Musings on #27

With great happiness I watched the Yankees win their 27th World Championship last night, taking out the Philadelphia Phillies last night to clinch the World Series in six games. Here were some of my random thoughts during and after the game:

• Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon are going to be free agents, and the conventional wisdom is to let one or both of them go given their advanced age and large contracts. It'll be just a little tougher to do that given how clutch they were in this World Series. I mean, Matsui won the World Series MVP, singlehandedly beating the Phillies in Game Six, and this guy might not get a contract offer so the Yankees can vacate the DH spot to spell Jorge Posada and (maybe Johnny Damon). It'll be sad to see either of those two go.
• Interesting to see Yankees in the midst of the celebration on the mound after the game who were pretty much AWOL for the season, including Chien-Ming Wang and Xavier Nady sightings. An ungracious teammate could grab either of those guys in the midst of the hugs and high-fives and say, "Uh, and you helped us get here by doing what, exactly?"
• So can we now officially deem the "drought" of Yankees world championships between 2000 and 2009 "The Curse of Mike Mussina", who left the Orioles for the Yankees after the 2000 season and retired last year? You've gotta feel a little bad for Moose, who just missed on both ends.
• Still on this point, it dawned upon me how skewed things are with announcers talking about ending the "drought" of championships which has lasted a whopping nine years. Nine years is a long time between World Series? Sarah had gone to bed after the sixth inning, and when we woke up this morning we talked about the final score and realized that this was the first Yankees world championship we've gone through together (having started dating in 2001). "It won't be the last," she added. I agreed, but again thought of the privilege or entitlement of Yankee fans who can be so bold to assume that they'll see championships oh, every couple of years or so. There were entire generations of fans in New England who never lived to see a World Series championship for the Red Sox (86 years). Same thing with the White Sox (88 years). And don't even talk about this to Cubs fan (101 years and still counting).
• It'll be interesting to see the trajectory of A-Rod's career after this moment. Now that he has the World Series ring that has eluded him for 16 years, will this liberate him to simply go out there and dominate as he is able to do, recognizing that the pressure of having to justify himself as a "winner" or "true Yankee" is now gone? Or will this take the hungry edge off of him? I think it's the former, and look forward to seeing Mr. Kate Hudson laying waste to the rest of the league.
• I'm not sure what C.C. Sabathia and Mark Teixeira do for an encore after this, their first year of their respective monster free agent contracts, but I'd say that they've distinguished themselves from the Carl Pavano and Jason Giambi signings.
• Speaking of Teixeira, I think he is rapidly becoming my favorite player and in this series demonstrated how you need to keep yourself mentally sharp and find ways to help your team win, namely with great defense, even if you're in a terrible hitting slump.
• I know this is not what Phillies fans want to hear, but the Phillies were actually close to winning this series and could've easily done so if not for a few pivotal plays here and there. Johnny Damon's double-steal of Brad Lidge in Game 4 was arguably the turning point of the Series. The Phillies had just tied the game with two outs in the bottom of the 8th inning with Pedro Feliz's clutch home run off of Joba Chamberlain (shades of Jimmy Leyritz in Game 4 of the 1996 World Series), who had just made the previous two batters look silly. Lidge easily dispatched Matsui and Jeter in the top of the 9th, and Citizen's Bank Park was absolutely going nuts, anticipating that with Phil Coke coming into the game, it was just a matter of time until the Phillies evened the series. Instead, a few minutes later it was 7-4 with Mariano Rivera coming in - please turn off the light as you leave. If Game 4 goes to the Phillies, the Phillies win Game 5 behind untouchable Cliff Lee and the pressure is all on the Yankees to sweep the next two games. Heck, the Phillies could've easily won Game 2 if Chase Utley doesn't hit into that double play with two on in the 8th inning.
• I finally got a baseball prediction right.