Looking back

A short note here on Buster Olney's key matchups from the World Series and how they worked out. These are the factors Olney identified as most important in the Series (and which The Monk discussed on 10-28).

(1) The Yankees' hitters against Cliff Lee's frantic pace. Lee wins. The Yanks solved this in the 7th inning of Game 5, but Lee had a 6-1 lead then. He was the only Phils pitcher the Yanks struggled against.

(2) The Phillies' hitters versus Mariano Rivera's cutter. Rivera wins. No answer for the Phils -- Mo pitched 5.1 scoreless innings against them, with two saves, in the Series.

(3) The Phillies' pitchers versus the patience of the Yankees' hitters. The Phils actually walked more than the Yanks (26-18) and had a higher OPS, but the Yanks made their hits count -- after the split in games 1 and 2, the Yanks hit .352 with RISP (12-34) and the Phils hit .207 (6-29), and the most patient at bat of the Series -- Damon v. Lidge -- went for the Yanks.

(4) Jayson Werth and Jorge Posada versus opportunity. Push. Neither set the world aflame: Werth banged two homers in Game 3 but finished with just two homers and 3 RBI. Posada had 5 RBI. Both were 5-19.

(5)The Yankees' power pitchers against the Phillies Who Mash Fastballs. Rollins, Victorino and Werth were kept in check; Howard received a steady diet of breaking balls and set a record for whiffs in the World Series (13 in 25 AB). Utley crushed the ball. The Yanks' power pitchers (Sabathia and Burnett) were 1-2. Pettitte was 2-0.

(6) Derek Jeter versus Jimmy Rollins. Not close -- Jeter in a landslide (.407 AVG/.519 SLG/.947 OPS, 5 runs to .217/.217/.562, 3 runs). Better to walk it than talk it.

(7) Cole Hamels versus his recent past. The recent past won -- Hamels melted down in the fifth inning of game 3, the Yanks took the lead and never looked back.

(8) Damaso Marte versus the Phillies' left-handed hitters (that's you,Chase Utley and Ryan Howard). Marte wins -- he faced eight batters and retired them all, with five strikeouts. Whatever adjustment he made with Billy Connors in September on his slider was golden.

(9) The umpires versus the action. Only one umpire had a bad night (first base, game 2, two blown calls) and the rest of the Series was well-officiated.

The newest Obama disgrace

Twenty years ago today, the Berlin Wall fell. Ronald Reagan's moral clarity resonated in the four words he spoke in West Berlin in 1987: "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL."

But Obama did not deem the 20th anniversary of the fall of the preeminent symbol of Communist evil significant enough as the president of the country that fought such evil for 44 years to fly to Berlin to commemorate its fall, signifying the practical end of the Soviet Union. That's a disgrace.

Or is it? The Washington Times makes the cogent case that Obama's absence is entirely appropriate:

Some have criticized President Obama for not visiting Berlin to commemorate this historic moment, but he made the right choice . . . Mr. Obama was on the other side of the policy divide during the Reagan years, and if his party had remained in power, we have no doubt the Soviet Union would have lasted longer as a going concern. Mr. Obama should not attempt to associate himself with that historic moment, when a man with vision had the ability to see the future and the courage to realize it.

From Mark Steyn's obituary of Reagan (from his book Mark Steyn's Passing Parade and currently on his website), a distillation of what matters:

. . . politics attracts its share of optimistic, likeable men, and most of them leave no trace – like Britain’s “Sunny Jim” Callaghan, a perfect example of the defeatism of western leadership in the 1970s. It was the era of “détente”, a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this feeble evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives”, too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.

Unlike these men, unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is details.

VICTORY = Yankees win #27

The greatest franchise in American sports history is again the champion of baseball. The Yankees are the champions of baseball after knocking off the Phillies in the 2009 World Series, 4 games to 2. Considering the youth of the Phils' core, their ability to retain their top prospects, and the way they've manhandled their principle rival for NL supremacy in the past two years, the likelihood that they will win the NL pennant a third-straight time is pretty good. If they do, the Phils will be the first team to win three-straight NL crowns since the 1942-44 Cardinals, and the first to do so in the NL since the start of divisional play (the '69-71 Orioles, '72-74 A's, '76-78 Yanks, '88-90 A's, and '98-01 Yanks all won at least three-straight AL titles since 1969).

Notes in abundance:

(1) Kudos to Godzilla (Hideki Matsui) whose 6 RBI performance in what is likely his swansong as a Yankee keyed last night's 7-3 win. Like another Yankee who had one fantastic game that defined his World Series (Reggie Jackson, 1977), Matsui won the WS MVP award on the strength of his one great game. Monkette and I loved Japan when we went and I'm happy that so many Japanese will take joy from Matsui's performance and award.

(2) The Phils are the 11th team to repeat as NL champs after winning the World Series. Eight of those teams have faced the Yankees in the World Series: '22 Giants, '23 Giants, '43 Cards, '56 Dodgers, '58 Braves, '76 Reds, '96 Braves, '09 Phils. Only two beat the Yanks: the '22 Giants and '76 Reds. Five of those Series were rematches from the previous year (1922, 1923, 1943, 1956, 1958). There have been only two World Series in history that were rematches of the previous year's contest and did not include the Yankees -- 1908 and 1931.

The other three times the NL champ was the defending World Series champ were 1908 (Cubs), 1966 (Dodgers) and 1968 (Cards). Only the Cubs won; the Dodgers were throttled by the Orioles and the Cards bonked a 3-1 lead against the Tigers.

(3) Based on his post-game remarks yesterday, Charlie Manuel is a very gracious man. Phils' shortstop Jimmy Rollins, who is still insisting the better team lost, is not. Seriously: from the time A-Rod returned from his hip injury, the Yanks were 101-48, including playoffs -- over the course of a full season that's 109-53, which is the same record as the 1961 Yankees

(4) The Yanks' starting pitching in the postseason was generally very good: three quality starts in three games against the Twins, five in six games against the Angels, three (and 1/3 inning from a fourth) against the Phils. Considering that the Yanks had rolled up four quality starts from 2005-07 in losing consecutive ALDS, the difference between winning and losing is clear.

(5) For all the opprobrium he'll get for losing game 5 of the WS, AJ Burnett deserves a hand for winning the biggest game of the Yankees' postseason -- game 2 of the Series. Burnett's lockdown start reversed any momentum from the opener and changed the dynamic of the Series. Yeah, he sucked in game 5, but he was fantastic in game 2 when the Yanks faced a possible 0-2 Series hole and the big ones you win count more.

(6) If the Phils fail to extend Cliff Lee, they're fools. But that front office is not foolish because the pitchers who started eight of their 15 postseason games were not with the Phils at the start of the year -- the Phils traded for Lee without giving up any top prospects and obtained Pedro off the scrap heap for a pittance. Manuel did well to scratch together a 93-win team with an ailing Hamels, horrible Lidge, and no starter who won more than 12 games

(7) If Cole Hamels is fully healthy next year, the Phils can threaten the 100-win mark. Of course, winning 100 means little -- the '97-99 Braves did it, lost two NLCS and were swept in the '99 WS; the '02-04 Yanks did it and suffered two playoff humiliations and a World Series bonk. There have been about 12 teams that won 100 or more games since 1995 and only the '98 and '09 Yankees won the World Series. This season is an oddity because for only the third time in the 15 three-round postseasons since 1995, the team with the best record in the regular season won the World Series.

More later, perhaps, but I need to get Yankees 2009 World Champs gear for myself, my son and my impending infant . . . it's called good parenting.

Ignominy or victory

That's the fork in the road the Yanks have reached tonight and, potentially, tomorrow. Either they'll win the World Series or fall into the same abyss of ignominy as the 1979 Orioles -- a 102-57 team that dominated the American League, ran 8 games ahead of the field and 13.5 games ahead of the three-time defending AL champion Yankees, waltzed through the ALCS and batted their way to a 3-1 lead over the Pirates in the World Series. The Bucs won game 5 in Pittsburgh and allowed only one run in Baltimore in games 6 and 7 in storming back for the World Series victory. [One day someone will examine the failed dynasty of the Orioles, who were the best overall team in baseball from 1969-1974, ran up three-straight 100+ win seasons from 1969-71 but lost two World Series to underdogs and two ALCS to the A's before falling into perennial not-good-enough status from '75-'78.]

Since 1979, six teams have come home with a 3-2 lead in the World Series and all six have won, with only one of those Series going to game 7 (1997). Nine other teams have returned home trailing 3-2 and seven of the nine have won the Series (exceptions: '92 Braves, '03 Yankees who both lost game 6). Sounds good, right? That's 15 Series, and the team coming home in game 6, whether up 3-2 or down 3-2, is 12-3.

Then again, since the ALCS and NLCS has expanded to seven games, four teams came home with 3-2 series leads and lost: '85 Jays, '91 Pirates, '03 Cubs, and '04 Yankees. Twelve others came home with 3-2 leads and won (including the '98, '00, '03 and '09 Yanks) but four of those went to a game 7 and two of the winners ('92 Braves, '03 Yanks) needed unlikely rallies to win (remember: if the '92 Pirates had a decent closer, they would have won the NL). The key fact in those four series where the leader lost -- only the '03 Cubs ever led at any point in game 6 or 7 (the Royals never trailed the Jays, the Braves blanked the Pirates twice, the Blosax never trailed the '04 Skanks). Total tally: 16 LCS where the team leading 3-2 came home for game 6 and (possibly) 7, home teams are just 8-8 in game 6, 4-4 in game 7. Crapshoot.

Hoo boy.

Baseball conventional wisdom = still just half accurate

In 1965, Sandy Koufax started game 7 of the World Series. He had pitched in Game 2, not Game 1, because the opener fell on Yom Kippur and as a Jew he felt it would send a bad message to pitch on the Day of Atonement of his religion. He lost in Game 2, pitching six innings, allowing one earned run and striking out 9, then pitched a complete game shutout (4 H, 10 K) in Game 5 on three days' rest. Although Don Drysdale was on turn for game 7, Koufax was given the start on TWO days' rest. The result? Complete game, three-hit, 10 K, 132-pitch shutout on the road where the Twins' hitters swung and missed at 27 pitches(!). And Koufax did it with essentially one pitch -- his fastball, because his curve didn't work that day.

Jim "Mudcat" Grant -- one of the 13 African-American pitchers to win 20 games in a season or "Black Aces" as he calls his group on his website -- pitched game 6 of that same series. Grant started and won game 1, started and lost game 4, and then started game 6 on two days of rest. He pitched a complete game victory.

Fast forward to modern baseball where the complete game is a rarity. In 2001, Curt Schilling started games 4 and 7 of the World Series on three days' rest. His line for two no-decisions: 14.1 IP, 9 H, 3 ER, 1 BB, 18 K. In 2004, Derek Lowe started game 7 of the ALCS on two days' rest and pitched six innings of one-run ball for the win. Anyone remember what Pedro did in 1999? Six innings of shutout relief in an ALDS game 5 do-or-die game against the Indians

The point is simple: pitching on three days' rest is not a life-altering occurrence for a competent starting pitcher.

The belief that Joe Girardi fouled up or may foul up the Yankees' World Series by starting Burnett and Pettitte on three days' rest is flat-out stupid. You put out your best players to beat the other team in a winner-take-all series and Girardi is doing the exact right thing. Burnett didn't lose Monday because of short rest, he lost because he pitched the same way in game 5 as he did in game 2 and the Phils stopped taking the first pitch. Burnett failed to adjust, the Phils didn't, and he got whacked. His career record on short rest was outstanding before that game. Pettitte should be ready to embrace the assignment, not worry about it. If he wins tonight, his legacy grows even greater than just being the winningest pitcher in postseason history.

In other words, this is no time for whining: it's time to man up and get the f---ing ring.

Pettitte is a man, unlike the whiny and fussy baseball press that thinks a guy who can throw a ball 90+ mph on 3,500-4,000 occasions each year will be decimated by the potential of having to do that same task on one occasion without the usual rest. I'd take him over Chad Gaudin in game 5 and a flaky Burnett in game 6.

On another topic, who's the MVP? If the Phils come back to win, unless Lee plays a major role in the game 7 win, the Phils' MVP would be Utley in a walk. Remember, in '77 Jackson won the MVP even though Mike Torrez pitched two complete game victories with a 2.50 ERA -- better numbers than Lee this year.

Utley's slugging percentage in this Series is currently seventh all-time for any World Series. He has tied Jackson for most home runs (5) and has the same RBI total Jackson had (8) when Reggie won the MVP in '77 (the record is 12) and has matched Reggie's six-game totals in five games. Utley has 22 total bases, which is three off the record by Jackson ('77, six games) and Stargell ('79, seven games). Even if the Phils lose, Utley has a credible case for being the second player on a losing team to win the World Series MVP (Bobby Richardson, 1960) -- in addition to his ridiculous OPS (1.651), homers, RBI and runs scored (6), Utley hit four of his five homers in the two games the Phils have won and has hit THREE off Sabathia, who was the best AL starting pitcher to play postseason baseball.

If the Yanks win and a Yankee gets the MVP, the race is closer -- Rivera has two saves and 3.2 scoreless innings; Damon is hitting .391 with 5 runs, 4 RBI and that crucial play in game 4; A-Rod is only 4-18, but he was 4-10 in Philly and has 6 RBI, all on the road. If the Yanks bonk, Utley wins.

Ultimately, The Monk would have no problem with either of these two scenarios: (1) a Yankee wins the World Series MVP award; (2) Utley becomes the second player on a losing team to win the award.

Against the policies, not the man

Last night Democrats Jon Corzine and Creigh Deeds, the incumbent governor of New Jersey and candidate for Virginia governorship, lost last night. Republican Bob McDonnell trounced Deeds, a pro-labor, pro-Keynesian, pro-Obamanomics candidate by 18 points in a state Obama won last year and in which Obama campaigned for Deeds this year.

Chris Christie beat Corzine in New Jersey despite being outspent 3-1 and running in a state that Obama carried by 15 points last year. Even with the loss of an upstate New York congressional district due primarily to its own stupidity, last night was a good one for the GOP.

Corzine is an a*s. He's a poor man's George Soros -- wealthy beyond description after a successful career on Wall Street, Corzine turned to politics as a tax-tax-tax-tax-tax-and-spend-spend-spend liberal in one of the highest tax states in the country. He's a redistributionist, pure and simple, which is fine for him now that he has more money than Croesus, but is harmful to the small businesses that form the backbone of New Jersey's economy. And he's nearly as corrupt as Tony Soprano. Christie won because he's moderate, affable and made his reputation as a corruption fighter as the United States Attorney for New Jersey.

Peter Wehner says McDonnell "ran what will become a model campaign for many other Republicans. Virginia’s governor-elect came across as conservative and practical, substantive and solution-based, disciplined and focused, calm and reassuring. He tapped into the fears and concerns of voters and seemed able to channel them in all the right ways. For Republicans to continue the restoration of public trust in their party, they must stand against Obamaism, in all its particulars, and offer compelling answers to pressing public needs."

Most importantly, McDonnell ran against Obamism, not Obama. And that's what the GOP must learn from. The American people generally like Obama personally. Running against the man is a fruitless endeavor. Running against his policies, now that we know them and can define them (unlike in the 2008 campaign), is a winning strategy because his policies are dreadfully unpopular. Lump in running against Nancy Pelosi and Congress with that strategy and the GOP has the ingredients for success. Now, it needs the candidates.

That's why they get the big bucks

Kudos to AJ Burnett on his excellent performance last night -- 7 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 2 BB, 9 K. Burnett has had three very good or better starts in his four performances in the Yanks' postseason and last night's brilliance came in a crucial situation -- team down 1-0, Phillies striking first last night, first-ever WS start.

