Blog Archives

Just a heads up for those of you living here in the tri-state area…Stephen Borelli, author of “How About That! The Life of Mel Allen,” will be appearing at the mid-Manhattan Library this Thursday. The Library is located at 455 5th avenue, which is on the southeast corner of 40th street and 5th avenue (across from the Main Branch of the public library, you know, the big one with the lions out front). Borelli will be there at 6:30, discussing his book and sharing some Mel Allen audio. If you are around, check it out.

With two men on and just one out, the tying run came to the plate against Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning last night (Rivera had allowed a bloop double and then hit a batter). At the same time in Detroit, the Tigers were staging a ninth inning comeback against the Red Sox closer Curt Schilling. However, Rivera steadied himself, retired the next two hitters and sealed a 5-2 win for the Yankees. With the Sox and A’s losing, the Yanks now trail Boston by three-and-a-half games in the AL East, and Oakland by just a game-and-a-half for the wildcard.

Jaret Wright had his longest outing as a Yankee, pitching into the seventh inning. He was aggresive and threw strikes. The Devil Rays hit the ball sharply several times off of Wright, but for the most part, they went directly at Yankee fielders (Alex Rodriguez made an especially nifty pick on a Jorge Cantu ground ball in the bottom of the fourth). Wright gave up two runs on four hits, a walk and a couple of strikeouts. Even better, he only threw 79 pitches and was still throwing in the early-to-mid nineties in the sixth inning.

Alex Rodriguez, the Bombers’ candidate for the American League MVP, led the offense cracking another memorable home run. This one–a solo shot–hit one of the catwalks. Rodriguez knew it was gone off the bat and went into a home run trot. The TV cameras showed centerfielder Joey Gathright going back on the ball as if he had a chance to make a play. Then he just stopped and kept looking up. The ball never came down. Suddenly, Rodriguez was hustling into third. But just as he slid, the umpires signaled that the ball was indeed a home run. Oh man, Jeter is going to bust his chops for this one, I thought.

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I’ve been a little out of it for the past few days. As a gentle summer rain cools Vermont off this morning, I’m catching up on the latest dish in the papers. Here’s some Sunday tidbits I’ve come across:

From the Times:

[Bernie] Williams’s day started with a flat tire on his drive to the ballpark, an anecdote Manager Joe Torre shared. “It was perfect, but that’s Bernie,” he said. “That’s the way we categorize everything that involves him: that’s Bernie. Bernie being Bernie.”

…”I know I’ve got a lot to catch up for the year, as far as numbers are concerned,” said Williams, who has nine homers and a .245 batting average. “But hopefully they’ll see a value in me being on the team, more valuable than individual numbers. They’ll see that in a given situation, I can help the team win in that fashion.”

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On a swealtering day in the Bronx, Mariano Rivera blew a two-run lead to the Texas Rangers in the ninth inning, raising his ERA to 1.33. It is the first time he’s blown a save since he faced Boston at the start the season. Thankfully, our old pal Bernie Williams saved the day, cracking a two-run dinger in the bottom of the 11th to give the Bombers a 7-5 win. No soup for Mussina (who pitched a good game), and no soup for Mo, but lots of soup for everyone else, as the Yanks have taken three-in-a-row from Texas. They’ll go for the series sweep tomorrow afternoon.

After two low-scoring games, I wonder if we are in for more of an offensive affair this afternoon. Aaron Small goes for the Yanks and geez, do you think it’s asking too much for another solid outing? Even if it is, what cherce do the Yanks have? Well, to pound Freddie Garcia for one. The Bombers hit the ball hard on Tuesday with nothing much to show for it. They’ll need the bats to do the talking this afternoon if they hope to win the series. Thunderstorms are in the forecast.

