Over at Why I Like Baseball, Cecilia Tan posts an interview she conducted with Tommy Tresh back in 2004:

Tresh: You know, I grew up with my dad being a major league ball player and because everything was there in front of me all the time, I never paid a whole lot of attention to it, to stats and all that. But I tell you there are a lot of people out there today who do. Playing in these fantasy camps and so on you really run into people who know everything. They know everything about you. Those have really been fun, for the players as well as the people who come. I’ve been doing them for over 20 years now but some of my best friends are people I’ve met through fantasy camps. It’s like every year you have a week’s vacation with your friends. So it’s fantastic. As close friends as I’ve ever had. I’ve got friends of my own background that I might have known longer that I don’t see a week a year. But the thing that makes it all work is that everybody has a love of the game, they have that one thread of common thing, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a fireman from New York or you’re an attorney from Tampa, there are so many different variations of jobs and careers and so on that are all mixed together, and nobody wears that hat during that week, everybody wears a Yankee hat. It just really works well. I really enjoy it.

The Rays were seven outs away from a pennent and now they are one game away from going home.  And they have to go through Jon Lester.  Good Night and Good Luck.  Or something like that.  If Tampa finds a way to win Game 7 it will be a terrific story but they sure are facing an uphill battle.  And I certainly wouldn’t put any money on them, would you?

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.

“Memory is what I have,” Hannibal Lecter said to Clarisse Starling during a thoughtful moment in The Silence of the Lambs. That might be a strange introduction to this story, but given the struggles of the Yankees this past summer, the memories of 30 years ago are far more appealing to this long-term fan of the franchise.  It’s been three full decades, but the impressions of the fall of 1978 remained sharp and fully defined.

It’s still the most memorable game I have ever seen. It was a tie-breaking play-off game that took place on October 2 that season, when the Yankees and Red Sox grappled in Fenway Park’s October twilight to decide the championship of the American League East. If you’re old enough to have experienced that game, you remember exactly where you were that fall afternoon.

Ridden with injuries to key players like Goose Gossage, and laden with controversies involving the triumvirate of Reggie Jackson, Billy Martin, and George Steinbrenner, the Yankees had endured a miserable first half of the 1978 season. On July 19, the Yankees reached a low-water mark when they fell 14 games back of the Red Sox. All seemed so incurably lost that Martin’s decision to resign four days later, which paved the way for the hiring of Bob Lemon, struck most observers as a move that would pay benefits the following season—and not any time sooner.

Lemon, a Hall of Fame pitcher who had received praise for his calm managing of the White Sox in the mid-seventies, didn’t see it that way. He restored order quickly by ignoring a fit of temper thrown by Jackson, and by fining Mickey Rivers and Roy White for breaking team rules. Under Lemon’s calming leadership, and aided by the continuing domination of ace left-hander Ron Guidry, the Yankees regrouped and slowly climbed back into contention in the American League East. A New York City newspaper strike didn’t hurt, either; annoying beat writers like Henry Hecht were no longer around to fan the flames of Yankee controversy.

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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.

Happy Friday, Peoples.

And while yer at it, shake it, shake it:

By Jeff Pearlman

My family hated baseball.

That was the worst thing about growing up a sports fan at 24 Emerald Lane in Mahopac, N.Y. My mom could not care less about sports. My dad could not care less about sports. My brother could not care less about sports.

Me? I cared. Boy, did I care. My walls were lined with one poster after another—Rickey Henderson next to Wesley Walker next to George Foster next to Bernard King. My closets were stuffed—stuffed!—with baseball cards, 30 … 40 together, rubber-banded in ways that left Mario Soto and Dan Pasqua positioned in the most awkward of poses. Dozens of baseball caps lined up neatly behind my bed.

But nobody cared.

Then, one day, my dad asked if I had any interest in going to a Yankee game. It was 1985 and Rich Green, one of his employees at Herz Stewart & Co., had an extra ticket. "You guys both love baseball," Dad said. "He wants to take you."

I still remember walking into the stadium that first time. We sat along the third base line, and my posters had come to life. There was Ken Griffey, Sr., his hat tipped high atop the front of his Afro, stretching calves the size of large dogs. There was Henderson, the great base stealer, twitching his fingers into white batting gloves. There was Henry Cotto, uhm, well, yeah. Henry Cotto. The grass was as green as a 7-Up label, Bob Sheppherd’s voice even more God-like then the one I’d heard on TV all those times. My seat was made of a hard blue plastic, and as the innings passed I must have bounced up and down upon it, oh, 500 times. Like Victor Mata, I was just happy to be there.

I’ve been told a game was even played that day. I recall little of it, only that Dave Winfield made an amazing leaping catch into the rightfield stands and that Butch Wynegar started at catcher. Doesn’t matter, though. What sticks with me is the magic of the day; the feeling of walking into a building and knowing love.

