• RT @ed_price: When will Major League Baseball hold umpires accountable? Why can't they be demoted or fired like players, managers or GMs? #
• RT @BloggingBombers: Wow. The entire press box at Yankee Stadium is howling about the worst call ever made. #
• RT @BloggingBombers: Congratulations to #JimJoyce who is now guaranteed to become a trending topic tonight. Worst. Call. Ever. #
• RT @grazdanny: This will prompt a justifiable replay debate for MLB. Every other umpire should hate this guy for what he just did. #
• RT @Ledger_Yankees: So, in the box score, does Joyce get credit for the hit? #
• Umpire just got hit by a line drive at Yankee Stadium. corwin says, "That's for Galarraga!!" #
• @TylerKepner And Mike Mussina, no? #
• RT @jorgearangure: Google 'James Joyce quotes' and the first quote that comes up is "a man's errors are his portals of discovery" #
• "I just cost that kid a perfect game. I thought he beat the throw. I was convinced he beat the throw, until I saw the replay." -Jim Joyce #

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It’s not every day you get to talk to a major league umpire. Today I got a chance to have an extensive interview with Jim Reynolds who has been a major league ump for more than ten years, to help kick off the UMPS CARE charity auction online. (Auction kicks off today onlinewith some truly amazing items, including a #44 All-Star Game jersey signed by President Barack Obama, the 44th president.) I picked his brain on a lot of topics, from concussions and the recent firings of umpire supervisors to how statistical analysis has changed the game of baseball and umpiring in particular.

Reynolds didn’t initially plan to be an umpire. As a student at UCONN, he studied communications, and had a job all lined up with a television station after graduation… but peer pressure led him to give umpiring a try.

Peer pressure? Yeah. It was during a fire drill in his freshman year that Jim struck up a conversation with another student standing around waiting to go back into the building. They became good friends and he suggested that Jim take a one-credit class on umpiring that UCONN offered. The students in that class got to work the games for the college team and then in the summer Jim was able to work a regular daytime summer job and then make extra money calling a few games a night. Then his friend told him when they were getting ready to graduate, that he wanted to go to major league umpire school, and wanted Jim to go with him.

“450 kids go and only 40 make it, he told me,” Jim explained, “So my TV job was waiting, and they told me go ahead and give it a shot, and if you don’t make it, your job is here. So I went for it and not only did I make it, he and I both made it.”

Jim’s friend is another name familiar to anyone who bothers to listen to the umpire lineups before each game, Dan Iassogna. Both men are now in their early forties, after spending nearly a decade working their way through the minors, and now ten years in the big leagues. Reynolds’ experiences have included umpiring in Japan during the 2004 All-Star Tour, working in three different division series, and working the final game at Tiger Stadium, but overall umpiring is a “tough road.”

“What’s been really nice is having a best friend go through this journey with me,” Reynolds says. “When you can have a very good friend who is going through the same stuff at the same time, it gives you a comfort zone. We worked the whole first season together. You’re each other’s family for the whole year.”

Cecilia Tan: Do you have a philosophy of umpiring?

Jim Reynolds: No I don’t. My philosophy about umpiring is that I take a lot pride in what I do. I work my rear end off. Nobody is going to work harder than me. I have an interest in my job, I want to get better. Every day I have a responsibility to get better even though I’ll never be perfect. I will say this, there is nobody in the ballpark when I miss a call who feels worse than I do. I’ll never apologize for missing a call because it won’t be because I was lazy. But it’s not for lack of trying or hustle. I treat every game like the seventh game of the World Series. You learn in a hurry in this job that you can be the lead story on Sportscenter whether you’re working the plate in a Yankees-Red Sox game or at third base in a D-backs Pirates game.

CT: You know, that’s the winning attitude and work ethic I hear from a lot of top players. Even guys like Derek Jeter are still working to get better. You sound like a lot of the players I admire. I think a lot of people take umpiring for granted and the fact that anywhere major league players go, umpires have to go, too. What was it like doing the Japan All-Star series?