Bombs away. Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

When Bernie Williams pinch-hit in the ninth inning last night, I held my breath and hoped that the Yankee veteran would come through. There were two outs and men on the corners with the Yanks down a run. Williams lashed the first pitch he saw from Dustin Hermanson. By my count it must have been the fifth or sixth ball a Yankee batter had hit on the screws during the game. Unfortunately, like the other hard hit balls–with one exception–it went directly to a White Sox fielder. Bernie’s liner was caught by the first baseman Paul Konerko, the game was suddenly over, and Chicago had won, 2-1.

“You can hit the ball but you can’t steer it,” said Yankee announcer Jim Kaat. It was just one of those nights, one where the Yanks couldn’t buy a break. Both Jose Contreras and Shawn Chacon pitched exceedingly well. Contreras was filthy, mixing his pitches, working efficiently. When he is on, he can be overpowering. (El Duque may be the better pitcher, but Contreras has much nastier stuff.) Chacon worked in-and-out of trouble, but turned in another admirable performance. For a low-scoring affair, the game wasn’t exactly crisp, but it was exciting. Tony Womack and Hideki Matsui made nice catches for the Yanks, Derek Jeter turned a difficult double play in the first, and Aaron Rowand continues to suck up everything hit to the gap in right-center and left-center field.

For the most part it was a clean loss for New York. The rub was Joe Torre’s decision to let Alan Embree start the ninth inning. After Embree got the Yankees out of trouble in the eighth, he gave up a long solo home run to Konerko on a 3-2 pitch to start the ninth. Alex Rodriguez’s dinger in the bottom of the inning made it close but not close enough. The Yankees lost a game in the AL East standings as Boston beat Texas in extra innings. They remain three-and-a-half behind Oakland in the wildcard, who were pounded by the Vlad and company last night.

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While Mariano Rivera is giving Yankee fans a peaceful, easy feeling each time he steps on the mound these days, I have to admit that I’m nervous. Not about Rivera, but about the possibility of another star player testing positive for steroids. I’m sure fans all over the country are feeling the same way. It seems inevitable that more guys are going to fall. Which Yankee will it be, I was wondering last night? Man, don’t let it be Rivera or Jeter or Bernie or Rodriguez. Please. It’s hard to say anything would surprise me, but really, if Mariano Rivera or Derek Jeter were found using steroids it would shock me.

As exciting as this season as been, it’s hard not to feel that these are dark, paranoid times for baseball. Cynicism is at an all-time high. The commissioner’s office has virtually sacrificed the integrity of the season witholding the Palmeiro test results for so long. Who knows what other players have tested positive yet are still allowed to continue playing? In the comments section yesterday, I wondered why nobody in the media has publicly suspected Roger Clemens of using performance-enhancing drugs. Today, Monte Poole wonders the exact same thing. I’m not saying that Clemens has done anything–how would I know?—I just think it is curious that he hasn’t gotten the same third degree that other bulky veterans have received.

Maybe it’s just me. But while I’ve got one eye on my team and my favorite players, I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Well, here it is. Stephen Rodrick’s profile on Gary Sheffield for New York Magazine. Truthfully, there is little here that will come of any great surprise: Sheffield has a chip on his shoulder, can be difficult with the press, and has an innate ability to speak his mind and say “controversial” things. You don’t say.

“I just don’t enjoy the game the way you want me to,” says Sheffield. By “you” he means reporters, for sure, but also many fans. “People say about me, ‘He’s moody,’ but I don’t see them in the same mood every day. Some days I feel like talking, some days I don’t. Some days I don’t feel like looking at you. I’m tired of looking at you. And I’m sure you’re tired of looking at me. They’re trying to catch me in a moment where I’m vulnerable. They’re trying to do damage. I don’t do damage to no one.”

Maybe sometimes to himself, but that’s nothing a two-run home run won’t cure.

Okay, first the bad news. Randy Johnson’s stiff back may force him to miss his start this week. According to Tyler Kepner in The New York Times:

“It’s real tight, so it’s hard to move around,” he said after receiving extensive pregame treatment. “Just the normal aches and pains, but today there’s the back spasm, so there’s a little bit more discomfort.”

