Bracing For The ALCS

CC Sabathia and CJ Wilson will be the initial pitchers in for the Yankees and Rangers in the ALCS.  If CJ can face off against AJ Burnett in Game 4 we will be entering new territory.

I look for the Yankees in six.

Comments

[Sue]

Rangers in 7.

[PD]

"How'd the Yankees make out?"

"Swept the Padres in 4."

[PD]

I'm expecting narciso to know where that comes from.

[Sue]

You know, I know the Rangers have never been here, never done this and the Yankees have been here, done this so many times they can do it in their sleep, but would the freakin' announcers keep the Yankee bias out of their voices? I am fixin' to turn on the radio and turn down the sound on my tv.

[Captain Hate]

This is the year of Cliff Lee domination

[sbw]

I thought the game was to be on Fox tonight. So disappointed to see it is on TBS. TBS announcers are sleep inducing, the camera-work amateurish, and, and, and, ... and the only good thing is that NBC golf's Johnny Miller isn't carping at everyone.

[hit and run]

TM:
I look for the Yankees in six.

Would you make that a Bold Prediction? Let's call it 70% to make it http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/05/its_what_they_l.html>sound scientific. That should sew things up for the Rangers.

BTW Sue,I think CJ is cuter than CC.

[Sue]

Hit,

Oh yeah. And a better pitcher too.

[Ken Hahn]

If the Yankees never win another game, I'd be thrilled.

[Sue]

Well, heck yeah.

[sbw]

Outnumbered Yankee fan... but I don't care. And I don't take the Yankees losing as hard as my wife... and certainly not as hard as my daughter.

[Sue]

sbw,

Boo... ::grin::

[PD]

One good thing about TBS is that we get to see Craig Sager's outfits.

[maryrose]

What I find so incredible is that the Cleveland Indians also had C.C. Sabathia at one time. No wonder we haven't won the big one since 1948!

[daddy]

Just arrived in Tokyo.

Great thing is that in the fancy Hotel Lobby all the TV's normally tuned to CNN and the BBC are all tuned to the Yanker's - Texas game.

God Bless Baseball!

[Sue]

Maryrose,

The 1st baseman and the 3rd baseman for the Yankees are former Texas Rangers. And to make it even better, we are paying Alex Rodriquez to play for the Yankees.

[Sue]

And just because we are paying him, he just screwed up. Error A-Rod! ::grin::

[sbw]

And I just found "The Holiday" finishing up on the channel next to the game. . . a chick flick even a real man can enjoy. Changing channels back and forth.

[Sue]

They are showing George W on the big screen and the fans cheered. ::grin::

[MarkO]

I'm still not over the 1960 World Series. And, while I'm at it, a no hitter in the first round of the playoffs is NOT in the same category as the Don Larsen perfect game. So there.

All the "post season" stats are just so much crap.

[PD]

All the "post season" stats are just so much crap.

But wouldn't that include the Don Larsen game?

[Sue]

I hate the Yankees.

[MarkO]

"Post season" is intended to compare marginal performance to the World Series records and to keep announcers in words.

Manny has 29 "post season HR," but he's not even in the top 10 of Series HR. Mantle leads that with 18. Not the same. Moreover, Manny was on the juice.

[Sue]

I hate the Yankees.

Did I already say that?

[MarkO]

Sue, do you like the Yankees?

[Sue]

Once again, pitching will be the end of the Rangers. Happens everytime.

[Sue]

mark,

No. I hate the Yankees. Just in case I haven't already made that clear.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vnjagvet]

IMO, the playoffs are just part of the regular season -- the part for the final winnowing out to pick the World Series opponents. Series stats are the only ones that should count.

[Sue]

Oh, crap.

[sbw]

An A-Single! From A-Rod!

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vnjagvet]

The dratted Yankees are making an 8th inning comeback. Now 5-4.

[Sue]

If Texas winds up losing this one, it will probably be Yankees in 5, with Cliff Lee being the only pitcher that wins a game.

[sbw]

"Tied!" apparently got eaten by Typhuspad.

[Jim Rhoads a/k/a vnjagvet]

The wheels are coming off the Rangers. Still no outs.

[sbw]

6-5! Whoot!

[matt]

As an Angels fan, I am now rooting for Vladdy.

Having spent an inordinate amount of time on the Death Star (Yankee Stadium)I will say we used to have a hell of a time out in the bleachers. We would take the D Train up from Central Park after playing in the Banker's League (softball) and be wastrels for an afternoon of bliss.

Those were the days of Catfish and Munson and Sweet Lou.But I still always rooted for whoever they were playing (except Oakland).

[sbw]

I'm not gloating. Just happy for the wife and daughter who bleed Yankee pinstripes. Her mother, rest her soul, used to listen with an earphone to Mel Allen on a transistor radio.

[sbw]

Never a fan of the theatrics - Billy Martin, Reggie & George... but a fan of quality, like Yogi, and Jeter, etc.

[Sue]

Well that helped.

[Sue]

Then we stand there and shake our head at a called strike that was right down the middle.

[caro]

Only slightly OT.

Paul at Powerline is doing a 4-part series on the most dramatic baseball game ever played. Today is part three and the first is here. It was the seventh game of the 1960 Series. Pirates and Yankees.

I lived in Pittsburgh and vividly remember listening over the school PA system while in Latin class. My father had ordered tickets in the lottery and got two to this game. He was a bit dismayed that the series might not get that far. Little did he know. My brother was younger, but he was a boy, so he got to go. I was so jealous.

I did go downtown that night with my friends. We went on the streetcar and the streets were absolutely wall to wall with crazy Pirate fans.

What a fun memory.

