My basketball game ends around 8:30 PM on Tuesday nights. Always check the Yankee score before I get on the train. Then, when I get off at 207, I sneak a peak into the bar on Broadway, which is sure to have the game on. If I can’t catch the score there, I’ll definitely get a glimpse in the cigar shop, where five or six guys will be huddled around their old school TV set.

Last night the end of the season hit home for the first time. No score to check. Nothing interesting at the bar and the cigar smokers blowing smoke at each other instead of Derek Jeter.

The baseball season, a constant presence for such a lengthy part of the year, functions as an adhesive to life in the city for a lot of people. I’m one of them. And when it’s gone, especially in those years the Yanks don’t win it all, it’s an effort to move on without it.

My cousin’s too big for trick-or-treating, but he was still bummed that Halloween was cancelled. Downed power lines, still rippling with electricity, all over his town. Kids had to stay inside, munching from the family stash.

In our neighborhood, it was business as usual, a rare time when Halloween in the city is better than the variety just across the Bridge.

We have a candy exchange in a big park. The scene is both efficient and chaotic as you can fill your pumpkin in minutes, but the total experience pales in comparison to the coordinated march from house to house that I remember from my childhood.

Luckily, we have a few local spots that give my kids an idea of how it’s supposed to be…

Saturday night, 9 PM reservations for four. Two in our group celebrating an anniversary, one of them pregnant. We show up a little early hoping a table is ready. “We’re running on schedule,” says the sleek hostess with dark hair so shiny we see our reflections.

We try the bar, but it’s just a trough at this point, crowded with diners who didn’t have reservations. I love the idea of being able to eat at the bar, but what about people who need to use it as a bar? I guess they need two bars. Our pregnant friend is a trooper but I see her look longingly at the seats.

Several tables look like they are going to leave at any moment, but then they never do. Nine PM approaches and the hostess walks over and assures us that we are going to be seated shortly. “In their laps?” I thought to ask but kept it to myself. Our pregnant friend is shifting weight from one foot to the other and smiling through it all. I learned that dance from my bad knees and bad back.

Nine fourteen. Now everybody is looking at me. Tension is filling our tight space in the walkway between the bar and the tables we long to occupy. I made the reservation, I should be the one to complain. But I’m staring at the hostess the whole time. She’s keeping track of us with an appropriate level of concern. Maybe it’s a relic of my bachelor days, but I can tell when someone is paying attention to me.

A terrible minute passes where my best friend, his pregnant wife and my wife all stare me down trying to get me to act on our growing unrest. But I wait. And yes, the manager gets a whisper from the hostess and he’s on his way.

“I’m so sorry about the wait. I thank you for your patience,” he says. “Can I help in any way?” I ask if he has an extra seat available for our pregnant friend. He does. Our friend sits and relaxes for the first time since we got there. “Now we can wait forever.”

We wait for fifteen more minutes, not exactly forever, and receive one more visit from another contrite manager. We finally sit down and enjoy a lovely meal. And when we talk about the wait, which we only do for about thirty seconds, we talk about how well they handled it and how they defused the tension.

Privately, I think they could have found that chair the second we walked in, but I can also chalk that up to not asking for it sooner. I don’t mention it though, because I don’t want to spoil the good mood.

In 2008 the Yankees missed the playoffs and had a hole at first base. They hoped to remedy both that winter by signing Mark Teixeira. Healthy as a horse, Teixeira has delivered homers, RBI and defense as expected and the Yankees have been in postseason all three years he’s been on the squad. They also won their first championship since 2000.

No buyer’s remorse there right? Who’s gonna argue with 111 home runs and 341 RBI in just three years? Two Gold Gloves to boot? A runner-up for MVP? Just keeps getting better and better with big Teix. Until it gets worse.

Yankee fans are shaking in their boots about the rest of Teixeira’s contract and here’s why: it looks like he can’t hit righties anymore, and out of six Postseason series with the team, he’s been dog poop in five of them.

These are not minor quibbles nor inventions of the back pages and call-in radio programs. These are the legit facts. Teixeira’s batting average against righties has fallen from .282 to .244 to .224 in the last three years. And his cumulative postseason triple slash with the Yankees over 123 plate appearances is .170/.276/.302. Eighteen hits in 106 at bats.

The postseason futility is a bummer and not a small reason why the Yanks have been bounced in 2010 and 2011, but it’s not predictive. He might have a good series down the road and help them win another title. And all those games when he didn’t hit, he was out there making some good defensive plays. If he choked because he was scared of the big stage, wouldn’t he be bad in field as well? He sucked, but it’s over

The real concern when it comes to his performance is the decline against righties. Has he hit bottom? Will this trend continue? Will he rebound?

Let’s look at the damage. His overall average has declined from .308 the year before he joined the Yanks to .292 in his stellar 2009 campaign to .256 and skidding down to .244 for a pedestrian-yet-productive-2011. Obviously, the shrinking average indicates Teixeira is trading hits for outs. But let’s try to figure out what’s going on in that exchange.

First thing we have to do is to separate his left-handed stats from his right-handed stats. His right-handed season was excellent – in fact, he’s hit for big power and good averages all three years as a Yankee. That’s no surprise as he has always hit lefties well. He’s hitting more homers, maybe due to Yankee Stadium’s cozy corners, but overall, he’s a carbon copy of the guy the Yanks thought they were getting.

His left-handed stats paint a stark contrast. At first glance, everything looks down from his career norms, and it is, in absolute terms. But diving into the components, we find it’s not that simple. Even as the batting average plummets, Teix is walking and whiffing with the same frequency, and his ISO (SLG – AVG) is also at his career norm. So if he’s turning hits to outs, they are not turning into more strike outs (phew) and the hits themselves are just as powerful as ever.

So where are the hits going? When Mark Teixeira bats left-handed, he often faces a shift – an extreme defensive alignment where the opposing infielders give up ground on the left side of the diamond to overload the right. Teixeira, a pull-hitter from the left side, hits a lot of balls into the shift and very few the other way. He loses some hits to the shift and he’s not making them back by exploiting the vacancy on the right side of the infield.

Could the shift account for most of Teixeira’s troubles against righties? Looking beyond batting average to his average only on balls in play, this theory starts to make some sense. As a left-hander, Teix had a pitiful BABIP of .222 (and only .256 in 2010). For the meat of his career his BABIP has been reliably between .290 and .314. Eureka?

If Teix is the same player he always was, and opposing teams have figured out exactly where to stand to rob him of singles, then the case should be closed. Teix is losing singles from the left side of the plate because of the shift.

But Teix is not exactly the same hitter he always was. The shift is playing a part, and Tyler Kepner cited Yankee research this summer which indicates it’s stealing 20 points off his average from the left side, but it’s not the whole story.

In the last two years Teixeira has seen career highs (or close to them) in O Swing % (the amount of time he swings at pitches outside the strike zone), FB% (the percentage of contact that results in fly balls) and in IFFB% (the percentage of contact resulting in pop ups on the infield). Since we already know his walks and whiffs are not changing, we know that the result of these tendencies is a sacrifice of line drives and ground balls, both of which go for hits more often than fly balls and pop ups.

