No Blues in St. Loo

Let’s see if I can wrap my hands around what’s been happening in St Louis these past few days. The baseball contingent of that fair city with the arch once again refused to lose to a Texas Rangers team that kept putting runs on the board all the way through the 10th inning.

When the Rangers finally came up short in their half of the 11th, the Cards finally put them out of their misery in the bottom half, hometown boy David Freese laying down the hammer with a walk-off homer to center, this after he had tied the game at nines in the bottom of the ninth with a 2-out 2-strike triple to right over a flailing Nelson Cruz.

If the St. Louis fans weren’t crazy enough after tying the Series in miraculous fashion in Game 6, they got to enjoy watching Chris Carpenter, their ace throughout the post-season, really and truly squelch any hope the Rangers may have still had . As a bonus, David Freese once again was the hero at the plate, immediately taking Carpenter off the hook with his 2-run tying double in the bottom of the first. The hometown boy became the MVP of course and that arch looked as shiny as it ever had as St. Louis celebrated late into the evening.

If it had been just a few heroes who came through for the Cards, acknowledged stars like Pujols, Berkman and Holliday, it would have been a good thing surely. But this Cards team was so much more than that. There was Freese of course. But there were also guys, young and old alike, named Allen Craig and Rafael Furcal, John Jay and Nick Punto. Skip Schumaker and Yadier Molina, Daniel Descalso and Ryan Theriot, all turning in whatever they could whenever they could.

And they had done it since late August, coming back from 10 ½ back to capture the wildcard, then whipping the Phillies and all their aces in the NLDS, the Brewers and all their sluggers in the NLCS before finally extinguishing those Texas Rangers’ hopes.

Then, as if basking in the light of that Cards magnificent championship, the lowly Rams, that town’s NFL entry, a team that hadn’t managed to win a game all year, slugged out a convincing victory over the team that had been Super Bowl champions as recently as two years ago. They did it with their reserve quarterback and one Steven Jackson, one of the finest running backs in the league when healthy.

Those Rams made the Saints look like, well, themselves at their worst. Drew Brees was terrible. The Saints couldn’t run the ball, the Saints couldn’t pass the ball, and, just when it looked as if the Saints could mount one of their patented comebacks, the Rams said “I don’t think so” and intercepted Brees to extend their unlikely lead even further to 31-14. The Rams would not return home on empty that day. They looked a lot like their baseball brethren, refusing to lose, especially after that fine start.

So, if you’re into baseball, you’ve got to like the Cardinals. If you live in St. Louis and are into baseball, you’ve got to love them. Yeah, Pujols may not return, manager LaRussa is retiring and who knows what else the fates may hold in store for them, but those St. Louis fans will remember this 2011 group for a long, long time.

But now you can be a Rams fan too. Perhaps all they needed was an inspiration, the kind of inspiration only a team such as that Cards team could provide. A lot of teams have talent. All they lack is the will to win. Those Cards had that in their back pockets with their chew.

Maybe that Cards glow will fade in time, but the Rams were on fire on Sunday. They were as determined as they’d been all year. Run the ball, no problem, Steven Jackson alone garnered 159 yards all by himself. Stop the run, no problem….they gave up fewer than 60 yards. Defend the pass, they’d do that too with an interception that was run back for that final TD that put the Saints to bed.

Society being what we are today, not many analysts gave the Rams any credit for the victory, it was too much fun to batter Brees and the Saints. It wasn’t Jackson who excelled, it was the Saints failure to tackle. It wasn’t newly-acquired Brandon Lloyd getting wide open in the end zone, it was lousy coverage by the Saints. It wasn’t a tough D that stopped Brees cold…..well, you get the idea.

Even the greatest Rams fan of all, my brother, had given up on his favorite team by Week 8. He’d been disappointed for too long. He’d seen enough from what had become a totally uninspired group of football players on both sides of the ball. The Rams averaged fewer than 10 points scored while usually surrendering 30 or more.

Ironically, he had picked the lowly Jaguars to cover against the Texans (a push, as things turned out), but he wasn’t quite ready to spend any more love on a Rams team that had shown nothing since the final exhibition game. The same man who had garnered hope from every conceivable Rams indication of talent for seven weeks had finally given up.