Some notes from the Yanks win:

(1) Kudos to Joey G. First, he went to Rivera for a six-out save. This should be a no-brainer, but Torre failed to do it five years ago when Francona was managing every game like it was game 7. Second, Girardi stuck with his Burnett-Molina battery even though the Yanks needed Posada's offense. Molina made the defensive play of the game picking off Jayson Werth at first after blocking a ball in the dirt. Thereafter, Burnett mowed down 11 of the final 12 hitters he faced, the crowd gained a little life and Tex banged the Yanks back into the game. Third, his intuition to play Jerry Hairston against Pedro (Hairston was 10-27 in his career against Pedro) paid off. Hairston went to the video tape in between at bats to figure out if the pitches he wasn't swinging at were actually strikes, determined they were, fought off a bunch of pitches in at bat #3 and plopped the single into right that started the Yanks' final scoring opportunity.

(2) Bad night for Charlie Manuel on a couple of questionable calls (retaining Pedro in the 7th, not sending the runners in the 8th). But Pedro's performance (6 IP, 8 H, 3 ER) was more than good enough to justify Manuel's decision to start him, especially considering that Matsui's homer in the 6th was a case of good hitting, not bad pitching.

(3) A-Rod sucks again. His swings are akin to the '05-'07 playoff A-Rod, not the '09 ALCS A-Rod. Verducci has more on this at si.com. The approach by the Yankees as a whole was wrong -- they know to look for the offspeed stuff and sit on the changeup up in the zone but largely hacked away at change-ups out of the strike zone. When they looked for the change, they did better -- like Tex's homer and Matsui's single (Matsui's homer was a good swing on a tough pitch).

(4) Welcome back Hideki Matsui. He was basically out to lunch from Game 2 of the ALDS through Wednesday, but came back last night to play a key role in the Yanks' win.

(5) Here's all you need to know about Phil Hughes right now. In the 7th, with a rested Rivera unquestionably set to pitch the 8th and 9th, Joey G. warmed up Joba in case he needed to pull Burnett.

(6) If I'm a pitcher, I don't throw Melky Cabrera anything above the knee. He's a dead high-ball hitter and quick enough to pull high outside heat. But he's clueless down in the zone.

(7) The umpires are just awful. Brian Gorman made two bad calls. One that very likely cost the Yankees, another that could have cost the Phillies. In the 7th, he ruled Damon lined out to Ryan Howard, even though Howard clearly short-hopped the ball. After Howard threw wide to second, the Yanks should have had bases loaded and one out for Tex. Instead, Damon was out and Posada was tagged out for leaving the base on a fly ball. Worse yet, the umps checked the replays after the game and still think they made the right call even though the Fox cameras show otherwise! Where was Gorman positioned? Behind Howard (who is quite large). How can Gorman make the out call like that when he can't even see the non-catch? Howard's first reaction upon getting the ball was to throw to second for a force out -- that's a dead giveaway that Howard himself didn't think he made the catch.

In the 8th, Gorman bonked the play at first on Utley's double play grounder. He was safe. This had a big impact for the Phils (it would have been first and third, two out, Howard up) but a less likely scoring chance considering that there would have been two out for Howard, as opposed to one out for Tex. Gorman later said the replays showed him a "little bit" of the ball was out of Tex's glove when Utley hit the bag. Yeah, that "little bit" would be basically the whole ball. Gorman is justifying his honks. According to this article, Gorman is "very good" on the bases, his ball/strike calls are a bit hinky and he gives make up calls. Guess who is behind the plate Saturday.

P.S. -- I like Buster Olney's insights and analysis a lot, but that Patience Index is pretty worthless. The mere fact that Brett Gardner saw six pitches in his only plate appearance is not a sign of effectiveness. The fact that he whiffed is what mattered. Ryan Howard saw 18 pitches in four at bats (4.5 per, a high total) and struck out four times. If the pitches faced can correlate to pitcher effectiveness, that's one thing (e.g., if Rivera had given up the lead in the 8th, Olney could point back to Rollins' 11-pitch walk), but just pointing out how many pitches someone faced is not particularly useful.

Empirical evidence?

OK, here's something that doesn't work: playing the Imperial March from The Empire Strikes Back during pre-game introductions for the Phillies last night and the processional theme at the end of Star Wars (during the heroism medal ceremony) for the Yanks.

WHAT????

The YANKEES are the EMPIRE in baseball, the Phils are the rebels, and the Yanks should glory in it. Not only did the Yanks win 20 World Series in 42 seasons from 1923-64, since the advent of divisional play in 1969 only one franchise has even been to as many World Series (A's) as the Yanks have won (six). Why shy away from that? The Yanks should be the big, dark, intimidating bad a**es of baseball and embrace it, not the scrappy little rebels -- that's beneath them. And it's tone-deaf too. The Yanks should be telling the baseball world "we're back, now commence to trembling." (Of course, sucking demonstratively less against Cliff Lee would aid in projecting such aura.)

RedSax president Larry Lucchino dubbed the Yanks the "Evil Empire" and you know what? F--- him and his team. The Yanks, win or lose, are the only reason that Fox pulled NFL-level ratings for the World Series last night and they make the television rights worth the immense lucre that the Murdochs pay . . . and that pile of gold is split between the teams.

The Yanks draw, period. No matter how much ESPN and it's New Englander tilt (Bill Simmons, Peter Gammons) likes to prattle on about RedSawx Nation and shill for the sport's historically most racist franchise, which is centered in a backwater provincial city that reached the zenith of its global relevance 234 years ago, the fact is clear -- the Yankees are the top team in all of American sports.

So whine and cry as much as you want, the Yanks are the Empire, and it's a good thing too.

The disgusting president

At some point, Charles Krauthammer will be incorrect in his assessment of Obama.

This is not that point.

Click the link and watch the video.

Turned into Philets

That was the Yanks last night -- turned into witnesses to their own execution by Cliff Lee. I said the Phils have a starting staff comprised of Tom Glavines and Lee looked like either the 1995 WS Game 6 version, the 1991 Cy Young Award winner, the 1998 CYA winner or the 1992 version who led the NL in shutouts. Lee neutered everyone in the Yankees' lineup not named Jeter -- 10 Ks, three of A-Rod and two of Tex (who had hit Lee well in the past). I watched the whole game in about 45 minutes on DVR -- once I saw how Lee mowed down the Yanks in the first, I said to myself: "Self, this is going to be a long game for the Yanks."

By contrast, CC looked awful -- he struggled with location all night, walked three and rolled up a stack of 3-ball counts. It's actually a testament to his skills and pitching prowess that he only allowed two runs over seven innings -- a short homer by Utley and a bomb by Utley. But Lee made 1-0 and 2-0 leads look more like the 6-1 final than the narrow margins they were. Overall, a Yanks' loss in Game 1 of the WS that is half as bad as the beating they took from the Braves in '96 (6-1, no ER against Lee compared to 12-1, one ER off Smoltz).

Some notes:

(1) The physics conundrum of what happens when the irresistible force meets the immovable object is easily solved in sports: the immovable object ALWAYS wins. John Smoltz told the Great Verducci that the Phils should consider just throwing waves of pitchers at the Yanks because the Yanks work over starters so well that by the third time through the lineup, the Yanks will crush the ball off the weakened pitcher. Nice theory. But the fact remains that good pitching ALWAYS tops good hitting. The Angels were the second-highest scoring team in baseball and Sabathia turned them into AA players. The Rox are one of two NL teams with an AL-quality lineup, and Lee made them into a collection of 35th round draft picks. Remember the 2006 playoffs when the Yanks were supposed to shell the Tigers and bang their way to a title? I try not to. Remember the '95 Indians who won 100 of 144 games that season? After the Braves' pitchers throttled them in the Series, no one else does either.

This works in every major sport except basketball, which is the only sport where good offense beats good defense because, ultimately, the defender cannot prevent a shot where the ball is about to fall in the basket from scoring. In hockey, middling teams frequently make deep playoff runs thanks to a hot goaltender (Giguere for the Ducks, Brodeur for the '95 Devils). In football, there are legends told about defenses like the '85 Bears, '00 Ravens and '08 Steelers. In baseball, one man has more control over the outcome of the game than any other player -- the starting pitcher. Even in soccer, this rule works -- just ask the Italian World Cup champions who allowed NO goals by an opponent in the run of play (the team allowed two goals in the tournament -- an own goal credited to the US, and a penalty kick scored by the French).

(2) The Yanks' bullpen is awful. They have two pitchers not named Rivera who don't suck right now: Marte and Robertson. The former has set down the last six hitters he's faced (all lefties) and the latter is a rally-killer with men on base. Robertson had an outlandish strikeout rate (63 in 43 IP) and seems to thrive in dire situations; Hughes, Bruney and Aceves have only created dire situations. The key to the series for the Yanks is to preserve a lead through seven innings and have Rivera pitch two, period. The only exception -- none or one out in the eighth and Howard up, then Joey G. can use Marte.

(3) I'm already sick of hearing about the Phillies' dynasty. They won ONE f**king World Series last year and are three wins away. Until and unless they get those three wins, they're not even a burgeoning dynasty (a dynasty really requires more than just back-to-back wins -- discuss the concept when the team wins three in a row or at least three in four years, otherwise it's just defining dynasty down).

This morning, Colin Cowherd was prattling on about how the Phils are 19-5 in the last two years in the playoffs. BFD. Through game 2 of the '96 World Series, the Braves were 20-6 in the '95 and '96 playoffs and had won their last five games by a combined score of 48-2 against the next-best team in the NL and the AL champs! Four days later, the Braves were 20-10 and watching Wade Boggs ride a police horse around a celebrating Yankee Stadium. In 1998-99, the Yanks were 22-3 in the playoffs with two World Series sweeps in a row. Even with the 2000 championship run, the Yanks were 33-8 over those three years -- that's a whole lot better than 19-5. Oh yeah, the Phils won't have Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Denny Neagle (before he sucked) on the mound in the next three games like the 1996 Braves did.

(4) If momentum is only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher, I'd feel better about the Yanks' momentum today with Pettitte than with Burnett. In 2003, the Yanks lost game 1 of each series and put Pettitte on the bump in game 2 each time. Results for Pettitte: 3-0, 22.1 IP, 3 ER, 22K in the Yanks' 4-1, 6-2 and 6-1 wins. The Phils banged around Burnett in May, but that was before AJ started pitching well in June and July. He's been on another upswing from late September to present.

From the past performance does not necessarily predict future results file: In '99, the Braves crushed Clemens and El Duque in the Bronx during the regular season (Duque gave up 4 homers in 4.1 innings!) and caused Mo's fourth blown save of the season (he then saved 28 of his next 28 opportunities, including six-for-six in the playoffs, and dropped his ERA from 3.22 to 1.83 [and 0.00 in the playoffs]); in the WS, Clemens and Duque allowed 2 ER and 5 hits combined in 14.1 IP, and Mo cut through the Braves' lineup like little leaguers in winning the MVP.

Fall Classic notes

Check it out: Buster Olney eschewed the trite position by position matchup analysis for the World Series. Must be because he's one of the best baseball reporters working today.

Here are his main points (headers only, for his explanations go to the link in the title of this post):

1. The Yankees' hitters against Cliff Lee's frantic pace. Olney says Lee works fast -- The Monk thinks the Yanks have more trouble with Lee's ability than his pace because they've been mediocre against him recently, but the Yanks kill Mark Buerhle, who is probably the fastest working pitcher in baseball.
2. The Phillies' hitters versus Mariano Rivera's cutter. The only NL team to actually hit Rivera hard in the WS, ever, is the '00 Mess. And they faced the Yanks six times that year.
3. The Phillies' pitchers versus the patience of the Yankees' hitters. The Monk discussed this one below. This was a huge factor in the Yanks' '99 win over the Braves
4. Jayson Werth and Jorge Posada versus opportunity. Werth has not sucked, Posada has. Even a decent game from Posada would have meant a cakewalk win in game 6 of the ALCS.
5. The Yankees' power pitchers against the Phillies Who Mash Fastballs. That's most of the Phils. The Phils didn't hit Sabathia well and only hit Pettitte a little back in May, but they smacked Burnett around.
6. Derek Jeter versus Jimmy Rollins.
7. Cole Hamels versus his recent past. Hamels worked in and out of trouble against the Yanks in May in a 6 IP no-decision. He's been slightly sharper than the average bowling ball in the playoffs this year.
8. Damaso Marte versus the Phillies' left-handed hitters (that's you, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard). Good info from Olney here as he discusses how Marte has changed his slider grip and how that has improved the pitch. Marte is a momentum guy -- he pitches better when he has confidence that arises from his results. Howard's 2009 splits are amazing: .319 BA, .691 SLG, 1.086 OPS against righties, and just .207/.356/.653 against lefties. Utley's splits are quite different, good against righties and slightly better against lefties. For their careers, Howard's left-right splits are not far off from his 2009 numbers (BA dropoff is 81 points, SLG dropoff is 217 points, OPS dropoff is 316), Utley is slightly better against righties than lefties.
9. The umpires versus the action. There will be no instant replay for this World Series. Hoo boy.

Other notes: the fact that the Game 1 winner has won 11 of the last 12 Series (Verducci cited this, I think) is of minimal value. After all, most "analysts" are predicting a 6-7 game series and only four of the 12 in that selection went more than five games. Of the four, the loser BLEW each one: the '97 Indians lost a lead in the bottom of the 9th in game 7, the '01 Yanks lost games 6 and 7 in Arizona, the '02 Giants completely collapsed with a 3-2 Series lead and a 5-0 lead in game 6 just nine outs away from the ring, and the '03 Yanks bonked a 2-1 Series lead when Torre let Jeff Weaver off his leash.

Only in the '03 Series did game 1 have ramifications for the rest of the contests because the Marlins broke the Yanks' record-long 10-game home winning streak in the Series that dated back to 1996 -- a crack in the Yanks' invincibility at the Stadium -- and the Fishes clinched the Series in the Bronx, which was just the third time since 1979 that a team won a World Series on the road in a game 6 (compared to the seven teams that came from 3-2 down to win in seven at home).

I also don't understand the prediction of Phils in 7 that some have made. If you think the Phils will win a close series, then it's Phils in 6, period. That's your ONLY logical pick. If you think the Yanks will win a close series, then it's Yanks in 6 or 7. Why? Because the last time a team won a game 7 on the road in the WS was 1979 (Pirates), and the roadies are 0-8 since, no matter how agonizingly close they've come ('91 Braves, '97 Indians, '01 Yanks). Then again, the '03 Yanks were the first team to come home for game 6 and lose the series since the '92 Braves (the previous six teams had won in either six or seven games), and just the second since '81 (against 10 teams that had won in six or seven games), so this team could be the one to bear the ignominy of first one to lose a WS game 7 at home in 30 years. After all, it may have four holdovers from the '96 team that beat the Braves, but it also has five holdovers from the '04 team . . .

A Classic Fall Classic?

The baseball press is almost desperate for a long and hard-fought World Series. The past five have been sweep, sweep, 4-1, sweep and 4-1. And eight of the 11 World Series since 1998 have been either sweeps (5) or over in five (3). (Those 4-1 wins for the Cards in '06 and Phils in '08 are the NL equivalent of a sweep -- no NL team has swept a World Series since 1990 and no NL team not from Cincinnati has swept a World Series since 1963.)

From Jimmy Rollins' perspective, his Phils in 5 prediction is a bit optimistic, to say the least (Benny Agbayani of the Mess made a Mess in 5 prediction in 2000 and was half right). After all, no Jeter-Rivera Yankee team has won fewer than two games in a best-of-seven. And The Monk is hoping that the Yanks double up that two win minimum in the next week or so.

So how does the Series really break down?

The Monk disdains the position-by-position analysis that so many writers use. Johnny Damon is not playing head-to-head against Raul Ibanez nor will Jimmy Rollins go toe-to-toe with Derek Jeter. It's the wrong frame of reference because it's not like Derek Jeter needs to make a play against Jimmy Rollins for his team to score. A position by position comparison of the '98 Yanks with the '86 Mets looks good for the Mets (they'd "win" the corner outfield spots, catcher and get at least a push at 3b and 1b) and that team couldn't hold the '98 Yanks collection of protective cups.

The relevant questions are entirely different.

