout his career, but that turns out not to be the case. It’s just that the hits he does have were big ones, from his part in the Yankees’ rally in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS through Game 2 of this World Series and tonight’s show of strength.

Matsui put the Yankees on the board in the second with a big two-run home run. The Phillies got one back right away on a triple and sac fly, but the Yankees padded their lead in the bottom of the third: Jeter singled, Damon walked, Teixeira was hit by a pitch (definitely an accident this time), and after A-Rod struck out, Matsui came to the plate with two outs and the bases loaded. He promptly unloaded them with a single to center, plating Jeter and Damon (who, unfortunately, injured his calf running home and had to be replaced by Jerry Hairston Jr; be thankful there was not a Game 7). Pedro got out of the inning, but that was the end of his night, and a patchwork of five Phillies relievers finished the game.

In the bottom of the fifth, after Jeter doubled and scored on Teixeira’s single, Matsui did it again, doubling in Teixeira and Rodriguez to make it 7-1 Yanks. He ended up with three hits and six RBIs, and one triple short of the cycle, though with the state of his knees, you’re more likely to see Alex Rodriguez actually turn into a centaur. He’s also the first DH ever to win the Series MVP.

Meanwhile, Pettitte was in full Battle Cat mode. After the top of the 4th, feeling (with some reason) that he was being squeezed, he started yelling at home plate ump Joe West and had to be pulled away by Joe Girardi. This is not a fight you want to pick in Game 6 of the World Series. But Pettitte persevered into the sixth inning, at which point he gave up a two-run homer to Ryan Howard – hi, Ryan! – but talked Girardi into letting him stay in. He got Jayson Werth out, gave up a double to Ibanez, and finally running out of what little gas he’d had to start the night, was removed to a long, loud ovation. Pettitte hasn’t said anything about retirement this year… and I don’t see why the Yankees wouldn’t want him back… but it is possible that this was his last start for New York. If so, he certainly went out on a high note.

Joba Chamberlain took over, and he looked pretty good, picking up where he left off a few games ago. He got three outs before running into a little trouble – and so with two out in the seventh and two on, the Yankees still up 7-3, Girardi brought in Damaso Marte to deal with Chase Utley, who could have pulled the Phillies to within one. It was probably the tensest moment of the game. I’ve groaned every time Marte came in this postseason, more out of habit than anything else, but he has been terrific, and he continued in that vein tonight, getting Utley to half-chase a slider for strike three.

Mariano Rivera took over with one out in the eighth – it was not a save situation, but no way Girardi was going to mess around here – and though it was not one of his seemingly effortless performances, he was never in real danger. When he completed the ninth he’d tossed 16 postseason innings while allowing one run, to the surprise of no one. Give Shane Victorino credit, though, he did not go gentle into that good night – his last at-bat, and the Phillies’, took took 10 pitches, but finally it ended the way most at-bats against Mariano do: a groundout.

And then there were a series of tableaux, some familiar – Jeter’s raised arms and yell, Rivera’s grin, Posada’s near-skip towards the mound – and some new: Mark Teixeira’s fiercely goofy expression as he jumped up and down, Nick Swisher tearing wide-eyed and open-mouthed towards the infield, Francisco Cervelli hopping around like a caffeinated bunny, Joe Girardi’s gaunt face an open book of anticipation and then, for just a moment, pure, unguarded happiness.

I think almost all of us realize that nine years, in the scheme of franchise championship droughts, is not a long time at all, sometimes just a drop in the bucket. But it’s still a significant chunk of life, and most of us have probably gone through considerable changes since the 2000 Fall Classic – gained and lost loved ones, maybe started a family, changed careers, changed cities, grown up. And who knows where we’ll be the next time the Yankees win? All of which is, I guess, a long-winded way of saying: enjoy the moment.

Other thoughts/notes:

-“Empire State of Mind,” as I said a few weeks ago, has a nice catchy hook but isn’t a great song, and far from Jay-Z’s best. Still, it’s neat that this postseason had such an obvious anthem – if only because now I’ll think of the 2009 Yankees every time I hear it, probably for the rest of my life. And I mean, say what you want about the tune, but the song that makes me think of the 2000 Yankees is “Who Let the Dogs Out,” so count your damn blessings.

-The Canyon of Heroes parade is set for Friday at 11 AM. I think I have to go.