What he hadn’t figured on was lightning in a bottle, a city brimming with admiration for its baseball team, hometown heroes making good, and unlikely candidates thrusting themselves into the heart of the fray. He hadn’t figured on the Rams wanting some of that too. He hadn’t figured on that Cards winning glow rubbing off, affecting even those lowly Rams, a team that had seemed impervious to even any suggestion of hope before Sunday.

I’ll bet there had been no room for blues in that St. Louis locker room on Sunday. That Rams football team came to play. Forty-five guys were saying ”Give me some of that”.

The End of Baseball

What could be better, a nice fall day (but not nice enough to have to work too much), a personal computer, a word processing program from 2007, a fantasy football show on the tube and the prospects of watching a World Series Game 7, if Tony LaRussa can just shut up and manage like a regular human being.

And Terrell Owens is making news again. You have to admire his tenacity. And he says he likes fantasy football too and he’s got Drew Brees and Ryan Fitzpatrick as his quarterbacks. All right, T.O.!

I love these NFL replays too, best thing next to the Redzone and the mute button. The NFL Network has been showing the Jets-Chargers and now it’s the Vikings-Packers on the air. The Jets, as much as they drive me crazy with their acerbic personalities, were actually good. They ran the ball, they passed the ball, they got turnovers, they were pretty impressive.

And C, the Vikes rookie QB, was really impressive against the Super Bowl Champions. Especially his first-drive bomb to Michael Jenkins that went for a TD before the refs took it away and awarded them the ball on the 1. Do officials ever do anything that isn’t friggin’ annoying?

The Series Game 6 scheduled for tonight may not be played. That’ll be good too, providing a perfect opportunity to watch “Inside the NFL”. Besides, maybe it’ll give Carpenter a chance to pitch again. That’d be interesting. That man is tough. There’d be nobody I’d rather have going for me in a Game 7.

But will the Rangers allow it? I don’t know. Right now, in this Series, they look like the team that does it all, especially in the power department. Since they decided not to pitch to Pujols, things have been looking decidedly better for the guys in red. And you had to love Derek Holland’s impersonation of manager Ron Washington taking him off the mound after his masterly performance in Game 4. These Rangers are a team that deserves to win.

But that doesn’t mean that the Cards don’t deserve to win it. You just get the feeling that the MO, momentum, has definitely gone to Nolan Ryan’s side of the ledger. (I wish he wouldn’t hang with Dubya though). Holliday has to start making the Rangers pay for avoiding Pujols. It looks as if he’s trying too hard. But he’s come through in the past in the post-season and Lance Berkman ain’t exactly chopped liver either.

But things are setting up for the Rangers. What must the Cards be thinking? How confident do they feel after the fluky sound problems that beset them yesterday? Even if you don’t blame anybody particularly for putting in the wrong relief pitchers, it’s a pretty big gaffe for a major league team in a World Series.

Other things weigh in the Rangers favor too. Their relievers are rested, their hitters seem confident and they’ve got the hot manager now. Ron Washington has been rock-steady at the same time as he jumps up and down like a little kid. The man’s got personality. And he makes the baseball moves that regular human beings make.

But, truth to tell, more of my attention is on the football action around the NFL , if only because my fantasy team hangs on in first for one more week, this despite getting almost nothing from about six different players in the lineup. Bye weeks can be a terrible thing but Drew Brees, even for three quarters, can make up for a lot of deficiencies in other areas.

You have to be lucky though. I’ve said this before but all that stuff about making your own luck is vastly over-rated. I’ve won one weekly contest by one point and another by about 3 along with the most curious set of circumstances one could possibly imagine.

I just learned that it’s snowing in the Denver area and all that weather is heading for St Louis, and not only that, but it’ll probably be headed our way too over the weekend. I’m not quite ready for any skiing in October. Let’s at least have Halloween first.

The Football Giants should be entertaining this weekend too. They get to play the worst team in the league this week, the Miami Dolphins. They’re coming off a nice performance against Buffalo but that game followed a horrible team performance against Seattle. That’s what bugs me about football. You can get totally inexplicable game results, as was Sunday’s Ravens debacle against the Jaguars.