How will the Phils fare against four starts minimum from Yankee lefties in the Series and how will the Yanks fare against the Phils' precision starters who don't have blow-by fastballs but just PITCH well? The Phils' staff is a collection of Tom Glavines, the question is what era -- Lee is the HOF-quality Glavine from the 90s and early 00s, Hamels is capable of doing the same, Blanton is a righty equivalent who has gone from innings-eating midlevel starter in the AL to a #2-3 quality starter in the NL. And Pedro will junkball the Yanks for as many pitches as he can -- he's not the 1990s-early 2000s pitcher who dominated opponents with the 96 mph fastball and the 77 mph changeup. Can the Phils make the quality pitches necessary to get the Yanks out against a team that led the AL in walks? Will the Yanks actually have some decent hitting by players who do not play on the left side of their infield? Will the Phils patchwork starting staff (Lee excepted) resemble the parade of horribles that the '04 Yanks and '09 Dudgers put out, or will it resemble the '96 Yanks, which had 5 quality starts in 15 postseason games but won the World Series?

Can the Yanks' staff, which led the AL in strikeouts, confound the Phils and their free swingers (Howard cut his strikeouts down to 186 from 199(!), Werth had 156, Ibanez 119 in 134 games, Feliz doesn't walk)? The Phils led the NL in homers and have four players who hit at least 31. Can the Yanks keep the Phils in the park in two of the most homer-friendly stadiums?

Will the starting pitching even be the key to the Series? Look at how the Braves pitched in the 1996 WS -- five good to great starts in six games but they lost three of the five and unearned runs were the difference in two of the three losses that their starters suffered.

Whose bullpen will come to the fore? Last year, the Phils won two games against the Rays' 'pen. This year they won two games against the Rockies' 'pen in the NLDS and another against the Dudgers'. The Yanks won twice against the opposing bullpens in the playoffs and their supposedly superior bullpen took both losses in the ALCS. Lidge was awful in the regular season, solid in the playoffs while Madsen has been shaky in the postseason and top-notch in the regular season; Hughes, Chamberlain and the lefties are a question mark for the Yanks after Hughes' lights-out performance as a set-up man in the regular season, but Mo is still Mo.

And one more: which manager will foul up a key situation? Manuel survived his only bad call in the NLCS because the Dudgers sucked; he survived a bad decision in game 4 of the NLDS because Huston Street imploded. The joke after five games of the ALCS was that the series stood at Yankees 3, Girardi 2. Even Mike Scioscia, who would win best manager in baseball by acclaim just about every year from the press, made a colossal bonk by yanking Lackey in game 5. No need to discuss Torre -- his pitching decisions just failed, failed and failed again in the NLCS.

These are the relevant questions. I just want the answers to add up to Yankee title #27.

Restoring partial order to the universe: the Yankees' 40th Pennant

Five years after TheChokeHeardRoundTheWorld and the TorreFiringThatShouldHaveHappened, the Yankees are back in the World Series.

About time.

The why is easy to determine: (1) the Yanks had 5 quality starts in six games, including two top-notch starts from ALCS MVP CC Sabathia; (2) Jeter and A-Rod scored 11 of the team's 33 runs and A-Rod hit .429 with 3 HR and 6 RBI in the series; (3) Mark Teixeira, for all his high suck level at the plate, made about a run-saving play per game; (4) Chone Figgins (13-39, 1.025 OPS), Bobby Abreu (11-35, 8 RBI in 9 games), and Kendry Morales (12-32, 3 HR, 7 RBI, 1.147 OPS), who killed the Yanks in the regular season were 7-48 with 1 HR, 7 RBI and 5 runs combined in the ALCS, (5) the Yanks have Mariano and the Angels don't. The absence of a top-end closer in the postseason has been deadly to the Dodgers, Cards, Angels and Rockies. The presence of top-end closer who fails to pitch up to his ability killed the Twins and eliminated the RedSux (Nathan and Papelbon are two of the three best closers in the AL, the third is in the World Series).

The Monk will have some more World Series information tomorrow and Wednesday. But here are some observations from the ALCS and NFL.

(1) The Yanks need better protection for A-Rod. If I'm Charlie Manuel, I seriously think about giving him the 2002 Barry Bonds treatment. Matsui has been poor in the postseason, Cano's inability to hit with RISP is almost legendary in scope (.320 average, .520 slugging, .872 OPS overall; but .207 AVG, .332 SLG and .574 OPS with RISP), and Swish still can't hit a lick in the postseason. And Posada was absolutely AWFUL last night. Jorge made the last out of three innings. He hit into two double plays. He left 10 men on base. He was 0-5 but accounted for 7 outs. He bounced into an inning-ending DP in the fourth with bases loaded, one out and the Yanks one hit away from blowing the game open up 3-1. Posada's horrendous night came batting right behind A-Rod, who had two hits and three walks and was on base every time Posada was at bat. Matsui wasn't better (0-4), but because Posada was so bad, Matsui only had one at bat with A-Rod on base even though Matsui batted right after Posada.

(2) The relievers need to suck less. Kudos to Joba, who had been atrocious, for getting two weak grounders to end the seventh and set the stage for Rivera in the 8th.

(3) AJ needs to toughen up. The Yanks need someone other than Sabathia to be able to finish the 7th. Pettitte had his super-glare last night and pitched a fine game. I don't blame Joey G for giving Andy the hook with one out and one on in the 7th because Pettitte had a tough sixth inning and dodged trouble and rough innings cost the pitcher more energy than just a high pitch count does.

(4) Give credit to Swisher on defense last night -- he made a good running catch and throw to first to pick off Vlady (who stupidly wandered halfway to second on a short fly to right) and he made a nice sliding catch. For a guy who plays the outfield because he hits his way into the lineup, Swish has made three nice defensive plays in the last 9 innings he's been in the field.

(5) Kudos to Pettitte for setting the record for most playoff wins by a pitcher. He has 16, John Smoltz had 15. Pettitte also has more wins in the LCS and World Series (10) than Smoltz (8). And Pettitte also set the record for most playoff wins by a pitcher starting games where his team could close out the opponent. The others: '96 ALCS game 5, '98 WS game 4, '01 ALCS game 5, '09 ALDS game 3.

And on another topic -- the NFL.

First, The Monk cannot remember a year in the salary cap era where there were so many blowouts and so many suck teams. The Raiders are awful, the Browns are horrid, the Bucs are terrible, the Rams are horrendous. They lost 38-0, 31-3, 35-7 and 42-6 yesterday, respectively. But the blowouts between seemingly evenly matched teams (Bengals 45, Bears 10) are also surprising.

Second, Cris Collinsworth showed last night why he earned his post as Madden's successor. He sussed out one of Eli Manning's snap count tricks (calling "Omaha" at the line changed the snap count) and pointed out why the Giants' receivers were failing in their route-running through bad technique. Listen to the Sunday night football broadcasts and you'll learn more about the game.

Disaster or delay -- the ALCS game 5 honk

The Yanks failed last night, and Joel Sherman makes the best possible case that Girardi blew yet another game in the ALCS: nine outs away from their 40th pennant with a rested bullpen and a clean slate to start the bottom of the 7th, Girardi could have gone to Hughes and Rivera for nine outs with no problem and did not. On further review, although I said last night that I thought Girardi was right to give Burnett the ball in the 7th after only 80 pitches or so, I see Sherman's point -- it was lockdown time and the Yanks failed to lock down the Angels.

Or did they? Buster Olney's blog entry on the game (behind a subscription wall) makes a credible case regarding how good Burnett was in innings 2-6 -- 20 batters, 17 retired (one DP), 70% first-pitch strikes (59% is average), and 80% of batters with two strikes made outs (72% average). Why not think he could continue that?

And Hughes has been erratic, at best, in the postseason (see below). Maybe he gives up two bloops and a blast and we're at 7-6 anyway. The only sure thing in the Yankees' 'pen is Rivera. Contrast that with the previously erratic Phillies, who have Madsen, Happ, Eyre and Park pitching well in getting 6-7 outs before the rejuvenated Lidge.

This is how teams lose pennants. Tom Verducci makes the point that of the last 12 times the Yanks have been nine outs or fewer from victory in the playoffs, they've lost four games including THREE in which they could have closed out a pennant. Not good. And if the team loses game 6, winning game 7 may prove pyrrhic. The Yanks' postseason rotation is built upon the NEED for Sabathia to pitch three times in a seven-game series and do so on short rest. If the Yanks win in 7, they start the Series in New York Wednesday. If tomorrow's game is rained out and the Yanks win in 6 or 7, they start the Series Wednesday. That means Sabathia in game 2 on short rest or Pettitte, and possibly a four-man rotation for the Series. If Pettitte pitches well in the close-out game and the Yanks win tomorrow, it's the all-Indians reunion of Lee-Sabathia on Wednesday.

Then again, as important as the rotation is to the Yanks, the matchups are not that crucial -- Lee is the Phillies' ace right now, but the other three starters (Hamels, Pedro, Blanton) are essentially interchangeable because Hamels is not his 2008 self.

Some other failures from yesterday:

(1) Nick Swisher is terrible at the plate now. He has no clue. Credit him for a great play on a potential sac fly in the 8th -- he charged the fly ball and immediately threw home with accuracy, keeping the speedy Reggie Willets at third and the game a 7-6 deficit.

(2) The first batter to face Joba in his relief appearances has doubled more often than made an out. This is relief? Joba has allowed 7 hits in 2.2 IP -- that's about 25 per 9 IP. Hughes has allowed 9 hits and 2 walks in 4.2 IP for a 2.36 WHIP. These are Tom Gordon 2004 numbers. They're also Exhibit 1 as to why Rivera must pitch the 8th AND the 9th for any saves in the rest of the playoffs. The only relievers not named Rivera doing their jobs are (shock) Damaso Marte and Dave Robertson.

(3) Mike Scioscia had a bad game. First, he yanked his ace with bases loaded and two outs and a 4-0 lead. Lackey is the best pitcher the Angels have, keep him in. First pitch from Darren Oliver to Teixeira = three-run double. A walk, single, triple followed and it's 6-4 Yankees. Second, he bunted with Figgins against Marte with runners at first and second and none out in the 7th. Figgins is too fast to get doubled up on a grounder, even as a righty. He makes decent contact. He walks alot. Why give up the out? The tactic only worked because Hughes failed.

(4) Whoever made the call to throw Vlady Guerrero a fastball in the 7th owns the loss. Hughes threw five pitches to Torii Hunter when he came into the game -- four fastballs for balls and a slider for a 3-0 strike. Hughes missed on his first pitch (fastball) to Guerrero and got strikes on a slider and curve. With Guerrero set up at 1-2 and two on, Hughes shook off two signs and Posada set up for a high fastball. WHY? Hughes couldn't hit the target with his fastball all night, if he misses up, Guerrero could create a three-run souvenir. Hughes could spot the slider and curve and Guerrero will swing at anything. Sure enough, Hughes misses the target low, Guerrero smacks a single, tie game. And a 2-0 fastball to Morales = Angels 7-6.

And now, two more days of hearing all the 2004 ALCS nightmares revisited and the press wondering if the disaster will hit again. It's possible. In '04, Jon Leiber pitched very well except for a fluky opposite-foul-line homer by Bellhorn in game 6, and the Yanks lost. And as cliche as it seems, anything can happen in a game 7.

The Monk: an NLCS prophet

Did I say five-game sweep or what?

Honestly, this year's Dudgers put on a worse performance in the NLCS than last year's Dudgers. Other than a freakishly good outing by Padilla last Friday, the Phils whacked the Duds starters and knocked the whole Western Blue pitching staff around -- a 35-16 aggregate run total in the Phils' favor after just a 25-20 total win last year.

Unlike the '08 NLCS, the Duds' lone win came from fortuity -- last year they smacked the Phils around in game 3 and were doing the same in game 4 before Torre stupidly lifted Derek Lowe, the Artfuls' bullpen crumbled and the team faced a 3-1 hole from which Cole Hamels would not let them dig out. This year, the Duds were whomped twice.

How exactly did the Duds lead the NL in wins and the majors in run differential? This is more Torre smoke and mirrors, for which he is well-known and rightly lauded and can work wonders with over the course of a long season in which each pitch and each at bat means far less than it does in the playoffs. Remember, this is the manager who coaxed a combined 25-8 record out of Aaron Small, Shawn Chacon and rookie Chien-Ming Wang in 2005.

The Duds lacked a starter with more than 12 wins and had only two pitchers with 10. They relied on scrap heap pickup Padilla to fortify the rotation at the end of the year (and stave off the Rockies). Their two best postseason starts were from Padilla -- only once in six other starts did the Duds' starter pitch into the 7th inning. These are the types of pitchers that the '05 Yankees relied upon. But if your team lacks pitchers with pure stuff and top-end ability (Kershaw has the former, not the latter), postseason success is difficult. The Phils' pitchers not named Lee were far from spectacular and the Dodgers couldn't even put a small roadblock in their season. Instead, Colorado-Philly was the de facto NLCS.

The LA of LA's biggest problem is development. The team is young, and its best pitchers are kids (Kershaw, Billingsley). Torre often has problems with pitchers -- look at how much better Jeff Weaver, Ted Lilly, Javy Vazquez, Kenny Rogers and Jose Contreras have done after they left the Bronx. Billingsley imploded this year, even though he has top of the rotation ability. Kuroda completely biffed in his NLCS cameo.

And the Phils look tough. This team failed to win 98-100 because the bullpen sucked during the year. In the playoffs, it's been a team strength. They have an AL quality lineup with four players who whacked 30+ homers and another with more than 20 (with an AL capable DH for the World Series in Matt Stairs). And they're a lot more intense than the Dudgers. Just ask Jonathan Broxton . . .

Reporters can't count

Here's a classic. Can you find the problem?

Winning back-to-back pennants in the National League is a feat not easily accomplished. The last team to do so was the Atlanta Braves in 1995-96; they also did it in 1991-92. In the last half-century since the Milwaukee Braves won back-to-backers in 1957 and ’58, NL teams have reached the World Series in consecutive seasons only four times: Los Angeles (1965-66 and 1977-78), St. Louis (1967-68) and Cincinnati (1975-76). Winning the World Series twice in a row is even more rare: No NL team since the Big Red Machine in the mid-’70s has done it.

So Gordon Edes says NL teams have won consecutive pennants four times since 1958: the '65-66 Dodgers [that's 1], '67-68 Cards [that's 2], '75-76 Reds [that's 3], '77-78 Dodgers [that's four], '91-92 Braves [that's four again?] and '95-96 Braves [that's four a third time???].

OK, maybe that's 6 repeat winners of the NL pennant since the '58 Braves.

In the AL, there have not only been repeaters but multiple repeat pennant winners: six multiple repeaters -- '60-64 Yanks, '69-71 Orioles (yes, the Orioles were once a good team), the '72-74 A's, the '76-78 Yanks, the '88-90 A's and the '98-'01 Yanks all were multiple repeat pennant winners, and the '92-93 BluJs were single repeat AL champs. Unlike the NL, where only the '75-76 Reds won back-to-back titles, the AL has had five repeat World Series champs since the '58 season: '61-62 Yanks, '72-74 A's, '77-78 Yanks, '92-93 Js and '98-00 Yanks. And that seems a bit odd that the AL would have so many more repeat champions, considering that the AL edge is just 26-23 in the World Series since 1958. The NL has pulled off far more upsets in the Fall Classic ('60 Pirates, '63 Dodgers, '64 Cards, '69 Mets, '71 Pirates, '79 Pirates, '88 Dodgers, '90 Reds, '95 Braves, '03 Marlins, '06 Cards) than the AL ('66 Orioles, '85 Royals, '87 Twins, '96 Yanks).

Good thing I'm not a reporter, my ability to count would be completely shot.

Umpirical evidence of awful

The umpires this year have given umpirical evidence of awful officiating. The baseball playoff officiating has been so bad, with so many obvious blown calls, that the NBA's title of worst-officiated American sport (no sport is more poorly officiated than soccer) is in serious jeopardy. Even Big T(elev)en football and basketball officiating is not this bad.

Phil Cuzzi's failure in game 2 of the ALDS will be the paradigm failure. But C.B. Bucknor's calls in the Sawx/Angels ALDS were bad and last night was just horrendous.

