Upon Do it Again

The Boston Red Sox just won the World Series.

They swept aside a Colorado Rockies team that had an incredible run through the playoffs, winning 4 straight. For the most part, the outcomes of these games were never in much doubt.

You have to tip your hat to a team that won the most games in the regular season, came back from a 3-1 series deficit in the second round, and smashed their opponent in the Series.

This marks the second title in the past 4 years for the Red Sox, which is a very impressive feat. The only thing I can say to rightfully cocky Boston fans is: Do it again.

You have now won 2 world series in baseball's modern era... do it again.

You dominated your opponent in the series... do it again.

You won the AL pennant in inspiring fashion... do it again.

You won the AL East over the Yankees... do it again.

You won the most games in the majors... do it again.

Do all these things, again and again and again. Make the playoffs every single year. Win your division every year. Walk into every stadium you play in for a decade and have your opponent get up as much as they can to play you. Boston is on its way, but remember that Florida has won two titles in the modern era as well. Your championship should be enjoyed, and you now have the keys to the AL East. We will forget that you finished third in 2006, and say that the balance of power has shifted. The Yankees are without a manager and their superstar 3b appears on his way out the door. They are a team in flux, and you are riding high.

The only thing you have to do, is do it again. And again. For years, and decades. Do it 20 more times, and come close every year you don't. Then you can start comparing yourselves to the Yankees.

Upon Opinions on Torre

When word emerged that Joe Torre would not be returning as the manager of the New York Yankees, the resulting furor had every Tom, Dick, and Sally offering their opinions on the unsuccessful contract negotiations.

The story began when reporter Ian O'Connor obtained a quote from Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, where the Boss said: "His job is on the line," the Yankees' owner said in a phone interview. "I think we're paying him a lot of money. He's the highest-paid manager in baseball, so I don't think we'd take him back if we don't win this series." Both fans and reporters wondered if this was a motivational technique, or signs of Steinbrenner returning to his "what have you done for me lately"/Billy Martin ways.

When the Yankees lost to the Indians 3-1 in the ALDS, speculation regarding Torre's future continued. It ended late last week, when both Torre and the Yankees announced that he had turned down their contract offer, and would not be returning to the team. While the proposed contract would still have had Torre as by far baseball's highest paid manager, it included performance incentives which would have paid him approximately $1 million per playoff round reached. The contract would also have automatically renewed for the 2009 season if the Yankees had reached the World Series.

During a news conference held on Friday Torre was, for the most part, gracious in his exit. However, he did reveal that he felt insulted by the lower base salary, with the inclusion of performance incentives as what he said the Yankees termed "motivation".

So, where do I stand on the subject? For now, I only have bulleted thoughts.

• I have been a fan of the Yankees since 1991-1992, and remember Buck Showalter and the esteemed Stump Merril as managers.
• I was a big fan of Torre during his tenure, and thought he did a great job as manager of the team most years.
• I think that Torre was a fantastic regular season manager (as shown by his record with the Yankees). He knows how to guide a team, first of champions and later of superstars, to optimal regular season performance. He always got his team to the playoffs, and almost always won the AL East.
• I think that Torre was faced with a unique job among all other managers in baseball. He won a title in his first year as skipper, and 4 in his first 5. Expectations were that this would continue, and the payroll for the team and pressure adjusted accordingly. The New York media is relentless, and Torre never had any scrapes.
• Persevering through his own poor health, and that of his family was admirable.
• Torre never became a good bullpen manager. Ramiro Mendoza, Jeff Nelson, and Mike Stanton were luxuries which he got used to, and never adequately replaced. A more than solid long man, and a lefty-righty combo who threw hard from unique angles often served games to the untouchable Mariano on a platter.
• Tanyon Sturtze, Tom Gordon, Paul Quantrill, Scott Proctor...etc. All these guys have had their arms nearly fall off due to the constant use that Torre put them to. HOWEVER (italics for emphasis)- Joe Torre had to win his division each year, and make the playoffs. He could not afford not to do so. Therefore, he used his best guys to win games in September vs Boston, but in my opinion, he also felt compelled to use them in 5-4 games at Tampa or Seattle in May. Being a Yankee during the must-win times we live in now meant that the relievers who performed best were used, because losing a game b/c Torre ran one of the average guys out there was not an option.
• While he has received an increasingly potent lineup, Torre's pitchers never matched the level that he had with Cone, Pettite, Wells, Clemens the younger, Jimmy Key, El Duque the somewhat younger...etc. the recent Yankee bomb squads can ravage a 3-4-5 starter, and get an ace in trouble. In the playoffs, you get as many aces as a team has, and your own pitchers have to match that.
• The 4 titles the Yankees won were littered with heroic moments. You need these breaks to win it all. However, Torre often showed signs of being outmanaged tactically. The Yankee lineups of recent years may have lulled him into some managerial complacency, which can't happen in the playoffs.