JR: One of the things that MLB does–you saw that in the Olympics too–is any time their players are out there they want their officials out there. We’re not going to let things get out of hand. It’s a safety measure. The trip to Japan was great. We got to work with the umpires in Japan, too. We had a great time doing that. Ted Barrett and I both brought our wives on the trip, and we worked like eight games, got to see a lot of different ballparks, in four or five cities, rode the bullet train, got to see Hiroshima.

CT: Okay, this is funny. The top two videos that come up in a Google search for your name are a Youtube clip in which you talk about UMPS CARE, and one other one. Can you guess what it is? It’s you rescuing a bird from the mound during a Mets-Diamondbacks game. You scooped the bird up in your face mask and then gave him to a bat boy. How do you decide that sort of thing is your job as home plate ump?

JR: You know what, I’ll tell you about that scenario. You’re the first person who ever asked me about that. All I remember is the bird falling on the mound behind one of the relievers. It’s like 8-2 and we’ve been out there for three hours already, and the guy just stands there. I’m thinking he’s going to shoo the bird away or something but he just stands there. And so then I’m looking in the dugout for a ground crew guy or something. But those guys are very hard to find in an indoor stadium. They’re in their office or something. So I thought, it’s time to get going here. So I just took things in my own hands. My wife said I should have cleaned my mask.

CT: Most people who have never played the game or worked on the field don’t understand everything is just grimy and covered in dirt anyway.

JR: “Did you not wash your mask afterward?” she asks. I didn’t even think about it. (laughs)

CT: So just a few days ago the story broke that MLB fired three umpire supervisors (Marty Springstead, Rich Garcia and Jim McKean) directly as a result from all the kerfuffle over postseason blown calls — the supervisors but not the actual umps who blew the calls. (I was surprised that Tim McClelland, an umpire I have been watching my entire life, so blatantly blew the Cano-Posada rundown call.) At the same time I wouldn’t say that one blown call should erase 40 years of experience, right? Do you think this move is going to help improve the umpiring?

JR: I think that the guys that were let go were not deficient as far as the job they did. It is a move to bring in new blood and a new attitude. I learned a tremendous amount from each of those supervisors, but now we’ve got guys who have worked a little more recently, so I’m looking forward to that dynamic. As an umpire, I’m going to miss stuff. I’m going to miss stuff in April, May, June, and July, and in August, September, and October. But you’re going to see if guys became instantaneously accountable to missed calls you’d see a change for the worse in umpiring. If you make guys scared to make a call, you introduce a dynamic into the job that’s not going to be beneficial to the game. I know it makes the fans feel good because they are emotionally invested in the outcome. But we are not invested in the outcome. If I miss a call, I miss a call. It’s not because I wanted one team or the other to win.

CT: What’s the best thing that MLB could do to improve umpiring overall?

JR: What I do know is that the most valuable thing an umpire has is his experience. Even our major league prospects spend 7-10 years in the minor leagues. Player prospects only spend sometimes 1-2 years. But we need to see pitches and plays. We need to be able to make mistakes, because only when you make mistakes do you get better. There has to be accountability, but you have to make them accountable for the right reasons. If I’m missing calls because I’m lazy or out of position consistently, then we have an attitude problem. But if I miss a steal at second and people are like how can that guy blow that call? I have to be allowed to do that. The more experience the staff gets, the better. MLB has been good. They understand the dynamics and pressure of our jobs. They recognize uncoachability and laziness and those things are being addressed. What baseball could do I think they are doing. It was a very young staff when we had the turnover 10 years ago from ‘99. What you’re going to see is a more experienced staff in the next ten years. The players and managers are more comfortable with you, and I’m a much better umpire now than I was ten years ago.

CT: What’s your best advice for anyone interested in getting into umpiring?

