After three days the Phillies finally wrapped up the World Series, defeating the Rays 4 game to 1.

All I know is that Met fans are probably pissed, which is always a good thing.  But the young core of the Rays is going to be pissed also.  And that’s scary.

The AL East is going to be stacked next year.  And it’s very conceivable the Yankees might miss the playoffs again next year no matter what they do this offseason.

The Rays, Blue Jays, and Red Sox all have good young pitching.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see all four teams beat up on each other next year.  The Yankees need to stabilize the starting rotation in order to keep up.

But with Garza, Shields, Kazmir, Price, more young pitchers for the Rays, and Beckett, Lester, Dice-K, Buchholz for the Red Sox, these teams are not going away.

…but is there ever really a baseball off season in New York?

First of all, the closing ceremony was well done. Nobody wanted to leave Yankee Stadium on that Sunday night. And only one idiot ran on the field, which is nice. But I think I’m a little bit late with all this now, seeing as how Game One of the World Series is going into the bottom of the 9th at this moment. (I still don’t trust Brad Lidge. I think that Pujols homer in the NLCS a few years ago just landed.

But Boston is gone, which is nice. Maybe I’ll put my ideas for the Yanks this winter on here one of these days. I have plenty of time, I don’t have a real job anyway.

How do people think that this year was a terrible year for the Yankees?

Ok, I know there were a ton of injuries and not hitting in the clutch will be the excuses. But do people really think these guys that made the playoffs the last few years, and all hit their strides the last 2 weeks really didn’t care in the middle of the year?

What a bunch of idiots. Baseball is a game of failure. You come to the plate, and you fail 67 out of 100 times at getting a hit and you probably win a batting title. But whether it’s a cop out or not, the injuries really hurt, and this team is just as good as last year, or the year before. But Tampa’s young guys finally put it together.

And Tampa has so many good young arms coming up, don’t think this is a 1 year thing. Price, and Jeff Niemann, and Wade Davis, and Jacob McGee. The Rays have the young arms coming.

The Yankees making the playoffs all these years in a row? It’ll never be seen again. So maybe we can sit back tonight and enjoy the run we’ve been on.

As a 21 year old Yankee fan, I literally can not remember not making the playoffs. Tonight I mourn, but I rejoice, and I thank God for making me a Yankee fan.

Tonight was the easy game for Boston.  Beckett vs. Zack Johnson.  All it takes is three more days…

So I was correct about my first tirade that Joba should be starting instead of coming out of the bullpen.
And I’ve been saying since ‘06 that everyone should get off A-Rod for not being a “clutch” hitter.  In ‘06 it was hard to defend, even though the guy was the reigning MVP of the American League.  But in ‘07 he had a crazy, historic season and led the Yankees to the playoffs.
But now this year he’s a failure again.  Everyone wishes he opted out last October and never came back.

But can you imagine the Angels with A-Rod?  Can you see him playing short in Boston?

The  Yankees need his bat, his glove, his presence.  If he had opted out and walked away, no one would have even thought twice about bringing in Johan Santana.  This would have been a straight rebuilding year the likes those spoiled early 20yr old Yankee fans have never seen.

The ‘96-’07 Yankees making the playoffs is a stretch unlikely to be seen in MLB in the foreseeable future.  Especially considering the team(s) with the longest running playoff steak besides the Yankees is is the Red Sox, Indians, Angels, Rockies, Phillies, Cubs, and Diamondbacks all tied AT 1!!!!

If you want to complain talk about how the starting rotation next year is still shaky, how the big three of Joba, Hughes, and Kennedy cant’ be relied upon to throw big games, none the less a lot of innings.

But to place blame on Alex Rodriguez, the man with two MVP’s in pinstripes, is ridiculous.  Without him their would have been no playoff race the last two years.  There would have been pressure on somebody else being in the spotlight of the bullshit New York tabloid media.  The Yankees would not be the same.

This was probably the best game we’ve been to this season. It was a crisply (at least the first half) played game with lots of drama and a great ending for the Yanks.

It was also my first time driving to Yankee Stadium. The ride in was fine, we left really early to make sure to beat the holiday weekend traffic. Got there really early and hung out in the parking lot.

During that time we became friends with this butterfly that would not stop landing on Matt’s hat and shoulders.

We also saw three girls get busted for peeing by the female cop riding her bike around…

And Cope…

…battled through a heat stroke or something, sweat an incredible amount and nearly passed out, but was good to go into the game.

The view again from row X, section 7. Also interesting is that it was 9:08 in the top of the 5th inning.

The only scoring up to that point was a laser of a home run by A-Rod that got into the box seats in left field in a hurry. It was his 536th in his career, tying him on the all time home run list with Mickey Mantle.