True love.

Jeff Pearlman is a writer for ESPN.com.

As I was walking down 50th street last night after work I thought about a friend who recently was in town. He couldn’t stand walking in New York–or at least in midtown where he was staying.  He complained to me about the congestion.  "Why are people stopping to take pictures of a cop on a horse?" 

As a native New Yorker, I take it for granted that as I walk I’m thinking two people ahead, and that slipping in and around clueless pedestrains is second nature to me.

On the subway platform I ran into a guy I used to know in the movie business.  A music editor.  I hadn’t seen him in a long time.  We met in 1988–twenty years ago, fer cryin’ out loud–when I was a messenger and he was the music editor on The Last Temptation of Christ.  He snuck me into a crew screening which was one of the highlights of my summer.  I recall that I was sent on a delivery to 5th avenue and 58th street with twenty minutes to spare before the screening.  I ran from the Brill Building on Broadway and 49th street and back, dodging through the crowds doing my best Barry Sanders, and was a hot, sweaty mess, but I made the screening.  The movie had been scheduled to debut at the New York Film Festival but there was so much commotion over it, they rushed the post-production schedule and it was released in August.  When the screening was over, I remember Michael Powell, the acclaimed British director and husband to Scorsese’s longtime editor, Thelma Schoonmaker, a frail man, stood up and remarked on Peter Gabriel’s score.

I mentioned the incident to the music editor last night and he said, "I got in trouble for that."  Which I also remembered.  We smiled about it.  Then talked about how much the business has changed, who has died who is still around.  Then we said goodbye.  But I’ll never forget how exclusive I felt, sitting in that screening, or how this dude went out of his way to do a solid for an eager young kid when he knew he’d get balled out for it. 

The Yankee brass met yesterday and Hank Steinbrenner told the AP:  "The plan as of right now is [Joba] Chamberlain is going to be a starter," the Yankees co-chairman said. "Everybody’s pretty much in agreement with that." (King, NY Post) 

Apparently, Andy Pettitte would like to return.  Perhaps Mike Mussina will be back as well, although I’m less sure about that.  Still, it would be cool to see Chamberlain begin the year in the starting rotation.  That would be nifty.

They won’t die.  The Red Sox just don’t go away.  They are a tough out and as much as I dislike them, I admire that as defending World Champs, they are making it difficult for the young Rays, who kicked away a shot at going to the World Serious last night.  Evan Longoria with an awful play in the eighth  (after making a nice pick) and then Gabe Gross with perhaps the worst pressure throw in recent memory helped the Sox tie the game.  It was a forgone conclusion that the Sox would win it in the ninth.  When Carlos Pena came to bat with runners on first and second and just one out in the top of the inning, Chip Carey said, "Pena’s only hit into two double plays all year…" 

The kiss of death…Thanks, Skip.

Hey, the Rays now have a painful moment they’ve got to live with.  They broke their cherry.

Funny thing is, I still think the Rays will win this series, in six.  As a friend of mine pointed out last night, my belief about momentum vanished after that Albert Pujols dinger off Brad Lidge didn’t secure the series for the Cards a few years back.  I sure wouldn’t be surprised if the Sox took it in seven.  Upset, yes?  Shocked, no.

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.

By Mark Feinsand

Since I started covering the Yankees in 2001, I have witnessed some of the most memorable moments in history at Yankee Stadium. Not just Yankees history or Yankee Stadium history, but baseball history.

The Aaron Boone home run. The Red Sox ALCS comeback. Roger Clemens’ 300th win. Tino Martinez and Scott Brosius hitting dramatic homers in the bottom of the ninth on consecutive nights in the 2001 World Series.

But when I was asked what moment stands out to me from my time as a fan (1978-2000), there was one that jumped to mind immediately.

It was Tuesday, October 17, and the Yankees were trying to close out the Mariners in Game 6 of the ALCS. The Mets had closed out the Cardinals in the ALCS the night before, and a win over Seattle would send the Yanks into the first true Subway Series between the crosstown rivals.

As a kid growing up in New York in the ’80s, I had many more friends that were Mets fans than Yankees fans, since the 1986 Mets captivated the city and seemed to turn most 10-12 year olds into Mets fans. But with a father who grew up in the Bronx, I wasn’t about to be a convert (He did help me become a San Francisco Giants fan, however, having moved to the Bay Area in 1989, but that’s another story). A World Series between the Yankees and Mets would be the most memorable baseball week in my lifetime.

I was at the game with my buddy Matt Sadofsky, his sister, Janna, and their father, Lenny. Sadofsky and I were fraternity brothers at Boston University, and as Yankees fans living in Boston, we had become good friends while fending off the Sox fans that surrounded us.