What kind of balls in play will the shift snare? Mostly ground balls and line drives. Teix is surely losing some hits there, we can see it happen. But since his whole batted ball profile is transitioning away from ground balls and line drives, the shift can’t be solely responsible.

I find it hard to believe teams weren’t shifting on Teix in 2009 or on previous teams. We know Giambi faced shifts before Teix even entered the league, why would the opposition wait until 2010 to try it against Teixeira?

While we can’t be certain, swinging at pitches outside the strike zone sure sounds like a confused hitter, mired in a slump, trying to hack his way out of it. When that hitter swings at pitches outside the strike zone, pitches that are harder to drive with authority, he gets jammed and pops out. He gets under high fast balls and hits towering fly outs. And he yanks outside pitches right into the teeth of a shift.

Frustration leads to desperation. Desperation leads to poor decision-making. And the batting average continues to fall, caught in a negative feedback-loop. It’s possible the pitchers are getting wise as well. In 2011, Teixeira saw a fewer percentage of pitches in the strike zone than ever before. (That must be why the walks stayed the same even though Teix was swinging at slop.)

Teixeira faces a combination of four factors eroding his average from the left side. The shift, hitting more fly balls and pop outs, swinging at bad pitches more often, and of course, some good old fashioned bad luck on balls in play. He can rebound from the bad luck and rededicate himself to not swing at bad pitches.

But if Teixeira wants to hit a respectable average again, he’s going to have to make some alterations. He’ll need to take the ball to all fields to punish the shift when the location of the pitch dictates. He’ll need to revisit film from earlier in his career and try to figure out why he is hitting so many harmless pop outs. He’ll need to exchange those easy outs for liners and hard grounders. Some of those will end up as outs because of the shift, but he needs Kevin Long’s support to ride those out and stick with his new (old) plan.

Jason Giambi had a fine Yankee career. But his .260 batting average was a far cry from the .308 average he brought with him. He had to deal with the shift and injuries and whatever it was that going on and off steroids was doing to him. He never found a way to reclaim those points of batting average after his first year, but he still mashed with homers and walks and was a part of many great offenses.

Teixeira can do all of that minus a few walks and play good defense as well. If the worst case is that Teix is now a .250 hitter, that’s a bummer and he won’t be worth his contract, but he’ll still be good. But from what we’ve seen and heard of the guy, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be satisfied down there. He’ll work his butt off to improve, and luckily, the Yankees just have to go to fangraphs.com to pinpoint where he needs to direct his attention.

All statistics from fangraphs.com & baseball-reference.com

[Images via nj.com & southernbelle.mlblogs.com]

There’s an understanding regarding seat selection on a subway train. Don’t sit right next to someone until you have to. The way this plays out on the A Train on weekday mornings is that you’re sitting by yourself for one or two stops, but by the time you get to 168th st, every seat is taken.

So it was a few days ago. I chose a corner seat on a bench of three seats so that I’d have only one person on my right and the partition on my left. The middle seat of my bench was empty. A short woman in her late 40s, dressed neatly, occupied the third seat.  I read my book.

After a few stops, a younger woman in jeans wedged herself into the middle seat. Business as usual.

Around 168th or 145th, the woman in jeans got up and headed toward the exit. At least that’s where I thought she was headed. She crossed the aisle and found a newly vacant seat. But it was also a middle seat between two other people. And one of those two other people was the short/neat woman form the third seat of my bench.

I held my gaze for another instant to make sure I was correct. Short/neat caught my eye and looked away quickly. I felt the blood drain from my face and sweat break out all over my head under my hat. The two people who shared my bench had bolted to the exact same position across the aisle at the first chance they got.

Was I the cause? I am usually acutely aware of how I might impact a train’s environment.

An Odor? I had showered and deorderized less than 30 minutes prior to their flight. My clothes were clean. I gave my shirt, jacket and hat discreet sniffs just in case. All clear. There could be dog shit on the soles of my shoes, but I couldn’t check right then. Music too loud? I whipped my headphones out of my ears. Not even a feint guitar scream escaped.

Oh God, could I have passed gas on the subway? I was not paying attention, but I cannot believe that I did. I mean, that’s the kind of thing that just can’t slip past you in public. My book isn’t even that good – since I finished the Martin books, I’m trying to remain unenthralled for awhile. If I am going to trust something about myself, let me start here.

I finally looked around. I missed the first exodus, perhaps I missed an offensive presence enter our area as well. I scanned the train but didn’t see anyone that looked like they used their pants as their bathroom. And at this point I realized that whatever it was that sent those women across the aisle, I had not noticed it. I had not smelled, heard, or seen anything out of the ordinary.

I arrived at my stop and I had to get out. I was shaken; couldn’t think of anything else. I checked my shoes on the platform. Nothing. I’ve tried to let it go, but once in a while I return to the mystery and want an answer. And it’s not coming.

[Featured Image via Zoo Y0rk]

When the Yankees contemplate the 2012 roster, Russell Martin’s name is going to come up – for about five seconds. He’s going to be on the team and, if healthy, the opening day catcher.

He’s cheap, requires only a one-year commitment, and he said something heartwarming about the Red Sox. All this and he was a slightly above average catcher last year, too. Of catchers with 400 PAs, he was top ten in fWAR, and just below top ten in wOBA (.325) and wRC+ (100). That 100 wRC+ means, after adjusting for park effects, Russell Martin was exactly average offensively in 2011.

There are no likely circumstances in which the Yankees are better off in 2012 without Russell Martin. Even if the Yankees somehow acquired Joe Mauer for Jesus Montero and some magic beans, they might as well keep Martin on board for 2012 as an expensive but high quality back-up.

A Mauer trade isn’t going to go down, however. So what variables should the Yankees consider when it comes to Martin?

Cost. He made four million last year and is under team control for one more year. They must tender a contract to retain their rights and at least head to binding arbitration. But that should be no problem. Martin could command a significant raise and still be cheap for a decent starting catcher.

Length of commitment. The Yankees could try to negotiate a long-term contract with Martin, but why? He’s not good enough and the Yanks have cheaper, perhaps better, options on the horizon. The risk of losing him after 2012 while none of their other catching prospects pans out to replace him is far less damaging than the scenario of signing him long term only to have his adequacy block the development of the prospects.

The Yankees can control one more year of Martin’s career and that’s all they should sign up for at this point. Maybe a two-year deal would be even better, but I don’t see why Martin would want to delay his impending free agency to help the Yanks. If it so happens that Martin is also their best option for 2013 and beyond, they can address that with their wallet after they win the 2012 World Series.

Other Options. Despite blistering the ball for a month at the Major League level, the Yankees were scared to let 21 year old Jesus Montero catch more than a couple of pitches in September. Whether this was because they thought he would cost them vital games in their quest for the AL East crown or because they thought he’d hurt his trade value by exposing his poor defensive skills, neither indicates he’s storming to the top of the depth chart by opening day.

I don’t think it’s going to be a widely held opinion, but certainly there are some fans who think the Yanks should adios Martin to give Montero a trial by fire to become the next Mike Piazza. A trial by fire only works if you’re prepared to allow the prospect to burn. Montero’s bat is too promising to be used for kindling in that experiment.

