Howdy! Here is what’s going on in Yankeeland today.

River Avenue Blues takes a crack at the off-season plans for the Yankees, and sees an inevitable push to sign Teixeira.

Over at the Daily News, George King writes that A.J. Burnett may be interested in signing with the Yanks if he opts out of the remainder of his deal with the Blue Jays.

MLB.COM’s Lisa Winston reports that the Trenton Thunder have been awarded the 2008 Minor League Baseball Yearly Award as the top Double-A organization.

Chien-ming Wang was honored as one of the ten most outstanding young men and women in Taiwan for 2008, reports the Taiwan News.

U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner suggests that the City sell off its luxury boxes at the Mets and Yankees new Stadiums as part of the plan to balance the budget, mentions the Daily News.

That’s all for now.

The guys who gather around Juan Carlos’s coffee cart every morning are committed to the game and their team and getting the last word. Javier – the unofficial leader of this group – is respected for his baseball knowledge and the fact that as a boy in Puerto Rico he once shook hands with Roberto Clemente.

He also got the last word on the neighborhood and maybe the whole world when he showed around his Last Will and Testament that was signed by the lawyer J.C. Klein. The only stipulation listed was that his gravestone – payments having already been made to a place on East Tremont Avenue – carries the line:

“It Was The Walks That Killed Him.”

“That sounds like something Casey Stengel would have done,” one of the guys said.

“Nope,” Javier shot. “Lots of people have talked about it, but I really did it. And that’s the last word.”

Javier smiled and said:

“Man, I love winning.”

Everyone in this neighborhood loves winning almost as much as they hate losing.

The kids that climb the fence and play ball in the parking lot across from the old Yankee Stadium will risk anything for victory. Just the other day a ball was hammered into the left-centerfield gap. It was fielded perfectly off the wall and the play at second was going to be close so the runner slid on the asphalt to the cardboard base. Getting into scoring position is always worth the price.

The old men who play dominos in Joyce Kilmer Park know the price of victory, too. And that price goes up when they are certain there are no cops around.

Jose, who delivers pizzas during the winter and sells baseball tickets in the summer, hates to lose.

There was a game this past April when he was stuck on River Avenue with nine tickets at the end of the first inning. He gave eight Main Box seats to his friends and lost himself in the Tier with a bottle.

The Yankees won and that made everything better, but Jose is worried about his ticket business for next year.

There are a lot of people worried about their jobs around here.

Jon, who lives over in High Bridge, had his hours cut at the warehouse and is driving a buddy’s cab on nights and weekends. Things like paying for rent and groceries and buying baseball tickets will be getting a lot more complicated for him.

“But I’m not worried about the economy,” Jon explained. “I need my team to get healthy. How’s Mariano doing? Is Jorge’s shoulder coming along? And is Wang’s foot feeling okay?

“I’m also looking for big things from the kids next year,” he continued. “Joba will be Joba and Hughes is ready to break out and I think Cano is gonna come back strong.

“That’s all anyone around here really cares about,” Jon went on. “Give us the Yankees and we’re ready to take on the world.”

Things can get pretty complicated around here. But what’s not to love?

[Photo Credit: Arthur Tress]

After three games, the aggregate score of the World Series is dead even at 10-10, but if the Rays don’t win tonight, this thing could be over, as Cole Hamels would pitch for the title tomorrow. Given that this has the potential to be the most exciting World Series since 2001, it would be a shame for it not to go at least six, and preferably seven games, but the last World Series to start off like this also ended in five games as the Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 fall classic. I explain in my preview of Game 4, which is up over at SI.com.

All of the baseball cards that I use to illustrate my posts are from my personal collection, which includes every regular-issue Topps set dating back to 1979. The first complete set I ever owned was the 1987 set. It remains one of may favorites both because of its nostalgic significance to me, and because of its appealing design and fine photography. With the recent quasi-retirements of Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds (the latter of whom was pictured on the first card in the first pack of 1987 Topps cards I ever bought, his .223 average prompting me to think he was some skinny slap-hitting nothing), the last remaining active player who had a card in the 1987 set is Jamie Moyer (Moyer’s then-teammate Greg Maddux is the only other active player from the 1986 season, but his first Topps card was a 1987 traded card). I had written Moyer off as a scrub in the early ’90s. He was released by the Rangers after the 1990 season and spent most of the 1991 and all of the ’92 seasons in the minors, and I figured he was just another anonymous face on a baseball card that I’d never see again.

Instead, Moyer quickly resurrected his career with the Orioles and, after a quick layover in Boston, emerged as an unconventional star with the Mariners just before the turn of the century. Last October, I found myself at his locker in Citizens Bank Park, interviewing him about Coors Field in anticipation of his Game 3 NLDS start, and now, 21 years after I pulled his rookie card out of a pack I bought on a trip to the mall with my mom, he’s starting his first World Series game at the age of 45, and I’m writing about how he could cost the team he grew up rooting for a chance at its second championship, for SI.com. I guess we’ve both come a long way.