I was away for the Giants woes against Seattle but everything I read indicates that both Seattle QB’s had pretty good stats and Eli Manning threw 3 interceptions on the day, the last one ensuring the Seahawks the victory. The Buffalo victory, while impressive, came against a Bills defense that was all banged up.

Now they play Miami, a desperate team for a win, and, judging by their Seahawks performance, I’d say anything’s possible. But the G-Men will probably emerge victorious. It’s a really good thing too, because their succeeding six games are really tough ones….at New England and San Francisco, then home against an out-for-revenge Eagles team, then at the Saints, home vs. the Packers and at Dallas.

If they win 2 out of those 6, they’ll be lucky. I see the G-Men being at 6-6 after their game against the Packers. They’ll then have to finish strong against their division opponents, Dallas (twice) and Washington, around a home rivalry game with the Jets.

If the Giants win a playoff berth, they will have earned it. The Jets seem to have an easier road, facing the rest of the NFC East and their own division rivals. I think that if the Jets can dominate the Bills, they’re pretty much assured of at least a playoff spot. The Pats are still the favorite to win the division.

It’s the best time of the year, even if it will be the end of baseball.

Looking Forward to Rangers-Giants

What could be better?

The Yanks are losing and should be losing even worse. The Phillies are in bad shape, in fact the same shape the Yankees were in about 24 hours ago, and that is down 3-1, and facing complete annihilation. Of course, if the Phillies can win tonight, and, like the Yankees win their Game 5, they’ll at least be headed home to that bandbox in Philadelphia.

The Yankees will be in Texas with a whole huge bunch or gaggle of wild-eyed Texans, facing a tough pitcher nobody outside of Texas has ever heard of, one Colby Lewis, who did pretty well in that Game 2 against them. On the mound for the Yanks is Phil Hughes, who is a pretty fair pitcher himself, but who got beat by these Rangers pretty easily.

But for the Yankees, they have one big thing going for them, the fear of elimination. The Texans should be playing a little looser, whether that works well for them or not. In the Yanks minds will be a healthy fear of losing.

The Rangers have nothing to really worry about as they’ll have Cliff Lee going in a final game if it’s needed. Every Yankee will feel that pressure of losing, thus finishing 2010. They will have been the wildcard in 2010, They’ll have been the winner of their ALDS with the Twins, 3-0. They will have been the ALCS losers in 6 games to the Texas Rangers. That will be their legacy.

The Rangers will be in this circus atmosphere, but could still feel the emptiness of year after year in Texas, all those years when they had hitting but no pitching, These are relatively young guys with a history together, guys like Michael Young and Josh Hamilton, Ian Kinsler and Nelson Cruz. It’s a tight bunch and they can all play ball. They like playing ball. They’re hungry for the World Series.

The Yankees just won the World Series. Would it be so bad to lose in Game 6 and avoid facing that horror of a pitcher, Cliff Lee, in Game 7? They’ll be missing their star slugger and fielder extraordinaire, Mark Teixeira. They’ll still have Robinson Cano, though, and between him and Arod and Granderson and Berkman, they have sluggers for sure. There’s almost nobody in that lineup that can’t inspire a little respect.

But these Yankees haven’t distinguished themselves in the field. Arod at third has been looking a little suspect to me, playing deep and not handling the soft grounders. Jeter could be quicker and, although Cano will still sparkle at second base, Berkman will have a hard time looking good at first with a bruised back that he got while falling backward and looking rather clumsy in the process. The catcher can’t throw people out. The right fielder plays hard but won’t get to some balls.

The Rangers have scary guys from 1 through 7 but tail off somewhat in 8 and 9 with our old friend, Frenchie Francoeur batting 8th and Bengie Molina batting ninth. But Molina killed the Yanks just the other night and Francoeur will be, you know, Francoeur, who, if I may say, has done quite all right with himself. Landing with a World Series team after spending a year or two with the Mets has got to feel good.

I like the Rangers Young, Andrus and Kinsler better than Arod, Jeter and Cano. When I think about it, it’s really Arod I have the problem with. But Jeter doesn’t inspire awe, especially when he makes that ridiculous jumping cross the body throw with nothing on it, or made only after a little stutter step while jumping?

