Not to worry, ladies and gentlemen. You'll be seeing Lee again---come Wednesday night, starting Game One of the World Series, against either Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants or Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies. Posted on 10/23/2010 3:32:32 PM PDT by BluesDuke
The bad news is that Texas Rangers fans won't be seeing Cliff Lee for a few days at least. That's because of the good news that New York Yankees fans won't have to look at Lee assassinating their heroes yet again.
And that's because of the worse news for Yankee fans that, when next they see their heroes, the club may be altered slightly (it usually is) but their heroes won't be brandishing the World Series rings to which their fans think they're entitled every year.
They have the Rangers to thank for that. It couldn't possibly get any better for Ranger fans than punching out, for game, set, and first American League pennant ever, the man who once represented everything wrong with Ranger management through little enough fault of his own.
No matter what their heroes go on to do or not to do in the World Series to be, that's one splash of sweetness that nobody can take away from them.
Who would have thought these plucky Rangers wouldn't need their number one lancer to put them into the Series because Colby Lewis picked Friday night to pitch like someone doing his best possible imitation of Lee without the voluminous strikeouts?
Not to worry, ladies and gentlemen. You'll be seeing Lee again---come Wednesday night, starting Game One of the World Series, against either Tim Lincecum of the San Francisco Giants or Roy Halladay of the Philadelphia Phillies.
For that matter, who would have thought these plucky Rangers would go where no previous franchise team, from its 1961 birth in Washington, had gone except as individual paying customers? Well, Ian Kinsler would have, for one. The Rangers' second baseman was asked amidst the celebrations when he knew the Rangers had at least as much, if just a little more talent than the defending World Series champions they had just ousted in six. "April," Kinsler replied. "We always believed we were the best team."
That they finished the regular season with the eighth-best record among the entering postseason combatants---in a dead heat with the National League West-aspirant San Diego Padres, who faltered on the final weekend---mattered not one whit. Not to Kinsler, not to his teammates, not to his manager. Not even the Rangers' suddenly-vaunted pitching staff would have thought the Yankee bats would combine to hit .200, reach base at a .300 clip, and slug a measly .370.
Crown that with the only Yankee run in Game Six being a run they shouldn't have gotten in the first place. Thanks to a little charity from plate umpire Brian Gorman, who never saw what everyone on television and perhaps in Rangers Ballpark noticed, Alex Rodriguez was allowed to score on a wild pitch that had actually hit batter Nick Swisher in the leg before heading for the backstop.
That tied the game at one. It would stay tied only long enough for the Rangers to put a sad finish to Hughes's season in the bottom of the inning. The right move was walking eventual ALCS Most Valuable Player Josh Hamilton to work a right-on-right advantage with Vladimir Guerrero. The wrong move was throwing Vlad the Impaler a curve ball with about as much bite as a denture-expectant shark. That was all the invitation Guerrero needed to do exactly what a first-ballot Hall of Famer in waiting does, when handed such a gift, banging it off the center field wall, sending home Mitch Moreland and Hamilton, and sending Hughes to the bench in favour of David Robertson.
Robertson must have figured Nelson Cruz's slightly bothersome hamstring might keep him from being slightly bothersome at the plate. Cruz made sure he wouldn't have to do anything hard on the bases. You don't have to gun it that hard when you've just hit one about twelve rows up the left field seats.
There's nothing like a five-run fifth to make the Rangers feel a little as though they could quit holding their breath and quit waiting for the inevitable Yankee uprising.
Especially with Lewis working as steadily as Hughes had been unable to work and the Yankees showing even more barrenness at bat than they'd shown to that point as it was. Except for one big inning in Game One, taking advantage of a perhaps unexpectedly shaky Ranger bullpen, the Yankees never scored more than three runs in any ALCS inning this time around. And the Yankees got so badly outscored over the full set, 38-19, that it now seems a wonder that Game One could have turned out to be a one-run game.
Of course, few if any expected the Yankees to pull into the postseason (it was practically a given that they'd get there in the first place) with addled enough pitching that even the weakest-hitting team in the league could have dismantled the Yankee staff as profoundly as these Rangers managed to do. And if Game Six wasn't a microcosm of everything that worked right for the Rangers and everything that worked wrong for the Yankees, you're invited to show me what might have been. What did the Yankees really have to throw at the Rangers?