Incidentally, the sight of Moyer in a Cubs cap on this card reminds me of the ex-Cub factor, a theory which was popularized in the 1980s stating that the winner of a playoff series could be determined by finding out which team had fewer former Cubs on its roster. The 2001 Diamondbacks (and the 2003 Cubs, who actually won a playoff series themselves) blew a hole in the theory, but for yucks, Phillies Moyer, Matt Stairs, and Scott Eyre outnumber the Rays’ lone ex-Cub, Cliff Floyd, three to one.

Finally, here’s the factoid from the back of the pictured card: “Jamie pitched 3 consecutive No-Hitters at Souderton Area High Scool, Souderton, Pa. in 1980.” Yes, 1980.

The Phillies were supposed to win Game 1 last night behind Cole Hamels, and they did. The Rays are supposed to win Game 2 tonight behind James Shields to salvage a split at home. Result pending. My preview is up on SI.com.

It’s strangely fitting that the Phillies and Rays are meeting in the latter’s first World Series. When then-Devil Rays general manager Chuck LaMar was assembling what would be the inaugural Rays roster in late 1997, he decided to build his team around pitching and defense. Any good defensive team needs a strong defensive shortstop, so LaMar worked out a deal with the Phillies to draft a young outfielder out of the Astros’ system in that November’s expansion draft and flip him to Philadelphia for the Phillies good-field/no-hit shortstop Kevin Stocker.

Stocker had taken over the Phillies shortstop job as a rookie in July of their pennant-winning season of 1993 and had since established himself as one of the game’s best defenders at the position. A 27-year-old switch-hitter who wouldn’t price himself off the team, Stocker was exactly what LaMar was looking for to anchor his new team’s infield. The problem was that LaMar had failed to notice the steep drop off in Stocker’s defense during the 1997 season. Stocker’s glove recovered in 1998, but he had his worst season at the plate, hitting just .208/.282/.313, and his season was mercifully ended a month early when his hand was broken by a pitch. The next year his bat picked up, but his glove work declined again, and knee tendonitis ended his season soon after the All-Star break.

That winter, LaMar scrapped his defense-first concept, signing aging sluggers Greg Vaughn and Vinnie Castilla to join Jose Canseco and original Ray Fred McGriff in the Tampa lineup. Stocker, the symbol of the Rays’ abandoned approach of just two years earlier, was released in May. Despite LaMar’s shift in focus, the Devil Rays of 2000 once again finished a distant last in the American League in runs scored. Making things worse, the young outfielder Lamar had used as currency to acquire stocker was a 23-year-old Bobby Abreu, who hit .312/.409/.497 as the Phillies’ right fielder in the Rays’ inaugural season of 1998 and proceeded to perform at a Hall of Fame level over his eight and a half seasons in Philadelphia.

Now, a decade later, LaMar is the Phillies’ scouting director, and his team is in the World Series against a Rays’ team that produced its first winning season, first playoff berth, first division title, and first pennant in part due to a renewed focus on pitching and defense. The signature player in that renewed focus is Jason Bartlett, a good-field/no-hit shortstop who was acquired for a talented young outfielder. The trick being that Bartlett wasn’t the key player in the deal that brought him to Tampa Bay from the Twins, righty starter Matt Garza was, and the outfielder he was traded for, Delmon Young, is no Bobby Abreu, which just goes to prove that intention is only as good as its execution.

To be fair, LaMar deserves to have a better legacy in Tampa Bay. It was under Lamar that the Rays drafted Aubrey Huff, Carl Crawford, Rocco Baldelli, James Shields, B.J. Upton, Andy Sonnanstine, and Young, and it was Lamar who fleeced the Mets in the Scott Kazmir deal. Still, it took a change in ownership and an overhaul of the front office for the Rays to figure out how to make proper use of that bounty.

My point in all of this is that, even in a World Series in which the two combatants have just one prior championship between them (the lowest combined total since 1980 when the Phillies and Royals met, both looking for their first), there is still some history here.

For more from me on this match-up, check out my position-by-position breakdown and preview of Game 1, both up on SI.com.

The Tampa Bay Rays are a good baseball team. In fact, they’re the best team in baseball. I give four reasons why over at SI.com.

They’ve been doing this for years . . . friggin’ Red Sox. If the Rays stagger like zombies through tonight’s game, which they likely will, it’ll be like 2004 all over again, except in a dome and on artificial turf. Awful. My preview of Game 7 is up on SI.com.

