The Day After...

There are families who LIVE for sports. They build their days, weekends, vacations, etc, around their sport and/or team. Some choose football, others basketball or possibly hockey to be passionate about. For my family its baseball. It's imprinted in our DNA, it runs through our veins and makes us who we are.

Now, I say "we", but I am of the utmost certainty that my wife humors me most of the time. She'll watch a game with me from behind a book, with her nose poked out from under the covers or, most likely, as far as she can get from me as I sit in front of the tv and try and convince everyone arouund that I could manage better than the yutzes in the dugout. My youngest son, Brendan, will watch and show interest, but only if I don't allow him to first become engrossed in an animal show or dvd. Ryan, my ten year old, however, is JUST LIKE ME. Those who know him, know exactly of what I speak. He scans the sports' pages in the mornings, borrows the computer to check the box scores, the standings and will try and figure out the magic numbers that will allow us to, hopefully, celebrate at the end of a long hard season. He's me, just smaller, cuter and has a slightly earlier bedtime.

Ryan and I spend the spring, summer and early fall months, each year, religiously watching the Yankees on tv, listening on the radio, going to the games and talking non-stop about them. We want to build weekends around them, taking in games at Yankee Stadium, as well as at Single, Double and Triple A ballparks to see the players, learn who is coming up through the minor leagues and determine who "we" think will be the next great Yankee player.

It all culminates in October, when the leaves change color, the air gets a little cooler and only the best teams are left standing. We throw parties, invite friends over to watch and sit in front of a tv, or a radio if need be, for hours, devouring the games. We watch them all and have an opinion on each and every one. Especially our Yankees.

Before going on, I must tell you that I could have been the next great Yankees' second baseman. But, Chuck Knoblauch STOLE my place in the pantheon of Yankees' greatness. Just ask my wife, she'll tell you that as well, but she'll do it with a roll of the eyes and more than a slight hint of sarcasm in her voice. There are some nights she doesn't even want to be in the same room with Ryan and me as we go through the machinations of watching another playoff game. Personally, I think she's hiding under the bed as things go flying across the living room (one year a kid's sippy cup somehow got lodged in the wall, which eventually had to be patched and repainted) and four letter words flow like water from a faucet...And that's just Game 1 of a series. You can't even imagine an elimination game...LIKE LAST NIGHT...

Last night was NOT a good one in our home. Yelling, screaming, cursing, throwing things and crying. Hell, Ryan even did a few of those as well. . It started out innocently enough, we made our rally chili cheese dogs, three for me and two for him and we had peanuts, popcorn, pretzels, beer and soda as well. After all, why watch a ballgame if you can't have ballgame food to go with it? We were SURE the Yanks were going to pull this out and move on to face Texas, for the second straight year in the ALCS. After all, we were back home at "The Big Ballyard in the South Bronx", Ivan "Super" Nova was on the mound, the bats were coming around after the last game and the great Mariano would be able to pitch two or more innings once we had the lead in the Eighth Inning. See what we get for thinking?

As we settled in for the first inning, the game started out on a good note when Nova struck out Austin Jackson. The second batter is where it began to unravel. Don Kelly, and then Delmon Young (why the hell couldn't he have stayed with Minnesota) took Nova out of the yard on consecutive pitches. "WTF" (if you don't know what that stands for look it up, I'm going to TRY and keep it clean here) was screamed loud enough to make Nicole and Brendan come running from where they had been hiding out in worry that something was wrong. As if anything could be MORE wrong than giving up back to back jacks to the second and third batters of the game. After Nicole  shook her head, muttered something under her breath and walked back to the other room, Ry looked at me and asked what was wrong with my outburst. I told you he was my kid.

As the innings wore on, the Yanks stranded a small village on the basepaths and we were growing more and more annoyed. The first real hint of a problem was when Nova was removed in the second inning with an injury to his pitching forearm. In came Phil Hughes, whom I believed would go for 2-3 innings. WRONG...Girardi pulled him after 1.3 innings and brought in Boone "Effing" Logan. After another WTF, Logan managed to quiet us down by getting out of the inning.

In the 4th, the Yanks loaded the bases and set up Ryan's first problem of the night. "All we need is a sac fly and we get a run", he says right before Martin pops out to first base and Gardner pops out to third. Then Ryan said a word that begins with the letter "F" and rhymes with duck. Somehow, I got blamed for it and smacked. Ryan looked at me quizzically, I took the punishment, gave him a halfhearted "...don't say things like that..." and then typed what just happened on my friend Lauren's Facebook status, where a bunch of us were "watching" the game as well. (What? I told you we were nutty). At that time Rob typed back, "...he should be allowed...two of those...tonight..." and Lauren liked both our comments.

Fast forward a few innings and the Tigers have scored again, the Yanks had put one on the board thanks to a Robbie Cano HR and have, again, loaded the bases with one out. Up comes A-Rod, the Yankees' lightning rod for playoff futility, and he could literally OWN NY with a base hit. Nope, he, unsurprisingly strikes out swinging. Next to the plate is Tex, who also can't seem to remove the object from his throat that causes him to choke every October, but he walks, which forces in a run to make it 3-2. Next to take his hacks is Nick Swisher, the Yankees' version of Jack Nicholson's Joker from the Michael Keaton "Batman" movie. Down goes Swisher, with yet another strike out in a big spot and there goes the Yanks' last big chance.