The Yankees may someday pencil Austin Romine’s name into the opening day lineup, but in 2012, he should start in Scranton, not the Bronx. He’s got two seasons of AA under his belt, and he’s hit enough to stay on the radar screen, but not enough to skip a level. There’s no way either of those guys is going to be a better option at catcher than Russell Martin before next April.

Francisco Cervelli is right out.

Crazy Ideas. The DH slot opens wide if Montero wins the starting job. Which configuration gives the Yankees the best chance at the 2012 title? A catcher-DH-3B medley of Martin, Montero, Arod and Nunez? Or one of Montero, Cervelli, Arod, Nunez and David Ortiz?

Imagine this lineup: Jeter, Granderson, Cano, Arod, Ortiz, Teixeira, Montero, Swisher, Gardner. Swap Gardner and Jeter if you want. DH Arod against lefties if you want.  Ortiz was among the top ten hitters in baseball last year by wOBA (.405) and wRC+ (153); he’s going to be good next year too.

But Jesus Montero could prove within two weeks that he cannot handle the full time catching responsibilities. He could be the next Johnny Bench and, at 22, still struggle with full time duty in the Show. And if Montero fails completely, like we’ve been warned he will by 29 other teams and the scouting community at large, then Cervelli is the guy. Due to Arod’s fragility, he appears unable to play 140 games at third base. To keep him around all season in something resembling top form, he needs a lot of days at DH.

If this crazy idea worked out perfectly, the Yanks would be upgrading from Martin to Ortiz on offense while downgrading from Martin to Montero defensively. And if the plan fell apart, they’d be downgrading from Martin to Cervelli on both offense and defense while Montero, Arod and Ortiz shuttled between DH, the bench, the DL and AAA.

So the risk of cutting Martin loose so that David Ortiz could pepper the right field stands just isn’t worth it. If Montero improves over the year and the Yankees have an opening at DH, they will have another chance to acquire one at the trade deadline.

Martin’s ALDS performance was disappointing, and he’s a lousy hitter if his power returns to pre-2011 norms. But with Montero in the lineup and playing some catcher to boot, Martin’s offense should be even less relevant than it was last year. It’s possible that by the time Yankees are contemplating their next playoff roster, Montero could be the starting catcher.

Martin’s adequacy is exactly what the Yankees need right now. On the cusp of better options from within, he’ll do more than keep the spot warm; he’ll give the 2012 Yankees the best chance to win.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach begins in the middle of a streak. Scrawny shortstop Henry Skrimshander has never made an error. Not in Little League, not in high school. And when he matriculates at a small, venerable, liberal arts school called Westish College, he remains perfect.

The streak exists not only during games but in between as well. He’s never made a bad throw in practice; a ball has never hit a pebble and skipped past his glove during drills; never lost a ball in the sun while having a catch. He’s been flawless for fifteen straight years.

Henry works hard at the game, perhaps harder than anybody, since nothing else matters to him besides playing baseball. He’s memorized Hall of Famer and personal hero Aparicio Rodriguez’s book, The Art of Fielding and internalized the practical advice on positioning, balance, and physical preparation. The meaning of the more philosophical passages has eluded him as he starts college, but he’s memorized those too.

The book starts percolating when scouts and agents descend on Henry as he scoots up the draft board towards the first round. In the game he’s set to match his idol’s college errorless streak his errant throw sails into the dugout and shatters his roommate’s eye socket.

The first bad throw of Henry’s life spawns others and he unravels. By the time a ballplayer counts 15 years experience, he’s learned the humbling nature of the sport. The paltry rates of success that stand for excellence and the failure to constantly replicate even the most routine gestures bend a player’s expectations. But since Henry’s never made an error, he’s never had to confront this essential truth about the game and his identity collapses when he fianlly does.

The meat of the book is about how Henry and his estranged mentor, catcher Mike Schwartz, the guy responsible for bringing him to Westish in the first place, attempt to overcome the errors. But Mike, distracted by his new girlfriend Pella and brimming with resentment from Henry’s lurking draft day success, offers only warmed-over platitudes for Henry’s soul and countless sets of stadium stairs for his legs.

The inadequacy of their response is obvious to any baseball fan. How can they recover magic that they made no attempt to understand in the first place?

Unfortunately, not one character in the book is in the least bit curious about the source of Henry’s supernatural fielding ability. And anyone that has played one season of baseball at any level would instantly recognize 15 years of perfection as supernatural.

In The Art of Fielding however, even die-hard ballplayers accept the perfection without comment. And when Henry’s first error touches off a crisis of confidence and eventually a total systemic failure, the other players treat him like a player in a bad slump, expecting hard work or the right attitude adjustment will eliminate the errors and restore his factory settings.

But he’s already the hardest worker and already has the best possible attitude. So how’s that supposed to fix the problem? Perfection at this absurd length cannot be earned through practice. And if his ability is indeed supernatural, with all the hard work running parallel at best, then the sudden loss of his ability requires a different treatment than this book imagines.

A ballplayer could react to a terrible slump in a number of ways. But all of them should be vastly different to a person reacting to the loss of a supernatural gift. A slump usually begins with the wrong mix of flawed mechanics and dumb luck and spirals into Adam Dunn-level tragedy when the player gets trapped inside his own head. Henry’s situation is closer to Prometheus and his gift of fire than it is to Adam Dunn and his buck-fifty batting average.

Because all of the characters ignore this essential difference, the baseball in the book loses integrity – a distraction that I could not tolerate.

I’m sure Harbach has loftier intentions than examining Henry’s fielding ability, but he wrote a book around a baseball team – and from what I can tell, nobody’s been shy promoting it as a baseball book. At the very least, the context of the baseball season should serve as the binder of the story, but since the author doesn’t get the baseball right, the binder dissolves. What’s left is still good enough to carry your interest for a while, but since the baseball is palpably unreal, it taints the other stuff too.

And what was gained by Henry’s lifetime of perfection if the source of that gift is not an element of the story? So that his error can be an original sin? An expulsion from his Diamond of Eden? The extreme nature of Henry’s predicament lends itself more easily to that metaphor, but for me, a similar construct was still achievable without involving the miraculous.

Harbach would have been better served if he had taken Henry to the natural limits of baseball. An outstanding fielder in the midst of a record-tying streak. And when that guy flubs a throw and falls into a bottomless slump, Henry’s story could play out as it does without the necessity of an eye roll.

It’s not just the unspoken presence and sudden disappearance of magic that serves to dislodge the baseball fan from making an intimate connection with this book. Henry’s teammate (and roommate) Owen Dunne gets away with reading books on the bench until such time as their red-ass Coach Cox tells him to pinch-hit.

Owen’s homosexuality is accepted by the team without the slightest hesitation. That’s probably not plausible at a college in a state that elected Scott Walker Governor; even the most enlightened eighteen year olds are prone to confusion and snickering when they find themselves spending a lot of time in cramped locker rooms.