JR: Don’t do it. Finish school, get your college education. That’s what I tell kids coming out of high school. Go get your degree and then try umpiring. It’s always nice to have options and choices and this is a tough road, a very tough road. A lot of time away from family, and a lot of uncertainty. I knew a lot of guys in the minors who were better umpires than me, but a lot of life was timing and they didn’t make it. They either just couldn’t handle the lifestyle or when they were ready there were no openings. The hours leading up to the game were mind-blowing to this one guy I knew. He needed to be doing something all the time and he couldn’t hack the downtime. I’m very lucky to be where I am.

CT: SABRmetrics and statistical analysis is transforming the way front offices run and the way the game is played. Has statistical analysis changed the way umpiring is done?

JR: The introduction of QuesTec concerns me a little bit. It’s a good tool for two things. It’s a good training tool, and gives you a rough estimate where the ball is. The strike zone has come in because of that training tool. It is also good for entertainment because it gives people knowledge of where the strike zone is, too. But it’s a very slippery slope when you try to say that it’s pinpoint accurate, because it’s not. The TV folks especially will research this because it’s part of entertainment and driving conversation, but I don’t think the accuracy is there. They’ve got the interns and the people to be able to pull up numbers on umpires like they do on players, and soon you’ll see “JIm Reynolds in the ninth inning calling games of the Yankees does this.” But QuesTec isn’t 100% accurate. That scares me, because a lot of what we do is public perception.

CT: What’s your take on concussions and umpire safety?

JR: Last year I got hit by a warmup pitch between innings. One thing I do is take pitches just to get a feel for a new guy coming out of the bullpen. It was St. Louis and the Nationals, and you can probably see it on Youtube. [I looked for it, but didn't find it. -ct] Jason LaRue was catching; he’s a guy I know well. I saw his glove going up and I thought it’s going to be high, I ducked out of reflex… the ball hit me just above the mask. It’s a very real hazard of our job. I had a couple of concussions when I played high school football, and back then it was just do you have a bruise? No? Get back out there. But there’s much more awareness of the issue now. It’s kind of eye opening to see the conditions of the 50s and 60s guys. We have a dedicated medical staff and an educated medical staff for umpires. You see the dragging of the feet that goes on, but it’s a very real issue with us. It’s a real issue and I hope it’s something they continue to recognize as a real issue. I hope our guys understand too. Our guys are Type A guys, and even our own guys have to understand it’s better to get off the field right away and not take the second hit which is the danger. You might be fine after that first one but if you took another right after that? It’s a huge risk.

CT: Do you think we’ll ever see female major league umpires?

JR: If they are good enough, there’s no reason not to. One thing that ties women’s hands a little bit, though, is you have to have an initial feel for the game. You have to understand how the game is played; you have to live it. And more of the men grew up playing baseball, but most women grow up playing softball. My sister would do a batter job than I would umpiring a softball game because she knows the flow of the game. And you learn that from playing the game and being out on the field and not from TV. I could find as many guys who have never played, they have the same handicap. I taught at umpire school for five years, and those guys who never played are handcuffed. We can teach somebody to umpire but it’s hard to teach them about the game. I think women are handicapped by that lack of experience. I’m a firm believer they should hire the best people, doesn’t matter who they are, men or women.

CT: So what else should we say about UMPS CARE Charities?

JR: It’s the greatest thing the MLB umpires do off the field. We raise the money, we show up at the events, but then we see the money all the way through the ends. We’re the ones participating in the experiences and the hospital visits. We’re actively involved and that’s unique for some charities. We’re not just cutting a check. We all take great pride in it.

CT: What kind of programs do you participate in?

JR: One of the major pieces of it is the kids awaiting adoption program. We arrange 120-150 visits a year, almost a thousand kids a year get hosted at a ballpark. I was lucky enough to go to games with my dad and it was something I cherished. For these kids we try to give them an experience like that. We get to take them around batting practice, they get a gift card for the concession stands then and a gift big with a hat and Cracker Jacks and all that in it, and the intent is to just give them a nice day. It’s something that all 68 umpires get involved in. We have some really really cool stuff in the auction. The Obama jersey is #44, because he’s the 44th president. We do a lot of stuff with the hospital visit program, too, with Build-a-Bear, so great great things. We just need to get the word out. This helps us fund those initiatives.

