Tonight gives that ol’ Yankee Game 2 stand-by, Andy Pettitte.

YANKS

Derek Jeter SS
Ichiro Suzuki LF
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Robinson Cano 2B
Nick Swisher RF
Mark Teixeira 1B
Russell Martin C
Curtis Granderson CF
Eduardo Nunez DH

ORIOLES

Nate McLouth LF
J.J. Hardy SS
Chris Davis RF
Adam Jones CF
Matt Wieters C
Mark Reynolds 1B
Jim Thome DH
Manny Machado 3B
Robert Andino 2B

Never mind the one-game lead: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture by Heather Landis; drawing by Larry Roibal]

Today’s cherce is brought to you by Larry Roibal.

Mr. Murdoch and Mr. Dolan…

…looks like I will be one of many who won’t be watching the Whirled Serious.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

Here are some fearless ALCS predictions from the crew at Bronx Banter.

First of all, I predict that I’ll have worked myself up into a state of near fury/exhaustion before the first pitch is thrown tonight. I’ve got nothing against Texas. I’ve never been there, other than a stop at the Dallas airport, but mostly, I admire Texas. But I predict that I’ll be cursing it up-and-down for the duration of the series. The sight of former president Bush will be fodder enough to get me going I figure.

I also predict that my wife will have had it up to hear with me by Saturday night. 

As much as it bothers me to say, I think the Yanks will win the series. At least they should. The thought of them losing…no, there’s no way to make that palatable. Ron Washington is cool, sure, and I’ve got nothing against Michael Young. I’ve always loved Vlady. But collectively, the Rangers come across as a college team, youthful spirit, antler-horns,  hollering, rah-rah. And why shouldn’t they next to the business-like Bombers? Still, that doesn’t mean I have to find it “refreshing.” 

I figure Mo is going to blow one game and the Yanks will beat Lee.  Oh, and if A.J. Burnett gets a start, he’ll do okay.

The Rangers will steal at will against Posada.

I don’t have a feeling about Alex Rodriguez but he’s due to catch fire and be a monster. He was terrific down the stretch. I’d be as geeked as the next guy if he goes on a tear.

Also, I fear Nelson Cruz.

Matt Blankman:

Yankees in 5. Superstition makes me nervous calling for a Yankee victory in fewer than 6 games, but really, if my thoughts and actions have such little impact on my own life, they can’t possibly affect a major league baseball game. The Yankees will drop one in Texas, find a way to win Cliff Lee’s start, and win the pennant in the Bronx. While I’m reading tea leaves, I see another effective start for Hughes, at least one Yankee bullpen implosion and some big hits from Mr. Cano. Also, look for some creative Bronx cheers for Cliff Lee – it’s not often you have to boo a guy you’re simultaneously wooing for next season.

Jon DeRosa:

I predict that the most annoying Ranger batter will be Michael Young, most annoying pitcher will be a tie between the twoDdarrens, and all three of them will be eclipsed by Nolan Ryan, who will be on camera so often that he’ll be the number-two most-annoying sports figure this fall (Nobody’s touching Favre. execpt Favre, obviously).

Diane Firstman:

In no particular order…

Derek Jeter will be replaced by something with greater mobility and range …. Dalek Jeter.

Nelson Cruz’s “Boomstick” will be seized as a “weapon of run production”.

Even prior to his Game 3 start, Cliff Lee will use his extraordinary abilities to sense that there are more than the supposed 33 miners in that Chilean mine, and fly his “invisible jet” to Chile to assist in the rescue of two more miners.

Jorge Posada will be caught in a rundown . . . by Bengie Molina.

The Steinbrenner Memorial will gain sentience during the 7th-inning stretch in game 3. Its eyes will start to glow bright red, and the mouth will move, singing “God Bless America”. Josh Hamilton will then be vaporized by beams from the memorial’s eyes.

Joe Girardi will relieve A.J. Burnett during the fifth inning of game 4, and bring in the XXL Chalupa.