Though his back has been a persistent issue this season, it has not caused him to miss a start. That could change this week.

“Let’s put it this way: If he feels the way he does today, he can’t pitch,” Manager Joe Torre said. “He’s been dealing with this issue and other issues. There are a lot of things he has to attend to before he pitches every fifth day. He’s uncomfortable today. Is it going to affect his next start? We need a day or two to know that.”

Meanwhile, Carl Pavano was scratched from his scheduled return on Tuesday. Instead, Pavano will visit Dr. James Andrews and there is talk that his season is over.

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‘Nuff said.

Randy Johnson allowed six runs in four innings and did not return for the fifth as the Yankees lost 8-5 in Toronto. As a result, the Bombers lose another game in the wildcard standings as the A’s won again, but kept pace with the Sox who fell to the Twins for the second straight day.

Tyler Kepner wonders how much of Johnson’s ineffectiveness has to do with his back. While we don’t know for sure what the status of Johnson’s health is, his performance has been uneven all year:

“There’ve been some games where I’ve gotten roughed up where I felt like, ‘O.K., I made a pitch here, I made a pitch there,’ ” Johnson said. “Today, I didn’t make a pitch all day. I wasn’t effective, for whatever reason. Obviously, if I knew, I would have corrected it. But I threw every pitch that I had.”

If Johnson and Mussina are not able to lead the pitching staff–like our old friends, with the help of one Roy Oswalt, are doing down in Houston–then it is likely that the Yankees will miss the playoffs this year. It’s not terribly complicated: the Yankees desperately need greatness from their top two starters.

We could be in for a long one this afternoon as Curtain Call Al Leiter performs in a matinee. Let’s hope it’s not “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” Stay away from the O’Neill, Al, and you can skip the Arthur Miller while you are at it. Keep it snappy and light like “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.” Or some cornball Neil Simon affair.

Break a leg, boys.

Michael Kay and Ken Singleton were discussing Gary Sheffield’s latest comments as Sheffield came to bat in the first inning. No sooner had Kay reported that Sheffield told reporters before the game that his words were taken out of context, the Yankees’ right fielder lined a two-run homer to left. Hey babe, say what you want, just keeping mashing. As far as what he told the press, Sheffield is at his usual upfront (and confounding) best:

“That’s the life of being me,” Sheffield said at Rogers Center on Friday. “It’s tough for me to do interviews. When people have pens, they have motives. It was supposed to be a positive interview.”

…Of all the two people you pick, you pick probably the two guys I trust most in all of baseball,” Sheffield said. “Not just on this team, but in all of baseball. Dearest friends, closest friends, personal relationships. That ain’t even worth commenting on or defending.”

…Of Jeter, he said Friday: “Jeter’s our captain – he’s not the leader, he’s the captain. So that’s a different ballgame. Every team I’ve been on, everybody leads in different ways. So it’s not no shot at one particular person. There’s a lot of leaders in baseball. That’s what it was about.”
(N.Y.Times)

Neither Jeter or Rodriguez seemed to be upset about Sheffield’s comments. Nothing to see here, let’s move along.

After Friday night’s tidy 6-2 win in Toronto, Randy Johnson goes to the hill for the Yanks this afternoon. The Bombers gained a game in the AL East standings.

Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon have given the Yankees five good starts. Johnson and Mussina need to be lights out.

With the 231st street station closed for repairs this summer, the fastest way for me to get to my apartment is by getting off on 238th street and walking. About seven blocks from the station is a mountain of a steps. There are eight levels, each comprised of sixteen steps. After you make it past the first four flights, there is a rest area where you can catch your breath or puke your guts out, whichever comes first. Since the station at 231 has been closed for a few months now, I no longer suck wind by the time I get to the top of the stairs. Still, at the end of the day–particularly in these dog days of summer–the schlepp isn’t exactly something to look forward to.