CT: So much of what you’ve said today isn’t just applicable to umpires, but to baseball as a whole.

JR: There’s this perception that the umpires and players and front offices don’t get along, but first and foremost we are a family. The executive offices donate a lot of stuff to us, they recognize what we’re doing as important. I can’t tell you how many times we’re got the kids on the field before batting practice, hanging out behind the ropes and we’re in our uniforms because we take pictures with all of them. And so many players come over unsolicited and say hi and sign for the kids and such. And guys like Aaron Hill (and guy after guy after guy) will say to me during the game, hey what was that about, and I’ll tell him and they think it’s cool.

The UMPS CARE online auction runs from today through March 22nd.

Among the many items, Boston Red Sox batting practice & game tickets caught my eye, and in addition to the Obama jersey, there is a George Bush signed baseball. How about a Nolan Ryan signed Hall of Fame jersey? Or how about Lunch with an Ump, plus game tickets, in the city of your choice? A Whitey Ford hat, and many other items await your perusal.

This has been an interesting decade to be a baseball writer.

Once upon a time, in a storied era of American history, sportswriters were the creme de la creme of all writers. New York City had dozens of newspapers and even smaller cities boasted multiple papers, often with multiple editions per day. Newspapers were the morning drive radio, and the evening TV news, and CNN and ESPN. Those now-iconic words, “Extra, extra, read all about it,” indicated some big news had happened that wasn’t in the previous edition of the paper you read already that day. Wire services carried the stories of the top writers to newspapers all over the country. Writing was the thing.

The biggest celebrities and and stories of the day were sports figures and the games they played. The Hollywood blockbuster film didn’t yet exist. The first commercial radio license in the USA was granted in 1920, and the first “gold record” for a music album wasn’t awarded until 1941. Think of Jim Thorpe in the 1912 Olympics. The Kentucky Derby has been run since 1875. Jack Dempsey won his first boxing heavyweight title in 1919. And there was baseball, baseball, baseball.

So the best-known writers were the sportswriters, in particular the baseball writers.

But time has marched forward and each new medium has brought new ways of enjoying baseball. We have seen the rise of radio and the classic storytellers, and the advent of slow motion cameras and in-game audio have brought us closer to the field than ever before. Mobile phones have made it possible for us to follow every pitch of a game halfway around the world no matter where we are or what we’re doing. And the Internet brings us everything, audio, video, stats and data, and, yes, writing. More people are writing about baseball than ever before. We can read a thousand opinions and recaps of a single game, from partisan and non-partisan points of view, from professionals and fans, from historians and bloggers, not just after the game is over, but during, as well.

When I started Why I Like Baseball in 1999 it was because baseball had become such an obsession I couldn’t help but write about it. And although I had been writing professionally for over a decade at that point, as a freelancer there were not enough baseball writing gigs to be had to satisfy my urge to write.

So I started this website and started writing essays, interviewing people connected with the game, recounting my childhood baseball memories, as well as writing about some of the baseball books I read. At the time, there were no “blogs.” I called Why I Like Baseball “an online journal” before there was such a thing as LiveJournal, thinking of the word in the sense of “journal” meaning “literary magazine,” although I was the magazine’s only writer.

I went through an intense period from 1999 through 2001 in which I read, quite literally, over a hundred books on baseball. New books, old books, biographies, histories, encyclopedias, player instruction manuals from the 1940s, juvenile fiction from the 1950s, and more. Then I slowed down and read about another hundred books over the five years after that. Then I wrote two books of baseball history myself. Looking back on it now, I realize did the equivalent work of getting a PhD in comparative literature, except I did it in baseball.