Bruce Markusen:

Ever since the Rangers eliminated the Rays, all I’ve read and heard about is the looming presence of Cliff Lee. Well, I think the Lee Factor is being overstated. At best, he will make two starts in the Championship Series, and that’s only if the Rangers extend the series to seven games. Lee is obviously very good, but he’s not even the best pitcher in the American League, nor in this particular postseason. And the Yankees have reached Lee in recent memory, including last year’s Game Five loss in the World Series.

It will be important for the Yankees to win in six, so as to avoid having to face Lee on the road in a decisive seventh game. I think the Yankees can do it, because of the advantages they have in pitching depth, lineup strength at the bottom, and of course, the closer’s role. The Yankees’ lineup is so deep that it will give the Rangers’ bullpen repeated matchup problems; Ron Washington had little confidence in using his relievers, outside of Neftali Feliz, in the Division Series, so that trend says a lot about his mostly inexperienced corps of relievers.

A lot has been made of the Rangers’ speed against Jorge Posada, but the Rays would have posed an even bigger problem because they have even more speed than Texas. The Rangers have one big-time base stealer in leadoff man Elvis Andrus, but he was also caught 15 times in 47 attempts and is susceptible to slumps; against good pitching, he can be kept off the bases. Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz have good speed, but they are not blazers. I think the Rangers’ speed can be controlled.

So what do I expect? The Rangers are a very good team, but the Yankees had the better record, against tougher competition, and I think that should hold forth. I expect a good, competitive series, much like last year’s ALCS against the Angels, with the Yankees winning in six.

Emma Span:

Yankees 3, Rangers 3: In Game 7, Cliff Lee ascends to a higher inter-dimensional plane midway through the third inning, and Bud Selig declares a tie.

Hank Waddles:

The funny thing about sports is that it only takes a game or two for the conventional wisdom to swing around a hundred and eighty degrees. It wasn’t too long ago that people were expecting the Yankees to bow out of these playoffs early. They were too old, the starting rotation was a disaster, and — oh, yeah — they were really old. After three games against the Twins and six days resting, they’re suddenly the overwhelming favorites to reach the World Series. It would be easy for me to just agree with everyone and say something safe like “Yankees in 7,” but that would be boring. Here’s what will happen.

Game 1
Do you really think CC will have two clunkers in a row? Not likely. Eight innings from Sabathia, one from Mo, turn out the lights.

Game 2
I fully realize that any non-Yankee fan reading this next statement will vomit all over his keyboard, but here it is: Phil Hughes strikes me as a true Yankee. There. I said it. He just seems to get it. He says the right things when he wins, and he says the right things when he loses. Unlike other guys on the staff, he stands up and takes the heat when he pitches poorly and doesn’t try to convince us that he actually pitched well, even though we all watched and know he didn’t. (I’m looking at you, Joba.) But back to Game 2. Hughes will be good enough to win, maybe even great. Yanks win this one, too.

Game 3
I love Andy Pettitte, but he’s pitching against Cliff Lee. Lee will give up a lead-off single to Jeter, a blooper that arcs just over the infield. Then he’ll retire everyone else. His line will look like this: 9 IP, 1 H, 0 BB, 27 Ks.

Game 4
Now here’s where I get a little crazy. A.J. Burnett will win this game. Stick with me, though. I know he’s got 15 losses. I know that if his ERA were a holiday it would be Memorial Day. But over the past two years Burnett has never ever pitched the way I expected him to on a given night. My expectation here, of course, is that he’ll implode in the second inning and give way to a conga line of Dustin Moseley, Sergio Mitre, and Ed Whitson. But to paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, if every instinct I’ve ever had about A.J. Burnett has been wrong, then the opposite would have to be correct. A.J. Burnett will win this game.