[MarkO]

Great. I complain about the 1960 Series and caro remembers it fondly. Rats.

A beer-league softball game broke out in Texas. The Rangers are doomed. The pickoff was the foreshadowing literary moment. Adios.

[peter]

Yankees win! Mariano still God-like! Sorry, President Bush and Nolan Ryan, you just can't mess with the Yankees.

[bgates]

Following the ball game on the east coast comes Air Force One. Hard to imagine that only 14 years ago a movie could open with a successful...what was that term? "Extraordinary rendition", of a guy who never gets to see a lawyer for the whole rest of the picture.

Even more amazing is the speech given by Harrison W Ford in the next scene:

The dead remember our indifference. The dead remember our silence. ... The truth is, we acted too late. Only when our own national security was threatened did we act. Radek's regime murdered over 200,000 men, women, and children, and we watched it on tv. We let it happen. People were being slaughtered for over a year, and we issued economic sanctions and hid behind the rhetoric of diplomacy.

How dare we.

The dead remember.

Real peace is not just the absence of conflict, it's the presence of justice.

And tonight I come to you with a pledge to change America's policy. Never again will I allow our political self-interest to deter us from doing what we know to be morally right. Atrocity and terror are not political weapons. And to those who would use them: your day is over. We will never negotiate, we will no longer tolerate, and we will no longer be afraid. It's your turn to be afraid.

Scene 3, the nebbish little National Security Adviser frets about how he should have consulted the allies first, and President Veteran Pilot cuts him off by saying, "It was the right thing to do."

Last interesting thing about this picture: out of its $315M gross, $142M was from outside the US. You could almost think there was a market for a depiction of a strong, assertive, confident America in the movies.

[daddy]

If any of you guys have a full hash pipe and a few billion neurons and a couple minutes to waste, you might be able to make it through ">http://althouse.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-will-web-do-to-content-in-terms-of.html"> this.

[bgates]

Daddy, couldn't you imagine that guy and Harry Reid hitting the singles bars together?

"Google."

[daddy]

"Yahoo."

[daddy]

And you guys thought the Olympics ">http://wimp.com/bicycleskill/"> couldn't get any worse.

[Mustang0302]

Hey, daddy,

Did you see this Kenyan man's homebuilt airplane?

[Extraneus]

That bicycling was great.

[Captain Hate]

What I find so incredible is that the Cleveland Indians also had C.C. Sabathia at one time. No wonder we haven't won the big one since 1948!

We should've won in '97 but for that fat POS Hargrove getting smoked by Leyland; when the Marlins tied it up off of Mesa in the bottom of the ninth, Tons-of-bad-decisions had completely expended his bullpen like the over-managing idiot he was; at that point I just went to bed because I was sure things wouldn't end well.

Also we were up 3-1 on the Sawx and fell victim to CC not being able to win a postseason game at that stage of his career, which continued on to his brief stay with the Brewers.

[Jim Ryan]

To me, comic-book superheroes serve as role models. If you want to put a hop in your step today, read this eight-frame little superman gem.

[patch]

Media bias from The Boston Globe:

Yankees rally, steal Game 1

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2010/10/16/yankees_rally_steal_game_1/

Everyplace else,

Yankees rally, win Game 1

November 3rd headline:

Republicans rally, steal election.

[Donald]

Daddy, I'm about to take you up on that Charlie Rose thing.

[Donald]

Well, there's 3:37 I'll never get back.

Too bad for the Rangers.

[Threadkiller]

Daddy, was the bicycle video a lost scene from "Top Secret"?

That was incredible.

[Ignatz Ratzkywatzky]

Damn yankees.

[Sue]

Well, the good news is I didn't slit my wrists. ::sigh:: Thankfully, as a Ranger fan, we are used to this kind of loss.

[maryrose]

Captain Hate:
I remember 1997 well. I was at a high school football game and someone had a small tv and was watching Mesa flush our hopes down the toilet. We all went out to a bar afterward. Too cruel. Almost as bad as trading Cliff Lee over the weekend so people wouldn't notice. We have not been the same since.

[maryrose]

Sue:
I am happy you are enjoying this play-off season so much. Love your comments!

[Threadkiller]

Narciso, I remember "bad call" Padres losing the first game to a strike called ball by the ump. That is a tradition in San Diego so I don't know if that is what PD was talking about.

[Pagar]

"No wonder we haven't won the big one since 1948!"

That's because they don't make them like Bob Feller any more. I really haven't followed any baseball player since he retired. If you get a chance, check out his record. IMO, he is amazing.

[PD]

My quotations above (near the beginning of the thread) are part of the dialog of the episode Omerta of my favorite TV show ever, Millennium.

In it, a couple of guys who sustain fatal injuries in some isolated woods come to, finding themselves very much alive, having been found and miraculously brought back to life by a pair of women. When the second man revives, the first, who has already been there a while, but out of contact with society for a while, wants to get caught up on the important issues of life. His first question:

"How'd the Yankees make out?"

The second guy's reply:

"Swept the Padres in 4."

[Sue]

I swore I wasn't going to watch. I've been watching NCIS all afternoon. I couldn't help myself. Peeked in to see how bad it was. And what do I see? We are in the same galldarn position we were in last night. Grrrrr.......do I watch? Do I go back to Gibbs? What to do?

[daddy]

"google."

Mustang,

Cool airplane story. Hope he's got a nice robot to test pilot the thing.

[maryrose]

Sue:
Don't watch and then they will win. You can see all the replays later. That's what I do with the Cleveland Browns. As the game nears the finish my family chimes in with "Mom leave the room!"

[indoor bike trainer]

Love the posted above article. Looking forward for more regarding this.