Of course the Yankees can’t hit Wakefield all night, but Girardi comes out and gets tossed…

… and Gardner and Jeter put together back to back hits and get the crowd back into the game.

It was also nice to see Gardner improve on his batting average, which dropped down to .056 at one point during the game

When Manny came up to pinch hit in the 9th the general consensus was to just walk him. But when Mariano Rivera is on the hill nobody is good enough to pitch around.

This ass hole in the red hat was messing with the crowd all night, and in the ninth inning he was finally escorted out, but not before trying to take his hat off and hide.

And finally, the aftermath of Brett Gardner’s game winning hit.

Note the game ended at 11:36 and we didn’t get home until after 2:30, but even getting lost in the Bronx in the middle of the night didn’t put a damper on a great game like this one.

Some of you may recall a post where I profiled a beer vendor at Yankee Stadium who is known for his dead on (NOT) impersonation of Bob Sheppard.  If any of you read Gene’s last post, we had the chance to meet him the other night at Shea Stadium as he decided to catch the back end of the doubleheader.  I would just like to say you really can’t judge a book by its cover and I really feel bad for joking about him, even if it was in good fun.  Now on to the games

Game 1: sucked…at least A-Rod hit a long HR (although many would deem it meaningless as they do for every run he produces in a loss.  Last time I checked every run counts.)

Game 2: didn’t suck.  Although Cano swung at every first pitch like usual, it paid off in his fourth AB and he hit a long home run to right center.  Seeing Pedro lose really made it a great day.

PS – if they sold those aluminum beer bottles at Yankee Stadium, I would piss so many people off.  Apparently seats are not supposed to be used as drums.  Also, I am pretty sure Sidney Ponson would be tempted to put one in his belt buckle next time he started there since it keeps the beer cool and all.

Next game I will be attending is July 6 vs the Sawx.  Now I really wish they sold those bottles…

- Billy

Now that was a hell of a long day.

After the sun came out and it got uncomfortably hot and Dan Giese and Mike Pelfrey threw nearly 200 pitches in the first five innings I wanted to kill myself.

Fan of the Game

I need to put this in here somewhere because I just spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out how to spell Eddie Scezzari and got sidetracked by Mike and The Mad Dog’s wikipedia page. Matt’s the only other person I know who knows who Eddie is – he actually brought the name up – but I highly doubt anyone else in the entire world has typed “Eddie Scezzari” into a Google image search.

But yeah, this guy was just rambling on about how much he hates the Mets. I can never get enough of that.

Then on to Shea…

Listening to Howie Rose’s call of Delgado’s grand slam was a great time sitting in traffic in the sweltering heat. The ride over wasn’t all that bad, and we ended up in what looked like a decent parking lot.

That was the view of the new Citi field. Having two new stadiums in New York next summer is going to be a great experience, assuming our Yankee ticket plan carries over and we can get in.

Then Billy went to pee and came back and said some guy gut run over by a golf cart. Then things got interesting. The guy was hit by a parking lot attendant, and he needed to be taken away in an ambulance. The video is coming. I was fumbling around with the brand new camera but it was pretty interesting.

When i went into the Stadium in the 2nd inning I still had the camera in the wrong mode for taking long distance shots, so they came out pretty bad.

The highlight of my night was seeing the Yankee Stadium Beck’s Beer guy sitting in the first row in our section. Me and Billy went to take a picture with him, and he seemed like he was conscious, but barely. We felt really bad for the guy. He barely responded to us, and it took everything he had to swing his legs around to get in the picture with us. Whatever the reason for that is, next time you make fun of a beer guy, think of him.

In the end, it was time to say good bye to Shea Stadium. I am glad I will never have to enter that dump ever again.

And for anyone unfortunate enough to attend a game there the rest of this season

Watch out!

It’s late, the amazing reporting job on the guy getting hit by the golf cart will becoming shortly.

- Gene

But there will be plenty of shenanigans Friday with Dan Giese and Sidney Ponson on the mound.  Can’t wait.

The story of this game was obviously the pitching of the resurgent Mike Mussina, and the continued hot hitting by Johnny Damon. Mussina went six, allowing only five hits and one run. Damon went 3-4 and sparked the lineup all night.

We ended up getting to the parking lot at 4:00PM, after about a 50 minute ride from Stony Brook. I think this is the earliest and quickest we’ve ever made it to a game.

The parking lot was empty, but at least the car shifted out of park this time.

They announced attendance of 51,151 was a little bit exaggerated.

Overall it was a pretty ho-hum game.

The seats were very similar to the Mets game.

I was down buying that $7 bag of popcorn that it is impossible to finish when Jeter got the base hit that pushed him into third on the Yankees all time hit list. Really seems weird to think that Derek Jeter is in his 13th big league season.

In the end there really wasn’t anything crazy or ridiculous that happened. But I did get a good picture of this guy…

- Gene