But let it slide in the interest of progress. Still, there’s not a competitive baseball team in the country that’s allowing a bench warmer to clip a reading lamp to the brim of his cap so he can curl up in the corner of the dugout with a steaming cup of herbal tea and the latest Barbara Kingsolver novel.

That’s not Division III college baseball. That’s not even the Amherst English Department’s softball team. Perhaps Tanner Boyle lacked the SAT scores to play at Westish, but he’d have that reading lamp sticking out of Owen’s ear before the end of the first inning. Or he’d end up in the garbage can trying.

These things could have transpired in a different kind of book. In a funnier book. In a book that was candid about its alternate, enhanced reality. In science fiction, perhaps. But this story takes place in a crafted, hyper-reality, a reality that breaks with ours for effect only before darting back under a mutual cover. The physics of this world are the same as ours, and under those rules, we know that baseball players can’t be perfect for long.

If W.P. Kinsella conceived of a shortstop that didn’t make an error for 15 straight years, someone else in the story would have noticed.

One of the best parts of my day is the short walk to my younger son’s daycare each morning. One of the worst parts of my day is when their front door closes with him on the other side.

I walk with the happiest, chattiest kid on Broadway. But as soon as we enter his classroom, his smile flatlines. He clams up and gently clings my leg.

He’s past the point of fearing or disliking the place. Before I’m across the street, he’s back to his regular self, running and horsing around with his friends. But for the 45 seconds I unzip his jacket and hook it with his Yankee hat in his cubby, he’s totally blank. He doesn’t argue or fight or try to get me to stay. Passive resistance in it’s purest form.

He’s never once said goodbye to me. This morning, one of his teachers lifted him up to the small square window in the door to give him one last chance to wave or grin. He stared through me like I was a lamp post. The corners of his mouth never even flinched.

Later today I’ll hear how he had a great day and I’ll forget feeling like I broke his heart this morning and I’ll forgive myself. Again.

A parent in New York has a few special responsibilities. You’ve got know how the bus routes and subway maps mesh with the best playgrounds. You’ve got to steer your kid away from the Mets. You’ve got to try to protect the downstairs neighbors from the all-hours demolition derby going on in the living room.

And you should teach them about pizza.

For my son’s fourth birthday he asked for Domino’s Pizza for dinner. I’m not quite sure how he got to this point. We have a decent pizza jernt in the neighborhood, but it’s not a paragon. And it’s a little slow.

One day when we needed pizza to arrive instantly, we called up the local Domino’s. It’s been a steady progression towards the “pizza with the sand on the bottom” from there.

I know I’ve let him down in some hardboiled fashion, but really, is being a pizza snob such a great legacy to impart? Or maybe Domino’s is a phase you have to go through in order to finally arrive at the proper level of snobbery in adulthood? I can remember in my early teens thinking that it didn’t get much better than Pizzeria Uno. And though I grew up in New Jersey, I was lucky enough to have two exemplary pizza parlors in my tiny town.

Of all the things that I thought I’d be vigiliant about as a parent, I did not anticipate any pizza problems. But now that I watch him enjoy Domino’s so thoroughly, I’m not going to try to push him in any other direction.

When he comes to me in twenty years and asks “How could you?” I’ll just show him a picture from his fourth birthday dinner and hopefully he’ll understand.

Carrying a Kindle on the subway is not big deal. Nobody wants to steal a Kindle. They want iPads and iPhones. But while I was away, my wife started up with the Kindle and I’ve got to switch to other reading. I wouldn’t mind carrying a book or a magazine or something, but I’m halfway through the fifth book of the Song of Ice and Fire series and I’m not stopping there. It would be like pausing to set up camp on the final quarter of the descent from Everest.

But that leaves the tablet or the phone as my reading choices. The phone is too small for me. But damn, I did not feel comfortable at all whipping that other thing out. It’s a little too heavy for super-easy handling and it’s incredibly conspicuous. It’s designed to catch your eye after all. One of the stops on my route is notorious for ripping off iPads, and I looked down to see that I’m clutching the corners with white fingertips.

I’ve got to get that Kindle back, Daenerys Targaryen is counting on me.

On the line at Yankee Stadium tonight, the end of the season versus the glory of the ALCS. Agony or ecstasy in their undiluted forms. Nervous, excited? Sure. Not scared though, that’s not our thing.

Rookie Ivan Nova fired the ball at Austin Jackson to start the game and whatever butterflies were in my stomach were blown away by the gas same as Jackson.

Don Kelly stepped to plate and Nova continued to deal. With a strike to Kelly, he threw his wrinkle curve for the second pitch. Kelly opened up, waited and hooked the spinning orb into the right field seats. You’ve seen Paul O’Neill do it a bunch of times. Same little flick. The next pitch to Dangerous Delmon Young was a change-up. Good idea to the first-pitch-fastball loving Young, but up at the top of the strike zone, the change up is vulnerable. Young, the best hitter in this series from either team, killed it. 2-0 Tigers, and the butterflies returned hauling lead.

Derek Jeter led off the first for the Yankees by swatting a hot shot down the first base line but Miguel Cabrera fell and smothered it with his big belly. I wonder now how difficult a play that really was, but at the time I figured Jeter wuz robbed. The Yankees went quietly after that.

Nova battled with Magglio Ordonez to start the second. Nova kept throwing good pitches, but Ordonez eventually tugged at a low breaking ball and scalded it into the left field corner for a double. Nova retired Avila on a grounder to second and caught a break when Jhonny Peralta shot a bullet right to Alex Rodriguez for the second out. He struck out Ramon Santiago to end the threat. And his night, as it turns out. He had forearm stiffness and could not continue.

Nova was confident and he was aggressive. He threw strikes and looked good with his fastball. But he let up two home runs on poorly executed off speed pitches and put the Yanks in a hole. Nobody is going to blame Nova for blowing the season, but it would have been nice to give the Yanks a crack at drawing first blood.

Mark Teixeira hit a ground rule double with one out in the second. The Yanks could not move him around. Two backwards Ks made the inning especially frustrating. Phil Hughes replaced Nova in the third and had a great inning. He rang up two strike outs and he got Miguel Cabrera to ground out. The best part is that when facing Delmon Young, he merely yielded a laser beam single.

Gardner’s single and Granderson’s walk preceded Cano with two outs in the third. He got a tough strike call on the ump’s favorite corner (again, the lefty batter’s outside corner was given generously) and battled from there. He protected close pitches, though I have no idea if they would have been called strikes. I give Robbie the benefit of the doubt considering the previous calls. He got a couple of chances at hittable pitches and couldn’t produce. He flew out on a high heater to center to end the inning.

Hughes started the fourth and retired Victor Martinez. Ordonez smacked a fastball to right for a single and that was it for Hughes. How far could he have gone? He looked pretty sharp. But trailing 2-0 and a long winter of fishing for CC awaiting the Yankees, Girardi went to Logan to face the lefty Alex Avila. Avila was hitless in the entire series up to that point, so of course he hit the first pitch for a single. Logan got the righties though and the score stayed at 2-0.

Finally in the fourth, the Yankees looked dangerous. Alex walked and Swisher and Posada hit singles after a Teixeira pop out. Bases loaded. Russell Martin popped out. Brett Gardner popped out and the air went of the balloon with a sickening hiss.