-I hope George Steinbrenner is at least lucid enough to know what happened tonight. Of course we already knew he was unwell, but the fact that he wasn’t at tonight’s game at all is still a little startling.

-I’m a little sorry Mike Mussina couldn’t have been part of this one; he did right by the Yankees, and retired with flair at the top of his game – but he arrived the year after a World Series and left just before another, Mattingly-style.

-I’m much sorrier that Todd Drew couldn’t be here for this one. But, as Alex and many other people mentioned tonight, this one’s for him.

Whew.

After a tense, up-and-down (and-up-and-down-and-up) game, with some smart batting and quick thinking from Johnny Damon, and yet another monster (centaur-ish, even?) Alex Rodriguez hit, the Yankees beat the Phillies 7-4 and took a 3-1 lead in the Series. Now they’ve got three more chances to get that 11th postseason win… but for the sake of older Yankees fans and those with hypertension or weak hearts, let’s hope this thing doesn’t go to Game 7.

For one thing, while CC Sabathia came through and pitched a solid game tonight, he wasn’t quite the dominant force he was against the Angels; he’s now thrown 266 innings this year, so it would hardly be shocking if he was getting a little worn out. The Yankees staked him to a 2-run lead right away, on Jeter’s single, Damon’s double, Teixeira’s RBI groundout, A-Rod’s third HBP of the last two games, and Posada’s sac fly; for a little while, it looked like Blanton might implode. But either he got it together or the Yankees let him off the hook, depending on your point of view, and in the bottom of the first Sabathia gave back a run on two doubles – the second hit by Sabathia’s current arch-nemesis Chase Utley (who now, with that hair, looks like the sidekick to the snobby frat-guy villain of a Revenge of the Nerds sequel).

Both pitchers clamped down after that, until the bottom of the fourth, when Ryan Howard – you remember Ryan Howard – singled and scored on Pedro Feliz’s hit to left, tying the game. It didn’t last long: the Yankees rallied right back in the top of the fifth, with Jeter and Damon coming through again, knocking in Nick Swisher and Melky Cabrera respectively, and making it 4-2 Yankees.

Since it was That Kind of Game, that score didn’t last, either. In the seventh Utley destroyed yet another Sabathia slider,  pulling the Phillies to within a run, and ending Sabathia’s night at a workmanlike 6.2 innings with three earned runs, six strikeouts and three walks. The Phillies went on to tie it up the eighth, when Pedro Feliz of all people rudely interrupted an otherwise-excellent Joba Chamberlain inning with a big blast to left: 4-4.

Charlie Manuel brought in Brad Lidge for the ninth, and the Philly closer made pretty quick work of Hideki Matsui and Derek Jeter. I admit that at this point, I was trying and failing to imagine the Yankees surviving an inning of Phil Coke. Johnny Damon’s two-out at-bat, though, turned everything around, not just for Lidge but very possible for the Phillies. It took nine tense pitches, as Damon fouled off several sliders and fastball after fastball, looking for something he could hit – and when he finally got it, he dumped it into left field.

With Mark Teixeira up, Damon immediately took off for second base, slid in with a little room to spare… then popped up, paused for just a fraction of a second, and took off for third. “I was like, ‘Where is he going?!'” said Jorge Posada after the game, and that makes two of us. Joba Chamberlain said he had “a mini heart attack” watching the play, while Brett Gardner’s initial reaction was “Uh oh.” I think most Yankee fans could probably relate to one if not all of those responses, but in fact, Damon simply realized that because on the shift on Teixeira, no one was covering third base – no one was even close to covering third base – and that given where Pedro Feliz had caught the ball, he wasn’t in any position to outrun Damon. Hence, two stolen bases on a single pitch.

Teixeira was hit by a pitch – I’m sure it wasn’t intentional, but still, Phillies pitchers: if you can’t pitch inside without hitting people, maybe don’t throw inside so much – and that brought up Alex Rodriguez. Of course. Lidge seemed rattled by then, and his second pitch to Rodriguez was a fat fastball that was promptly redirected towards the left field wall. The Yankees went up 5-4, and then up 7-4 on Jorge Posada’s two-run single. That was all they’d get, but not once in Mariano Rivera’s postseason career has three runs not been enough, and tonight was no exception.

(Incidentally, I love how Yankee fans have embraced the whole centaur thing. Personally, I think it’s hilarious if true – and it’s almost too weird to be invented – but anyway, Rodriguez has hit so well for most of this postseason, it would take a pretty serious felony for anyone to be bothered at this point).