Game 5
CC closes out the series with another dominant win, wrapping up his second straight ALCS MVP in the process. But here’s the interesting thing. As Sabathia leaves the mound to tumultuous applause with one out in the ninth, the cameras follow him as heads to the Yankee dugout and finds a seat next to… Cliff Lee! Figuring there’s no need to proceed with the usual “we’ll evaluate everything in the off-season” charade, Brian Cashman drew up a contract during the seventh inning stretch and Lee will ink it as soon as the final out is recorded. Cashman, of course, will deny all this, but he will let slip that a press conference has been scheduled for early December.

So there you have it. Yanks in 5.

Will Weiss:

Yankees in 5

Reason: Much has been made of the Yankees being 1-4 against the Rangers in Texas in September. If you trot out such lockdown relievers as Joba Chamberlain, Chad Gaudin, and Sergio Mitre, you’d be 1-4 against any team with a respectable offense, let alone the Rangers. At least there wasn’t a Royce Ring sighting.

The news of Hughes pitching Game 2 positions the Yankee rotation to be L-R-L-R-L-R-L if it goes the distance, which keeps the Rangers’ lineup
off-balance. You can see the method behind Girardi’s madness. Hughes has yet to allow an earned run in three appearances in Arlington, amassing a 2-0 record, a WHIP of 0.46, and holding the Rangers to a .064 batting average. Confidence has to be high. Plus, it gives Pettitte extra days to rest the groin. It’s conceivable that the Yankees return home with a 2-0 series lead, which could mean AJ Burnett’s Game 4 could mean a sweep, or put them in position to go up 3-1. At that point, I like my chances with CC at home to lock it down.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

I figure Andy Pettitte is a borderline Hall of Famer, but if he keeps winning playoff games, who knows?

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

It’s cool in New York this morning. I can only imagine it will be nippy in Twinkieland come tomorrow night. Playoffs in the air…never gets old.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

…When you’re the Boss.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

Joe Posnanski asks the question over at SI.com.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

It used to be that hitting four-hundred home runs gave you an automatic ticket to Cooperstown, but then Dave Kingman had to go and mess things up by hitting 442 home runs.  Since any rational person knew that Kingman most definitely did NOT belong in the Hall of Fame, the entrance requirements were rewritten.  Now 500 was the milestone you’d have to hit to assure your place in the Hall, and for a long time that number seemed nonnegotiable.  But you know what happened next.

If you take a look at the top twenty-five players on the all-time home run list and scan up starting with Eddie Murray’s 504 , you’ll see a host of names that will never be enshrined in Cooperstown.  There’s certainly a lingering drug cloud that will keep several of them out, people like Barry Bonds and the Unholy Trinity of McGwire, Sosa, and Palmeiro, but there are others who simply don’t seem to belong.  Gary Sheffield comes to mind, drugs or no drugs.  And I know Jim Thome‘s had a nice career and will finish with more home runs than all but six or seven guys, but somehow I don’t think Hall of Famer when I look at him.

So what do 600 home runs mean for Alex Rodríguez?  It was just a few years ago that people looked at him completely differently.  Boxing had a string of Great White Hopes, but A-Rod was baseball’s Great Clean Hope.  He was the one who could race to the top of the charts, surpassing Bonds and scoring a victory for what we hoped was clean baseball.  (This, by the way, is the part where I resist the urge to launch into a diatribe on the hypocrisy of a sport that allowed amphetamine use for decades, or start talking about the slippery slope of ligament transplants and lasix surgery.  But I digress.)

But with great hope comes great disappointment, and so it was with Rodríguez.  The optimists among us suddenly had no ammunition against the pessimists.  Maybe everyone really was juicing.  Maybe nothing was real.  And so when A-Rod came to bat with 599 home runs in Cleveland and Kansas City, people booed as they waited for history.  There weren’t as many asterisks as we saw in the stands when Bonds was chasing 755, but they were definitely there.