CC Sabathia started the sixth facing Austin Jackson. In Game Three, they had several very frustrating match ups. Add another one to the list. Jackson hit a broken bat double on a pitcher’s pitch deep into the at bat. Sabathia responded to strikeout Don Kelly and Delmon Young, though he had to work for it. Girardi called for the intentional walk to Miguel Cabrera. Figure a homer by either Cabrera or Martinez was going to kill the game, so might as well make the less powerful guy end it. Sabathia threw a fat breaking ball down the middle and Martinez served right back into center field for a dreaded two-out RBI. The inning ended there, 3-0 Tigers.

Things looked grim at that point. But Fister did not look good enough to hold the Yankees down forever. He got two quick outs in the fifth and faced Cano. He threw a little cutter or slider toward the inside corner and Robinson turned on it like a woman scorned, launching it into the second deck. 3-1.

CC came back out for the sixth and retired Alex Avila. If Alex Avila could have batted for every single spot in the lineup, the Yankees would have thrown three shutouts and maybe two no-hitters. He walked Jhonny Peralta and gave way to Rafeal Soriano. It was the end of a very sad ALDS for CC. Hope it was not his last game as a Yankee. Soriano got a double play ground ball to clear the slate.

The Tigers went to pen to start the sixth, which I thought was a good idea. Fister had thrown 92 pitches and in a two-run game, no need to push things. Jim Leyland called on Game Two hero Max Scherzer. He looked less than he was in Game 2, but he still got the first two outs. Posada managed to ground another single for his sixth hit of a fantastic ALDS, but Martin whiffed on a change-up two feet inside.

The Detroit pitchers really had it made in this series – at least the two games I covered. The umps gave the pitcher’s a ton of latitude on that one corner, and every pitcher they trotted out had a natural fade right to that spot. The Yankee southpaws were left to swing at pitches on the outside corner or off the corner and not being sure where strikes ended and balls began. The righties had it even tougher, as they almost had to be hit by a pitch to get a ball called on the inside corner.

At this point, let’s just skip past the Platonic Ideal of the Yankee bullpen which retired 11 straight Tigers which ease from the sixth through the ninth. Precision and power; if you blinked, you missed them pitch. Soriano, Hammer, Sandman. Nothing but slack-jawed gawkers in their wake.

The Yankees loaded the bases with one out again in the seventh. Derek Jeter hit a slow grounder and hustled his ass-off for a hit. Joaquin Benoit replaced Scherzer to face Curtis Granderson. Granderson put on his best at bat of the night, worked the count full and guided a low outside pitch into right for a single. Jeter did not realize how deep the right fielder was playing, because he could have made it to third easily. He got there on the next pitch as Cano squeaked it off the end of the bat and it spun past Benoit for an unlikely hit. Bases loaded for Alex. He got one beautiful pitch right down the pipe and he fouled the fastball back. He swung through a change up well out of the strike zone for strike three. You could lick the disappointment oozing out of the Stadium.

Mark Teixeira came up next and took five straight pitches for a walk and a 3-2 game. All five pitches looked like balls, though the one called a strike was on the upper edge which usually does not get called. Benoit threw another five straight balls to Swisher, but this time he recorded a strike out for his troubles. The first pitch, which was both high and outside, was called a strike and it screwed up the rest of the at bat. Benoit just kept aiming near that same spot and Swisher finally swung at a couple of them. He missed.

The bottom of the eighth got quickly to Gardner with two outs. Somehow Benoit was still in there. I thought  he was going to blow it on every fastball he threw. Gardner slapped a single through the hole and everybody knew a steal was coming. Benoit threw a high heater, Gardner broke, and Jeter swung. I was shocked, but the ball looked right off the bat. The kind of fly ball to right that just carries over the wall at the last instant. The right fielder Don Kelly got back to the wall and reached up his arms. Their was no kid to pull the ball into the stands, and Kelly caught it against the wall.

Should Jeter have let Gardner steal? My opinion is that when the tying or go ahead run is at the plate, he should have carte blanche to swing away. The best way to win the game is with a home run right there. Jeter almost got it. It was just an out and now I wish he hadn’t swung, but I trust the hitters to make the determination. If they can crush a pitch, they should swing. I don’t fault Jeter for that decision, he gave it a ride.

Trailing 3-2 entering the ninth, the Yankees sent their two best hitters to the plate against the guy who guaranteed he would beat them. It was a pretty great showdown. To beat the Yankees, Jose Valverde would have to beat their best. And if he brought that weak-ass shit he brought in Games Two and Three, the Yankees were going to beat him. The stage was set for a Yankee Classic.

But it never happened. Curtis Granderson worked a long at bat and got two pitches to hit. He fouled off the first one. He popped up the last one. He missed them, plain and simple. Pitches he’s tattooed all year long, he missed them. Robinson Cano got a sweet chance when the first fastball tailed right into his happy zone, but his lumber betrayed him. His swing looked pure, but on contact the bat came into two pieces and the ball lost crucial juice. It went all the way out to fairly deep center where Austin Jackson made the catch. I have no trouble imagining where that ball was headed had the bat maintained structural integrity. It was going to a happy place.

That left it up to Alex Rodriguez. Whatever good will that man built up in this town with his epic 2009 Postseason, he may have squandered tonight. Hopefully we’re not that fickle. He struck with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh when a hit would have tied the game. As the tying run, he struck out in the ninth to end the season. He took a low strike and watched a splitter float over the middle. He finally went right through a fastball down the middle.

*****

Having the season end in ALDS sucks beyond anything else, except not making it in the first place, or of course, losing to the Red Sox. I’d rather get stuck with the hideous memories of the ninth inning of Game Seven in Arizona than be eliminated like this. The Postseason stretches on endlessly, but it’s like a phantom limb for Yankee fans now. We can feel it out there, but we can’t see it, can’t touch it, can’t use it. Reality crashes in and our world opens up for other things to fill baseball’s void. But that happens anyway. A few more weeks was all we asked. And an honest chance at number 28.

All year long, I noticed that the Yankees win big and lose close. That’s the mark of a very good team. I wish they won more games when trailing late. Maybe that’s entirely a function of luck and timing which the players cannot control. The 2009 team did it all year long and then they did it in the Postseason and won a World Series. The 2011 team rarely did it in the regular season and failed in three comeback bids in the ALDS. Each time one swing of the bat at the right time would have won the game for the Yankees. But they never got that swing. In 2009, they easily could have been knocked out by the Twins or Angels if not for Arod’s heroics. If Jeter gets three feet more on his eighth inning drive, the Yankees are the team with heart and character. A few feet short and they’re overpaid losers.

The Yankees are the better team. I don’t think anyone could walk away from this series thinking the Tigers outplayed them. But CC Sabathia went head to head with Justin Verlander and got smacked down. CC got no decisions, but his performances in Game Three and Five went a long way to deciding the series for Detroit. The starting pitching scared many of us before the ALDS, but they Yankees were fine there. It was CC and the bats, scoring nine runs total in their three losses. Not cashing in on any of the big moments in all three losses. Legends were ripe for the making, but not this year.