As I approached the stairs last night, I took my head out of my book and saw an old man in shorts ahead of me. Carrying two plastic shopping bags, he was walking oddly, almost hopping, as if he wanted to jog but just didn’t have it in him to move any faster than he was already going. I caught up to him at the bottom of the steps and said hello. “Two-at-a-time,” he announced in a thick Bronx accent. Well, if he was up for it, so was I. We started chatting–I told he reminded me of Art Carney. The conservation kind of died so I asked if he was a baseball fan. He said he was.

“Yankee fan?”

Nope. I figured it was a stretch that he’d be a Dodger fan so far north, so I said, “Giants?”

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Book Excerpt

Chapter 17 from “Juicing the Game.”

By Howard Bryant

(Part Two. For Part One click here.)

At the beginning of the 2000 season, Barry Bonds was in a place familiar to most thirty-five-year-old athletes. It looked as if his body was beginning to crumble. The 1999 season had been particularly rough on him. He reported to spring training and immediately began suffering from back spasms. Before the first month of the season was over, Bonds was in a cast, scheduled to miss two and a half months rehabilitating from elbow surgery. He suffered through his worst season in San Francisco. His power numbers were good, 34 home runs and a .617 slugging percentage, yet he hit just .262 and saw his on-base percentage dip below .400 for the first time since the eighties. More than any other statistic, Barry Bonds not being on the field was the most telling. He had played in a mere 102 games, his lowest since 1989, when he was in his fourth season, still batting lead-off for Pittsburgh, and had yet to become the feared Barry Bonds. He had been durable throughout his career, playing in 888 of 908 possible games as a member of the Giants before undergoing knee and wrist surgery in 1999. In six seasons with the Giants, Bonds had never been on the disabled list, and yet was shelved twice in 1999. Bonds rebounded in 2000 to play in 143 games and hit a career-high 49 home runs.

During those two seasons, there was something about Bonds that was remarkably different. He was gigantic. During the first day of spring training in 1999, Charlie Hayes walked by Bonds and did a double take. Hayes strolled past a group of reporters and said, “Did you see my man? He was huge.” Bonds said he feared what age would do to his body, and began a weight-training program to stay fit. For a player who was always muscular but never massive, the Bonds transformation was consistent with the era. Mark McGwire in 1999 dwarfed his Oakland self. In Chicago, the Sammy Sosa who was lean and strong and could run and had an arm like Clemente had disappeared, replaced by a thick, blocky slugger. He looked like a different person.

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The Yankees were leading 4-0 last night when Derek Jeter walked to lead-off the top of the fifth. Mike Mussina was crusing (he struck out six through four innings of work) and the offense was looking alive (back-to-back doubles by Matsui and Giambi followed by a two-run dinger by Posada). Then something happened and the course of the game changed for the worse.

Inexplicably, Robinson Cano was called on to bunt Jeter to second. On the YES broadcast, Michael Kay questioned such a move while the Yankees held a decent lead. Cano took two strikes right over the plate, making half-hearted attempts to actually connect with the ball, which is to say that he squared to bunt but then tentatively pulled his bat back. He compounded the problem when did lay a bunt down on the next pitch. It rolled foul and he was retired on strikes. Third base coach Luis Sojo threw his arms up and turned his back to the plate, and when Cano reached the dugout he went straight to principal Joe Torre’s office. All I could think about was when Reggie Jackson tried to show Billy Martin by bunting with two strikes, but I doubt whether this was an intentionally defiant act on Cano’s part. It was just the wrong time for a rookie mistake.

The Yankees did not score a run in the inning and then Mussina simply lost it (he walked four). While he wasn’t getting the calls he would have liked from the home plate umpire Rob Drake, Mussina’s pitches–fastballs, change-ups and breaking balls alike–all missed their spots, hanging up over the plate instead. The Indians pounced and scored six runs in the bottom of the fifth, chasing Mussina from the game. Everything had been looking up for the Yanks. Suddenly, they were sunk, and they went listlessly in the second-half of the game. Cleveland picked up the win (and the series), 7-4. After the game, Mussina told The New York Times:

“I tried everything I had, and I thought I had good stuff,” Mussina said. “I just couldn’t get it right. For 10 hitters, I couldn’t get it right. When you have a 4-0 lead and things are going well for the club and that stuff happens, it’s frustrating, disappointing. It’s been a long time since something got away from me like that.”