We watched the ALDS games at a sports bar in 1995 (that was the year of the Baseball Network, so the Red Sox series against the Indians was on local TV, forcing us to spend what little money we had to watch at the Sports Depot) and sped home in about 38 seconds to watch Jim Leyritz hit his homer after the manager told us they were closing up.

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Tommy Tresh died yesterday. Vic Ziegel writes that Tresh was a nice guy, always available to chat with reporters, even if he didn’t have much to offer. I hunted around my Yankee library last night, found some stuff on Tresh, and Ziegel was right, he wasn’t especially interesting. But he was a good Yankee and Ziegel shares his one good Tresh story here.

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?

Mark Lamster has a nifty piece over at YFSF titled Fall Classic:

October is a bittersweet time for baseball fans. A long and sometimess difficult season comes to an end with the excitement (and often disappointment) of the postseason. We hate to see it go, but to be free of our rooting obligations is also a kind of liberation. There’s no greater consolation, whether your team’s been eliminated from play or just taken one on the nose in a tough game, than the splendors of autumn, especially in the northeast.

Check it out.

By Hank Waddles

I have only been to Yankee Stadium three times, but each visit holds a significant spot in my memories. My first visit changed my life. I was born in Detroit, Michigan, and geography told me to root for the Tigers until at the age of seven in the summer of 1977 I convinced my parents to spend one day of our New York City vacation at Yankee Stadium. Catfish Hunter started the game, Chris Chambliss launched a late pinch-hit home run to bring the Yanks from behind, and Sparky Lyle got the win in relief. My strongest memory from that afternoon, though, is of a play that wasn’t made. Graig Nettles lunged into the stands in pursuit of a foul pop-up, and I was confused when the crowd cheered for him even though he hadn’t been able to make the grab. “They’re cheering because he gave it his all,” my mother explained. He gave it his all. To this day, whenever I hear that phrase I think of Graig Nettles.

My third visit was bittersweet. Last month my family and I flew across the country to New York from our home in California so that my children could one day say they had been to the original Yankee Stadium, the place where Ruth and Gehrig, Mantle and DiMaggio, Yogi and Whitey, Reggie and Thurman, Jeter and Rivera had all played. A-Rod homered, Jeter picked up four hits, Mike Mussina coasted to his sixteenth win, and everyone went home happy, but a little sad that we’d never visit again.

Neither of those games, as memorable as they were, measures up to the visit I made in August of 1997. A friend’s wedding brought me to the east coast, and as fate would have it, Don Mattingly Day was scheduled while I was in the area.

Mattingly, for me, was everything, a bright light in a dark time. The previous generation of Yankee fans had Bobby Murcer to guide them through the wilderness, but Mattingly was better; in my teenage mind, he was legendary. I was fourteen years old when he outlasted Dave Winfield for the American League batting title, and I remember tracking each of his hits in a computer program I’d written. (This was long before the instant gratification of the internet, and I couldn’t wait for the stats in the Sunday sports section.) A few years later, just before he was robbed of what should’ve been his second MVP award, I announced to my mom that I would one day name my son after him. (As it happened, I didn’t, but I was wearing a Yankee jersey in the delivery room when my son Henry was born.) Even when I got to college I mirrored Mattingly’s batting stance during IM softball games, crouching low and turning my front toe towards home plate.

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Mmm, Mmm, Good.

I have watched all of the playoff games but it wasn’t until Willie Aybar’s blast last night that I made an audible noise.  I jumped up off the couch and yelled, then crossed the room to high five my wife.  She saw me coming and was scared, so she slipped her hand behind her back like a turtle retreating into its shell.  She didn’t want any part of a stinger.

I watched the game last night with a mixture of glee and dread.  I’ve effectively blocked out most of the details of the 2004 collapse but it won’t ever go away, at least not yet.  And of course, the Indians blew a 3-1 lead against the Sox last season too, so no, I don’t think Boston is out of it.  I won’t believe the Sox are done until they are done.  Dude, I was nervous when they scored their fourth run of the game last night, and when I went over the possible pitching match-ups for Games 5, 6, and 7, I convinced myself that the Rays are in trouble.

Still, that game was a Lu Lu.  And when I wasn’t being nuerotic, I enjoyed every last minute of it. 

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.

Bobby Meacham is just destined to be a hapless figure in Yankee history.

Those of us who remember all too well his misadventures as a player in the Eighties can’t be shocked by the news that Meacham has been fired as the Yankees’ third base coach. Pete Abe has the details–and also links to an item by Mark Feinsand reporting that pitching instructor Rich Monteleone was canned too.

Think Tino Martinez will become a coach? Or maybe perhaps this will mark the return of Lucky Luis Sojo?