They thumped CC Sabathia in Game One before the Yankees overthrew them with that stupefying ninth, but Sabathia came back in Game Five and managed to ward them off one way or the other, even if Sabathia wasn't quite at the absolute top of his game.
They barely had to look at The Mariano, for which they could credit themselves. Every one of these games but Game One was a no-questions-asked blowout, or close enough to being one, and the Rangers won all four of theirs in just that fashion.
And the Rangers ended up with a team 3.06 ALCS earned run average. Less than half the Yankee ALCS ERA of 6.58. It gets better: the Rangers' staff WHIP for the set was 1.19. The Yankees? 1.67.
That wasn't the way Hughes planned things to go. To anyone who would listen between Games Five and Six, Hughes insisted he was going to be a little different than he'd shown in Game Two. Swisher wasn't planning this, either. All his bravado about how the Yankees didn't give a tinker's damn, practically, about Cliff Lee, in fact were sick and tired of hearing about him, came true in the most disheartening of Yankee ways.
One reason the Yankees won't have to worry about Lee in a seventh game is because Hughes in the sixth game looked like a first-year starter in desperate need of an out pitch and a sedative with men on base. Now the Yankees don't have to worry about Lee until 2011, at which time he may or may not be one of their teammates.
Of course, they'd really rather have gotten a crack at Lee in Game Seven. If they could have beaten Lee, a happenstance many even around the Yankees might have doubted would happen, they'd have had no worries except either the Giants or the Phillies. If Lee had beaten them in a seventh game, however, and that was the outcome just about everyone would have expected, the Yankees could have taken heart that at least they'd kept him from opening the World Series to whomever's embarrassment. You take your vengeance wherever you can scrounge it.
It got this bad for the Yankees in the bottom of the seventh Friday night: Not only was reliever Kerry Wood giving Hamilton his third free pass on the night, but after Guerrero pushed Hamilton and Michael Young (leadoff double) to second and third, Wood put Cruz on intentionally, to load them up for Kinsler, who wasn't exactly hitting ferociously throughout the series in spite of a couple of big swings.
This time, Kinsler promptly lofted one to left, plenty enough room to let Young, the Rangers' longtime field leader, trot home with the sixth Texas run of the night. And Lewis took the mound for the top of the eighth with only three hits on his ledger, none of which did any great damage beyond Lance Berkman's seventh-inning triple that ended up in a strand.
As a matter of fact, if you blinked you might have missed Lewis striking out the side in the eighth. Even if he had to get through a two-out, full-count walk to Brett Gardner to do it, ending with a flourish by swishing Derek Jeter on three pitches.
You might even have missed The Mariano, thrown in to pitch the bottom of the eighth, almost as a gesture of defiance, maybe a forlorn expression from Joe Girardi that his troops weren't going down without a fight, never mind that his troops were going down without much if any fight left in them. The Mariano set the Rangers aside in order. Even if Moreland fought him to an eighth pitch before lining out to shortstop on 3-2. This was one time the Rangers could enjoy The Mariano's handiwork without it meaning the end of the line for his victims.
But you couldn't miss Feliz, sent to the mound for the top of the ninth despite the non-save situation, simply because Ron Washington decided Lewis had done more than enough with his 103 pitches. Only 64 of those pitches were strikes, but Lewis did exactly what he gets paid to do for eight yeoman's innings.
Now, so did Feliz. The slider curled in so neatly on Rodriguez---who hit .190 with two runs batted in over the entire ALCS---that he might not have been able to pull the trigger on the swing even with a vault door in his hands for a bat. The gigastar who wanted out of Texas after the 2003 season because he wasn't crazy about being surrounded with twenty-four kids could only stand frozen as a kid dropped a pennant-winning third strike in on him.
Pending Lee's opening night performance in the World Series, the ayes of Texas couldn't have gotten any brighter---or, louder---if they'd tried.
Great to see the Rangers take the Pennant.
The play that will stick with me was the Rangers double steal of second and home in game (IIRC) 1.