Joe Torre added:

“It looked like he had knockout stuff…Then it got ugly. It got away from him; it got away from us.”

It was as discouraging a loss as the Yanks have had in a while. There were many long faces in the Yankee dugout, none more grave than Joe Torre’s–heck, I wasn’t feeling too chipper at home either. They didn’t lose any ground in the wildcard race as the A’s finally lost, but the Bombers did lose another game to the Red Sox who won their seventh straight last night in Boston.

Oy and veh.

Mike Mussina has another important start tonight in Cleveland, but who am I kidding? Every start for him is going to be important down the stretch here. Let’s hope the Yanks go batty and bounce back from yesterday’s loss. With the A’s and the Sox streaking, it behooves the Bombers to win four of their next five. That’s a whole lot of B’s, baby. Am I right or am I right?

Let’s Go Yan-Kees.

Book Excerpt

It wasn’t easy to select an excerpt from Howard Bryant’s new book “Juicing the Game,” because so many of them are excellent. But I think that one of the most insightful and powerful sections focuses on Barry Bonds, the greatest player and most controversial figure of his era. So for your summertime reading pleasure, please enjoy Chapter 17 from “Juicing the Game.”

By Howard Bryant

(Part One of Two)

The problem was Barry Bonds. The BALCO testimonies combined with the commotion and compromise that led to a strengthened drug policy, one baseball executive thought, provided baseball with a special opportunity. The sport could start fresh and begin a new era of enforceable drug testing while allowing the suspicion and doubt that plagued the previous decade to slowly recede into history. Bonds, however, would not allow baseball such a clean break from the steroid era.

The problem was that he was too good. To the discomfort of some baseball officials, Bonds would soar so high above anyone who ever played the game that no one would ever be allowed to forget this difficult decade, for he was no longer one of many great players, but arguably the best ever. Bonds already owned the single-season home run record and was set to break Hank Aaron’s career record in 2005 or 2006. In addition, between 2001 and 2004 he hit for four of the top twelve slugging percentages of all time, breaking Babe Ruth’s eighty-one-year-old record in 2001, and, over the same four seasons, recorded four of the top eleven on-base percentages of all-time, breaking Ted Williams’s single season record in 2002 and then demolishing his own record by becoming the first man to reach base more than 60 percent of the time over a full season in 2004.

The result was a bitter irony to that spoke to the odd and unprecedented state of baseball: Instead of celebrating the greatest player the sport had ever produced, numerous baseball officials entered 2005 lamenting the notion that they were being handcuffed by him. Bonds stood as the symbol of the tainted era, of its bitter contradictions and great consequences. Jason Giambi’s was a more open scandal, but Bonds was more emblematic of the larger complexities. If baseball suffered from the conflict of reaping the benefits of high attendance and unprecedented mass appeal while its players individually fought the taint of illegitimacy, then Bonds’ continued ascension, first past his peers and then past every iconic standard in the game’s history, served as an eternal reminder of all the sport did not do to protect its integrity when it had the opportunity. By shattering Mays, eclipsing Ruth, outdistancing Aaron, and putting the single-season home run record even further out of reach, Bonds and the era in which he played would always be present.

Thus, the enormous specter of Barry Bonds loomed, not because of his guilt or his innocence, but precisely because of the impossible question of how much of his phenomenal achievement (and by extension the feats of his peers) was real, how much was due to his use of anabolic substances, and how no one, for or against, friend or foe, could ever discuss the greatest player of his generation or the greatest records in the sport without in turn discussing the drugs that contributed to them. Not only would the decade from 1994 to 2004 be forever associated with steroids, but so, too, would the record books. There would be no escape, either for Barry Bonds or the sport that made him famous.

