For the first time in 15 years, the Yankees won’t be in the post-season:
TORONTO — Joe Girardi went to Yankee Stadium on Monday, the day after the final regular-season home game, to board the team bus to the airport. Girardi, the Yankees’ manager, noticed that sprinklers were watering the grass.
Maybe the Yankees want to keep the color in their lawn so they can slice it up and sell it. But Girardi saw a noble purpose. “To prepare,” he said in the dugout before Tuesday’s game, hopeful as ever for a miracle.
Four hours later, from the same vantage point, Girardi saw the end come when the out-of-town scoreboard on the right-field wall flashed the final score of the Cleveland-Boston game. The Red Sox had beaten the Indians to clinch a playoff spot and eliminate the Yankees.
Mariano Rivera was on the mound at the time, closing out Mike Mussina’s 19th victory, a 3-1 decision over the Toronto Blue Jays. Mussina, who took a liner off the right elbow in the third inning, will try to pitch Sunday at Fenway Park, and a victory there will give him his first 20-win season. The Yankees only wish there were more games to play after that.
“It’s really devastating,” Alex Rodriguez said, adding later: “There’s absolutely no excuse for a team with this talent to be going home. It’s hard to believe right now that we’re out. As inconsistent as we were, to have an opportunity this late in the season just makes it that much more frustrating.”
The Yankees have won 9 of their last 10, pushing their record to 86-71. But the Red Sox are 92-65, a record the Yankees cannot match. They will miss the postseason for the first time since 1993, two years before Rivera and Derek Jeter started their major league careers.
Ironically, while the Yankees will be spending their October at home, it looks like the man who led them to the playoffs for those 15 years will be going back, with a new team:
LOS ANGELES (AP) -Two big swings edged the Los Angeles Dodgers closer to claiming the NL West title and gave them greater control over making the postseason.
Nomar Garciaparra and Blake DeWitt each hit three-run homers and the Dodgers reduced their magic number to three with a 10-1 victory Tuesday night.
”Three is our number,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. ”We want to win the next three games and put this thing to sleep. We’re confident, but not comfortable.”
After a 1-0, 11-inning loss to San Francisco on Sunday, the Dodgers sure looked loose, piling up six runs in the first and eventually scoring at least 10 runs for the 10th time this season.
”Our challenge is to go out and make it very tough on the Dodgers. Our guys realize what’s at stake in our division,” Padres manager Bud Black said. ”The Dodgers have a lot to play for. We’re going to end up playing them nine times in a short period of time, and they know that we’re going to come at them the next two nights.”
Manny Ramirez added a two-run double, making him the second player in major league history to record at least 50 RBIs in each league during the same season.
The Dodgers’ victory, combined with Arizona’s 7-4 loss at St. Louis, drew them closer to their first division title since 2004 and first under new manager Torre. They lead the Diamondbacks by three games with five to play.
A development which apparently is driving Little Stein batty:
Baseball went to a multidivision setup to create more races, rivalries and excitement. But it isn’t fair. You see it this season, with plenty of people in the media pointing out that Joe Torre and the Dodgers are going to the playoffs while we’re not. This is by no means a knock on Torre — let me make that clear — but look at the division they’re in. If L.A. were in the A.L. East, it wouldn’t be in the playoff discussion. The A.L. East is never weak. Ask the teams that finished behind us all of those seasons. I’ll say it right now: Boston should have made the playoffs in 1978. We beat the Red Sox in that one-game playoff, but they still had a better record than the Royals, who won the A.L. West. And that’s one of many examples.
I’m happy for Joe, but you have to compare the divisions and the competition. What if the Yankees finish the season with more wins than the Dodgers but the Dodgers make the playoffs? Does that make the Dodgers a better team? No.
Of course, as Peter Abraham notes, Hank probably wasn’t saying that a few years ago:
The last Yankees team that won the World Series had 87 wins. There were eight other teams in baseball with more wins that season. So apparently the Yankees weren’t the best team that season, they just got hot at the right time, right Hank? I guess the Yankees should give that trophy back.
Right Hank ?
In any case, score one for Torre in the resumption of a great rivalry.