I covered the end of 2010, and now the end of 2011. I think this is much, much worse than last year. Maybe that’s the fresh sting, but I’m sticking to it.

*****

Couple last things though, because this is baseball, and the Yankees gave us a good season and they don’t deserve to go out in a flood of piss and vinegar. Not what we wanted, given how they ended the year on top, but from where I started with this team, I give them mad props. Thinking they were a third place finisher who might catch a break and snag the Wild Card to winning 97 games at a trot, wow.

We probably will never see Jorge Posada play baseball again. He was one hell of a Yankee. I think ultimately he came up too late in his career to accumulate the numbers he’ll need to be ensrhined in Cooperstown, but I would support an even bigger honor. Having his number retired by the Yankees. What a wonderful ALDS. Thanks for everything Jorge.

And though it will be impossible not to take this loss with us into the upcoming off-season, be sure to take something else with you. Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game 5. Has he ever looked better? He broke bats like match sticks. Martin never moved his glove even a hair. And his pitches spun and cut at breathtaking speed. Vaverde got three saves, got to celebrate, but Mariano reached Nirvana in his final inning of the 2011 season. Take that with you, too.

Walk down into the subway, pay a small fee, and the city can be yours. If the city is big enough, and the subway thorough enough, there’s no better way to get around. No other mode of transportation can bestow the access and the sense of accomplishment. Getting in a cab can get you most places, but there’s more chance of getting stuck in bad traffic in a busy city than there is of having a problem on the train. And walking is wonderful, but can’t take as far as you’d often like to go.

I realized this as I took the subway in Japan last Friday night over to the Tokyo Dome to see the Giants play. The ride was simple and short. Only one transfer and less than twenty minutes. But bounding up the steps of the Korakuen station and onto the exterior concourse of the Dome, I felt so happy. And in there was a little pride I think, too. I almost let a little, “I did it,” escape, but I stopped it at the top of my throat.

At first I was embarrassed to be proud of such a simple thing as a subway ride. But I’ve always had trouble confronting tasks with which I have no experience and no guide. I started thinking more and more about what it means. The access, the freedom, the speed.

And just like that, the city was mine.

Last night before the game, my boys wanted to play trains. I started stacking tracks and they pulled the trains out of the yellow toy cubby.

“Which train do you want, Daddy?” asked the two-and-a-half-year-old.

“The one that’s fast, clean and not too crowded,” I said.

“So not the A Train?” asked the four- year-old.

Derek Jeter banged the first pitch of the night back up the box for a lead off single. Justin Verlander threw a high fastball, several notches below his best velocity. Jeter was ready. Curtis Granderson saw a few more of the third-tier heaters, and then lashed at a high one out over the plate. It’s rare you see a hitter manage to hit a ball with such authority on a pitch so fast and so elevated in the zone, but Granderson beamed it over Austin Jackson’s head just left of center for a run-scoring triple.

Verlander decided that was enough of the mid-90s junk and loaded the gun for maximum cheese. The look on his face said that Granderson was not scoring. And the look was almost right. He struck out Robinson Cano on fastballs of 98 and 100 mph. Cano was blown away. Arod looked for the same treatment, but saw filthy curves instead. And just when he got used to the bend, Verlander flashed 100 again. Alex fouled the first one back. He snapped the bat on the second, but the dribbler to short scored Granderson and the Yankees led 2-0. Verlander struck out Teixeira to end the first and must have been thinking, “Damn, if I threw my best fastball to Curtis, could he have gotten on top of it like he did?”

CC Sabathia staked to two runs should give Yankee fans a warm and fuzzy feeling. But Sabathia was off from the first batter. The umpire gave nothing on the left-handed batter’s box side of home plate, and Sabathia set up camp there all game. When he was out there, he walked guys. When he came over the plate, the Tigers did a little damage. Sabathia walked the lead off man, Austin Jackson, on a pitch that looked to be strike three. He got a double play on the next batter. He walked the next two hitters, but got out of the inning with the 2-0 lead intact.

Deep breath for everybody. It was just a bumpy start. He’ll settle down. He’ll figure out the umpire. He’ll be good. Before an out was recorded in the third, we had our answer. No, he wouldn’t be good. Unable to throw precise strikes on the ump’s corners, and unable to coax the Tigers to chase his off speed stuff down below the strike zone, Sabathia combined a mix of high and out side balls and hittable fastballs at the belt and over the plate.  The Tigers took their walks when given and took their rips when appropriate.

Brandon Inge, the first batter of the bottom of the third, doubled into the left center gap. CC went up 1-2 on Austin Jackson as he tried to bunt Inge to third, but then CC lost the zone completely and Jackson walked again. CC went up 0-2 on Ramon Santiago, as he too tried to bunt, but could not put him away. Santiago ripped a single into left and Inge scored the Tigers first run. Sabathia got lucky when Miguel Cabrera got out in front of a relatively benign breaking ball and rolled into the third double play in the first three innings. That tied the game, but allowed the Yankees to escape the big inning.

If not for the twin killings, Sabathia might have already been out of the game.

The Yankees chipped at Verlander, but never bothered him. Posada singled in the second but was erased on Martin’s double play. Brett Gardner accidentally had a great bunt to lead off the third, but was erased on Jeter’s double play. Gardner and Jeter tried to work a hit and run, but Jeter was forced to swing at a ball and fouled it off. It was not a bad call. On a 2-1 pitch, Girardi expected a fastball for a strike and didn’t get one. The straight steal might have put Gardner in scoring position and had Jeter sitting on a 3-1 count. But it worked the other way, left the double play in order and Jeter couldn’t resist. Jeter singled to lead off the sixth, but Verlander ate the heart of the order for dinner. Strike out, pop out to left, strike out.

I left out the fifth, in which Verlander struck out the side on 10 pitches. No contact. Just one ball away from an immaculate inning. The score was 2 to 2, but the Tigers must have felt that they were in firm control as long as the two starting pitchers remained in the game. Fans on both sides were just wondering in which inning Sabathia would crack. The big guy had little to nothing and little was late for a bus.

But give the big guy credit. He never did crack. He got hit. He let up runs, but he averted catastrophe each time. And when his gas tank was officially empty, Rafeal Soriano averted it for him. In the fifth, Inge looped a single and scored on a deep double by Ramon Santiago. But that was it for the fifth. Defensive replacement Don Kelly dragged a bunt to lead off the sixth. Jhonny Peralta took his turn with a deep double and made the score 4-2. After a sac bunt, Rafeal Soriano relieved CC and coaxed a pop out and a whiff. The game had no business being close, but there it was.

Let me rephrase, it was close in the sense that two runs is usually considered “close.” But the way Verlander was dealing, two runs did not feel close. He started the seventh with two quick outs and just as he was about to settle Jorge Posada for his tenth strikeout of the game, Cy Young became Cy Twombly. He walked Posada on four straight balls. He plunked Martin. With a full count on Brett Gardner, he got beat. Gardner saw six straight heaters and finally had the timing. He served Verlander’s 96th pitch, a 100 MPH fastball, into left center for a game-tying double.