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Slow news day, huh?

After two tense, come-from-behind wins, there isn’t much in the way of Yankee news this morning as the team prepares to start August in Cleveland (before heading for Toronto this weekend). Hideo Nomo was fuhideous in a Triple A start last night, and Shawn Chacon is happy to be away from Coors Field. No suprises there.

I read something the other day that said that Carl Pavano has been a disappointment on-and-off the field this year. I’m vaguely aware of talk that he hasn’t been communicative with the coaching staff, but Steve Lombardi has a link to a story that appeared in Newsday which suggests Pavano would rather be somewhere else than New York…like Detroit. Hmm. Now how often do you hear that?

Yesterday, Will Carroll–who did a first-rate job on the Palmeiro story–had this health report on the Yankees:

The Yankees were left with nothing at the break, smartly grabbing what was available (Shawn Chacon and various waiver detritus) before the deadline. The waiver wire figures to produce few trade options in August, so help, if it’s coming, will have to come from within. Carl Pavano is close and now Jaret Wright is showing positive progress. Wright made his first rehab start at high-A Tampa, going 65 pitches in 2 1/3 innings. Normally, that’s not positive. Wright’s control, never good, is still on the DL. He’s facing at least three more rehab starts and will have to find that control before he’ll be able to think about coming back to the Bronx. We’ll know more after his next start, but at this stage, he’s not likely to help the club in August.

Hey, anyone notice how well Andy Pettitte and Brad Halsey have been pitching lately? I’m not trying to be a smart-ass, I was in favor of letting Pettitte walk and moving Halsey in the Johnson trade. I’m just saying, man, they’ve been hot. (As has Emily’s boy Tony Clark.) Good for them.

The Bottom Line

One thing that was reinforced by the recent Manny Ramirez hoopla is that all anyone really cares about is the bottom line: production. It’s not about how you play the game, or playing the game the right way, or setting a good example for kids, it is about what you produce while you are on the field. Some people might not like the way a player like Ramirez approaches the game, but so long as Manny is Manny most fans will put up with Manny being Manny. If you are a great player–and I don’t think Ramirez is a great player, he’s a great hitter and just like Ted Williams, that is enough–you can essentially get away with anything you want–within reason, of course. The moment Ramirez’s production begins to fade I assume people will turn on him as quickly as fans turned on Sammy Sosa in Chicago. For now, he remains the Gangster of Love and the best right-handed hitter in the American League.

And Another Thing

I only caught a portion of Peter Gammons’ Hall of Fame speech on Sunday, but ESPN has a complete transcript if you are interested. Also, Stephen Borelli, author of “How About That! The Life of Mel Allen,” had a nice piece on Jerry Coleman for the USA Today over the weekend too. Oh, and in case you missed it, Jonathan Mahler had an interesting feature on Omar Minaya and the Mets in The New York Times magazine the other day. It’s well-worth checking out (as is–and forgive me from digressing from baseball for a second–a terrific article by Roger Rubin about the Emmett Till case).

That is all.

Howard Bryant became a sports writer so that he could write a book about racism and Boston sports, specifically as it pertained to the Red Sox. “Shut Out” featured fine reporting but the writing was surprisingly repetitive and weak in spots. However, it remains an extremely useful book in spite of its flaws because the subject is so rich. I always felt as if Bryant did not have a strong editor to help make his narrative shine. That is not the case with Bryant’s second effort, “Juicing the Game,” a story that is much larger in scope but one that is also told with great precision and focus. Bryant’s reporting continues to be top-notch (and this book certainly could not have been written if Bryant was not established inside the game), but it is his writing that has grown by leaps and bounds. If “Juicing the Game” is not a truly great book–and it might just be–it certainly is an exceedingly good one. It is the story of the Bud Selig Era and will go down as the logical successor and ideal companion to John Helyar’s “Lords of the Realm.”

