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In the grand scheme of things, baseball is a kid's game. It makes heroes out of ordinary men. It makes celebrities out of lowlifes like Jose Canseco and John Rocker. It turns cities against each otherùsometimes, even boroughs of the same city. Its victories and defeats are celebrated and suffered with pure emotion. It can make an 18-year-old kid lean out of his 14th-floor dormitory window at one in the morning and joyfully ...

I was going to wait until the World Series was over before I wrote a word. I wanted to know everything and stop making predictions from game to game, as it drove me nine different kinds of crazy in the ALCS. And as superstitious as I am, I didn't have any intention of jinxing the Yankees on the doorstep of a championship. But with the most important inning of the postseasonùand surely ...

Well...that was fast. My night of celebration ended about 15 minutes after I posted the last piece . Immediately, my mind started to shift to the new question at hand. How do the Yankees beat the Phillies this week? Here's the game plan, in three(-ish) parts: á 1. Use the Long Lineup to Tire Out Cliff Lee and the Philly Starters Early. Then, Go to Work on the Bullpen. This has been the plan ...

He was as animated on the mound as we've ever seen himùand exactly the way we always remember him. For six-and-a-third innings and two-and-a-half hours Sunday night, Andy Pettitte turned back the clock yet again, as we've seen him do time and again in the most important of games, and gave the Yankees the victory they needed to advance to their fortieth World Series. For his individual part, Pettitte won his sixteenth ...

Alex Rodriguez is having a career-altering postseason. Nick Swisher? Not so much. No matter whether he's hitting left-handed or right-handed, whether he's swinging at fastballs or breaking balls, whether the pitch is a foot outside or right over the middle of the plate and thigh high, he is the surest out in the Yankee lineup right now. Don't get me wrong—I love the guy. I love the energy he brings, and his goofy ...

There was a scenario I forgot to mention at the end of the last column . If the Angels were able to come back from a big deficit and beat our bullpen in Game Three, that might make this series a series again, too. That was silly of me to overlook. I forgot about Game Three of the 2005 ALDS, when the Angels blew a 5-0 lead against Randy Johnson, wound ...

In a season full of dramatic ballgames, the context of the drama of Game Two of the American League Championship Series can only be described as What We Have Come to Expect. "One relief pitcher left in the bullpen, one position player left on the bench, in a five-hour affair featuring pitchers getting into and out of jam after jam..." kind of sounds like the conclusion to the fifteen-inning epic the ...

It goes without saying that the better team won this series. The Yankees hit better with runners in scoring position over the three-game set; their three starters combined for 19 innings, a paltry four runs and fourteen hits allowed withá and twenty-one strikeouts. The defense saved three crucial runs in close gamesùincluding Teixeira's two outstanding defensive plays with the bases loaded in the 11th inning of Game Two. But among all the ...

He knew it was gone the moment he hit it. It was one more in a long series of moments that have Yankee fans everywhere believing that this is one of those special teams that will go down in history. One more long shot paying off for a team that, for all its talent and gaudy statistics, for all the money it cost to put together, is building its legacy as ...

Somewhere around 10 minutes after six tomorrow afternoon, the man already anointed the American League's Most Valuable Player will step into the box against a contender for the American League Cy Young and decide what kind of playoff series we're in for. Here's what we know so far, going into that at-bat: CC Sabathia saw the Twins once this season, on July 7 at the Metrodome. He threw seven innings, gave up ...