This team is amazing. Derek Jeter is the best clutch performer I have ever seen. But their pitching never fails. They always get it when it counts. I mean, when they get good pitching, they get masterful, perfect pitching. Their pitching is always good enough. I mean, the way they just ran through the 116 win Mariners in their own yard. The Yankees show that home-field advantage does not matter. The Yankees could win 80 games in a season and still win it all. And Mariano Rivera is the best, most dominant player in baseball. Not just the best pitcher, but the best player. People know, not think, that he will get the job done. Dude never fails. He is the closest thing to a perfect pitcher, especially in the playoffs, when it counts the most. Not to mention that Rivera can start pitching in the eighth, and still be invincible in the ninth.
People who hate the Yankees even have to admit this team is just amazing! Some whiners are going to say that they buy their championships, but the Dodgers, Red Sox, Indians, Braves, etc. spend just as much money and look what it gets em. Hate em or love em everyone knows this team is simply CLUTCH! GO YANKEES!
Rivera is simply unhittable in the playoffs. Somehow Jeter, Tino, Brosius, Posada, and co. always seem to get it done in the playoffs. Bernie Williams always comes up with the big hit. Adding Mussina to an already lethal starting rotation has made them that much better. Moose was dominant tonight, and Seattle have dug themselves a big hole. The only team that could match up with the Yanks is maybe the D-backs. The Unit and Schilling could easily match up with Clemens and Mussina. Problem is, in a close game, Stanton and Rivera are lights out. Arizona has some huge holes in their lineup, the Yanks only have a hole in right field.
America's team, no. That is the <b> Dallas Cowboys </b> (no other sport really has an America's team mantel). However, Steinbrenner and Satan got together plotting something about 95--when the Braves were 2-games away from sweeping the Yankees in the World Series. Until god decides to step in we are all screwed.
No, they are not America's team. But... <i>These are hard times for Yankees haters. Times to try our souls. Not only are the men in pinstripes beating this year's standard bearers of the anti-Yankees nation, they're beating them by playing baseball the way it ought to be played. Great baseball. Imaginative baseball. Fun baseball. It's enough to shake the very foundations that we stand for. In Game 2 of the ALCS Thursday night, for example, aging right fielder Paul O'Neill, days from retirement, raced down a gapper in the bottom of the second and flipped the ball backhanded to center fielder Bernie Williams, to keep Stan Javier from scoring from first and to hold Dan Wilson to a single. O'Neill looked like a young second baseman turning a double play. Then there's the irrepressible Derek Jeter, who plays the game like they did in the 1950s: diving into stands for pop flies, bunting runners over, making that improbable toss to nail Oakland's Jeremy Giambi at home plate in Game 3 of the Division Series to keep the Yanks from being swept. People talk about the Sports Illustrated cover jinx (see: Nomar Garciaparra, March 5, 2001), but guess who was on the cover of this year's baseball preview issue wearing his four World Series rings? You can't jinx a player like Jeter. The Yankees aren't mouthy. They don't gloat. Everyone contributes. And they never beat themselves. Meanwhile, the teams the Yankees are defrocking -- the would-be emperors -- are revealed under pressure to be wearing very few clothes. Clothes with great big holes in them. The little things that win games -- defense, running the bases, moving runners over with less than two out -- have eluded these pretenders time and again. If Giambi had slid into home in the aforementioned play, for example, as the on-deck hitter signalled him to, Jeter's game-saving toss almost certainly would have been for naught. Giambi scores, Yanks go home. In the deciding Game 5, Oakland's defense completely unraveled. It's happening again in the Mariners series. In the fourth inning of Game 1, catcher Jorge Posada's line drive off the wall was fielded perfectly by Seattle right fielder Ichiro Suzuki, who threw a strike to shortstop Carlos Guillen covering second. If Guillen had put his glove on the bag, as high school infielders are taught to do, instead of reaching for the sliding Posada, umpire Gary Cederstrom would have called Posada out. As it was, Posada evaded Guillen's waving tag, then scored on O'Neill's ensuing homer. A big run that never should have scored. In Game 2 the situation was reversed. The Yanks' Williams dropped Ichiro's fly ball in the bottom of the second with none out for a two-base error. But the