I've got more thoughts rattling, but I'd like to hear what other people think too. Anyone? Bueller?

Upon Expansion and Bad Sports Cities

Rather than letting this develop in the comments, I think the topic deserves its own post.

In my last post, I criticized Arizona D-backs fans for not filling their stadium during the NLCS. I said that Phoenix is not a good sports town. . In the comments of the post, one of my readers took exception to this assertion. It grew into a discussion of expansion teams and contractionThe most recent comment is copied below :

"These expansion teams exist b/c the greedy, short-sighted pigs who own mlb teams can charge huge expansion fees to some rich guy looking for a new toy or status symbol and then divide the expansion fee equally among themselves without any regard for the impact on the sport or the league-wide diminution in the quality of play caused by expansion. Then the guy who bought the team has to operate on a tight budget b/c he is already out the franchise fee and the team has no existing fanbase and finds it difficult to get a following due to the restraints on the budget caused in part by the huge expansion fee. I agree that there should be fewer teams, but the bigger problem in baseball is the lack of revenue sharing which creates the large divide between the big and small market teams. What did both Arizona and Florida do immediately after winning the world series? Dump salary and rebuild because they lost big $ in the years they won by paying salaries they could not afford. KC is not a good example of a team where there should be no franchise. KC was a great baseball town and an incredible franchise until it could no longer keep up with the changing finances of the league. KC is an example of a team hurt by the lack of revenue sharing. The fan support would be there if the team had the ability to compete, which it can't because of the lack of revenue sharing and/or salary cap. Go look up their wins and losses and attendance figures in the 70's and 80's before the big market teams really pulled away from the small market teams when they began to rake in the big bucks in the 90's with their cable tv contracts (and now their own networks). I'm pretty sure that the figures will back me up here. But I digress.

This started with my taking exception with your calling Phoenix a bad sports town b/c it couldn't sell out games. My point is that if you're gonna expand into these markets (and I agree that there has been too much expansion), it will take time for the teams to get a large and loyal following and that it's not fair to look down at the people who live in these towns until the team is strongly established there. How do you think the Yankees' attendance was when they were playing in the Giants' shadows during the first 20 years of existence? Should they have been eliminated b/c they were a loser franchise which drew virtually no fans at the Polo Grounds? These things take time.

I read several years ago that an independent study done for baseball in the 90's as to what city could best support an expansion frachise based on population and wealth in the region concluded that New York could take a third team before any of the cities without a team could take a first team. Living in a wealthy region with 18 million people does not make us better sports fans."

I want to address a few of the points raised in this comment.

• First, there is revenue sharing in baseball. The Yankees pay other teams almost $80 million each year. Add this to the luxury tax the team pays and it amounts to over $100 million. This is not a small figure by any stretch.
• In 2006, MLB transferred a total of $323 million in revenue sharing. Again, this is a huge amount of money.
• As for the Kansas City Royals: 1) their owner is the CEO of Wal-Mart. I hear that company earns a little bit of money 2) despite receiving the largest revenue sharing payments in 2004 and 2005,the Kansas City Royals reduced their payroll by 23%. other teams do the same, pocketing money which should be used to improve the team, or dumping it in to Gil Meche 3) the Royals have been out of it since approximately 1993 with the Cone dump, but really havent made an impact since 86-87. Scheurholtz killed them when he left.
• I can't see how a comparison of the Yankees in the 1910's and the glut of baseball teams now really applies. There is no other team in Phoenix to draw baseball fans with no previous allegiance away. New Mexico, Utah and Nevada have no team. Why can't they draw to Arizona? Hell, where are the 2001 bandwagon fans?
• Living in the NY metro-area does not make us better sports fans. However, I don't know if you ever see the NBA Suns games, or the NHL Coyotes games, or the Arizona Cardinal games. The Phoenix crowds are pretty poor almost across the board. Again, if you can't find 40,000 people in your major American city to go to a baseball game with the World Series on the line, you are a bad sports town.