The Yanks-Angels game had 3 major gaffes and a minor one (Fieldin Culbreth called Juan Rivera safe on a bang-bang play at first, but Rivera was out). Worse yet, two of the three were by Tim McClellan, reputedly one of the best umpires in the game.

In the 4th inning, with one out, two on, Yanks with three runs in, Scott Kazmir thisclose to getting ripped up and the Yanks going into cruise control, and Jeter up, Nick Swisher was picked off second base. Not close -- his lead hand was more than a foot away from the bag when Erick Aybar tagged Swish ON THAT HAND. Second base ump Dale Scott was four feet away from the play and looking directly at the tag . . . and called Swish safe.

After Jeter walked, Damon whacked a fly ball to centerfield. Swisher tagged up at third base, left AFTER Hunter had caught the ball, and trotted home with a 4-0 lead . . . or not. The Angels appealed to McClellan that Swisher left early and McClellan called Swish out. Replays showed clearly that Swish left after Hunter made the catch. More importantly: McClellan was looking at Hunter catching the ball, and was positioned so that Swisher was BEHIND McClellan when Swisher left the base. McClellan had no clue when Swish left and still called him out. Swish was called out on an appeal play last month, in a similarly spurious call, so this is pure reputation.

Finally, in the 5th, after he failed to score on Cano's double, Posada was at third and Cano at second with one out. Swish hit a bouncer to the pitcher. Posada was running on contact and the Angels caught him in a rundown. In that situation, the burned runner must play for time and the trail runner must take the next base. Thus, if the burned runner cannot score, both should end up ON third base, the fielder with the ball tags both and the ump calls the lead runner out. Here, Cano stopped short of third and Posada overran the base. Angels catcher Mike Napoli tagged the both and BOTH idiots should have been out. McClellan called Cano safe and Posada out.

Awful umpiring.

Except home plate ump Jerry Layne. He's the ump who did NOT give Aybar the "area play" on a double play attempt in game two (the shortstop or secondbaseman gets credit for the out at second just by being in the area of the base). On all previous double plays, Aybar had clearly stepped on the base (the Yanks bounced into three). And we saw why Layne made the calls he did.

FOX, to its great credit, showed Layne talking with Angels manager Mike Scioscia between innings and discussing how his view of the balls and strikes was not as clear when the Yanks were batting because Mike Napoli's stance impeded his view. Layne said he didn't ask Napoli to get lower, but if he wanted to that would be up to Napoli. Scioscia told Napoli what to do, and the Angels adjusted. With a clearer view of the low strike for Layne, the Angels seemed happier with the zone. Then again, Layne's zone was so consistent that the FOX Box strike zone graphic looked like it was designed by Layne's calls.

One other note: I think Tim McCarver has cut down on the cornpone and bad punnery this year. That's good. He's easily the best color commentator in the game when he's not being a buffoon and he was sharp last night in describing why Posada failed to score on the Cano double and why McClellan so badly whiffed on the Swisher sac fly run.

Pennant #40 is just one win away . . .

Even Girardi couldn't screw this up. As CC Sabathia made a mockery of the "three-days' rest" concerns and the Yankees FINALLY got some hits with runners in scoring position, the only decision Girardi had to make was whether to let CC pitch a complete game. He made the right choice, giving Chad Gaudin a taste of the playoffs and live game action, which may be beneficial in the near future. (And The Monk wonders if the Yanks will have Gaudin back next year as a fifth starter candidate -- he's earned the chance.)

For the rest of the night, the Yanks were a lineup that looked like the one that led baseball in scoring. The problems were minor: Matsui was a black hole (0-5, 3K, two bonks with RISP), Swisher hasn't had a hit since sometime in August. The biggest of the big hitters, A-Rod, was 3-4, 3 runs, 2 RBI, a stolen base and caused an Angels' error. Melky Cabrera expiated some of his previous failures with a two-run single that gave the Yanks a 3-0 early lead and two hits with RISP. Damon banged the two-run homer that iced the game.

A good night all around for the Yanks except for THREE baserunning idiocies: (1) Swisher getting picked off second in the 4th; (2) Posada getting suckered by a half-hearted decoy by Torii Hunter and failing to score on a double in the gap; (3) Cano failing to stand on third base after Posada got his own dumb a** caught in a rundown. None of this is rocket science or even advanced baseball strategy. Posada is a catcher, so he's slow. But he's been in the majors for 12+ years. There's no excuse for his horrible baserunning skills. Contrast him with Teixeira, who won't compete with Usain Bolt any time soon, but certainly runs the bases with intelligence, which means extra bases, more runs, fewer outs.

For now, the Yanks are one win away from the World Series and a date with the Phillies (who will likely win the NL pennant tonight). Hopefully Girardi won't overmanage this into a seven-game series . . .

Girardi tactics leading to Yankees' tee time

That's the Yankees' situation in a nutshell. Girardi's overmanaging in the playoffs is going to lead this team, which is the best in baseball, to a failure. Girardi's attention to detail is impressive and if the Yanks do win World Series #27 this year it will be legendary. But yesterday, it helped cause a failure that pushed the Yankees from the brink of a 3-0 series lead to a 2-1 with Sabathia on three days' rest (which should not be that big of a problem) and Angel ace John Lackey looming in game 5.

Here's where the Yankees failed as a team: 0-8 with runners in scoring position, three failures by Melky Cabrera, two failures by Nick Swisher to score the runner from third base with less than two outs, Jeter 0-5 after his leadoff homer, team was 0-6 in extra innings. They were 0-8 with RISP on Saturday too. That's ok if the team hits 5 sac flies and 3 solo homers in one game, not if six of the team's last eight runs over two games have come on solo homers. Right now, the Yankees' offense has a governor on it holding the team to four runs (in five straight games). Not good.

Here are Girardi's questionable moves, in game order, and whether they were right or wrong AT THE TIME.

(1) Mound conference with Pettitte and Posada with a 2-2 count on Vlady Guerrero and a runner on base. WHY NOW? Pettitte and Posada have 27 years of Major League experience and have worked together for NINE seasons. If Joey G wanted to have a chat to reinforce the game plan, he should have done it before Vlady stepped in the batters' box. First pitch after Girardi departed = homerun, tie game. The pitch didn't seem that bad, but the result bit.

(2) Overuse of Chamberlain. Joba has been erratic at best this year. Now he's in a different pitching role as the "7th inning guy" and his stuff is off. Tim McCarver noted on Saturday that his slider was hanging up in the strike zone (that's called batting practice) and yesterday he got whacked around. Chamberlain's unwarranted ascension to 7th inning guy has pushed Aceves, the regular season's 7th inning guy, into extra inning duty only, where he has struggled. Chamberlain's only clean (no hits, walks, HBP) outing in the postseason came in game 1 against the Twins, when the Yanks had a big lead and Girardi was emptying his bullpen to give the young guys a taste of the playoffs. Yesterday, Chamberlain gave up the go-ahead run in about 5 pitches and got hammered so badly that Girardi had to yank him early for Marte.

(3) The abysmal 8th inning substitution. Girardi has two speed guys on his bench: Freddy Guzman and Brett Gardner. Guzman has one purpose -- pinch run and run fast. Gardner is a late inning defensive replacement for Damon or Swisher. So when designated hitter Matsui (who runs like a Molina brother) walked in the eighth inning, Girardi did the right thing in replacing him for a pinch runner. But HE USED THE WRONG MAN. Girardi should have used Guzman, but he used Gardner in a close game where the Yanks could need a defensive replacement in the outfield. If Girardi substituted Gardner for a fielder, the Yanks would lose the DH.

(4) Sending Gardner on an 0-1 count to Posada. With Gardner in the game, he had to steal, so that's the right call. On Saturday, Gardy did not steal and the hitter bounced into a double play on pitch number 4 or 5. But Scioscia likes to pitch out on 0-1 counts. McCarver said this on Saturday, and Girardi has to know this because the Yankees' scouts are very good and Girardi is such a stat geek he makes me look slipshod. Result, 0-1 pitchout, Gardner out at second. Two pitches later, Posada banged a homer to tie the game.

(5) Substituting Marte with Coke. The Monk is no fan of Damaso Marte, but he can often get lefties out and can terrorize switchhitters who are weak righties. He retired Chone Figgins to end the 7th and had Abreu (lefty hitter) to start the eighth . . . but Girardi replaced Marte with Coke. Coke is prone to give up homers, and his stuff is not as deceptive to lefties as Marte's. And the conventional wisdom is don't replace a lefty with another lefty. The move worked ONLY because Abreu made a baserunning mistake after whacking a double off Coke, but it needlessly burned the remaining lefty in the Yankees' 'pen.

(6) Sticking with Hughes, and yanking him. Girardi was right to both stick with Hughes through the 9th and yank him in the 10th after he allowed the leadoff double to Mathis. I'd prefer Rivera to hold the line in a playoff game, which he did thanks to Teixeira.

(7) Replacing Gardner with Hairston at DH. Girardi did this instead of having Gardy face Brian Fuentes. This had little purpose because if Girardi was going to end up blowing the DH, he should have done so with his best outfielder, not Hairston, and Hairston was not a threat to take Fuentes deep or to the gap -- the only ways the Yanks would have scored with two out and A-Rod on first.

(8) Replacing Damon with Hairston in LF in the bottom of the 10th with a runner at third and none out. This meant the Yanks lost the DH position, had a pitcher's spot after Jeter, and two light-hitting catchers on their bench (Molina, Cervelli) and the throwing arm upgrade from Damon to Hairston is far less than the upgrade from Damon to Cabrera or Gardner (Gardner usually goes to CF and pushes Melky to right or left, depending on who Girardi replaced).

(9) Replacing Robertson with Aceves. This made no sense at the time and is worse in hindsight. Robertson had cakewalked through the first two hitters in the bottom of the 11th. He's been excellent since the All-Star break (Aceves has been mediocre) and pitched out of HUGE trouble (bases loaded, none out) in game 2 against the Twins. He has better pure stuff. He can go more than one inning. Both are righties and so were the next and on-deck batters for the Angels. But Girardi liked the matchup of Aceves v. Howie Kendrick. Kendrick hit a seeing eye single, but the light-hitting Mathis whomped Aceves' offering into the gap, game over. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

If CC dominates and the Yanks win game 4, this matters less. If CC struggles or sucks and the Yanks lose, this matters a lot. And if CC pitches well but doesn't get through the 7th inning, then we go to the bullpen merry-go-round all over again. That's not good.

The Monk's call is that if the Yanks have a narrow lead and CC is running out of gas with 8 or fewer outs left for the Angels to tie it, use Hughes for four outs and Mo for four. Other than Robertson, the rest of the 'pen is not dependable or not good.

There's not much difference between these teams right now. The composite score is 12-9 Yanks. The starting pitchers are 1-0, 20.1 IP, 6 ER for the Yanks and 0-1, 17.2 IP, 7 ER for the Angels. The vaunted Yankee 'pen has allowed more earned runs (3-2) than the supposed Achilles' heel bullpen of the Angels. So managerial decisions have large consequences. To a large degree, Girardi is managing from fear, not strength. If he has the superior team, he should act like it and use its strengths effectively, not just manipulate matchups for their own sake.

* * *

P.S. -- I wonder how much Joe Torre misses Mo. For the second straight year, Torre's Dodgers were thisclose to winning game 4 of the NLCS and tying the series, and for the second straight year Jonathan Broxton lost the game. Last year, he failed to preserve an 8th inning tie by allowing Matt Stairs' bomb that went halfway to Bakersfield. Last night, he got the last out of the eighth inning and then completely bonked the ninth, giving up two runs with two out after putting one of the runners on by hitting the batter.

Joe's own worst enemy -- is he in the mirror?

Here's The Monk's question of the day: Is Joe Girardi his own worst enemy?

The Yanks have a 2-0 lead in the ALCS, which they've achieved four times in 8 ALCS since 1996 (1999, 2001, 2004, 2009). In 1999 and 2001, they won in five games after losing game 3. We don't discuss 2004 here.

In the ALDS, Girardi established a pattern with his pitchers: have the starter pitch 6 or more, use Coke for the first lefty in the 7th, use Joba for righties in the 7th, use Hughes in the 8th, use Rivera in the 9th. Problems: Hughes was ineffective, so Rivera entered in the 8th; Coke and Joba were erratic even though they worked out of trouble.

In game 2 of the ALCS, Girardi reverted to that same formula. Burnett pitched 6.1 and left after Cano's error put a runner on, Coke issued a walk and got a strikeout, Joba gave up an infield single hit and struck out Guerrero in a 15-minute at bat with about 10 conferences between Joba and catcher Jose Molina. Even though it was a tie game and Joba could have pitched another inning, Girardi again used Hughes in the 8th and again for 2/3 of an inning (although Hughes would have pitched the full 8th if Jeter hadn't bonked a double play ball). Then, on came Rivera for 2.1 IP.

I'm unsure which of this is what Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan called Girardi's misuse of the bullpen. I thought it was when Girardi actually used Damaso Marte . . . but Joey G. got away with it. Maybe Passan didn't like the use of Rivera . . . but this is the playoffs and winning managers don't leave the closer in the bullpen just because it violates a "Rule" in "The Book."

My concern going forward is what Joe is going to do if presented with the same situation he had in games 2 and 3 of the ALDS: a starter with plenty of gas left (Burnett was at 95 pitches, Pettitte at 81) and game in the 7th inning. I'll take Pettitte for another 25-30 tosses, Burnett for another 10-15 (I have no problem with Girardi giving him the hook on Saturday, Burnett was at 115). Girardi went to the 'pen early and often. I hope that doesn't turn out wrong later in this, or another, series.

P.S. -- The MLB Network's breakdown show seems pretty good. I watched for about 10-15 minutes after Saturday night's/Sunday morning's game and was impressed by Wild Thing Mitch Williams' breakdown of Burnett showing why A.J.'s balance and breaking ball is so much better when he pitches from a full wind-up than from the stretch and discussing the importance of a good balance/gather point for a tall lanky pitcher like Burnett. Williams' co-analyst (didn't get his identity) also rightly observed that when A.J. throws a wild pitch, he misses left or right, not short or high.

Quote of the day

James Morrow in response to White House Communications Director Anita Dunn's citing Mao Tse-Tung as one of her favorite political philosophers:

the Obama White House is rapidly becoming a big tent for the sort of cranks who set up card tables on the fringes of growers' markets and pass out hand-xeroxed fliers.

A five-game sweep?

In 2004, the Detroit Pistons whupped the Lakers in the NBA Finals 4-1. The Pistons' four wins were by an average of 13+ points; the Lakers' lone win came after a miracle game-tying shot that forced overtime. Sports journos called it a "five-game sweep" because of the Pistons' dominance.

The NLCS is shaping up to be the same. The Phillies can pound the ball, their starters have pitched 15 consecutive scoreless innings, and even the Phils' bullpen can hold an 11-0 ninth inning lead. The Dudgers won Friday thanks to some poor fielding and surprisingly decent pitching. But the Phils have four or five solid starters, the Dudgers couldn't hit Pedro Martinez (who now throws like a right-handed Jamie Moyer) and the series is out of the California sun until Friday . . . if it goes that long.

The Dudgers are fighting history. Since the advent of divisional play in 1969, the same two teams have met in the NLCS in consecutive years four times. The previous year's winner won twice, the loser gained revenge once, and the Phils are halfway to repeating. The one time since 1995 that the same two teams matched up in consecutive NLDS, the winner repeated (2004-05 Astros over Braves).

In the AL, the prior year's loser has fared worse in the rematches. When the ALCS has been a repeat of the previous year's matchup, the prior winner is 5-1. When the ALDS has been a repeat of the prior year's matchup, the prior winner is 4-2 (and the eight times the Redsax were not involved, the prior winner was 8-0). Total for the two leagues: 12-4 advantage for the prior year's winner, and we're halfway to 13-4.

Team of the Decade -- who will it be for MLB?

This is a debate for every decennial -- which one is the team of the decade for the sport? The 2009 World Series will be the last of the decade and the answer is . . . still up for grabs.