The game had a fresh anything-can-happen vibe for a few moments, but then Delmon Young dinked one over the right field wall. The Tigers should play in Yankee Stadium. They are the masters of the oppo dink homer in this series. It’s hard to complain about that, considering how many dink homers the Yankees have hit over the years. Also, Miguel Cabrera hit the next one 419 feet and had nada to show for it. Still, it sucks to have the series turn on the dink homer.

The Yankees still had Verlander to contend with in the eighth. Granderson took aim at the right field wall and came up a few feet short. Robbie got jobbed on a high strike for the second out. A-Rod worked a 3-0 count and let loose when Verlander pumped a get-me-over fastball down the middle. The get-me-over fastball with two outs in the eighth? 100 mph. A-Rod took his best swing of the series, but only could foul it off. He did stick around to work a walk, but the human pop out machine follows him in the lineup, so all hope was lost for the inning as soon as Alex dropped the bat.

David Robertson hammered through the eighth without any trouble, so the Yankees were facing a tired closer who couldn’t throw strikes needing one run to tie the game. It just so happened that the closer was the same guy who guaranteed that Detroit was winning games three and four. Jose Valverde threw a lot of leaky fastballs (drifting towards the right handed batters), most of them for balls, and looked ripe for the plucking.

The Yankees didn’t pluck. Nick Swisher saw stars in his eyes and popped up a honey of an 2-0 pitch, right down the pipe. Jorge Posada walked to get the tying run on a base. Russell Martin made a bid for the shorter wall in right and came up a foot short of where Granderson came up short. Brett Gardner walked on four pitches setting the stage for Derek Jeter. Valverde woke up. He reined in his leaking fastball just enough to nail the inside corner a few times. Jeter got a break on a close 1-2 splitter (the first I saw of the inning) but swung through a well placed fastball up and in to end the game.

Tigers 5, Yankees 4. The Tigers lead the best of five ALDS 2-1 and can wrap it up tomorrow night.

Justin Verlander was excellent, throwing eight innings and striking out 11. But the Yankees got to him for four runs and acquitted themselves pretty well against the best pitcher in the league. CC Sabathia was bad and coughed up an early lead. He managed to keep the game close, but his performance was disappointing, and a massive letdown for all the people expecting to see the two best pitchers in the league show their stuff. Losing this game was not destined, but the way CC pitched, it was certainly deserved.

Where do the Yankees go from here? AJ Burnett. That’s as bad as it sounds. But facing elimination, the Yankees have no choice but win. So we have no choice but to root them on. Our best did not measure up to their best, didn’t come close, and that’s a kick in the gut with a steel tipped boot. But the series is not coming down to those guys. It’s coming down to everyone else. And the Yankees have a great everyone else. Get Mariano in a game that matters and show this Valverde clown something about pitching and about class.

C’mon Yankees, winning two in a row is simple as rip, boom, bash, hammer, snap. Get to it.

Tampa spanked a Scranton-New York mash up 15-8, and that score does not do the game justice. It was 12-0 after four innings. The American League East Champions are entitled to a sleeper after clinching last night.

From this game we should take the following, in decreasing order of importance: nobody got hurt, Bartolo Colon was terrible, and Jesus Montero went three for three with two walks after a couple of ghastly games. The only regulars in the lineup were Jeter, Swisher and Teixeira, and they all came out after the game was out of hand in the fourth. Mad props to the Scranton boys who scored eight runs in the final few frames.

If I didn’t mention it earlier, the Yankees are American League East Champions. Before the season, I thought they had little chance to take the East crown. During the season, they proved me wrong and stayed close to the top, but I still never thought they’d outclass Boston because Boston was murdering them head-to-head. So to win the East so early that the last series with the Sox means diddly squat? Inconceivable.

Happy to be wrong. Hope I’m as bad at prognosticating the Postseason results because I still can’t see this rotation getting it done. To me, we’re in 2004-2007 territory. A great season, a great run differential, but having to throw one bad starter after another in the Postseason. The good news is that in AL at least, looks like everybody is in a similar jam. The Yankees can coast home from here, win a couple of the remaining games, rest players liberally and still pick up the best record in the AL. That’s what they’ll probably do.

But of course, given the fact that they play out the string against Red Sox and the Rays, the Yankees will determine the Wild Card winner. Should the Yankees arrange the off-days for the regulars so that the Rays play Scranton four times and the Red Sox draw the Bronx Bombers for all three games at the Stadium? There are two possible reasons for doing this: 1) The Yankees hate the Red Sox and want to ruin their season as early as possible. 2) The Yankees fear the Red Sox and want to avoid them in the ALCS if possible.

Going out on a limb, I think the first one is purely a fan’s reaction. Yankee fans would love to stick to the Sox, but for the Yankee organization, I hope it’s low on the priority list. If it came down to the last day of the season, and everything else was set in stone, and the Yanks could twist the needle by starting Brackman in the final game at Tampa, I could see that happening. But not some week long choreography.

But the second one deserves consideration. The Yankees are 4-11 against the Red Sox. CC Sabathia has struggled in all five tries against them this year. Of all the teams in baseball, they seem the most comfortable against Mariano. The most able to lay off the cutters outside the zone anyway. As a scaredy cat fan, I think they should do whatever possible to end Boston’s season now so that they don’t have the chance of losing to them in the ALCS.

Luckily, the Yankees are not comprised of scaredy cat fans. When I was a player, I certainly was not upset to see a top team knocked out of a tournament before we had to deal with them. But I also didn’t get too worked up about it one way or the other. If a team wants to consider itself a true champion, they’ve got to have the huevos to take out all comers. Whatever lineup Girardi puts out there should just try to win every game they play, and let the chips fall where they may.

Give guys rest. Line things up for the ALDS. But manipulate the final week of the season to push a floundering team out of the Postseason in favor of an equally good surging team? Pass.

Enter Sandman rang through Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night, even though Mariano was in Seattle. Metallica was in town and a few of my friends went to see the show. They grabbed a few beers for the subway and made their way uptown.

I’m opposed to boozing on the subway because booze leads to piss and you’re S.O.L. when nature calls underground. More than that, groups of drunkards can get aggressive and, at times, violent, and I’d rather not be confined in tiny box cars with them when that happens.

So I wholeheartedly support police presence down there for the big crush of ball games and concerts. When my friends got busted I had no sympathy for them when the started to tell the story. But the story didn’t end where I expected it would.

One of them had an unpaid citation (of which he has no recollection) and he got to spend the next 19 hours on a tour of the New York City correctional facilities. He spent the night in lock-up. By the time he finally got to see a judge, around the noon the next day, she took one look at the case and sent him home with time served, seemingly annoyed she even had to say that much.

I think he should have been punished. There are a limited number of cops and just maybe they could have been doing something more useful at that moment. But in the end, he didn’t even pay a dime, for either citation and how much money did he cost the system by being processed? The way this went down seems like a terrible waste of everybody’s time and money.

What should have happened?

PM rush hour. Water main break Upper West Side at 106th St. Streets buckled, buildings flooded, subways shut down. UN in session on Upper East Side. Traffic snarled. How to get from midtown to Inwood?