So the question now is, will Alex Rodríguez be elected to the Hall of Fame?  Even though he may end up with something in the neighborhood of 800 home runs, there are those who believe the doors to the Hall are closed to him forever.  Buster Olney doesn’t think his colleagues will ever elect him, but Olney himself has voted for McGwire and plans to vote for Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, and A-Rod once they’re eligible.  Here’s the money quote from his larger explanation:

I think most of the elite players were using performance-enhancing drugs, and within the context of that time — when baseball wasn’t doing anything to stop the growth of drug use — this was what the sport was. And we don’t know exactly who did what. There are a lot of superstar players who were broadly suspected within the sport of having used steroids, but they avoided the crossfire; the only difference between those guys and McGwire was that McGwire had Jose Canseco as a teammate. And here’s the other thing — we don’t know exactly who did what, and when they did it. So I think in order to have a consistent standard when considering the steroid-era players, you either have to vote for no one at all, or set aside the steroid issue and just vote for the best players of the era.

Alex Rodríguez, then, emerges as the ultimate test case.  Most of the big-name steriod users saw their names dragged in the mud after their careers had ended.  A-Rod had the sense to admit what he had done, which might count for something with some writers, and by the time he retires he will have played six to eight years — presumably clean — following that admission.  Certainly some writers will never forget the stain, but I hope that enough do.  Alex Rodríguez belongs in the Hall of Fame.

[Photo Credit: Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated/Larry Roibal]

Let’s hope this ain’t no real skid here, and just an old-fashioned two-game losing streak. Either way, the Boss would not be pleased…

Time for the Yanks answer last night’s ass-whuppin’ with one of their own.

Never mind the formalities: Let’s Go Yan-Kees!

(I was fool enough to call Alex Rodriguez’s 600th last week so what do I know; don’t know if he’ll get it tonight but it says here the Big Puma will have a big game.)

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

I watched most of the George Steinbrenner special on YES last night and thought they did a nice job. I especially liked hearing some of John Sterling’s stories (and it made me reconsider Sterling again; how do I ever let a guy who is this funny get me upset?). The thing I noticed most was Yankee players–from Derek Jeter to retired players like Paul O’Neill–talking about Steinbrenner’s generosity. Financial generosity, that is. David Cone was candid in a phone interview and said that the Boss helped Ron Guidry out of financial problems after Gator retired.

Once you took his money, you were open to his abuse. But for the most part, no matter how ugly things got, once a player retired or left the Yankees, Steinbrenner usually invited them back, wanted them ”part of the family.” He brought them back with money and attention. Guys who hated the Boss when they played for him, Nettles, Gossage, Gamble, they all hang around the Yankees these days, go to fantasy camps, they get paid.

Money equals love, or something close to it. And speaking of which, because of a tax-law, the Steinbrenner family gets off easy in George’s death. If not for this bit of fortunate timing, who knows, perhaps they’d have to sell a part of the team.  

The New York Post has a terrific tribute to Steinbrenner today, including a funny column by Larry Brooks, and an insightful one by Fay Vincent.

Up in Boston, as usual, Charlie Pierce nails it.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]

Thanks to you Banterites who responded so nicely to my post! I read all of you every day, and have the utmost respect for all of you. Hell, even the jazz talk is right on point.

I wanted to give you one more Shep nugget to chew on. I mentioned in the post a handwritten poem he had showed me (on his own Yankee stationery), that he had penned after an infamous incident. He showed it to me on the sly, and his real fear about it getting around was that it would ‘get him fired’, so seeing as that’s not an issue now, I’ll take the liberty of issuing this as a ‘Banter Exclusive’.

I don’t think it will get him fired, or me in any trouble (I hope not, anyway), and you all deserve to hear it, Plus, it’s brilliant, concise, and pretty damn funny:

“O, Kevin Brown let his team down
When he fractured his hand on the wall.
Better instead he had fractured his head,
Then it wouldn’t have mattered at all!”

I, too, wish there could be a book of these published. He said he had ‘hundreds’ of them!

Editor’s Note: Bill Madden has a tribute to Sheppard today that includes another poem…Don’t miss it.

Ed Alstrom plays the organ on the weekends at Yankee Stadium.

[Drawing by Larry Roibal]