The sine qua non of any "team of the decade" is championships. Championships means sport titles, not conference titles or pennants, not most times with the best record, not division titles (although these factor into ties), not best record of the 10-year period. The Lakers are the team of the '00s in the NBA because they won 4 titles, San Antonio (with a better overall record) won 3. The Stars aren't in the mix for NHL team of the decade for the '90s despite various President's Trophy wins (best record) because the Penguins and Red Wings won more Stanley Cups.

In baseball, the Team of the Decade in the World Series era has been clear cut in seven of the ten decades to date. Here's a list, along with best team (to win the WS) and honorable mentions:

1900s = the Cubs (2 titles, 3 pennants including the WS wins) of all teams. Honorable mention = Pirates (1 WS, 2 pennants), Tigers (3 pennants). Best team = 1909 Pirates (110-42) because the '06 Cubs (116-36) lost in the Series.

1910s = the Red Sawx (4 WS). Yuck. Honorable mention = Philly A's (3 WS, 4 pennants), Giants (4 pennants). Best team = 1912 Sawx (105-47), led by Tris Speaker and Joe Wood (34-5 in 43 starts!).

1920s = Yankees (3 WS, 5 pennants). Honorable mention = Giants (2 WS, 4 pennants). Best team = the 1927 Murderers' Row Yankees (110-44) that had four Hall of Famers in its starting lineup (Combs, Lazzeri, Ruth, Gehrig), two in its rotation (Hoyt, Pennock) and a third who should be in (Shocker).

1930s = Yankees (5 WS). This will become a pattern. Honorable mention = Cardinals (2 WS, 3 pennants). Best team = 1939 Yankees (106-45) who outscored their opponents by 411 runs! Compare that to the 1975 Reds (254 run differential). No contest.

1940s = Yankees (4 WS, 5 pennants). Honorable mention = Cardinals (3 WS, 4 pennants) -- this was the Cards' decade until the '47 and '49 Yanks won. Best team = '42 Cards (106-45).

1950s = Yankees (6 WS, 8 pennants). This is no contest. Honorable mention = Dodgers (2 WS, 5 pennants). Best team = '53 Yankees (99-52) by default because no WS winner won 100 games in the regular season, although a pair of WS losers ('54 Indians, '53 Dodgers) did.

1960s = Dodgers and Cardinals (2 WS, 3 pennants each). Honorable mention = Yankees (2 WS, 5 pennants). The Yanks had the longer list of accomplishment, but lost to both the Dodgers and Cards in the WS. The Dodgers had one of the most dominating WS wins ever in '63 over the Yanks, and took probably the worst beating ever in '66 from the Orioles (shut out three times). Best team = '61 Yanks (109-53).

1970s = A's (3 WS). Honorable mention = Reds (2 WS, 4 pennants, 6 division wins); Yankees (2 WS, 3 pennants); Pirates (2 WS, 6 division wins). This is why championships matter. Fans always talk about the Big Red Machine, but the A's won the most titles. Best team = '75 Reds (108-54) and '70 Orioles (108-54). Unlike the Reds, the Orioles led their league in pitching as well as hitting and the O's had some decent players (Palmer, B. Robinson, F. Robinson). The Big Red Machine is continually overrated because it had a modern AL-quality lineup in the NL, but the pitching was not notable. Think the Reds could beat the '98 Yankees? Think again -- the '75 Reds bonked 5-1 (5-2 after 6 innings) and 6-3 leads against the RedSawx in two different games of the '75 WS; the Mariano-era Yanks don't blow those leads.

1980s = Dodgers (2 WS). This is pure default and fluke. The Dodgers are the only multiple winner of the '80s. And for half the decade, the Dodgers sucked. If the Yanks had used anyone other than George Frazier in key relief situations in the '81 WS, baseball might have had 10 different winners. Honorable mention = Cards (1 WS, 3 pennants); A's, Royals and Phils (1 WS, 2 pennants each). Best team = '84 Tigers (104-58); yes, they were better than the '86 Mess (108-54).

1990s = Yankees (3 WS). This is especially great because in '95 the Braves had their WS rings engraved with "Team of the Decade" on them and the Yanks beat the Braves twice in the Series: once by grit and good fortune ('96), and once by whipping a** ('99). At the time the Braves had their rings engraved, the Blue Jays had won more titles (2-1). There's a deadly sin for that . . . Honorable mention = Toronto (2 WS); Braves (1 WS, 5 pennants). Best team = '98 Yankees (114-48). They're the best team since the end of WWII and it's really not close (Tom Verducci had a great piece on this).

2000s = currently RedSax (2 WS). And that's where the fun is. If either AL team wins the WS, there's a legitimate debate. The Yanks will have 2 WS, 4 pennants and 8 division titles; the Angels would have 2 WS and 6 division titles. The Red Sax have 2 WS and one division title. And although the Redsux would be 3-1 in playoff series against the Angels, they've split two with the Yankees. The Phils would get a close second to Bostin if they go back-to-back because they only made the playoffs three times; the Massholes have won six playoff berths ('03-05, '07-09), although their actual participation in '05 and '09 is subject to speculation as to whether it really counts as participation. Best team = '05 WhiteSax (99-63) -- they had the best playoff run (11-1) and the most impressive pitching performance in a series since the '96 Braves when their starters threw 44.1 of 45 possible innings in a 4-1 ALCS wipeout of the Angels.

Now we know the stakes.

As for predictions: the Yanks SHOULD win, but who knows what will happen. Lackey and Saunders match up well with the Yanks, the Angels 'pen is weaker than it was when the Angels beat the Yanks in '02 and '05 -- the game is longer than six innings now. And for all the chatter about how the Angels own the Yanks in the postseason -- the Angels survived in '05 by about 5-10 feet -- the distance by which Matsui's blast with two runners on in the 9th inning of a 5-3 ALDS game 5 went foul.

The Yanks need to pitch well and not fall into traps: (1) worrying too much about the Angels' running game; (2) going completely by-the-book with 7th, 8th and 9th inning roles for the relievers. Torre would use Mo to START the 8th with a day off to follow and Girardi needs to be ready, willing, and able to make that call.

The Dodgers and Phils will be interesting but I'm thinking the Dodgers win. Bullpens are crucial in the playoffs and the Dodgers' 'pen is far superior to the Phils'. Just ask the '92 and '96 Braves how much a superior bullpen can mean to the team with inferior starting pitching.

RINO stampede

After Olympia Snowe fell victim to her own stupidity, Susan Collins followed and now says she will support some sort of sweeping health care overhaul. Both are Republicans (in name only) from Maine and should da*n well know better considering that Maine's highly regulated and nearly universal coverage state system is a disaster (like Massachusetts' system is, and TennCare in Tennessee was before it was discontinued).

This means that to prevent the US from becoming a European-style statist cooperative in health care, the Republicans need to pick off three Democrats in the Senate. Lieberman is one, Lincoln is being pressed into pulp to adhere to her party line even though it will cost her reelection in 2010. The next best hope may be Ron Wyden of Oregon, who actually has a plan that does not completely suck.

Elections have consequences. Minnesotans who voted for a clown, New Hampshirites who voted for a statist liberal (in the highly libertarian Live Free or Die State) and Alaskans who voted for notTedStevens will be among the 300,000,000 of us who pay the price.

Colossal playoff bonks

As a modern closer in baseball, you have one job. Get the last three outs and seal the win for your team. Despite the specialization of pitching roles and the narrow task of getting those final outs delegated to the fresh-from-the-bullpen closer, the incidence of losing leads late in the game is no lower since the advent of the modern one-inning closer in the mid-80s than it was when guys like Lefty Gomez would throw 25 complete games in 34 starts in the '30s or Bob Feller would throw 370 innings.

The first time a team blew a ninth-inning lead in game 7 of the World Series and lost was 1997, when closer Jose Mesa did it. Such failures had happened in the League Championship Series -- in 1977, the Royals lost a 3-2 ninth inning lead to the Yanks but that dissipated with starters in relief; in 1992, the Pirates blew a 2-0 lead in the ninth inning of NLCS game 7 to the Braves and their starter took the loss.

So even with the closer as a specialty position, teams have not been better served with the fresh arm out of the 'pen late in playoff games. Instead, more closing opportunities has led to major failures: Rivera in the '01 WS, Mitch Williams in the '93 WS, Eckersley in the '88 and '90 WS.

But some bonks are simply bad. Those are the ones where the closer has a multi-run lead and starts the ninth. Worse than the bonk is when the stakes are high. On Sunday, Jon Papelbon gave up 3 runs in the ninth with two out to the Angels . . . and did the Angels' comeback eliminated the Redsax. It was the first time a team allowed a comeback from 2 or more runs down with two out in the last inning of an elimination game in the playoffs and lost. Yesterday, Huston Street had two out, two on, and needed only one strike against Ryan Howard to get the Rox to game 5 of the NLDS. Double, single, three runs and the Rox are setting up tee times. As the closer roles have become more specialized, so have the approaches that hitters take in the ninth inning to the closer -- more careful, more apt to battle the pitcher to force him to throw lots of pitches because the one-inning closer burns out after 18-20 tosses.

Stretching a closer to even four outs is anathema to most managers. Last year, when he set the record with 62 saves, Frankie Rodriguez had ZERO appearances all year of more than one inning. By contrast, Mariano Rivera had nine saves of 4+ outs in 2003 (out of 40), and five more in the playoffs. This year, even as the Yanks have essentially babied him, Mo had seven 4-out saves. Papelbon had six of 4+ outs.

And the Yanks will need more out of Mo. Phil Hughes has looked like Tom Gordon (career postseason = 21 IP, 17 ER, 6 HR, 7.06 ERA). Joba is unsteady. And Girardi, for some daft reason (overconfidence in his 'pen), has had a quick hook (Burnett = 6 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 95 pitches; Pettitte = 6.1 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 81 pitches) even though his starters allowed 3 ER in 19 innings with 22 K against the Twins. If that bites Girardi and the Yanks against the Angels, you'll have heard it here first.

Empire Disgrace

The Empire State Building was lit up in garish red and yellow Wednesday night.

Ostensibly to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.

It also celebrates two generations of the most murderous regime in the history of man.

Presumably it's ok now because China is strong and up-and-coming and we all want to do business.

Aside from the visceral disgust my first thought was this classic line from Carl Fox [Martin Sheen] from the movie "Wall Street":

"I don't go to bed with no whore, and I don't wake up with no whore. That's how I live with myself."

9-1 > 0-8? The AL East Champs again

In June, following the Yanks' humiliating three-game sweep in Fenway, I said the team lacked character. Since then, I've either been proven wrong (which I hope) or the RedSawx are just terrible (which I don't believe).

Through the first half of the year, the Yanks were 51-37. That's pretty good.

They were 10-8 against the NL East, which is uninspiring.

They were 39-17 against everyone but Bahstin and the LA Angels of Knott's Berry Farm, which is very good.

They were 2-12 against the Sawx (0-8) and Angels (2-4), and that sucked.

Since the All-Star break, the '09 Yankees have played even better than the '98 Yankees did: 51-20 (compared to 53-28) and have blasted their two bitterest rivals by winning 12 of 14 against the Sax (9-1) and Angels (3-1). How?

First, the Yankees learned to pitch at the Stadium. The "bandbox in the Bronx" has been a haven for the team (57-24) and after a shaky 6-7 start in the new home, the Yanks have won 51 of 68 games there -- that's 75%.

Second, the Yankees figured out the Rays by winning 8 of 9 games against the other AL East contender since early June.

Third, the Yanks flummoxed the Sawx at the Stadium. In the seven post All-Star break games between the teams at the Stadium, the Sawx have scored 15 runs and nine in the last 60 innings. The Yanks are 7-0 and FINALLY beat Jon Lester. When the Yanks won a Friday night game 2-0 in 15 innings, it was the first time all season they'd held the redsux to less than four runs.

Fourth, warm weather means warm CC. Sabathia established himself as an ace with his effort in a loss to the Sawx in June and his attitude against the Chisax in an August game where the Yanks were trying to stave off a four-game sweep. After coughing up an early lead, Sabathia shouted "that's it, that's all they get." The Yanks won that game and all 10 CC starts since then (each a quality start, 8 wins, only once allowing even 3 ER, only once going less than 7 IP).

Fifth, the Yanks have one of the best long relievers in baseball, Alfredo Aceves, to get the team through the sixth and seventh innings before the season's best game-ending duo since perhaps the '96 Yankees take the mound -- Hughes (5-1, 1.24, opponents OPS of .430 as a reliever) and Rivera (yawn, 44 saves, 46 chances--that's three bonks in the past two years).

Yeah, the Yanks have a question mark as their No. 4 starter . . . and the 2006 Cardinals won game 1 of the World Series with Anthony Reyes (5-8, 5.06).

Sure, they're older than most teams . . . and the Rays flopped in July.

And AJ Burnett is a question mark: from iffy in April/May to Cy Young caliber in June and July to inconsistent in August, to sharp in late September . . . but he has almost the same quality start percentage as CC, and is a power/strikeout pitcher -- the type that is crucial to postseason success.

So congrats to the Yanks, who have once again assumed their proper spot atop the AL East. Joe Girardi should be AL Manager of the Year. CC Sabathia should be 3rd in the Cy Young ballot. Jeter and Teixiera should be Nos. 2 and 3 in the AL MVP ballot. And hopefully the team will win 11 games between October 5 and December 31, 2009. That's what I'm wanting.

The last roar of the "lion"

The media in the United States completely loses its grip on reality when a Kennedy, any Kennedy related within a couple of degrees of sanguininity to Joe Kennedy, Sr., dies. And the media's reaction to the death of Edward M. Kennedy, the last and in many ways least of the four sons of Joe, has had truly preposterous episodes.

There's the Melissa Lafsky reaction: What would Mary Jo Kopechne "have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history . . . Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it."

And there's the Joyce Carol Oates nonsense.

The Monk is offended by the notion of Ted Kennedy as the "last lion" of the Senate -- THE Last Lion was Churchill and Kennedy was a far inferior man.

The brothers Kennedy included a war hero who died on a bombing run in World War II, a war hero and President who was assassinated by a Communist sympathizer, and a principled civil rights leader who was assassinated by an Arab nationalist. Joe, Jr.'s political career never became a full reality; John Kennedy was a tax-cutter and Cold Warrior (one of two the Democrats nominated as President from 1948-88); Robert Kennedy was a civil rights stalwart of the Martin Luther King, Jr. approach, not the Jesse Jackson affirmative-action-as-reparations approach that Ted Kennedy heeled toward.

As a Senator, Kennedy was what he was -- an old-line liberal of no real fixed ideology other than pro-union, pro-state, pro-liberal interest group. His best decisions included supporting deregulation of the airline industry and the phones. He supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which (as written) was a legislative triumph . . . but he also supported the affirmative action, quota, race-conscious accounting of its implementation that was anathema to its drafters (see Hubert H. Humphrey's defense of the bill when an opponent claimed it would begin a quota system).

The hagiography will continue apace despite the facts of Kennedy's heinous personal actions and uglier moments in public life (two words: Robert Bork). Of course, there is likely much good to balance some of the worst of the bad -- after all, the licentious Kennedy counted the upstanding Orrin Hatch as one of his best friends; and the story that Ted, Jr. recounted about his father, 12-year old Ted Jr.'s prosthetic, and their determination for Ted, Jr. to climb a snowy hill to ride his sled in the snow after Ted Jr. lost his leg to cancer is a paradigm of fatherhood.

There is also a lot to be said for the Kennedy mystique -- The Monk himself understood the Kennedy charisma when he met Rep. Joe Kennedy (RFK's eldest son) walking and shaking hands in a park outside Boston in 1993 during a services fair to help the homeless (we were there on behalf of this fine group). The fair seemed to stop as a short man with curly hair, bright eyes, and a big smile wandered the grounds chatting up the attendees.

But there is also reality. Ted Kennedy was an influential Senator in a narrow niche but his overall impact on policy, politics, and America are far less than what the eulogies in Time, Newsweek, the NY Times and other mainstream media outlets have declared. He was not the greatest or most accomplished of the Kennedy brothers. Ultimately, he probably knew that.