Needless to say, the Series ain’t over til it’s over, as someone who’d know once put it, and you don’t have to try too hard to imagine ways in which the momentum could shift – Cliff Lee tomorrow, just for instance. But the Yankees are awfully close now… so stock up on the self-medication of your choice and get ready for another wild night.

A.J. Burnett had a terrific start last night, as if unaware that millions of people were completely freaked out about his ability to do so, and a few of the Yankee hitters recovered from Wednesday’s Cliff Lee-induced  trauma, and so New York beat Philly 3-1 to even the series. And yet, naturally, the first thing I want to write about is Pedro.

“I know they really wanna root for me,” said Pedro of Yankees fans, smiling in what appeared to be a zoot suit stolen from the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, shortly after (he claims) lecturing a man in the front row about using foul language in front of his daughter. “It’s just that I don’t play for the Yankees. That’s all. I’ve always been a good competitor, and they love that… You know, I’m a New Yorker as well, so – if I was on the Yankees, I’d be a king over here.”

He’s right, of course. Personally, I always appreciate athletes who understand that they’re also entertainers, and nobody gets that more than Pedro. He gets the fans, he gets the media, he plays his part with flair – he was a great villain; his ego is, to put it politely, healthy, but he’s backed it up often enough. By the end of 2003 I disliked him about as much as I’ve ever disliked a player (at least, a player who hadn’t committed some actual crime), but I’ve long since come around. It was seeing him on the Mets that mostly did it, watching him pitch smarter as he got slower, loved by the fans and his teammates no matter how often he was injured, and of course always good for a quote. And I suppose it was also realizing that he would be retiring soon, if not this year, and you won’t have Pedro to kick around anymore. I can’t wait for his Hall of Fame induction speech.

Pedro was going to be the story tonight no matter what he did, which is probably fine by him, and he pitched very well – but as far as the Yankees are concerned, the bigger news was A.J. Burnett’s excellent start. I think most fans knew he was capable of it, but didn’t dare to expect it. His curveball was a knockout punch, and he was refreshingly free of control issues: seven innings pitched, nine strikeouts, only two walks. There were moments in the game’s first half when he seemed like he might be teetering on the brink of chaos, but he never quite lost control: one second-inning run on a blooped ground-rule double and a single that probably should’ve been an E5 was all the Phillies got.

That was a good thing, too, since for the first chunk of the game, the Yankee bats were becalmed and the Stadium was way too quiet. Pedro and his sneaky stuff deserves the credit, but I wonder if he got any kind of assist from a Cliff Lee hangover. In the fourth inning, though, Mark Teixeira (it’s aliiiiiive!) whacked an 84 mph changeup over the right field fence to tie the game.

Hideki Matsui gave the Yankees the lead with another solo shot in the sixth, and I never call these things, but I have to say: I called that one. The Phillies got five-plus excellent innings and 90 pitches out of 2009 Pedro, against the Yankees no less, and I thought to ask for too much more than that was to push their luck.

Then in the seventh, a funny thing happened: Pedro Martinez stayed in the game. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Even six years ago, everyone watching the ALCS at home knew that after about 100 pitches, give or take, Pedro’s effectiveness took a nosedive – as great as he was then, he didn’t have a ton of stamina. Everyone knew it, and everyone was screaming it at Grady Little’s impassive face on their TV, yet here we are many years and multiple Martinez surgeries later… I don’t mean to make too much of it, probably the Yankees win this one anyway, with that Burnett start and Mariano Rivera. It’s just that if you pulled some random casual baseball fan off the couch and put him or her in a dugout, this is probably the one mistake they would absolutely know not to make.

Anyway, the much-maligned Jerry Hairston Jr. singled, and Brett Gardner ran for him, advancing to third on Melky Cabrera’s single. Jorge Posada came up to pinch-hit, but we were all denied the drama of that matchup when Manuel finally strolled to the mound and summoned Chan Ho Park. Posada singled anyway; 3-1 Yankees. Derek Jeter then struck out on a foul bunt. That’s right, he was bunting with two on and no outs, Yanks up by two in the seventh, and he kept bunting with two strikes, and then he struck out on a foul bunt, and I don’t want to talk about it.