Some teams would have been knocked out by the Red Sox’s Game 5 comeback, the 2004 Yankees among them. I don’t think the Rays are one of those teams and expect them to wrap up the pennant tonight. My prediction for this series was Sox in seven, but only if the Rays fail to win it in six. Never mind that I got most of the others wrong (Dodgers in six? Not so much). My preview of tonight’s Game 6 is up on SI.com.

Congress is taking Assemblyman Richard Brodsky’s report about the new Yankee Stadium’s cooked books seriously. The charge is being led by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), who is chairman of the House’s Domestic Policy subcommittee:

In an e-mail interview on Thursday, Kucinich said that “our factual findings could be the basis for a later agency or court finding of legal liability.”

In the letter and interview, he cautioned that the I.R.S. could roll back the tax-exempt status of some or all of the stadium bonds. He also suggested that the I.R.S. could reject the Yankees’ pending request for tax-free status on an additional $366 million in bonds to complete the financing of the stadium.

One wonders if such action by the I.R.S. could have a direct effect on team payroll in the coming years, thereby making the Yankees’ proposed spending spree this winter one that severely handicaps their flexibility in subsequent offseasons. It seems a long shot, and I certainly wouldn’t expect the Yankees to alter their behavior in the near term, but this bears watching.

So the Yankees wrapped up their organizational meetings yesterday and they have their offseason plan in place. According to SI.com’s Jon Heyman, the plan appears to be get everyone:

The Yankees’ top executives have decided to pursue many of the game’s premier free agents, chief among them starting pitchers CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe, and first baseman Mark Teixeira, among others, this winter. They will also will pursue Jake Peavy, the Padres’ Cy Young-winning starting pitcher who may be available via trade, and may take a look at top free-agent outfielder Manny Ramirez . . . The Yankees will also consider bringing back starting pitcher Andy Pettitte, who has told them he’d like to return. . . . The Yankees may also consider Brewers pitcher Ben Sheets as yet another free-agent alternative, but there are some concerns about his injury history. If Mike Mussina decides he want to keep pitching, the Yankees would be interested in him, as well.

All this really tells us is that they Yankees aren’t ruling anyone out and do plan to be big spenders this winter. So that’s good, but before you get yourselves in a tizzy trying to figure out who the Yankees can trade for 2007 NL Cy Young award winner Peavy, bear this in mind from Pete Abe:

Barry Axelrod, Peavy’s agent, made it clear this afternoon that his client wants to stay in the National League. “It’s where he’s comfortable,” Axelrod said. “He knows the hitters and he enjoys that aspect of the game himself.”

In other news, Chien-Ming Wang is throwing off a mound, the Yankees have stated their intent to return Joba Chamberlain to the rotation for 2009, and Phil Hughes is tearing up the hitters’ paradise that is the Arizona Fall League with the new cutter he showed in his late-season return. That’s all very encouraging and means the Yankees are really only likely to sign two, three tops of the six non-Peavy pitchers listed above, which includes Pettitte and Mussina.

If it were up to me, I’d stay away from Burnett and Sheets due to their Pavano-esque injury histories. Sheets averaged 134 2/3 innings from 2005 to 2007 and was unable to help the Brewers in the playoffs due to reoccurring elbow pain. Burnett had made 30 starts just once his his nine major league seasons prior to his walk year this year. Instead, I’d go after Sabathia (of course), Lowe, and Moose, with Pettitte as a backup option.

Lowe will be 36 in June, so he shouldn’t be offered much more than a two-year deal. If he wants more, the Yanks can let him go and sign Pettitte, who has said he won’t sign elsewhere and should take another one-year deal. Pettitte was awful down the stretch, but blamed his poor performance on a loss of stamina due to his failure to stick to his usual winter workout regimen as he wanted to stay out of sight during the fallout from the Mitchell Report. Mussina might want another two-year deal if he decides to return, as a return may mean a commitment to go for 300 wins (he’s at 270), but he earned it by reestablishing himself as the staff ace this season. Given the fact that Wang, Chamberlain, and Hughes are in their team-control years, as is everyone in the bullpen except for Mariano Rivera and Damaso Marte (if the Yankees decide to pick up his $6 million option), a pair of two-year deals for Moose and Lowe would be extremely affordable and leave plenty of payroll room for the Yankees to throw Johan Santana money at Sabathia. Of course, CC, a career .261 hitter who connected for two home runs this year, may also prefer to stay in the NL where he can hit, but if that’s the case, the Yanks can up their offers to Lowe and especially Mark Teixeira, the latter of whom is the free agent I most hope the Yankees will sign this winter.