RIP

Two sporting dissents

I dissent.

There are two lines of NFL conventional wisdom that do not work.

First, the Brett Favre signing by the Vikings has raised the team to an NFC favorite, Vegas put the odds of the Vikes winning the NFC at 6-1, down from 12-1. Brett Favre has not made the Vikes the best team in the NFC, and the Vikings will not be the conference champs for the first time since Super Bowl XI.

Here's the argument: Favre will have a great running game, and a great defense against the run, and the team only needed a new QB to become a champion.

But that combination of great running game and defense sounds just like the 2007 Steelers (3rd in rush offense, 1st in total defense), who had a QB who threw for 32 TDs with just 11 INT, had a 1300-yard runner, and lost at home in the first round of the playoffs, just like the Vikes did last year. And it sounds like the 2008 Jets, who had a top 10 running offense and a top 10 defense against the run . . . and went 9-7 and watched every playoff game.

The Vikings barely beat the Giants in the final game of the season last year. The Vikes needed to win to make the playoffs, the Giants rested their starters (no Jacobs at all, Eli sat the second half, various lower workloads for the starters on defense and offense). And the best run defense in football (Minnesota) allowed 135 yards on 30 carries to the Giants' #2 and #3 runners and won only because the Jints had missed a field goal earlier in the game. With nothing to play for, the Giants acted as if the game were a preseason matchup, and nearly won.

Minnesota just was not that good last year: the Vikes should have lost to Detroit at home and won by just four in Detroit against the worst team in the past 30 years. They were no match for the Eagles or Titans. The Jets' improvement from 2007-2008 came as much from having a healthy QB as having a healthy QB named Favre -- look at how well the Dolphins did with the 2007 Jets' QB as their signal-caller (unlike Favre, Chad Pennington has never started 75%+ of his team's games and NOT made the playoffs). The Favre factor may enable another win for the Vikes, but they're not in the top three of the conference.

The second strain of conventional wisdom is that the Giants need a #1 receiver to win the Super Bowl. That's rot. The Giants' defense wilted in the last quarter of the season last year because the team lacked defensive end depth. The Giants' offense failed against the Eagles, twice, as much through error and game-planning (Domenik Hixon's dropped TD in the regular season, Coughlin's bad wind decisions in the playoffs) as the absence of a #1 receiver. The Giants lost to the Cowpatties in Dallas because the Cowmanures were desperate for a win (the Giants knew the next weekend's game against Carolina would be for the NFC's #1 seed), and the Giants didn't have Jacobs available. The Burress mess occurred at the worst possible time because the Giants could not reconfigure their offensive game plan against the Eagles as quickly as the Eagles revamped their defense against the Giants. But the fact is that the Giants had two of their best passing days with Burress out of the lineup (against Seattle and at Washington).

The defense was spent at the end of 2008. The team blitzed on 40 of Philly's 46 passing plays in the playoff matchup but only had one sack and few hurries. The Giants had five sacks in games 12-17 of their season. They allowed 28 points to the Panthers, had the Panthers run all over them and won only because Derek Ward went off. Tom Brady won three Super Bowls without a top-end #1 receiver, so did Ben Roethlisberger, so did the Bucs under Gruden. If the defense is healthy and rested, the Giants can go far.

The stopped clock and a Monkling

One of my colleagues who is basically wrong about everything political and social was right last year when he told me just how enormous a difference there is between a child at his first birthday and his second.

The Monkling turned two yesterday. He speaks in phrases and has an extensive vocabulary, not just a random word or sound (when he was 18 months, we laughed at one of the baby books that said he should have about 4-7 words he routinely sasy -- he had more than 30); he walks, instead of just stumbling around and bear-crawling; he no longer falls asleep on dada's head as we walk around the local greenbelt; he has a full little baby mop of hair . . . and he had that a year ago too. Some things don't change too quickly: mama is the greatest thing ever, Nana and Pawpaw are silly people who grab at his toes, dada is the big voiced man who sings silly songs to him and wins all the one-sided tickle-fights, he likes to pretend to be a zombie or a ghost because he knows when he attacks mama or dada he'll get hugged and kissed and tickled. And his hair is out of control.

But now, he likes specific things like Elmo, Thomas (trains, especially Toby), biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig trucks, pine cones that splash when thrown in the pond, testing what floats and what sinks, buses, Pei Wei, Propel water, raspberries, edamame, noodles, rice, almonds, bacon, peas, spicy food, sidewalk chalk, rocks, itsy-bitsy spiders crawling up water spouts, picking acorns, dada singing him to sleep, walking around the nearby greenbelt, the sticks in his aunt's backyard, rubbing his head against the cats' torsos, Boowa/Kwala, watching the garbage pickups each week, zrbrts (Cosby show reference) on his tummy, reading book after book after book with mama during the day, or dada at night.

And he has his momma's eyes.

That's the Monkling in a moment on his second birthday. What he did yesterday was play with his new train set, take two walks with dada, eat turkey and cornbread at Boston Market, have a big nap, drink his weight in Propel and chase the kitties.

The day before, when we held his party after his pregnant mama worked for hours decorating the house, he received the big train set (Imaginarium set with round house -- a good deal: tons of trains, accessories, double track layout, all for 1/2 the price of a Thomas set, and compatible with the Thomas accessories), opened his presents (lotta Thomas's friends and trucks, a backyard slide, more sidewalk chalk), ate his cake (but cried when we were about to cut the Thomas design in the frosting), had his favorite food for lunch (Pei Wei teriyaki chicken, rice, edamame) and fell asleep with dada as dada nodded off in mid-song.

That's my son.

Defiant ignorance

The most disturbing thing about Obama is not his preternatural self-assuredness. That's almost acceptable on some level because he is about as charismatic as he thinks he is. Instead, The Monk is most disturbed by Obama's belief that what he says is true even if it is undeniably false, and his unshakeable belief that his policy prescriptions will work even when every shred of scientific and economic evidence (depending upon the subject) conclusively prove otherwise.

This is nothing less than defiant ignorance, or aggressive solipsism. And it's not the sign of an intellectual or a highly intelligent person, it's the sign of a doctrinaire demagogue. For all his love of Keynesian economics (most of which is bunk), Obama still hasn't taken to heart the Keynesian maxim "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

Thus, Fred Barnes' column on Obamanomics is a must read. Here's the core:

. . . He wants to eliminate many deductions for upper middle class and wealthy taxpayers. He's eager to spur the growth of unions, though success here is likely to slow the rate of growth and increase the rate of unemployment. He wants government to intervene more aggressively in the economy, a reliable job killer. He's asked for authority to seize any financial institution deemed (by his administration) a "systemic risk" to the economy. He thinks government can teach the private sector lessons in efficiency. That would be an historic first. He believes his budget, which triples the national debt, "lays the foundation for a secure and lasting prosperity."

Whew! And this is just what Obama has proposed in the first six months of his presidency. Obamanomics pays lip service to a free market economy. But Obama hasn't a clue what makes it work.

Not the only one

I'm not the only contrarian who thinks the latest HP movie is a dud.

First, on second look Monkette agreed with a couple of my main complaints -- most notably how director David Yates botched the climactic scenes at the end. She just finished re-reading the book and that persuaded her I had a point. (Seriously, if this were anyone else other than my better half, I trumpet this as a mea culpa and publicize it all over the country).

Second, a friend of mine who is both Irish and a Jew (don't ask), let's call him Seamus O'Goldberg, mentioned that upon re-watching the movies for HP3 and HP4, and considering HP6 once again, he and the O'Goldberg family are a bit worried about the upcoming two-part finale film. The most redeeming feature of the finale, however, is that there's a LOT of Harry and Hermione adventure (Ron buggers off for a while) and Emma Watson is the strongest of the three young actors.

Third, the dropoff -- the HP take for weekend #2 was 61% less than for weekend #1. That's huge in Hollywood terms. Worse yet, that weekend #1 take was a bit lower than it would have been if the movie had actually opened on a Friday instead of a Wednesday. HP6 made more than 1/2 of its Wednesday-Sunday take in its opening week on its first two nights. Last year, The Dark Knight made $158M+ in its first three nights, HP6 made $159M+ in five. Then again, TDK was a fantastic movie.

See? Sooner or later there are people who come around to agree with me when I have a decent point to make. It's just a question of when they admit it . . . like PaMonk, who completely botched his most recent presidential vote.

To have come so far, with so far left to go . . .

Years ago, The Monk was a sports reporter. Not a "professional" journalist, I was an associate editor and editor of the sports section of The Cavalier Daily, Virginia's college newspaper. And considering the talent I worked with (four of my six associate editors became professional journalists; the smart ones became lawyers) and the accolades the paper routinely received, we were certainly legitimate reporters.

One endeavor I attempted was to attract female reporters to my department. It was a boys' club, no question, and that was a turn-off in recruiting. And in the late '80s and early '90s, there were not many young women interested in writing about sports at Virginia generally -- football was a dating event and drunkfest, basketball games were covered by editors, and other than soccer, the other sports were uninteresting. I made little traction. My successor as editor did groom a reporter for our section and she became the first female associate sports editor at the paper in about five years and maybe the third or fourth ever. She was also too smart for the business -- she's a partner at a law firm in the Tidewater area.

Access to the players was another issue: after a game at Kansas, Virginia's strength coach barred a female reporter from the football locker room by physically blocking her path. And if a female reporter gained access, the default for jocks is to see "female" and not "reporter" -- just ask Lisa Olson or Suzy Kolber.

There are a lot of obstacles for female sports reporters to achieve success and respect, not just the old warhorse men who think women and sports reporting don't mix. Some are their own colleagues, like Carolyn Hughes who committed adultery with pitcher Derek Lowe, and Lisa Guerrero -- a pretty face with vacant space above her neck. Some are the network fools, like the ones at ABC who decided to axe pioneer Lesley Visser because they thought she was too old (after that backlash and Guerrero's incompetence, ABC has used old pro Michelle Tafoya on NBA broadcasts). Some, unfortunately, are the ones who've achieved decent positions but are not good at their jobs (Pam Ward -- seriously, why doesn't ESPN just replace her in all assignments with Beth Mowins who can actually call a game?).

And heaven forfend if: (1) you're a female sports reporter; (2) you're good at the job; (3) you're attractive. Melissa Stark had to fight for acceptance. But she never faced this: getting videotaped nude after undressing in her hotel room by a stalker.

That's what happened to Erin Andrews, the extremely popular and perpetually genial ESPN sideline reporter. Andrews is pretty good at her job, and that's not easy because sideline reporting is a job in which it is more difficult to be good than to suck. She's also off-the-charts popular because she's attractive, friendly, and covers primarily college sports.

Whoever taped and posted that video should be prosecuted criminally. Andrews has vowed to kick his a** through the legal system. Good. If so, he'll get what he deserves.

But female sports reporters will have another inconceivably heinous thing to worry about while fighting for respect in a male-dominated business.

The 66-year old overnight sensation, RIP

It's a bit rare for retired New York City schoolteachers to become overnight sensations. It's a bit surprising when the sensation in question has been to your house, had a few with your dad, and you played with his daughter when you were kids. And Mom and Dad STILL had to buy my copy of his book as a Xmas present! That teacher was Frank McCourt, whose unorthodox teaching methods and overflowing classes were notorious in the City's elite Stuyvesant High School.

In 1930, Angela and Malachy McCourt had their first child, Francis. He was the product of a knee-trembler -- a drunken fit of passion that resulted in Malachy and Angela's marriage and led eventually to (at least) five more pregnancies, six more kids and a completely failed life together until the early 1940s. Their time together is aptly described in one of the most arresting passages in non-fiction literature:

When I look back on my childhood, I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: The happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood. People everywhere brag and whimper about the woes of their early years, but nothing can compare with the Irish version: the poverty; the shiftless loquacious alcoholic father; the pious defeated mother moaning by the fire; pompous priests; bullying schoolmasters; the English and all the terrible things they did to us for 800 long years.

That's the second paragraph of Angela's Ashes, the memoir that transformed an unknown retired English teacher into a media and publishing sensation around his 66th birthday. Frank McCourt was a colleague of PaMonk from 1972-1987, and was the oldest of the seven McCourt children, of whom four boys (Frank, Malachy Jr., Alfie and Michael) survived into adulthood, but his sister and a pair of twin brothers died before age 6. Angela's Ashes, McCourt's tragicomic tale of growing up in Depression-era Limerick, Ireland, is by turns sad, horrific, and hilarious.

And serendipitous. McCourt had wanted to write about his childhood for years, and when he finally found his voice and constructed his manuscript, his timing was perfect. In 1996, a tremendous international publishing convention in Germany had as its theme Irish culture. The word of mouth for McCourt's memoir was fantastic, and the momentum continued as the book became a bestseller (4,000,000 in hardback sales), Pulitzer Prize winner, and National Book Critics Circle Award recipient. Here's the rave review from Michiko Kakutani.

McCourt himself was a media darling. From Letterman to Charlie Rose to Larry King to talk shows throughout the nation, the charming, understated and slight aging gentleman with the soft Irish lilt was the perfect guest -- profound, funny and sharp-witted. And he had more reason to show his face on TV almost immediately after the initial book momentum died down -- the Alan Parker adaptation of the memoir into a movie (far inferior to the book). McCourt wrote two more memoirs, the introspective and self-pitying 'Tis and the episodic Teacher Man, neither of which attained the critical, financial or literary success of Ashes. By the publication of those books, however, McCourt was a commercial publishing hit and a millionaire.

Not bad for a retired teacher who stole apples and milk to survive childhood and help feed his family, struggled to obtain the qualifications he needed to become a teacher in New York City because he'd quit schooling at 13 to help his family, and taught in some of the best and worst schools in the City.

Yesterday he died as a result of metastatic melanoma.

Frank McCourt, RIP.

Harry Potter #6 -- that was the best they could do?

The Monk and Monkette saw the HP6 movie yesterday and have a full he said/she said take -- the boss liked it, I thought it sort of sucked -- the worst one since Chris Columbus's kiddie flicks for HP1 and HP2.

Because the boss doesn't have a blog, I can have my say here.

Everyone knows the set-up: After HP5, the return of Lord Voldemort is known and irrefutable. Harry is now The Chosen One -- the wizarding world's Jesus. The best way to protect him is to keep him going to school in the exceedingly well-protected confines of Hogwarts. And as the Death Eaters perform their mischief in the wider world, and the darkness of old Snakeface begins to affect the world, Hogwarts is a safe haven. The kids go to school, become adolescents and suffer their hormonal fugue states, the professors continue their teaching . . . but all in the lee of a dark wind blowing.

The book itself is 600+ pages, but far tighter and shorter than book 5, HP and the Order of the Phoenix (800+ pages), or book 4, HP and the Goblet of Fire. Books 4 and 5 were made into far better movies.

Here is the Good, Bad and Ugly of HP6 (movie version):

The Good:

(1) Generally the kids are getting better and better as actors. Daniel Radcliffe continues to get middling reviews, but I think that's a bum rap. He's done far better as the series has progressed. Emma Watson is very good. Rupert Grint has a fine comic acting future.

(2) The reviews for Michael Gambon have been universally positive and with good reason. He plays a wistful and perhaps mildly regretful Dumbledore very well. The other old bugger of note, Jim Broadbent, is quite good too.

(3) The opening set piece with Snakeface's minions destroying the Millenium Bridge is pretty cool.

(4) The boys playing the young Tom Riddle are quite creepy, especially the teenage version.

(5) Luna Lovegood had a far larger role than in the book -- Evanna Lynch is just the perfect space case for the role and consigning her to the three lines she had in the book would have been a disappointment.

The Ugly: (we'll go out of order because the Bad may be a long list)

(1) the effects in the cave where Dumbledore and Harry fight the zombies protecting Voldemort's horcrux hiding place are weak -- too obviously effects.

(2) Helena Bonham Carter's teeth -- perfectly British, crossed with vampire.

(3) The comment by Tonks that the werewolf Lupin's agitation and irritation as the moon ascends to full are worst at the "beginning of the cycle" -- lycanthropy as the magical equivalent of the menstrual cycle. Ick.