“The slider curled in so neatly on Rodriguez-—who hit .190 with two runs batted in over the entire ALCS-—that he might not have been able to pull the trigger on the swing even with a vault door in his hands for a bat. The gigastar who wanted out of Texas after the 2003 season because he wasn’t crazy about being surrounded with twenty-four kids could only stand frozen as a kid dropped a pennant-winning third strike in on him.”
That really was sweet.
And when the Rangers had them down 3-1 in the series - Star Telegram writer, Randy Galloway wrote: ‘The Boys of Bankruptcy now have the Bank of Baseball shoved to the brink.’ in reference to the financial status of the two teams. Guess money really can’t buy everything.
Key concept...They are not entitled to wear the ring. They earn the ring by beating the opposition. And when they fall short they are usually in contention for the pennant or the series. They are consistently at the top or near the top of the game. What kills Yankee haters is their teams are not as good on a consistent basis as the Yankees. Well I am a Yankee fan and an AL fan. So...Go get em Rangers!! Show that triple A National League how to play ball!!
The Rangers just signed a very lucrative TV deal, so they will be able to compete with the big guns for players.
I think Cliff Lee will be a Ranger for a long time.
The play that will stick with me was the Rangers double steal of second and home in game (IIRC) 1.That's the second one that'll stick to me. The big ones---the Yankees showing Josh Hamilton the respect of five intentional walks all set long, and David Robertson thinking he could slip one past Nelson Cruz with a so-so hammy only to watch it sail over the left field fence. Right there was when I knew the Yankees were goners, but I wouldn't have said so quite then.
Guess money really can’t buy everything.If it could, my New York Mess (er, Mets, my Mets) and my Boston Red Sox (don't ask what my Class A drug bill was in 1986!!!) would be winning pennants every year, or at least every other year, assuming they could stay off the disabled lists.
...and for only $25 million per year...
´Hope Bush throws out the first pitch in Texas.
ESPN libs would spit blood...
That’s exactly what I’ve been thinking since last night!!! Bet he’d throw another strike!
Obozo will just show up in “mom jeans” again and throw out his wrist getting the ball halfway to the plate. Doofus.
1) The salary the Rangers could offer after taxes could EQUAL what the Yankees could offer. Why? No Texas state income tax, and as such Lee won't end up paying a fortune in New York state and New York City local income taxes.
2) The Rangers are a team full of mostly young players with a few good veterans, unlike the Yankees with its older players.
3) The Rangers' management is headed by Nolan Ryan, a LEGEND of Texas baseball if there ever was one. Cliff Lee would highly respect what Ryan has done.
Salary is one thing but the endorsement $$$$$$$ a guy like Lee could make playing in New York as a Yankee, totally blows away anything he could get in Texas. That is a big reason many players go to major market teams and you don’t get any bigger market than NY City. I don’t know what Lee will do but from a business (total $$$$$) perspective, going to the Yankees is almost a no-brainer
Correct, regarding why Lee may stay with the Rangers.
Also, he’s an Oklahoma guy and that’s just up the road apiece; plus, he likes to hunt and he can do a lot of that in OK and here in Texas. There’s also the fact that the cost of living (including property and housing prices) is so much lower here in Texas than in the NY area.
Again I repeat....the endorsement money he could get in the NY market is so much higher than what he could get in Texas, that he could probably pay a 60% tax and still come out ahead. With the way contracts are structured and the charitable contributions that players use to avoid taxes, they are not hurt as much by higher rates as regular individuals are. If things were as bad as you paint them out to be in NY, then the Yankees would never be able to attract top talent. They don’t have any problems, neither do the Mets, Giants, Jets, Knicks or any of the Fortune 500 firms that set up shop in NYC.
TOUCHE’ hahah I agree with you on that one. The Mets have signed a few big players but their management is terrible. They also don’t have the cachet of the Yankees so the endorsement money for star players is not as good.
The Knicks ??? well they are the Knicks, another team with horrible management. I sometimes wonder if the Dolans even care about winning a championship anymore.
Anyway it was a pleasure talking to you about this. I hope the Rangers do well, they deserve it. I hope for Texas’ sake that Lee stays put and has a long and fruitful career.
Best wishes !!!
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