The Rangers have a fast guy leading off in Andrus, a real veteran in Young to move him along, and in Josh Hamilton, the best hitter in the league batting 3rd. Hamilton only hurts you when his bat touches the ball, and he batted .359 on the season. Then you have this crazy old slugger batting cleanup, Vlad Guerrero, who’ll swing at anything and come up smelling like roses. Then Nelson Cruz, who just hits homers and doubles with alarming regularity. Ian Kinsler can yank them out of the park too. It’s a real killer 1 thru 6 lineup for sure, an All-Star lineup.

The Yanks are lack-luster at the top of the lineup. They have no speed game. They score big when their heavy hitters connect. That’s all. They have no other game.
From a purely baseball perspective, the Rangers are the better team and should win this series if they play their game. Will they play their game? I like their chances.

But the Giants have been my team all year too in the National League. That is, when all my attention wasn’t focused on the Mets. I even got to attend a game out there in San Fran, and watched Matt Cain putting away the Oakland A’s. My fantasy guys, Pablo Sandoval (the Panda) and peppery Andres Torres were good that day as was that first baseman of theirs, Aubrey Huff.

But their pitching staff is awesome and has been pretty awesome for this entire post-season. Lincecum, Cain, Sanchez and Bumgarner are as good as it gets. And that closer of theirs is pretty lights-out.

The Phillies after Halladay and Hamels don’t really match up to my mind, Oswalt and Blanton are good but not great. Oswalt proved last night that he can be had, even if his appearance was in a relief role, a role he never should have assumed in the first place.

But the Giants have momentum now, even if they have to face Phillies ace Halladay in tonight’s Game 5. Young and old, in guys such as Buster Posey and Juan Uribe, making all the plays and getting all the big hits, the Giants are very dangerous. And they already debunked the magic of Halladay in Game 1.

Anyway, I’m ecstatic, looking forward to a Giants-Rangers World Series. Isn’t everybody?

All That and Chile Miners Too!

It’s getting more difficult to focus. Definitely. There are a lot of things happening worthy of some commentary, that’s for sure, Brett Favre’s, um, sticky situation, the Mets hiring a GM, the Yankees looking a little vulnerable (though the Twins folded nicely, bent, folded and mutilated even). My favorite team (and God only knows why), the Mets, are starting over, hiring a GM who’ll run the show. The football Giants have been looking good lately and the baseball Giants are, like the Yankees, looking vulnerable, for totally different reasons. My adopted team this year, the Texas Rangers (they’re easy to like if you forget about George Bush and who’s more eminently forgettable), finally put away the Rays in a ridiculous series that featured great performances by the “away” team in the home park. Even the Knicks and Nets are beginning to become print-worthy.

I’m so tempted to just come out and say that Brett Favre is a pig, evil incarnate, one hell of a quarterback, if you don’t count all those turnovers. And then, what a surprise, a 41 year old guy has tendinitis! Bummer. The Vikings would be a pretty good team otherwise. But I can’t really come down on him until it’s clear whether he really took a picture of his privates and sent it out as a text message to his latest, um, amour? Anyway, I never liked Favre so anything I said would be just piling on.

As for the Mets, one burning question keeps coming to me. And that is, “Where did it all go wrong, Omar?” We were looking so good for a while back in ’06 and then we folded in ’07 and ’08, and then we really fixed all the problems in ’09 only to have the most ridiculously horrible streak of bad luck and injuries ever to befall a major league club. Things were never the same after that. The Wilpons closed the checkbook after Jason Bay and Oliver Perez. 2010 was a little interesting early before the team just folded up its tent right before the mid-season and right through the mid-term break.

To my mind, Omar is just unlucky. They say you make your own breaks, and there’s some truth to that, but really, he’s got that Mr Mxtplyk (from Superman) hanging over his head. I mean, could anyone have figured Ollie Perez would so utterly fail? Well, maybe. But still, he was Pavano-bad and worse, if just because he kept showing up, like a bad apple, a really rotten one, to the core, as they say. And then there was Jason Bay. If Bay hadn’t run into that wall, he would have been boo-ed out of the stadium when the Mets returned to CitiField. He was that bad.

