Happy Halloween

Sox Win!

Click on the picture. There are some real geniuses out there.

First a few belated comments on the ALCS. I had some mixed emotions on the Sox remarkable comeback. Cleveland has always been my 2nd city of sports. My father grew up there and was a devoted Indians, Browns and Ohio State fan. He loves to recite the entire starting lineup of the 1948 Indians and has told me at least 100 times the story of his going to a double header in 1948 where Bob Feller pitched the first game and his favorite player of all time, Satchel Paige, pitched the second. I have been to games at the now demolished Cleveland Municipal Stadium with my grandfather. Cleveland has very good baseball fans as you can see in the infamous Beer Night of 1974. At the same time I’m still pissed at Ohio for the 2004 Presidential election. Now Cleveland is a very strong union town and I’m sure they went for Kerry but that does little to soften my anger for the entire state. Plus there is the Indians logo issue which just doesn’t play well in 2007. So of course I wanted the Sox to win but certainly bad that the much maligned Cleveland had to face yet another humiliation.

Now for last night's game it is amazing how different my attitude is towards the Sox since 2004. Gone are the days when I would expect a spectacular collapse that would torment me through the winter. I'm by no means overconfident but I no longer expect to lose. Last night with the Sox down 1-0 I was calmly waiting to take the lead. And when Okajima and Papelbon came in to relieve Schilling I would have been much more surprised to see them blow the lead than get the save.

This is obviously a very good Boston team and the series is looking very good. Yet I'm not quite ready to call it over because I really expected the Sox to win the first 2 games with Beckett and Schilling starting. One more win by a pitcher other than Beckett and it is over because the Rockies are not going to beat him. I like our chances tomorrow night because teams tend to not fair well against Matsuzaka when facing him for the first time.

So all in all to this point this is the most enjoyable post season I've ever had even though the Fox network and Taco Bell are trying very hard to destroy it. This 'steal a base and America gets a taco' crap is beyond annoying. The obviously scripted shots of Royce Clayton talking about it in the dugout are a real shame. Not to be a whiny killjoy but does America really need a free taco? Can I send my taco to Sudan where they could actually use it? And one wonders what would happen if Cialis ran the same promotion and if Manny Ramirez hit a homerun, half of America gets a chemically induced boner.

Requiem for the Yankees

I feel bad for piling on and no Yankee fan should mistake my opinion as sincere criticisms designed to improve their ball club but Joe Torre’s managing in this post season was so horrendous I see no way that he could keep his job. I could talk about a lot of things. There is the head scratching choice of Clemens in game 3 over Hughes which predictably burned out the pen for game 4. And Matsui with a recently drained knee over Giambi who Torre mysteriously refuses to give post season at bats to despite having excellent numbers. But the most glaring is his decision to pitch Wang over Mussina in the deciding game. I don’t think Wang could have looked any worse in his game 1 start and had never pitched on 3 days rest in his career. Yet Torre decides to start Wang over Mussina who hadn’t pitched since September 28th and had looked good to average in his last few starts. Add to that that Mussina’s good post season stats and the choice is even more queer. As much as I enjoyed the Yankee batter futility with the exception of Johnny Damon and Robinson Cano you really can’t say too much about their failure. They faced some very good pitching and didn’t come through. It happens. Perhaps this year will finally deflate the last few bloated Yankee fans who have always thought of the World Series as an entitlement rather than a gift. As I heard many angry Yankee fans over the weekend say on WFAN this team seemed more designed to sell 4 million tickets than to win a World Series. And Yankees fans should be very pissed off. They were the second best team in all of baseball this year and they won just a single game in the playoffs. And for those of you keeping track of such things the Yankees are 4 and 10 in the post season since game 4 of the ALCS in 2004 and have lost 13 of their last 17 playoff games despite have very good teams every one of those years. Now that is a curse!

There is one thing I will gloat on a bit and that is Jeter grounding into the double play in the 7th inning which really buried the Yankees.

Your 2007 American League Wild Card Champions

I'm not saying this to be a wiseass because if the Yankees go further than the Sox in the playoffs and win the World Series, Yankee fans will not care one bit that they won as a wildcard. But in terms of marketing don't you think the sales of this t-shirt will be horrible?

So winning the A.L. East is meaningless yet satisfying at the same time. I'm certain the players don't really care how they make the post season, nor should they. But what is so gratifying about this season is that the loudmouth Yankee fans who always thought the the Sox would blow it have to accept that over the course of the 162 game season Boston was the better team. I don't want to hear that they won the season series because that isn't relevant. The Yankees were 9-9 against the Orioles this year. Does that mean they were even? It certainly bothered me that the Yankees won the A.L. East every years since 1996. So, sit on it, Murray Chass.

Looks like the Red Sox are making it a tradition of completely over the top celebrations. I thought Friday night looked pretty ridiculous until I remembered Kevin Millar saying that he thought the Sox didn't drink enough after winning the wild card in 2003 and Kevin Millar was a very wise man.