The Bad:

First, a preliminary note. Warner Bros. pushed the release date of the movie back from Thanksgiving 2008 to mid-July 2009 to make it a summer "tent-pole" movie (supporting the company's earnings for the year). But with eight extra months to make the film better . . . the filmakers failed. There's no quality comparison between last summer's mid-July blockbuster (The Dark Knight -- an all-time great) and this mess. Specific criticisms (SPOILERS ABOUND):

(1) The Dumbledore-Harry relationship's foundations are undercooked. As compensation for avoiding Harry in book 5 (and movie 5, as the ending colloquy between them showed), Dumbledore specifically sets up a special independent study class for Harry with himself as the professor -- the life and times of Tom Riddle. This is the crux of the book and completely lost in the movie. It adds to the relationship between the two in the book, which is lost in the movie.

(2) Lost flashbacks -- there are at minimum four flashbacks of Tom Riddle and his evil foundations, only two are shown in the movie (although one isn't really about him being evil) and that's bad. The ones cut from the film show Riddle as a parricide and conniver -- making Voldy seem far more evil and adding to the dread of the book.

(3) The love-sick kids. One of the best scenes in the movie has Hermione pining for Ron and asking Harry how it feels when he sees Ginny Weasley kissing her boyfriend. As Hermione cries on Harry's shoulder, he says, "it feels like this." That's brilliant. But the ridiculous amount of screen time for Jessie Cave (Lavender Brown) and Ron's love foibles is just far too much.

(4) Quidditch. Again, a bit much. HP5 had none and the movie certainly didn't suck. There were 10-15 minutes of quidditch in HP6 and it could have been cut in half.

(5) Pacing. Good gosh this was awful: bang-up opening, interesting scenes until Hogwarts, dreary, choppy, slow, inconsistent thereafter. The two final action sequences come completely out of the blue.

(6) The finale. This was botched twice over. First, one key aspect of the battle in the cave is that Harry must get himself and Dumbledore back to Hogwarts (and I think he took Dumbledore over the latter's objections) by apparating (Rowling's equivalent of teleporting). Harry had never done any such task -- he could only do so over short distances by himself. Now he shows his courage and dedication by performing such magic over a long distance to save his professor's life -- that was completely lost in the movie both emotionally and functionally (couldn't even tell Harry performed the magic).

Second, Dumbledore's death. This was a complete failure to mark the scene. Usually in large productions the movie handles such a scene as well as the book (see, Gandalf v. Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring). Not here. In the book, Dumbledore paralyzed Harry during the Draco-Dumbledore confrontation and Harry was hidden under his invisibility cloak. It is not believeable that Harry would just stay silent and hide when Dumbledore is in trouble, but that's what happened in the movie.

Third, the attack on Hogwarts is completely botched. This was a huge battle and action scene in the book; in the movie, the scene plays like the art museum defacing by the Joker in the original Batman movie -- a band of ne'er-do-wells committing mere mischief. But Hogwarts is the bastion of "good wizards" and the attack is a challenge to the peace and prosperity for which it stands. Good luck discerning that in the movie.

(7) The Half Blood Prince. This is one of the weaker mysteries in the series and a bit of a dud, but ultimately makes some sense. In the movie, it's barely a footnote and the revelation is a real yawner.

David Yates has the helm for the last two movies in the series (book 7 is getting split into two films). He did well with book 5, he needs to redeem himself after this adaptation of book 6.

Palin and the GOP

On further review, the grand old dame of the GOP (Peggy Noonan) is dead-on in her evaluation of Sarah Palin.

Her history does not need to be rehearsed at any length. Ten months ago she was embraced with friendliness by her party. The left and the media immediately overplayed their hand, with attacks on her children. The party rallied round, as a party should. She went on the trail a sensation but demonstrated in the ensuing months that she was not ready to go national and in fact never would be. She was hungry, loved politics, had charm and energy, loved walking onto the stage, waving and doing the stump speech. All good. But she was not thoughtful. She was a gifted retail politician who displayed the disadvantages of being born into a point of view (in her case a form of conservatism; elsewhere and in other circumstances, it could have been a form of liberalism) and swallowing it whole: She never learned how the other sides think, or why.

Noonan liked Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention and has not become an Obamacan like other "conservative" pundits like David Brooks, Kathleen Parker or William F. Buckley's son Christopher. In other words, she didn't lose her f*cking mind last year. So her short summary on Palin's rise, fall and failure is both credible and thoughtful.

We liked Gov. Palin when she blew away the GOP Convention. We liked her when she held her own in the VP debate. We liked how she rallied the base around a candidate that had formerly been anathema to it. She didn't lose the 2008 election, McCain's panicky response to the financial crisis did (along with his unwillingness to hammer Obama's weaknesses). But as a future standardbearer for the party and a potential candidate for 2012 or 2016, she's inadequate. There are far better possibilities. The GOP just needs to find them because there's no telling what damage Obama can do to this country if he serves two terms.

The idiocy of Obama

Just 5.5 months into the Obama Administration and the following has been revealed: Obama is merely a useful idiot.

He's a useful idiot for (or of) the environmental Left, which wants high energy taxes that will have the most negligible possible effect on "climate change" even as the global warming science has become increasingly discredited and the Obama Administration has suppressed contrary viewpoints. Do you really think "renewable energy" will solve our alleged energy problems? Ask the Californians how that's working out.

He's a useful idiot for the socialization of health care, which is perfectly summed up as "We'll raise your taxes and in exchange we're going to cut your treatments."

He's a useful idiot for the unions, who even get a huge lift from the ridiculous climate change bill because government grants for projects will only go to grantees who implement union wage rules under the Davis-Bacon Act -- a guaranteed added cost to any project of about 30%.

And ultimately, he's a useful idiot for the despots of the world. Every major foreign policy decision by Obama has been wrong: pressuring Israel, calling for Zelaya's reinstatement in Honduras, silence in the face of the Iranian popular uprising (where now a major clerical group is defying the ayatollahs), betraying Poland and Czech Republic on missile defense, and prioritizing a moronically ridiculous idea of nuclear arm reduction negotiations that demonstrates only that Obama learned nothing from Reagan's triumph in the Cold War.

Oh yeah, the economy has become worse than Obama's tax-and-spend aides predicted too.

And to think, we have 3.5 to 7.5 more years of this. What a disaster.

On Liberty

Something to ponder on the 233rd anniversary of the founding of the Republic:

"Liberty is not the power of doing what we like, but the right to do what we ought."

- The British historian Lord Acton

Most would define freedom as the ability to do what he wants. That understanding is venal and incomplete.

A contribution from the late Henry Hyde:

Democracy is an ongoing moral experiment in a people's capacity to govern themselves. And only a certain kind of people can be self-governing: People who have been formed by a life-affirming culture; people who are not, in the depth of their souls, utter pragmatists; people who do not worship false gods; people who are inwardly self-governing in terms of their appetites and aspirations; people who cherish goods worth cherishing and honor heroes worth honoring.

When the Founders staked their lives, fortunes and sacred honor on the American democratic experiment, they did not think that free government was inevitable, only that it was possible. And the Founders believed that its possibility depended on a certain kind of people: a people who knew that freedom, rightly understood, is not a matter of doing whatever we like, but of having the right to do what we ought. Freedom and virtue were inseparable, in their minds, and that meant that the house of freedom must rest on the foundation of a life-affirming culture.

The Great Rivera: 3000, 500 and 1

Congratulations to Mariano Rivera, The Great Rivera, for recording his 500th career regular season save last night. He also has 34 post-season saves (next best = Dennis Eckersley with 15).

The three numbers in the title have this significance:

3000 is the number of dollars in Rivera's signing bonus in 1990. He was a 20-year old beanpole from a fishing village in Panama who was expected to do very little as a starting pitcher, but the Yanks took a chance on him. Credit to scout Herb Raybourn, who signed the future Hall-of-Famer. What a bargain.

500 is obvious -- the save total he reached yesterday. Fittingly, in this age of three-out closers (*cough*Frankie Rodriguez and Eckersley*cough*), Mo came into last night's game in the eighth inning to secure the Yanks' win.

1 is his RBI total. Last night, in one of the worst pitching sequences possible, K-Rod (the aforementioned Rodriguez) walked Mo (career 0-for-5 including postseason) with the bases loaded to give the Yanks an insurance run in a 4-2 win.

In 1995, the Yanks called up Rivera to pitch in the major leagues as a starter. Other than an 8-inning, no-run, 11 K performance against the Chisax, he was an awful starter (3-3, 7.07 ERA). He fared better as a reliever -- after a rough first outing, he held down a 3.00 ERA over his final eight appearances. In the 1995 ALDS, he was a revelation: whiffing 8 Mariners in 5.1 IP and not giving up a run. As closer John Wetteland flopped, and the Yankees' staff as a whole bombed (5.94 ERA), Mo was brilliant.

In 1996, Rivera was THE bridge to the closer -- 107 IP, 130 K, 2.09 ERA and 1 HR allowed as the set-up man for Wetteland. Rivera finished third in the Cy Young Award voting as a set-up reliever, and 12th in the MVP ballot. That 2.09 ERA is great . . . but he has eight sub-2.00 ERA seasons.

The list of Mo's accomplishments as a player is long and The Monk would miss too many spots just trying to hit the highlights. The career statistical record says it all.

Congrats to Mo.

Buyer's remorse

The Monk would hope that PaMonk would be feeling some, at least at the same level that Marty Peretz does.

Peretz is the publisher of The New Republic, a political mentor of Al Gore, Jr., and strongly pro-Israel. Even as his magazine has become intellectually more akin to extreme left-wing periodicals like Mother Jones and The Nation, thanks to John Judis, Jonathan Chait, and Michelle Cottle (to its credit, TNR has also continued to print moderate liberals like Anne Applebaum, Leon Wieseltier and even moderate conservatives like Alvaro Vargas Llosa), Peretz is at minimum a voice of reason on Israel issues.

Or so it seemed until he famously wrote that friends of Israel and Jews could trust Obama. Peretz came to that conclusion in early 2008, and campaigned for Obama. Now, after Obama's speech in Cairo last week, Peretz seems to realize he screwed up. Some of Peretz's analysis of Obama's mythmaking:

When Obama attributes the establishment of Israel, and also Israel's fear that the Iranian government and many Arabs would quite happily visit another devastation on it, to the Holocaust, he is in fact accepting [Iranian Pres.] Ahmadinejad's analysis of the Zionist triumph and also one of the tenets of Palestinian rejectionism, which is that the Palestinians are correct in their phobia that they have paid the price for what the Nazis did to the Jews.

If the president does not grasp Israel's history, he should be more modest in his judgments. Here's just one huge fact that does not fit into the president's sweeping explanation for the success of the Jewish state: Why did more than 800,000 Jews return to Zion from their thousands of years of exile in the Muslim world beginning with the very morn of independence? Surely this rupturing of communal life dating back, in some cases, three millennia was not Holocaust-related.

* * *

I, too, am for a two-state solution. I always have been. As the president said, "many Israelis recognize the need for a Palestinian state"; he should have said "most" rather than "many." . . . Alas, Obama cannot and does not say that most or even many Palestinians recognize the need for a Jewish state or even, for that matter, the Israeli state. Here there is no symmetry, alas, that will serve. The most he can say is that, "privately, many Muslims recognize that Israel will not go away." Why does he not say "many Palestinians"? Perhaps because it would be stark deception. So which Muslims? The democratic but, alas, irrelevant and tolerant Muslims of Indonesia? Or Cairenes, especially the intellectuals, who have lived under a peace treaty with Jerusalem for all of three decades, but have not quite accommodated themselves to the existence of Israel?

* * *
So, in the end, the grand conciliator violated his own principle and spoke asymmetrically: He was very tough on Israel, but he was vague to the Palestinians and to the Arabs. The president was not at all specific about what he wished from people who are still enemies of the Jewish state. Every Israeli concession requires a reciprocal concession, and not just words. But even words are difficult to extract from the Palestinian Authority, the so-called moderates. Mahmoud Abbas said only a fortnight ago that he had only to wait on what Israel surrenders. . .

Marty, and you too Dad:

I told you so.

Snakebit? More like suck

The Yanks aren't snakebit against the Red Sawx, they just suck. The problem is the Yanks like their shiny baubles -- the high-ceiling emotional flakes; the Red Sawx are tough. This has been the tale of the two teams since 2004, when the Yanks procured A-Rod, Kevin Brown, and Sheffield and let Pettitte go, while the Red Sawx obtained Schilling and dumped Nomah in mid-season. Since the 2004 ALCS, the Yanks have lost all three playoff series they've played; Bahstin has won the 2004 and 2007 World Series.

The Yanks have lost to the Sawx in nearly every way imaginable: they've blown 8th and 9th inning leads (game 1, game 8), they blew a 6-0 lead to lose a slugfest (game 2), they've been outpitched (game 3), they've been dominated (games 4, 5, 6) and from the fourth inning of game 2 until the 7th inning last night, they NEVER EVEN LED after the completion of an inning for five straight games against their biggest rival.

The Redsax toughness is now the stuff of legend: they scraped by the Yanks in games 4 and 5 of the '04 ALCS (one of which Mo blew, one of which Joe Torre blew) and never trailed in games 6 and 7; they fell behind Cleveland 3-1 in the '07 ALCS, then pounded the Indians 7-1, 12-2 and 11-2; they fell behind Tampa 3-1 in the '08 ALCS and 7-0 in the 7th inning of game 5 and extended that series to seven games. This is the toughness that the Yankees had from 1996-2001 -- the teams that were on the brink of defeat against Texas (1996, down 1-0 and trailing in the 9th in game 2 of a best-of-five series), Atlanta (1996, the '96 Yanks were the first team to win the World Series in 6 games after losing the first two at home), Oakland twice (2000 ALDS game 5 in Oakland, trailed 2-0 in ALDS in 2001), and even Arizona (ninth-inning miracles in games 4 and 5).

This is why signing AJ Burnett was a mistake (high-ceiling, Yankee-killer, injury-prone, complete flake) and the Yanks should have signed Derek Lowe (7-3, 3.44 with the Braves), who has started 32-35 games in each of his seven seasons as a full-time starter, cracked 200 IP five times, has five seasons of 14+ wins (Burnett has one) and who pitched six innings of one-hit ball in Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS on TWO DAYS' REST. That's the kind of toughness the Yanks used to display.

The Yanks made two good moves this offseason by signing Teixiera (1.081 OPS, 3 HR, 7 R against the Sawx this year) and Sabathia. Tex is tough and has singlehandedly improved the Yankee defense by an order of magnitude. Sabathia pitches long, well and hard. He stayed in a batter too long last night. Burnett is going to be a 16.5M/yr bust, even if he averages 13-11, 4.60 each season. Joba has the requisite toughness to win (see his 1-0 win at Fenway last year), but the team as a whole is in a morass thanks to too many flakes (Cano, Cabrera, A-Rod) and bouts of plain stupidity (Swisher).

The Monk worried less when the Yanks fell behind Bastin in their season series 1-5 (2007), 1-4 (2006), and 1-5 (2004) because those teams tended to start slow, always played well against the Sawx the third time around (the Yanks won 9 of 10 v. Bastin at one point in 2006), had Torre at the helm (who managed every regular season game [tho' in 2004-07 not every playoff game] as if the Yanks needed the win; Girardi doesn't do that as well), and had taken their pound of flesh from the Sawx before the All-Star break. This year, the Yanks stink against Bahstin and won't get another change at redemption (the past three days were supposed to be the redemption) until August. At least in '97, when the Orioles were good and beat the Yanks like a drum, it was only 4-0 O's before the break and, even after the Orioles ran that series to 7-0, the Yanks immediately thrashed the O's four times in the final five games in the following 10 days (the one other loss was the two-game difference in the final standings).

There's no way to spin this -- the 0-8 start is a complete disaster.

Wongdoer is right about one thing, that ball two call on Pedroia last night changed the game a bit, but borderline calls are 50-50 propositions. Bad managing, bad execution, and bad character are not.