It was right around then, I figure, that the Wilpons decided not to send good money after bad and let Minaya play out the season with what he already had, which was, sadly, not nearly enough. It’ll be a different GM and manager who reap the benefits of R.A. Dickey and Ike Davis, Josh Thole and that nifty second baseman. And that’s a shame, because there was a lot to like about the Mets before their tailspin. An acquisition then would have made a big difference. But it is what it is, or was what it was, I guess.

Jerry Manuel will be missed for sure. That he couldn’t make a third or fourth place team finish first is no reflection on him. He was funny, wise, ironic, and totally in the game mentally, almost too much at times. But you can’t hold that against him. He won as many games as he lost. And managers do win and lose games for sure, just as much as bad umpires if not more, although that’s hard to imagine. To me, 2010 was the year of the bad umpires, even more than it was the year of pitching.

Omar will be missed too, by me at least. Omar was a very personable guy, and if not for his road-rage-like tirade against a New York reporter, you could say the guy never made a mistake in that respect. Omar’s clubs played exciting ball almost all the time. Too often, that excitement kind of petered out in the really big games. That will ultimately be his legacy but not to this guy. As I said, the man was just unlucky. I’ll look forward to the new administration. I can’t imagine that they’ll be more likeable though than what we had.

The Twins stink in the post-season. ‘Nuff said. That the Yankees beat them means nothing. The Twins never had a post-season game they couldn’t lose. Without getting into cases, the Twins never faced a Yankee they could look in the eye. Every Yankee pitcher and every player in pin-stripes became a superhero. It was disgusting to watch.

But let’s review. There is Sabathia looking a little worn, a Pettite who pitched one good game, a young guy in Hughes who may get rattled in a big one, and a psycho-Burnette who’ll maybe be bad and maybe be good. If pitching wins post-season games, if that’s true, then the Yankees are in big trouble. They might finish off the Rangers, who were a little too happy after their win over the Rays to suit me, but even that’s pretty questionable. The Rangers match up pretty well with the Yankees position for position. They have pitching too, and not just Cliff Lee. C.J. Wilson, Tommy Hunter, Colby Lewis, they’re not too shabby. If you match 1-2-3-4 vs 1-2-3-4, closer vs. closer, setup guy vs. setup guy, the Rangers should be more than competitive.

We’ll see if the Yanks are the best team money can buy. The Phils and Rangers spent some too.

The Giants and Jets…..what can you say? Both teams are playing great football. The Giants do have an offensive line, even without Sean O’Hara. The Jets do have a secondary, even without Darrelle Revis.

All of that and Chilean miners too, life is good.

Jason Bay, Tampa Bay, Rangers and Giants

It’s been a passing strange baseball season so far and strangest of all might be in Citi Field where starters surprise and big hitters utterly collapse at just the wrong moments. But if you like baseball, you’re getting your money’s worth from teams like Texas and San Francisco.

One has to wonder if our totally clueless cleanup hitter, Jason Bay, will ever get his act together. In fact, his at-bats are so horrible, one has to wonder if he ever takes batting practice. Although I fully expected streakiness when the Mets acquired him, I don’t think I fully appreciated how bad those plate appearances would look. And they feel worse than they look, being that there are always men on base when he comes to the plate.

The Mets could’ve swept the Reds if Bay were only mediocre. They’ve gotten good pitching, the rest of the lineup has been doing more than its share, and then Bay just totally kills them. It’s very frustrating, to say the least. The only interesting thing about a Bay at-bat is whether or not he’ll get the bat on the ball at all. He misses most pitches by such a wide margin that a foul tip becomes some wondrous event.

Jerry Manuel keeps talking about his history. He’s right, of course, but that doesn’t mean he should keep that number four spot in the order when he hasn’t a prayer of doing anything even remotely good. I mean….he’s been making Gary Matthews look good.

Maybe it’s the four spot that’s the problem. Looking back at his Boston and Pittsburgh years, he batted mostly in the fifth spot. But even then he had long streaks of futility to go with long streaks of wonderful productivity. We haven’t seen one of those streaks yet. I wonder if we ever will.

