August 25, 2008

Home games: Yanks reduced to spolier role vs. Red Sox

NewYorkology contributor Scott Ross keeps you abreast of upcoming Mets and Yankees home games in New York City. Jack Donaghy convinced Ross to join the GE family in the summer of 2008. Here’s your look at major league baseball in New York City this week:

It’s time to be honest: the Yankees’ season is effectively over. Cool Standings puts their post-season hopes at 6.8 percent, while Baseball Prospectus gives them just a 4.26 percent chance of making the playoffs. With 32 games remaining, the Bombers trail the Devil Rays by 9 1/2 games in the AL East race and the Red Sox by 5 games in the Wild Card standings.

What to make of the Yankees’ demise? Not much. Empires collapse, evil or otherwise. The fact is that in 1996 the Yankees began to enjoy a remarkable string of good fortune that saw them win three titles in four years and make the playoffs annually. This is not to say they weren’t also exceptionally good, but even great teams need weird bounces, bad calls, unusual health and fluke performances to go their way.

More than anything, it was the injury bug that hit the Yankees. Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui, A-Rod, Johnny Damon, Chien-Ming Wang and rookie phenom Joba Chamberlain all missed big chunks of time.

The Yankees will be back in the hunt next season, no doubt reloaded with a new crop of big–ticket free agents. For now, however, they will have to satisfy themselves by playing spoiler, trying to keep their arch nemeses out of the post-season.

There’s an amusing symmetry to the three match-ups of the Yankees’ series with Boston. On Tuesday, Josh Beckett and Andy Pettitte engage in a showdown of former staff aces who have had to grind their way through tough seasons. On Wednesday, it’s a pair of aging mid-season stopgaps brought in because of
injuries as Paul Byrd faces Sydney Ponson. And finally, Friday offers the best pairing of the week, 2008 aces Jon “Cancer Boy” Lester – who got seriously slapped around in his last start – and Mike Mussina, who at age 39 is on the cusp of his first 20-win season and possibly the Hall of Fame.

This week presents easily the sorriest collection of promotional giveaways in recent memory. The crap DVD of the new ballpark is actually the second-best freebie of the week, after the keychain to commemorate the final season at Yankee Stadium. As of Sunday night, the fine folks at Best Buy had yet to figure out what they were going to hand out on Friday. Shockingly, this “blind date” is still better than Saturday’s calculator. Honestly, in a day when virtually everyone over the age of 15 carries a cell phone or PDA and nearly every workplace has at least one computer around, isn’t making calculators tantamount to littering? When was the last time you used an honest-to-God, that’s-all-it-is calculator? Cheap bastards.

Boston Red Sox at New York Yankees
Tuesday @ 7:05, Beckett (11-9) vs. Pettitte (13-9)
Wednesday @ 7:05, Byrd (8-11) vs. Ponson (7-4)
Thursday @ 1:05, Lester (12-4) vs. Mussina (16-7), new Yankee Stadium virtual tour DVD

Toronto Blue Jays New York Yankees
Friday @ 7:05, John Parrish (1-0) vs. Carl Pavano (1-0), promotion item
Saturday @ 1:05, AJ Burnett (16-9) vs. Darrell Rasner (5-9), calculator day
Sunday @ 1:05, Roy Halladay (15-9) vs. Andy Pettitte (13-9), final season keychain

Next Week: As if the road ahead weren’t tough enough for the Yankees, they have to fly to Detroit for a make-up game before heading to Tampa for a three-game set and then on to Seattle. Meanwhile, the Metropolitans go to Milwaukee before coming home to host the Phillies for a showdown that will go a long way toward deciding the NL East.

Tickets to Yankees games can be purchased here. See NewYorkology’s guide to Yankee Stadium for the rundown on how to get there, where to meet, eat and eventually, sit.

Image source: Biederlack New York Yankees Woochie Pillow

August 25, 2008 10:05 AM in Kids, Out of Manhattan, Sports

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