In other Bad-For-Baseball news, the umpires then blew a call when Johnny Damon’s line drive was called an out in the air, though it looked like in fact it had hit the ground before Ryan Howard caught it, and so Posada was called out too, doubled off. I have run out of umpire jokes. The Phillies got screwed the very next inning, when Chase Utley and his hair were called out at first to complete a DP against Mariano Rivera; it looked on replays like he was most likely safe. Ragging on the umps is an ancient and respected part of baseball tradition, but things are getting out of hand.

Mariano Rivera had a choppy eighth inning, but persevered, and the ninth was more like it. The Yankees now head to Philly, and to paraphrase Ol’ Blue Eyes, if you can’t hit a ton of home runs there you can’t hit a ton of home runs anywhere.

Discussion question: if you were picking a baseball-related Halloween costume, what would you pick? And is there any way to go as an umpire without being insensitive to the visually impaired?

In some ways, and all the most important ones, this game went according to plan: C.C. Sabathia dominated, because he eats three-day rests for breakfast; A-Rod bashed the hell out of the ball again; and this time his teammates even decided to join him. The Yankees won emphatically, 10-1, and are now up three games to one in the ALCS.

In other ways, though, it was a bit of a mess; as I wrote earlier, if this game were an interwar German Expressionist film, it would be “The 1,000 Mental Errors of Dr. Mabuse”. Yankees and umpires alike made some baffling decisions this evening, though in the end the New York boomsticks made them pretty much irrelevant.

Sabathia started out strong, and got stronger. He went eight innings on only 101 pitches, allowed one run, struck out five and walked two. He was still touching 96 mph on FOX’s radar gun when Girardi pulled him and and, with a then-six-run lead, let Chad Gaudin (the bullpen’s Lonely Man) finish the game. It’s really impossible to overstate just how terrific Sabathia has been this October, and how valuable; the Yankees piled on the hits today, but even if their woes with runners in scoring position had continued, it might not have mattered.

Angels starter Scott Kazmir kept the Yankees off the board for three innings, but he looked plenty shaky in the process, with leadoff hits and walks and a metric ton of pitches thrown. (This might be some minor comfort to Mets fans after their painful season, if only it had been another team doing the damage). Finally, in the fourth, the rains came: A-Rod singled, moved to third on a Posada double, and scored with a close play at the plate on Cano’s fielder’s choice; then Nick Swisher walked to load the bases, and with the Yankees on an 0-for-26 skid with RISP, Melky Cabrera knocked a refreshing two-RBI single into left-field to put the Yanks up 3-zip.

The fourth inning also brought us the first of many blown calls, when Nick Swisher was caught too far off second base and tagged out by a foot, but was nonetheless called safe. Third base ump Tim McClelland then evened the blown-call score by calling Swisher out for supposedly tagging up from third too soon on Johnny Damon’s fly ball… even though replays showed he did not. (If a runner is wrongly called out when he should have been out on a previous play anyway, does it make a sound?) These shenanigans were only prelude to an incredibly odd series of events in the fifth, wherein both Robinson Cano and Jorge Posada were tagged out at third base during the same play, but only Posada was called out, and I’d like to explain it in more detail but frankly it still makes my head hurt, so just watch for yourself.

Anyway, before the ump oddness, the Yankees tacked on two more runs in the fifth with a Mark Teixeira single (nice, but his only hit of the night, so it’s too soon to say if he’s out of his slump) and then… you’ll never guess… yes, an Alex Rodriguez home run. Seriously. Another one. He is now slugging 1.000 in the ALCS, which is just stupid. In the bottom of that inning, Sabathia faced his only major threat of the night – a Kendry Morales solo shot and two singles – but he recovered and pretty much cruised from there on out. Three postseason starts, three earned runs.

The later innings were pretty low-stress for a change – and a good thing too, as Yankee fans have been, let’s just say, a mite on edge these last few days. Johnny Damon hit a two-run shot, Melky knocked in another couple of runs, and there were no terrifying extra-inning contortions to endure. This is the Angels we’re talking about, so I will not be lulled into a false sense of security, but I’m glad my stomach lining got a chance to recover before Thurday’s Game 5. Enjoy the off-day, Banterers.

I knew it. I knew Carl Pavano was going to pitch like that!