Snakebit

The Yankees are snakebit against Boston in 2009.

I'll leave the hard analysis to Monk who is good at this sort of thing. A few thoughts:

1. The Yanks need to IGNORE that they've been swept in Boston. NY, with the exception of the that five game Boston massacre, has completely lost its mojo/confidence/edge against Boston since the 2004 disaster. Take 2 out of 3 or sweep the Mutts and get on with life. Unless in the unlikely event that there is a tie for a playoff spot getting to and winning in the playoffs trumps even being 0-19 v. Boston

2. If CC had gotten that inside fastball call against Dustin Pedroia, it would have been one down and man on first. That should have been a strike. Compare that with the high strike on Teixeira in the 9th. That was very, very high.

3. A gripe that I've long had about the Yanks is how they went down in the 9th: 1-2-3. No fight. Can't blame Tex for that really because that should have been a double if it was hit four feet on either side of Youkilis. The Yanks are terrible at extending at-bats...except...

4. in the top of 8th in that bloody squall when the Yanks half took FOREVER and my continuing thought was get out of there and let CC come in before he gets cold. Can't blame the guys for fighting in the 8th but it was just bad timing.

Go Hoos II!

The Monk is a bit remiss (workload) and a bit late with this:

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE VIRGINIA CAVALIERS BASEBALL TEAM -- COLLEGE WORLD SERIES BOUND!

Virginia not only swept through the Irvine regional, as I discussed last Monday, it won its Super Regional and will now participate in the College World Series for the first time in school history!

Last weekend, Virginia had to travel to Oxford, Mississippi for a best of three series against the University of Mississippi. Ole Miss had received a #1 seed from the NCAA, which was appropriate (#9 or #11 ranking, top 16 RPI); Virginia had been screwed and given a #2 seed (#11 or #7 ranking, top 10 RPI). So Ole Miss hosted as the higher remaining seed.

Virginia bonked game 1, squandering a 3-2 lead entering the 9th with an error by the secondbaseman and a questionable pitching decision (not bringing in the team's lock-down quality closer to start the inning). Ole Miss won 4-3 on a leadoff homer in the bottom of the 12th.

In game 2, Ole Miss returned the favor, bonking a 3-2 lead entering the 8th with a terrible error by its secondbaseman (Chuck Knoblauch-ish throw) and the Cavs rallied for a 4-3 win.

In game 3, Ole Miss scored one in the first inning and nothing else. The Cavs' top-notch pitching carried the team; its hitters scraped together a three-run, error-aided rally in the fifth to take a 4-1 lead and Virginia coasted to the 5-1 win and a celebratory pile up in Oxford. Virginia is the only CWS team this year to lose its first game of the Super Regional.

On to Omaha, site of the College World Series and even tougher teams. The eight-team field is separated into two sub-brackets (basically teams seeded 1, 4, 5, 8 in one bracket; 2, 3, 6, 7 in the other). Virginia is essentially the #6 seed in the CWS, it faces national #3 seed LSU in its first game. The other teams in the sub-bracket are national #2 seed Cal-State Fullerton (the runner-up to UC-Irvine in the Big West Conference, but CSFU actually had a better resume because it fared better against non-Big West teams) and upstart Arkansas, which dropped Florida State in the Super Regionals.

This is the bracket of death: LSU is excellent again and is coached by Virginia coach Brian O'Connor's mentor, CSFU is a powerhouse, and Arkansas has feasted on good teams (5-0 against Florida, swept FSU, drubbed Oklahoma twice in Norman). Unlike Irvine or Ole Miss, Virginia's next opponents can BASH, which will be a big test for the Cavs' pitchers (who held UNC to 13 runs total in their four games this year -- a great total in high-scoring college baseball). Sub-bracket winner plays the survivor of Texas, North Carolina, Arizona State and darkest of dark horses Southern Miss (a #3 seed in its regional).

So this will be interesting. The semi-unknown Cavs on the biggest stage in College Baseball against two perennial powers (LSU has five titles, CSFU has four) and the "other" team from the nation's strongest conference, the SEC.

Go 'Hoos!

The Gipper

The Monk hoped that Mark Steyn would post his excellent eulogy to Pres. Reagan last week, but in the absence of Steyn doing so on his own website, The Monk found the eulogy on Free Republic.

Five years and three days ago, Ronald Reagan died. His public life came to an end 11 years before that. But his legacy still endures, despite the current president's efforts to defenestrate it. Here is the importance of Reagan:

[The 1970s] was the era of “détente”, a word barely remembered now, which is just as well, as it reflects poorly on us: the Presidents and Prime Ministers of the free world had decided that the unfree world was not a prison ruled by a murderous ideology that had to be defeated but merely an alternative lifestyle that had to be accommodated. Under cover of “détente”, the Soviets gobbled up more and more real estate across the planet, from Ethiopia to Grenada. Nonetheless, it wasn’t just the usual suspects who subscribed to this grubby evasion – Helmut Schmidt, Pierre Trudeau, Francois Mitterand – but most of the so-called “conservatives”, too – Ted Heath, Giscard d’Estaing, Gerald Ford.

And Reagan confounded those, like his misbegotten "biographer" Edmund Morris, who could not understand that certain evils had to be confronted, not cozened.

“The Great Communicator” was effective because what he was communicating was self-evident to all but our dessicated elites: “We are a nation that has a government - not the other way around.” And at the end of a grim, grey decade - Vietnam, Watergate, energy crises, Iranian hostages – Americans decided they wanted a President who looked like the nation, not like its failed government. Thanks to his clarity, around the world, governments that had nations have been replaced by nations that have governments. Most of the Warsaw Pact countries are now members of Nato, with free markets and freely elected parliaments.

The paramount success for the sportscaster, actor, governor of California and President is that he succeeded in ultimately making unfree people free.

Unlike [Heath, Ford, d'Estaing, et al.], unlike most other senior Republicans, Ronald Reagan saw Soviet Communism for what it was: a great evil. Millions of Europeans across half a continent from Poland to Bulgaria, Slovenia to Latvia live in freedom today because he acknowledged that simple truth when the rest of the political class was tying itself in knots trying to pretend otherwise. That’s what counts. He brought down the “evil empire”, and all the rest is fine print.

65 Years

Omaha Beach today.

65 years ago, on June 6, 1944, an estimated 4,500 Americans spent died here establishing the first beachhead against Hitler's 'Atlantic Wall'.   A first hand account of the assault is available here.

Note the width of the beach, its about 200 yards.   The fastest runner in the world trained and unencumbered can sprint that distance in about 20 seconds.   American GI's had to land on a sandbar 50 to 100 yards in the surf, wade to the edge of the water and make those 200 yards again a wall of enemy fire.  

20 Years

20 years ago this past Thursday a student-linked insurrection against the totalitarian government in the People's Republic of China was crushed by tanks. The photo above of a student with a shopping bag standing in the way of column of tanks is perhaps the most indelible memory of June 4, 1989.

China economic progress in the past twenty years has been nothing short of stunning. In fact fears of Chinese economic power today rightfully overshadows concerns about Japan's 20 years ago. The last ten years has made China rich and a creditor to many nations most notably somewhere near a trillion dollars of the United States. Folks treat China like fine china these days and many are selectively choosing to overlook the hideous warts of the government of this country who consider liberty as anathema as it ever has.

While we admire their single minded dedication to economic superpower status and their superb management of the economy (even this author will grudgingly admit) let's not forget this government rules from the memory and stands on the shoulders of the bloodiest murderers in human history.

A highly negative comparison

Losing out in a comparison of (political) courage* to former Pres. Jimmy Carter is a mark of Cain. And to Holman Jenkins, Pres. Obama is so marked.

In his column, Jenkins notes the perilous political path Carter navigated to push Congress to pass the Staggers Act, which deregulated the freight railroad industry and effectively saved it from mass bankruptcies. Compare that to Obama's sop to the UAW that constitutes his GM rescue plan:

Rail executives and economists had been arguing since the 1920s, when competition from trucks and planes began to emerge, that comprehensive federal regulation had only distorted the industry's pricing, driven away investment, and made competitive adaptation impossible. But the argument had a new ring now that Washington would have to bear the political risk of operating and subsidizing the nation's rail services.

It still took some doing on Mr. Carter's part. When the bill stalled, a hundred phone calls went from the White House to congressmen, including 10 by Mr. Carter in a single evening. The bill essentially no longer required railroads to provide services at a loss to please certain constituencies. It meant going up against farmers, labor, utilities, mining interests, and even some railroads -- whereas Mr. Obama's auto bailout tries to appease key lobbies like labor and greens, which is why it can't work.

In his message to Congress, Mr. Carter warned of a "catastrophic series of bankruptcies" and "massive federal expenditure" unless deregulation was allowed to "overhaul our nation's rail system, leading to higher labor productivity and more efficient use of plant and equipment."

* * *

In 1980, Congress passed the Staggers Act, ending a century of federal regulation and leading to the railroad industry's renaissance. Leo Mullin, then a young Conrail veep, would later look back and praise all involved for having the fortitude to recognize that salvaging the taxpayer's investment in Conrail meant more than fixing a single broken company -- it meant fixing a defective regulatory environment.

Carter also deregulated the airline industry. This is a far cry from Obama's plans to regulate the pharmaceutical (through health care reform) and automotive industries nearly to death.

* -- Despite innumerable political disagreements with the man, The Monk will not question Carter's personal courage. Carter served on submarine duty in the US Navy during World War II, and served under Adm. Hyman Rickover in the Navy's pilot nuclear submarine program.

Go Hoos!

For the first time in its previously far-from-illustrious history, the Virginia baseball team has moved past the regional round. Congratulations to the Cavs.

When The Monk and his friend Luskerdu were at Virginia, the team struggled to maintain a .500 overall record and never even sniffed the NCAA Tournament, which at that time had 48 teams split into eight 6-team regionals with the regional winners advancing to the College World Series. After we graduated (and I think there's documentary proof that Luskerdu did graduate), the Cavaliers caught lightning in a bottle for a year in 1996 led by the quite mortal Seth Greisinger, who played in the majors for the Tigers, Twins, and Braves (he was a first-round pick, he flopped) before going to Japan.

In 2003, the 23-year coaching term of Dennis Womack ended and Virginia hired Brian O'Connor, a Creighton grad who played in the College World Series, coached for his alma mater, then gained national recognition as an assistant at Notre Dame. Since hiring O'Connor, Virginia has been a top-flight baseball program: five 40+ win seasons in his six years, six straight NCAA Tournament appearances (compared to three in Virginia history before O'Connor arrived), an ACC championship and constant success in the ACC -- one of the better baseball conferences in the country considering its plethora of national powers (UNC, Clemson, Ga. Tech, Florida State, Miami).

O'Connor was a pitcher and his knowledge of pitching has been the key to Virginia's baseball success. The Cavs play at the cavernous Davenport Field and consistently have one of the better pitching staffs in college baseball. And it's not just at home -- the Cavs rarely play those 17-15 aluminum bat-aided slugfests (or 37-6 slugfests -- see the beating FSU put on Ohio State) on the road either, even in Atlanta or Chapel Hill or Miami.

The NCAA Tournament now has 64 teams split into 16 regionals with teams seeded 1-4 and eight teams seeded as overall Nos. 1-8 (like seeded players in tennis). The winner of the double-elimination regional goes to a Super-Regional to play a best of three series against another regional winner. The Super-Regional winner goes to the College World Series.

Two years ago, Virginia was up 3-1 and six outs away from its first-ever trip beyond the regional round against defending champion Oregon State. The Cavs threw away that game (four errors) and lost the rematch; Oregon State didn't lose again on its way to another national title.

This year, the Cavs got a complete screw-job from the NCAA Tournament committee. After winning the ACC Tournament (beating UNC, Clemson and Florida State in the process, all of whom received #1 seeds), Virginia's RPI was #6 and its national ranking was #7 or #11 (depending upon the poll). Instead of hosting a regional as a #1 seed, the Committee sent the Cavs across the country to Irvine to the regional with the No. 6 overall seed (UC-Irvine), the best pitcher in college baseball (San Diego State's Stephen Strasburg -- the upcoming No. 1 pick in the baseball draft who throws 98-102 mph with a fantastic curve and slider), and the defending NCAA champ, Fresno State. If the NCAA does the snake-seeding method of the basketball committee, UVa was rated as the No. 27 team in the country. A ridiculous notion.

And yet . . . the team turned that chickens**t seeding into chicken salad. The Cavs took batting practice from 40 feet against pitching machines at top speed to prepare for Strasburg, flew out to Irvine without much talk of their bad draw, and performed. They touched Strasburg (ERA 1.24) for two runs and outpitched SDSU in their first game, 5-1. They shut down Irvine on Saturday 5-0. Last night, the Cavs again stifled Irvine on its home field -- a 4-1 win that sends Virginia to its first-ever Super Regional to play the winner of tonight's Mississippi-Western Kentucky game.

Congratulations to the Cavs. You're moving near the big stage now.

Sotomayor not a bipartisan pick

Ed Whelan has this note regarding how Judge Sotomayor was selected by the George HW Bush White House to be a district court judge:

. . . when President Bush nominated Sotomayor to the district court in 1991, the New York senators, Moynihan and D’Amato, had forced on the White House a deal that enabled the senator not of the president’s party to name one of every four district-court nominees in New York. Sotomayor was Moynihan’s pick. I am reliably informed that Bush 41’s White House nonetheless resisted nominating her because she was so liberal and did so in the end only as part of a package to move along other nominees whom Moynihan was holding up.

So not only did Bush put Souter on the Court, he paved the way for Sotomayor. And Whelan indicates she will be a far left-wing voice.

But as I said before, her lack of intellectual firepower compared to Scalia and Roberts means she won't be an influential one (*cough*Stevens*cough*).

Easy confirmation, no superstar

Pres. Obama took the quick and easy path by nominating Hon. Sonia Sotomayor to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.

First, she's a two-party appointee. Pres. Bush (I) appointed her to a Federal district court bench during his sole term in office, Pres. Clinton appointed her to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals (which handles appeals from cases filed in district courts in New York, Connecticut and Vermont).

Second, she is female. As only the third female nominee, she'll receive great deference from the Senate (only three Senators total have voted against a female Supreme Court appointee -- the three dissenters to Justice Ginsburg).

Third, she is Latina. This is the minority category du jour that "deserves" a place on the Supreme Court. Miguel Estrada would have been the first undoubted Latino to serve on the Supreme Court if the Democrats had not filibustered his Court of Appeals nomination under Pres. Bush (II). Whether Justice Benjamin Cardozo (served 1932-38) was Hispanic is an open question.

Fourth, her paper trail, while not overwhelming the average Rhodes Scholar for its intellectual content, is not overly controversial. For a Democrat's nominee to be "controversial" to the media, the nominee would have to take opposite positions on Iraq War or War on Terror issues (Elena Kagan) or have doubts about the legality of abortion. For such a nominee to be controversial in general, the nominee would have to espouse a judicial philosophy that questions whether the law should be applied as written. Her comments that a wise Latina woman with the experiences of growing up poor, female, and Latina should reach the right conclusion in a case more often than a white male who was never poor nor Latino, is nonsense and preposterous on its face. It's the same "empathy" quality that elevates the feelings of the litigants over the rule of law. But it's less easy to challenge her dedication to the rule of law than Obama's alleged favorite.

Obama had a Supreme Court candidate whose dedication to the rule of law is highly questionable. That candidate was Diane Wood, a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. She seemed to be the favorite of liberal interest groups and the professoriat because she supposedly has the intellectual candlepower to go toe-to-toe with Scalia and Roberts. That's highly unlikely. But Wood was also the most controversial candidate possible precisely because her dedication to the rule of law is more open to question than any of the other rumored candidates (Kagan, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, Sotomayor). After Sen. Jon Kyl said Republicans would fight any nominee who placed empathy over analysis (a shot at Wood), Sotomayor became the most logical pick.

Possibility of her nomination passing the Senate = 100%.

Possibility of her appointment passing without dissenting votes = 45%.

Possibility of her reasoning in decisions ever being equally persuasive as Scalia's = 0%.