One unintended side effect of all the writing I did about the books I read, though, is that publicists at book publishing houses kept stumbling across Why I Like Baseball and wanting to send me free books. Typically they send me books I might actually like, too, and I always try to mention the books, even if I don’t get a chance to actually read them all the way through. (These days my writing life is so deadline-packed, I don’t have the luxury of devouring books like I used to.)

It’s no coincidence that the books that land in my inbox are doing so at the same time that major newspapers across the country are cutting their book review sections and book reviews have all but disappeared from literary journals. The amusing thing about the FTC rules, of course, is that no one ever regulated book reviewers at major newspapers. If they said a book was awesome because they were buddy-buddy with the author when actually the book stank, it wasn’t considered a threat to the American public.

Book reviewers have also never been required to disclose whether they got the book free, and of course it’s absolutely standard practice for someone in the ad department of the newspaper of magazine to then try to hit the publisher up for advertising money, pitching an ad in the same publication with the supposedly purely artistically and critically motivated review. Some of you may be thinking though, that regular journalistic rules must apply to newspaper reviewers, no? But here’s the plain truth. A columnist (which is typically what a book reviewer is) doesn’t have to be bound by facts, only by opinion. When a columnist says something factually incorrect (or lies) about you in the newspaper, you will learn this fact when the newspaper editor tells you that you have no recourse, because columnists are allowed to express their opinions without any requirement of getting the facts straight.

Hence you have sports columnists, too, who write scurrilous pieces about major league players, for example, but the FTC doesn’t give a flying fig about them.

In the meantime, blogs have exploded. Lots more people like me, fans and the baseball-obsessed, got onto the Internet and started websites of their own. Then as the newspapers scrambled to keep some of their market share, every baseball beat writer had to start his or her own blog, too. ESPN and all the non-text-based sports media got into the act, too, with their own dedicated columnists and bloggers. In fact, the line between columnist, beat writer, and blogger has become extremely blurred.

It’s because the line between journalists and bloggers has become so blurred that the FTC has decided to impose special rules for bloggers about disclosure. Ostensibly this is to protect the public from borderline fraudulent or dangerous opinions–like, I suppose, bloggers getting paid to talk about how wonderful a child safety seat for a car is, when actually it’s a dangerous death trap, but the bloggers are too amateur to know. Or something like that.

The result is that each blogger is supposed to publish a disclosure policy. I don’t really see that my opinions about baseball-related products can in any way be dangerous to the general public, but okay, I’ll do my best to be a good citizen.

Forthwith, then, I shall disclose my blog income and policy on review products.

What’s funny about this in my case, of course, is that I didn’t really expect to become a book reviewer. Or DVD reviewer, or any kind of “reviewer,” but it has ended up being part of this blog’s content as a matter of course — I will write about the ballparks I visit, the media I consume related to my sport, and who knows what else? I’ve written about T-shirt companies who have sent me samples and about the hotels I’ve stayed in on baseball road trips. Some of the things I’ve written about have been free samples sent to me by companies hoping for a mention, but I always disclose the source of the stuff I’m writing about. Some of the samples I receive, I keep, and some I pass on as raffle prizes for my local SABR chapter (Society for American Baseball Research, a 501(c)(3) non-profit). I’ve never been paid by anyone to produce any of the content on Why I Like Baseball.

I suppose if someone came along and said “Here’s a couple hundred bucks to write about our product,” I would consider it, but I’d disclose it if I accepted the offer. I’m pretty sure such offers are as mythical as the unicorn anyway, or at least as rarely glimpsed as the unassisted triple play.