I had hoped Omar would have gone after Holliday in free agency. The Mets preferred Bay, supposedly based on his defense and speed. And it’s true, he does play a nice left field, and he does manage to not get doubled up on many of his DP grounders. Most of his paltry RBI total has come from fly balls or weak grounders.

Maybe Bay needs glasses or contact lenses. He’s late on just about everything. Okay, that’s enough. I can’t even stand my own whining. If he doesn’t ever hit….fine. That’ll at least spell the end of Omar for good. We’ll see less of the Matthews’s and Tatis’s of the world year after year… all the retreads .

Meanwhile, this baseball season might turn out pretty special. The Rays look great in the AL East and Evan Longoria looks like an MVP. Then Texas is really starting to come on with Josh Hamilton starting to look like an MVP candidate. Seattle’s got a lot of pitching but pitching hasn’t helped the White Sox much.

The NL East has been pretty amazing so far with Washington looking much better, Florida hanging in there and of course, our Metsies and their surprising pitching. The NL Central has the Cards up top, but it looks pretty even below them. The Giants in the West are making the Dodgers look bad.

Biggest story to me is that of the Texas Rangers. It’s an exciting team, with young up-and-comers like Josh Hamilton and Ian Kinsler. Texas has a good old fella too in Vlad Guerrero, and there was nothing better than watching KC’s usually lockdown closer Joachim Soria get nicked for the tying home run from Hamilton and the game-winner from Vlad. Hamilton’s was a real moonshot too, high in the upper deck in right.

Tampa Bay is great too, if just because they’re scaring the hell out of the Yankees, that self-proclaimed juggernaut of the American League East. The Yanks are great…. just ask them.

But what are we talking about really? Arod is batting .253 with just a pair of homers. Teixeira’s batting .178 with just a pair of dingers of his own. If it weren’t for some surprises in their rotation, like Hughes and Pettite, added to the two you knew would be good, Sabathia and Burnett, the Yanks just might be in trouble. Cano can’t carry them forever and neither can Swisher, although I’d love to see it. If anybody’s going to take them to the World Series again, it should be one or both of those two.

Meanwhile, Tampa Bay’s got it all. Four of their five starters have ERA’s under 3 and the fifth is at 3.15. And in addition to guys you’ve certainly heard of, Upton and Crawford, Longoria and Pena, the Rays can boast of their relatively new rightfielder, Ben Zobrist, who gives them a little bit of everything, including speed and defense.

But, like many baseball fans, there has been no more exciting team than the San Francisco Giants, another team getting good performances from just about everybody. Top of the list goes to Tim Lincecum, of course, but they’ve also got Matt Cain, Barry Zito and Jonathan Sanchez performing like aces. Relief? How about Brian Wilson, whose fastball is almost as amazing as his hairdo.

They’ve been getting some timely hitting too, although their lineup can’t compare with some of those other teams I’ve mentioned. Chief among their batsmen is the redoubtable Pablo Sandoval, a roly-poly type whose fielding at third belies his waistline. He’s like Prince Fielder with more athleticism.

The bad news is that those same Giants are coming to Citi Field this weekend to faceoff against our lovable Metsies. They’ll roll out Jonathan Sanchez tonight against Pelfrey, a matchup that could be a great one. Then on Saturday afternoon, the Mets get a break in a matchup of Santana vs. Todd Wellemeyer, their one starter who doesn’t have great numbers.

The hammer comes down on Sunday though as Lincecum will face Ollie Perez and things could get really ugly. It’s to be hoped that Jason Bay wakes up. Stranger things have already been happening in Major League Baseball.

On Joba and Yankee Idiots

“Snake-bit” doesn’t really cover it, y’know. Not unless it’s a really big snake, more like that Harry Potter’s basilisk. This Mets team just can’t get a break. When their starting pitcher, Fernando Nieve, went down to injury early in yesterday’s game, it seemed just too much.

As small as it may have seemed, losing a journeyman pitcher, it proved to be big. The Mets filled in with a guy they’re soon either sending down or releasing, Tim Redding, and then looked lifeless for nine long innings. In the face of such disaster, why even try? The gods of baseball had already decided their fate, this day and most days in this horrible 2009 injury-fest.

It’s difficult to watch, of course, so you wind up turning the game off. Almost anything would be more interesting, say, a reality show featuring celebrities watching grass grow. Did they do that one yet?