Ryan then yells something COMPLETELY unprintable (trust me, if I won't type it you KNOW it's bad) which I get beat on again for. Now, I gotta stick up for my kid, so I offer up a lame "...at least he knows the proper context for that phrase...", which gets me a look that could, and may have, killed, in the past. After the latest exchange I tell him to knock it off. Not so much for saying it, but for saying it loud enough to get heard and get me beat on (I do understand and commiserate with him). Rob and Lauren, among many others to have joined the typefest on Facebook (stop judging me) think it's hysterical that I keep getting smacked for his mouthy indiscretions.

Now, we're in the bottom of the 8th, Jeter is up and Gardner is on first with two outs. Gardy, who is literally faster than a cheetah hunting down an antelope on the African Plain, has second stolen, but Jeter has swung at the pitch and lifted a fly to the warning track that will end the inning and any chance of a Yanks' comeback. You know EXACTLY what I screamed, loud enough to wake the neighbors. If Nicole has heard, she is either impervious to it by now, or she's just too tired to smack me anymore. Either way, I'm left alone to stomp, swear and mutter around the living room with Ryan.

The 9th is a microcosm of the game. Granderson flies out, Cano lines out to center and the last man standing is A-Rod. Well, not for long. He goes down swinging and so ends our season. By the way, I have seen better swings on a rusty gate than what I just saw from our $30 million per year third baseman.

Now, the game is over and it's time to tuck the crying kid into bed. There is nothing more pathetic than the sight of a ten year old, consoling his father and wiping away tears as they walk down the hall to the bedroom. So, I take him to his bed, wipe his eyes, he's already done the same for me and discuss the shortcomings of our season. We both agree that this year was a failure and it's not because we didn't win the World Series. We may not have won everything, but we SHOULD have won this series. It was handed to us, multiple times, and we just basically said "No thanks, you take it". Anyway, Ryan fell asleep snuffling and teary eyed, I stayed awake, teary eyed and fuming and tried to figure out how did this happen.

Here's what I came up with:

1) This felt a lot like 1960 (from what I have read/heard as I was not yet born) in that when the Yanks won, they won big and when they lost, they lost small. We outscored the Tigers 28, to 17, but still lost because when we won, we blew them away and when we didn't we didn't score. It was either feast or famine.

2) The much maligned pitching staff didn't give us a hole that I would have considered too big to climb out of...IF WE HAD HIT IN ANY OF THE THREE LOSSES. It's going to be hard to win any series, let a lone a short one, when four of your nine are hitting .111 (A-Rod), .167 (Tex), .211 (Swish) and .167 (Martin). They absolutely KILLED this team and for these three, it's their playoff M.O. Which leads me to my next point.

3) The pitching: Why the Hell was Hughes removed after 1.3 innings? WHY???? God forbid that game goes into extras we have used up a guy that could have given us length in Hughes and Robertson who came out for 1 inning. We would have been stuck with the Ayalas and Wades of the world. It really is hard to argue the move, in hindsight, though, because after Nova left, the guys from the pen only gave up one run through seven innings, and that was after they decided to walk Cabrera to get to V-Mart, who had better numbers against C.C. than Cabrera did.

4) The lineup: After 4 games that the entire world saw A-Rod, Tex and Swish KILL us, while Posada hit OVER .400 , why in God's name did Girardi stick with those three as his 4-6? Tex, Swish and Posada are ALL switch hitters, so why not move the MOST PRODUCTIVE GUY , SO FAR, into the middle of the lineup? I questioned that as soon as the lineup was posted. If it makes sense to me, why not to Girardi?

In the end, we didn't deserve to win this series. We SHOULD have, the Tigers gave us MULTIPLE opportunities to, we just didn't.

IMO, it all comes back to the three clowns in the middle of the lineup, who came up small AGAIN for this team in the postseason. I don't want to hear injury excuses, I don't want to hear anything. In certain instances all that was needed was a FLY BALL OUT and they couldn't even generate that. In fact, I saw a stat that showed A-Rod being the ONLY man in baseball history to strikeout and end his team's playoffs two years in a row. In fact, since he came to the Yankees his playoff averages (excluding 09) are .133 (2005), .076 (2006), .267 (2007), .219 (2010), .111 (2011).

Tex, in his three playoff years here is .180 (2009), .148 (2010) and .167 (2011)

Swish, in his three playoff years here is: .128 (2009), .176 (2010) and .211 (2011)

Does this sound like it should be the HEART of the order to ANYONE?????? Yet, inexplicably, Girardi kept all three, back to back, to back and it bit us in the ass.

What to do? I'm not sure and I have all winter to come up with opinions and mark my word, I'll have them. One thing I do know, is that the plan for next season, from what I have been told, is for Montero to be the everyday DH and the backup catcher. This will allow him to get his reps behind the plate slowly and on the days he does catch A-Rod, Tex, Jeter, or whomever it may be, will be the DH. Get used to this idea, because in a few years the Yankees want Romine to be the everyday catcher (he's better defensively) while still allowing Montero to be in the lineup.

In the end:

We didn't deserve to move on. End of story...But I will tell you all: There IS crying in baseball, whether you are ten or forty two...