In the end it didn’t matter, though  – “it’s okay,” a friend told me afterwards, “that man can’t hurt you any more” – because although Pavano was great tonight, Andy Pettitte was just a bit better; and while the usually great Joe Nathan faltered, the Yankees’ bullpen held the line. So it was a 4-1 win for New York tonight, and the Yanks are headed to the ALCS for the first time since 2004. Of course that’s nothing in the scheme of things, not compared to how long other teams have been waiting, but I’m still thrilled to have really engaging baseball going for at least a little while longer, as it gets colder and darker outside.

Pavano had absolutely everything working tonight, throwing strikes with movement, and provoking some terrible-looking at-bats from the Yankees – there were awkward swings and misses left and right. In the third inning Melky Cabrera removed the specter of a no-hitter with a dinky little infield hit that, had they been playing on real grass, probably would’ve been an out; it was not deeply encouraging. Hideki Matsui’s fifth-inning single and Derek Jeter’s sixth-inning double were more like it, but went nowhere.

Meanwhile, Andy Pettitte was putting on a retro-chic performance. Pettitte has pitched the equivalent of a full healthy season in postseason games, a phantom 16th season; he’s had some bad starts along the way, mixed in with the good, but it’s still deeply reassuring to see him out there – brim pulled low, shadowed eyes staring in over the glove, almost indistinguishable in that pose from the 1996 version. He was perfect through four innings, and very good thereafter.

Still, the Twins scored first, as they did in the first two games of the series, and of course it was Joe Mauer who drove in their lone run, singling home Denard Span in the sixth inning with two outs. But Pettitte recovered to strike out Michael Cuddyer, and the Yankees wasted no time in getting him a lead.

I’m not sure whether Pavano started to tire in the seventh, or whether the Yankees just started seeing his pitches better the third time through the lineup. Either way, first Alex Rodriguez – by now the clear MVP of the series – hit a solid home run to right field to tie the score; one batter later, Jorge Posada added another solo shot. In the space of a couple minutes the Yankees had gone ahead by a run, and despite his excellent performance, that was enough stick Pavano with the L.

Joba Chamberlain took over for Pettitte with one out in the seventh, and got the job done. Phil Hughes then came on for the eighth and did the same, though he had a slightly stickier time. He was greeted by a Nick Punto double, and the Denard Span single that followed could have been the start of a bigger jam – but luckily for the Yankees Punto was not paying attention to his third base coach. He ran well past the bag thinking Span’s hit had reached the outfield, realized his mistake, screeched to a halt and lunged back towards the base; but by then Jeter had corralled the ball (a play I’m not sure he makes last year), spotted Punto, and thrown home to Jorge Posada, who threw to A-Rod, who tagged Punto out at third. An odd play, and a credit to the Yankee infielders, but one made possible by more sloppy baserunning from Minnesota.

I felt bad for Punto; he does hustle like crazy, every time I’ve seen him play, and it’s not his fault that people are always overpraising him as gritty and scrappy.  This was out of character, and he spent the rest of the game looking stricken. But so it goes. Hughes got Orlando Cabrera to fly out, but with Joe Mauer coming up as the go-ahead run, Joe Girardi did the only sane thing: went out to the mound and signaled for Mariano Rivera. (Had this same situation arisen in the seventh inning, I don’t like to think about what might have happened).

Mariano Rivera vs Joe Mauer: best hitter in the league against the best pitcher, and if you can’t get excited about that then I don’t know what to tell you. Mauer’s had an excellent Division Series, providing the lion’s share of the Twins’ offense, and when he wins his MVP it will be thoroughly well deserved. But the result of his last plate appearance tonight was almost anticlimactic, the quintessential Rivera outcome: Mauer’s bat snapped in half just above the handle, and he grounded out to first.

The Yankees tacked on a pair of runs in the top of the ninth, loading the bases as Twins pitchers walked Teixeira, A-Rod, and Matsui in succession, and Joe Nathan then allowed singles to Posada and Cano. Rivera took care of the bottom of the ninth with fairly minimal drama, because that’s what he does, and my god will New York fans miss him when he’s gone, but let’s not think about that right now.

I like the Twins – I like Bert Blyleven, Gardenhire, Mauer, Morneau, Span (natch), Carlos Gomez, Joe Nathan, Pat Neshek, even Little Nicky Punto as the great Batgirl used to call him. And I like their fans, who mostly seem to manage being passionate without being dicks. This series was closer than the 3-0 sweep would suggest, and had they beaten the Yankees I would’ve pulled for them the rest of the way.

I do not feel this way about the Yankees’ next opponent.

Commence worrying about the Angels in 5… 4… 3… 2…