Of course, there is an alternative, but it’s a bad one. Watching the hated Yankees. Yesterday they even had Joba going, and it’s really difficult not to like Joba, even if he is on the wrong team. Joba was great yesterday, and the announcer only mentioned pitch counts maybe 63 or 64 times in the game.

But there’s an even better alternative…two actually, but one is turning off the TV altogether, unthinkable for a baseball fan of limited means. After all, the weekly fantasy baseball contests wind up on Sunday. The other alternative is watching the MLB channel when they’re covering things live.

I had wanted to re-acquire Joba in my fantasy league on Saturday night. I was tied in wins and losses with my weekly opponent and only slightly ahead in ERA and WHIP and strikeouts. Plus, he had three pitchers going, three pretty fair pitchers, Matt Cain probably the least of them, but I had been afraid that if Joba turned in another clunker, I’d lose the advantages I had.

Bad choice. Even the idiots in the Yankee dugout, not to mention the one behind the plate, couldn’t shake Joba’s confidence yesterday. He pitched into the seventh inning, giving up just a lone home run and 3 hits overall, struck out 8 batters and looked confident until the very end when the idiots finally prevailed. Girardi pulled Joba with two outs and nobody on in the seventh. Much to my delight, the crowd booed lustily, and never was a panning more deserved.

The announcers stressed that it was the right move. Sure it was. The crowd got to watch Coke, Hughes and Rivera finish the Tigers off and Joba got the win. And he got a tremendous ovation from the crowd when they finally stopped jeering.

As I found out later on, Joba went home for the break and forgot about baseball except for a bullpen session with a good friend. He “did not think about baseball one time”. He also said, “I needed that” before resorting to the typical Yankee line, how he loved the place to death yada yada (insert finger down throat).

If he loves the place to death so much, why was it so wonderful to get away? Why did he come back renewed? Why did his fastball attain upper-90’s and where did he finally get all that confidence? In Nebraska, that’s where, well away from the idiots and the corporate atmosphere that is the Yankees.

Joba’s a great pitcher on the wrong team. If he pitched for the Rangers, where Nolan Ryan has loudly excoriated all the crap written about the significance of pitch counts, he’d be much better. If he had a catcher who didn’t drive him crazy, if every pitch and every location wasn’t dictated from the bench, the sky would be the limit on Joba.

But that’s just wishful thinking. Joba won’t go anywhere. They’ll throw money at him when the time comes and wheel out some of the old-timers and that will be that. In a couple of years, they’ll remove the shackles and let him breathe. But until then, you won’t see any complete games from Joba.

You won’t see a fist-pump after striking out an even dozen batters over nine. You won’t see the jubilation achieved only after really having completed something you started. You won’t experience any late-inning buzz, the kind of group near-frenzy that typifies baseball at its finest.

What you’ll get is those corporate guys congratulating themselves after the game, after they’ve counted the daily take from those thrice-over-priced tickets, after the W.B. Mason guys have celebrated still another sighting of a Yankee pop-up sailing over that embarrassingly short wall.

The Yanks are a game out of first and Cashman is already celebrating his acumen. They have a glut of fine talent, Arod and Teixeira, all the rest of the aging Jeters and Pettites and Posadas and now Sabathia and Burnet too. They’ll undoubtedly be there at the end of September, especially if all these old guys can hold on until then.

But at what price? I’m not just talking about the tickets. I’m talking about the cost of a stifling atmosphere in the dugout, the clubhouse and even the broadcast booths, the cost of hearing the same Yankee line from every player and announcer, an announcer who knows nothing about baseball but can tell you only how many strikes and how many balls have been thrown.

This is an emphasis that can only come from above, from that embarrassingly stupid Yankee hierarchy that has only managed to achieve a higher form of mediocrity these last several years, this achieved despite spending double and triple that of virtually every other team in major league baseball.

And while I won’t be seeing any blue and orange in this year’s festivities, the Mets having all gone to the trainer’s room, I’ll take solace in watching those Torre-less guys in pinstripes go down once again, hopefully to a team that still has fun playing baseball, the Red Sox or the Rays, or in a perfect world, the Rangers.