Joe Maddon has taken a team that was the worst in the majors a year ago and brought them to within one game of the World Series, but with a chance to win that one game tonight, he’s swapped out his best starter in favor of the one who gave up five runs in 4 1/3 innings in Game 2 . . . and it’s the right move. Now that’s mavericky! Of course the Rays may lose tonight, but they might have lost anyway like they did the last time they faced Daisuke Matsuzaka, and now they’re more likely to win Game 6. My preview’s up on SI.com.

And since I’ve got SNL in my LCS, here’s a little something for NL fans.

Something tells me Matt Stairs’ home run in Game 4 was the unofficial end of the Dodgers’ season. We’ll find out tonight. The Dodgers’ last hope is that their 24-year-old ace, Chad Billingsley, can beat the Phillies’ 24-year-old ace, Cole Hamels. I don’t see it happening. My preview is up on Si.com.

Random Thought: how often did the Dodgers’ 68-year-old manager accidentally call Billingsley “Clay Bellinger” this year?

The Rays beating Jon Lester last night has changed the look of the ALCS. I had figured Lester to give the Sox a 2-1 lead in the series with the Rays tying things up tonight in a favorable matchup between Tim Wakefield and Andy Sonnanstine. Now, if the Rays win tonight, they’re a game away from the World Series and the Sox will have to win two straight just to force a Game 7 and get Lester back to the hill. How quickly things can turn. My preview of tonight’s game is up on SI.com.

The Red Sox figure to win behind Jon Lester this evening. That puts the focus back on the Dodgers and Phillies in the late game. With Cole Hamels lurking as the Phillies’ starter for Game 5, the Dodgers need to win tonight just as much as they needed to win last night. Joe Torre is taking his chances with Derek Lowe on three-day’s rest rather than turn to the very young Clayton Kershaw or the very old Greg Maddux. Is it the right move? My previews are up on SI.com

The Rays pulled out their must-win game in extra-innings last night. Now, the Dodgers arrive home down 0-2 in the NLCS facing not just one, but a pair of must-win games. With Cole Hamels lurking as the Phillies’ Game 5 starter, the Dodgers simply cannot afford to lose either tonight or Monday and give Hamels a chance to pitch Philadelphia into the World Series Wednesday night. Fortunately for the Dodgers, tonight’s pitching matchup is in their favor. . . .

Read the rest on SI.com.

With Jon Lester looming in Game 3 as the ALCS is set to move up to Fenway, tonight’s Game 2 at the Trop is a must-win for the Rays. Unfortunately, Scott Kazmir hasn’t been sharp since May. My preview of tonight’s game is up over on SI.com.

The only uniform number the Tampa Bay Devil Rays have retired is Wade Boggs’ 12. Boggs’ 26, meanwhile, remains unretired (though also unused) in Boston. Here are a few other sartorial notes about this year’s LCS participants:

Nine major league clubs featured pinstripes on their home uniforms this year, but after the Yankees, whose use of the pinstripes dates back to 1915, the Phillies are the major league team with the longest uninterrupted use of pinstripes on their home uniform. The Phillies adopted the original version of their current home duds in 1950, the year the Whiz Kids got swept by the Yankees in the World Series. They had one major redesign that stretched from 1970 to 1991, but still featured pinstripes at home, then switched back to an updated version of the Wiz Kids uniform. The alternate home unis which the Phils wore in Game 1 of the NLDS are a variation on the the home duds they wore from 1946 to 1949.

Similarly, the Red Sox and Dodgers have been models of sartorial consistency. The design of the Red Sox’s home uniforms dates back to 1933 and, save for some variations striping and piping, the only significant change it has experienced since then was a six-year flirtation with pullover v-necks in the ’70s. As for the Dodgers, save for the addition, removal, and restoration of names on the back and the swapping out of the “B” on their caps for an interlocking “LA,” their home uniforms have remained unchanged since they introduced the red number on the front in 1952, while the distinctive Dodgers script dates back to 1938. Also, their current road uniforms are a variation on the road flannels they wore for their first 13 years in Los Angeles.

The Rays, of course, have brand new uniforms this year along with a brand new color scheme and their sort-of-new name. I think they could beat the Sox in six in the ALCS that starts tonight, but it’s more likely that the series will go to a seventh game, which means the Sox will win because they’ll have Jon Lester on the mound for Game 7. My preview of today’s games is up on SI.com

Sadly the Royals and Yankees will be watching from home, but the Phillies and Dodgers are set to square off in the NLCS for the fourth time since 1977 (and first since 1983). I think the Dodgers will take this in six games, their two loses coming the games started by Cole Hamels. My preview of Game 1, which pits Hamels against impending free agent Derek Lowe, is up on SI.com.

With no games to preview today, I’ve got a piece up on SI.com summarizing five things I took away from the ALDS. The first of them Yankee fans new already: Jon Lester, who was 2-0 with a 1.19 ERA in three starts against the Bombers this year, is the Red Sox’s new ace.