I wasn’t exactly sure what the book was about when I first heard about it. I assumed it was an expose about steroids, a subject that doesn’t exactly captivate me. But “Juicing the Game” is really an insider’s history of the professional game since Fay Vincent was commissioner. It features a huge cast of characters and explores how and why the current Offensive Age, the Steroids Era came to be. Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the book is that Bryant does not attempt to simplify a complicated situation. The bottom line may not be complex (mo money, mo problems), but Bryant doesn’t lay the blame on one thing in particular-—instead, the entire game is complicit:

To Glenn Stout, the crumbling of the 1998 monument resembled nothing less than a classic morality tale. It wasn’t just the players, and it wasn’t just drug use, Stout thought, but the entire baseball institution that was under indictment. Baseball needed to recover from the strike, and found itself seduced by a culture of uncontrolled accumulation. Every segment of the game was culpable. It was the players who used whatever substances were available to maximize their achievements, and in turn their earnings, at the expense of their credibility. It was the fans who did not care that the game was being made less legitimate as long as they were treated to a more exciting product. It was the press and the broadcast media that chose to reap the added profits and increased exposure that came during the boom time instead of employing the stamina and scrutiny required to confront a spiraling baseball culture. Finally, Stout thought, it was the owners that profited from drug use and ran from the responsibility until there was nowhere else to go.

And this:

Tony Gwynn did not believe baseball was in crisis, but thought the decade of offense had to some degree been engineered by design. The strike had forced the game’s hand, Gwynn believed. Piece by piece, from the gradual institution of a tighter strike zone, to the manipulation of the baseball, to the construction of home run-friendly parks, and ultimately to allowing player’s growth in size to go unchecked and largely unquestioned, baseball had manipulated its product toward greater offensive production. It was a stunning consideration.

“Take into account us trying to regain and recapture the American public’s imagination and the hitter’s realizing that if he got bigger and stronger he could hit the ball out the other way,” Tony Gwynn said. “And it all manifested itself into a product people liked. And now it’s too late to go back. It’s too late and you can’t go back.”

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Due to some technical difficulties (I’m breaking in a new laptop to increase my ability to post on the go, but it always seems you have to take one step backwards to get two steps forward when these new-fangled fire-boxes are concerned), I was unable to get a series preview post up yesterday, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t write one. Here’s how what I wrote yesterday afternoon kicked off:

The Yankees enter this weekend’s four-game series with the Angels having gone 5-2 on their current roadtrip and 8-3 to start the punishingly difficult portion of their schedule. Considering that fantastic level of play (for the month, the Yankees are winning at an even 75 percent clip: 12-4), it seems like sour grapes to complain about some of Joe Torre’s bullpen decisions, as I (among countless others) did following Tuesday night’s 2-1 loss to the Rangers. Still, having done so then, I feel I must follow up by pointing out that using both Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera with a four-run lead in last night’s 8-4 win is exactly the sort of thing that lead to letting Wayne Franklin pitch against the heart of the Texas line-up in the eighth inning with a one-run lead the night before.

Sure, watching Gordon and especially Rivera blow away Rangers hitters with a comfortable lead inspires tremendous confidence on the part of the team and its fans, but on a night that Aaron Small made his first major league start in seven years and held the Rangers to just three runs in 5 1/3 innings, it was worth a shot to see if Scott Proctor and the re-purposed Alex Graman could take care of business, saving Gordon and Rivera for a game such as Tuesday’s in which they were desperately needed. With a four-run lead, there was enough margin for error that Gordon and Rivera could have been brought in should either of those lesser pitchers faltered, but by going to those lesser pitchers first, one creates the opportunity for them to succeed thus rendering Gordon and Rivera unnecessary.

Well, last night, Joe Torre took my unpublished advice and turned to Scott Proctor in the seventh inning with a three run lead. Even better, he did so with the bottom of the order coming up, as per my assertion following Tuesday’s loss that with weaker hitters due up a manager can get away with using his less dominant pitchers.

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