There a usually a lot of routes to get to any given spot in the city. And we calculate the best way each time, and probably nine out of ten times we succeed. All those options, all those factors to consider, and most of the time we choose correctly and never think twice. We’re certainly not patting ourselves on the back for picking the express over the local.

But that one time we screw it up, our heads explode. This time, I was not as upset because it seemed that all the possible avenues were blocked for me. But if I screw it up because of my own ignorance (That parade is today?) I’m gonna stew in it.

[Photo by Metro]

We’ve talked about eating on the subway. But shouldn’t hot coffee be a much bigger hazard? I’ve seen all sorts of coffee containers on the subway over the years, and I’ve never seen one spill. Do New Yorkers have mad balancing skills? Advances in coffee cup technology?

What’s your theory? Or have you seen a coffee disaster?

The Yankees started this West Coast trip in Los Angeles, against a great pitcher, after a rough travel schedule. They gagged a winnable game, 2-1, walk-off style. They won three of the next four. They seemed to have their feet under them, set to sweep Seattle, against a mediocre pitcher, looking ahead to their last day off of the season. And they gagged another winnable game, 2-1, walk-off style.

As easy as it was to anticipate the loss to Jered Weaver and the Angels on Friday night, the Yankees had to think this one was in the bag. But the Yankees did nothing for twelve innings and the Mariners, probably just out of sheer boredom, figured they’d better end the thing. Luis Rodriguez hit a game-ending home run off Cory Wade. He’s 31 years old, was out of baseball last year, and is hitting .176. Pretty much the same hitter as Jeff Mathis. It was his third extra base hit of the game.

It was Ivan Nova’s turn to shoot the fish in the barrel tonight. Against this team we have to recalibrate our expectations. A no-hitter would be a good game, a shut-out would be a quality start, etc. So Ivan Nova pitching over seven innings and allowing one run is an “OK job.”

The Yankees threatened to open the scoring in the third. Eduardo Nunez tucked a double inside the left field line, springing Andruw Jones from first with one out. Third base coach Rob Thomson waved Jones around third base. Given that Jones looked like he was reaching out for a little paper cup of water from Thomson at the time, it seemed like a bad move. Left fielder Mike Carp hit the second cut-off man Dustin Ackley, who relayed to Miguel Olivo, who ran out for a quick coffee from Zeitgeist around the corner, and then applied the tag with ease when he returned.

The Mariners broke the ice in the bottom half of the fourth, but to be fair, it was by accident. Ivan Nova lost the strike zone, walked two and threw a wild pitch. With two outs and men on the corners, a ball slipped high over Martin’s head. He got his glove to it, but couldn’t make the catch. Mike Carp was ready to run and scored the first run.

Flash forward to the seventh, yes, the seventh, and Nick Swisher notched the Yanks third hit with a solo homer to left. Eric Wedge removed Jason Vargas at that point. He held the Yankees to three hits and four base runners, and several trillion foul balls over six and two thirds. Even though the Yankees were pathetic, and they abandoned their patient approach after three innings, those first three frames served to jack up the pitch count so much that Vargas couldn’t even finish the seventh.

Ivan Nova came out for the eighth, and grooved a fastball to Luis Rodriguez. Having the night of his life, he doubled into deep right center. The Mariners bunted him to third. Eduardo Nunez vacated the position again, so Nova couldn’t nab the lead runner, even though the bunt was too hard.

The Yankees walked Ichiro intentionally in front of Kyle Seager and Dustin Ackley. Or as new pitcher David Robertson knows them, a couple of nails. The Hammer fell, pop out, strikeout, and preserved the tie.

Curtis Granderson led off the ninth and hit a long Yankee Stadium homer off of Brandon League. In Safeco, Ichiro caught it in front of the wall. Robinson Cano slapped a two-out double to left, and the Mariners walked Swisher to face Jesus Montero. League set him up with heat, and put him away with breaking stuff in the dirt. Montero struck out three times, popped out and squibbed one about ten feet in front of home plate.

Rafeal Soriano pitched the ninth. He blew away Mike Carp, but Adam Kennedy fisted one into shallow left. Eduardo Nunez could have caught it but didn’t. Friggin defense. Then Olivo lofted the ball down the left field line. Off the bat it looked like an out at medium depth. But when Gardner came in the picture, he was acres away from where the ball was going to land. He covered the distance in an instant and made a sweet sliding catch. Friggin A, defense! Soriano downed Wily Mo Pena to end the inning.

In the bottom of the tenth, Boone Logan came in for his first action since Baltimore. Logan got four outs and allowed two hits, but at least he got some lefties out. He stranded two runners in the tenth and then gave way to Cory Wade to strand one more in the eleventh.

In the top of the 11th, Mark Teixeira hit another deep out. It was well struck, but this place is just a black hole. The Yanks got four hits in twelve innings. They took two walks and got plunked twice. What a mess.

Justin Smoak and Jesus Montero were on the same field this series. It’s not Smoak’s fault, but as long as he is a Mariner, I’ll root against him. Smoak hurt his groin, Montero avoided injury, unless his feelings were hurt by having a really bad night. So advantage Montero, I guess. Montero sure doesn’t like to get a strike called on him. He spends a lot of time walking around the batter’s box, rolling his eyes and sighing.

Smoak’s dismal stats thus far in 2011 are .230/.324/.394, but somehow that OPS+ is above average, 103. How down is offense in general and how fallow a hitting environment is Safeco for that P.O.S. line to be above average? In Dodger Stadium in 1965, a dude named Lou Johnson hit .259/.315/.391 for an OPS+ of 104. So Safeco is basically a time machine.

This is getting depressing, let’s try some jokes.

Hey, how about this Mariner lineup? The Ghost of Ichiro, top prospect Dustin Ackley, and then seven guys they promoted from the food court earlier that day. No offense, but that’s no offense. How far gone is Ichiro? He grounded into a double play. Yeesh. Their best hope of moving out of the cellar next year is Bud Selig forcing the Houston Astros to relocate there.

And thank goodness Bud Selig’s fourteen year nightmare of having six teams in the NL Central might be over. Can you remember back in 1998 when that bastard owner of the Brewers, Bud Selig, forced the saintly commissioner, Bud Selig, to shoehorn the Milwaukee Brewers in there? He’s totally justified in strong-arming the potential new ownership in Houston to accept the move as a pre-condition of the sale.

Nah, not helping.

By the time this game reached extra innings, victory became secondary to just getting the hell out of that offensive graveyard. Heaven forbid the Yankees get permanently tainted by whatever’s going there to make that such a miserable team.

The Yankees have had every opportunity in these last eight games to take the division by the throat, make the next Boston series meaningless, and to rest their players in the final two weeks with nothing at stake. Instead they have lost four one-run heartbreakers, including three in extra innings and two as walk-offs.

If it feels like they never win in extra innings, you’re right. They are 4-10. But the Red Sox lost and they still have a four game lead, and something just as nice, a day off.

On a certain night in October of ’03, Roger Clemens said, “Pick your two favorite super heroes, I’ll put Mo up against both of them.”

Here’s to saving the day, 600 times.