Upon Further Playoff Thoughts

As The Colorado Rockies push on toward a sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, ESPN's Jayson Stark has some interesting facts on the place their recent run of wins has in baseball history.

The Rocks are on a big-time roll right now, which would be getting even more press if anyone cared about Colorado vs Arizona. The fault doesn't lie with the two teams left in the NL, but with the Mets, Phillies and Cubs for failing to give their fans a team to cheer for.

The Colorado fans (who set an all-time single season attendance record which even the Yankees have not been able to best) are into the series big-time. Judging by this series, as well as Bronco, Avalance, and Nugget games, Denver is a pretty good sports town. Too bad Arizona clearly is not. Empty playoff seats are for WNBA games, not the NLCS.

I know I am biased, but I guarantee that plenty of the fans who aren't watching Cleveland v Boston would be watching NYY v Boston. Too bad the Yanks couldn't oblige.

Upon Number 200

Seems like this will be my 200th post as a blogger, not counting back and forth comments which often become longer than the original post. So if you are a reader of mine, thanks for sticking with me and reading these 200 posts. I hope it was worth it.

Upon Reasons for the Loss

Joe Torre tightens up, and won't make his guys move with hit and runs and straight steals. A team waiting for a HR may get a solo job (ala Abreu and A-rod's efforts) but the 3-run/game-tying shot just never happened.

The starting pitching was the Achilles that everyone seemed to think it was. Wang over-threw in Game 2, and a strong Cleveland lineup got the best of him Game 1. Clemens is an old man whose body couldn't take it this year (possibly b/c of no HGH). Andy Pettite could not clone himself, and didn't get the Game 1 start he should have.

The bases loaded with 1 out never turned into the big inning it should have on the numerous occasions it happened.

The Game was not held up to allow the plague visited on Cleveland to abate.

Cleveland is a good team.

Jeter was surprisingly stagnant, and killed some rallies. A-rod was unsurprisingly stagnant, and didn't pick us up as he did all year.

I have more concrete thoughts, but it sucks to go home early again.

Upon The Start of the Playoffs

The Colorado Rockies stayed hot yesterday in taking Game 1 in Philadelphia. It must feel comforting for the Rocks to play in another hitters ballpark, but yesterday's game was about the pitching. Jeff Francis and Cole Hammels both gave their team "Game 1 Starter" starts. Money stays on the Rockies until they start to cool. Big HR from MVP Matt Holliday to put the game to bed.

Josh Beckett has officially begun to earn his money in Boston. In a slightly painful flashback, Beckett shutout the Angels last night, and made them look like a pretty average club in the process. LAAoA have never been a thunder team by any stretch, and with Garrett Anderson battling pink-eye, Vlad gimping around, and Gary Math"juice" Jr. out for the series, Beckett was all over them. Ortiz did his Ortiz thing, and the Sox are off to a good start. Better start than usual for Lackey at Fenway, but his boys didn't have much of a chance with Josh dealing like he was.

In Arizona, Sweet Lou over-planned for the NLDS, opting to lift ace Carlos Zambrano after 6 strong innings, only 85 pitches, and in a 1-1 tie. When the pitcher brough in to replace Los promptly surrendered a HR to a rookie, saving Zambrano's arm for game 4(the apparent motivation for Lou's yanking him) is now a huge issue. Zambrano will need to be fresh, as his next start now figures to be a must-win. Brandon Webb looked goodas did the D-backs bullpen, but this was a pitchers duel that wasn't allowed to play out. Is Pinella simply not a playoff manager?

In my realm of primary focus, The Yankees behind Chien Ming Wang do battle with The Cleveland Indians and CC Sabbathia. This game will be a good indicator for the series (as Game 1's usually are) because CC is the Tribe's biggest gun, and if he excells, it could get the ball rolling for his club. However, if the Yankee bats keep up their barrage, and Wang is dealing, a big mountain of pressure goes onto the largely untested Fausto Carmona, as he would need to prevent the Yankees from going home up 2-0.

Baseball playoffs are just a good time. Early October has an energy that only March Madness can hope to match.