Mariners failed to capitalize on the miscue when Mark McLemore, batting next, couldn't move Ichiro to third. Ichiro would have scored on Bret Boone's deep fly to center -- the second out. Instead, the Mariners lost the game by one run. It is on such plays that championships are won and lost. It's happening right before our eyes, night after night. The Yankees aren't winning on talent. Not on superior talent, anyway. Scott Brosius? Chuck Knoblauch? These are lunch-bucket guys. The Yanks are winning on execution. Sound, fundamental baseball. The sort of baseball that makes fans love the sport beyond reason or words. Which is the problem. Because a lot of those fans, I'm guessing about 120 million of us, are fed up to here with the Yankees winning all those championships -- 842 and counting. So year after year Chicagoans,Bostonians, Clevelanders, Detroiters gnash their teeth and wring their hands, knit their brows and tug on their sideburns, rooting for their adoptive teams from Oakland, Seattle, Atlanta, Phoenix -- wherever -- hoping against hope that just once, just one doggone year in their whole friggin' lifetimes, their guys would play like the hated Yanks</i>
Well, I guess the machine is human after all! It's good to see that the 116 win Mariner team finally showed up to play some baseball. But, I'm going to keep my mouth shut until it officially happens...the Yankees eliminated from the playoffs. I opened it too soon the last time and it came back to bite me in the butt.
tonight notwithstanding, i am absolutely amazed by the professionalism of the Yankees. I can't think of another franchise in my lifetime that has displayed that quality as much as they have over the last 5 years or so. They are the anti-Astros....and I say that as a HUGE Astros' fan who wishes like hell that the 'stros would win the big one! But 26 world championships is flat out ridiculous. 25 in one century!! are you kidding?? every four years this team won the world series, on average! how amazing is that ?? no other franchise in any sport rivals the New York Yankees. They personify the sport.
How did ya'll like that game tonight? I was working, so I only managed to catch bits and pieces of it. I can't believe what a pitchers game this was. The starters pitched great with the Yankees giving up only one hit through the first 5-6 innings and the Mariners no-hitting the Yankees for a good portion of the game. I was suprised that New York pulled Clemens and even more suprised when Seattle pulled their starter for Norm Charlton, formerly of the Reds. Then the home run by the Mariners to take a lead and the Yankees matching that homer with one of their own to tie it and eventually win the game with another homer in the bottom of the ninth!!!! What a great game!! GO YANKEES!!!!!!!!!!!!
The Seattle started had walked 8 in about five innings. They had to pull him I guess. Bernie and Soriano were just awesome! GO YANKEES!!!!!
I get the feeling that as long at Joe Torre is coach, Jeter is shortstop, Bernie is in the OF, and Steinbrenner is footing the bill, then the Yankees could win every WS for the next 12 years. Unless of course the Astros can get Felipe Alou for coach. Then we have a chance. Go Yankees! Until next season.
No doubt the Yankees are playing awesome baseball, and the have that intangible ability to just win. Unlike the Dodgers, Redsox, Orioles et al.., they also know how to spend their money wisely, and put together a franchise properly. But don't give me any crap about the Yankees not buying the championship. Their success is at the expense of the rest of the league, and the players union will be cringing at the thought of another Yankees World Championship. The Yankees recent dominance, while possibly earned on merit, will forever be tempered by the inequality in the league. As it stands, the situation is ludicrous - at least to everyone who hasn't jumped on the Yankee bandwagon.
davo, your point is well taken, but they're a great ball team nontheless. It's not exactly bandwagoneering when you appreciate the excellence of that team.
Yeah its not fair to the rest of the league. But they Yankees arent breaking any rules. They are taking maximum advantage of what they are allowed. I hate it when everyone blames everything on money (not referring to you davo). A freakin rookie hit a game winning HR yesterday for crying out loud. Its basically someone different every game. Everyone on this team might not be the greatest at their position, but they are one of the best group of clutch players anyone has ever put together.
Yanks are about to roll their way to another championship. Seattle's done. Arizona doesn't have the pen that the Yankees do, nor the offense. They will be lucky to take it to 6 games, even with Schilling's incredible playoff performances.