The monetary compensation I have received has come from the following sources. I set up an Amazon Affiliate account years ago, so purchases that are made from the “Buy from Amazon” links on my site give me a small kickback. I think in the 10 years of Why I Like Baseball’s existence the total income from these links has totaled about $100, or the equivalent of taking a family of four to Yankee Stadium for a regular season game. The second form is text link ads, mostly to ticket reselling sites with the occasional online casino thrown in. These are another thing that has come to me over the transom. After half a dozen advertisers approached me to ask how much I would charge for a text link ad, I finally set a price per word. (If you’re curious, see the ad info page since the price goes up and down depending on my Google Page Rank and Alexa rating.) I total maybe $250 a year from those ads as of 2009, or about $5 a week. I also started running Project Wonderful ads a few months ago that have been making about two cents a day on a good day. And yes, I pay taxes as a freelance writer, and that includes my blog income.

So there you have it, my blog’s disclosure statement on income and reviewing. Now I can get back to the activity of writing (I hesitate to call it the “business of writing” now, having disclosed what a pittance this blog actually makes.).

Joe over at Baseballisms interviewed me recently about The 50 Greatest Yankee Games, a book I really would like to revise now that there is another championship to add to the tally…

He recaps the interview in text here: http://baseballisms.com/podcast-author-cecilia-tan.html and then you can listen to the podcast of it, which runs about an hour I think.

We could have seriously talked for two more hours. I told the tales of Jack Chesbro, Bill Bevens, Ralph Terry… gee, do you think I like pitchers? And we talked about the “Jeter flip” game and much more.

I’ll go back for another round later this off season to talk about the Red Sox!

It’s time to talk about signs and magic. In other words, do the Yankees have fate on their side? Every championship year seems to have its thread strung with some gems that presage special things happening.

In 1996 the magic moments were things like Dwight Gooden pitching a no-hitter after all the adversity he had gone through personally, and with his father on the verge of heart surgery. Of course, we have the perfect games in 1998 and 1999 from Wells and Cone.

This season had a plethora of special moments if we count the fifteen walk-off wins (which I certainly do!), and how about Melky hitting for the cycle? The first Yankee to do it since Tony Fernandez, who you may have forgotten but he was the starting shortstop before the arrival of a certain rookie named Derek Jeter. Jeter taking the lead in the all-time hits list certainly ranks up there, too.

And then there is New Stadium mojo to be taken into account. The Yankees were in the doldrums from 1965 until the renovation of the old Yankee Stadium, after which the Yankees returned to the postseason three straight years and won back to back World Series in 1977 and 1978. In 1996 they had a new stadium, too, in Tampa, as Legends Field debuted as a miniature of the big ballpark in the Bronx. And now, of course, we have the brand new cathedral. Will the ghosts come across the street?

And then we have the White House factor. Since the original Yankee Stadium was demolished, each time the Yankees have gone to the World Series, if a Republican was in office, they lost, but if a Democrat was in office, they won. Barack Obama is even an AL fan, a follower of the White Sox. Will the pattern keep up?

Only time will tell.

Year     Par  President
1976  L  Rep  Ford
1977  W  Dem  Carter
1978  W  Dem  Carter
1981  L  Rep  Reagan
1996  W  Dem  Clinton
1998  W  Dem  Clinton
1999  W  Dem  Clinton
2000  W  Dem  Clinton
2001  L  Rep  Bush II
2003  L  Rep  Bush II
2009  ?  Dem  Obama

It was a game in which 280 pitches were thrown, but it was the very last one that decided it.

It was a game in which no pitcher was happy. In tonight’s game, Phil Hughes took the loss, and in postgame interviews put all the blame on his own shoulders, but the Yankees’ six-run uprising in the seventh inning was made necessary by A.J. Burnett’s dismal start out of the gate, and possible by Mike Scioscia yanking his protesting starter with two outs in the seventh only to see his bullpen melt down.

At first blush, it looks like Lackey was the one who was going to struggle. Derek Jeter, suffering from a cold but ever eager to play, singled on the first pitch of the game. Two pitches later, Johnny Damon pulled a ground ball to right for another base hit. But Lackey bore down, caught Teixeira looking, got A-Rod to pop up harmlessly, and then Matsui to ground weakly to first.

Then it was Burnett’s turn on the hill. He walked Chone Figgins on five pitches to start the game, then gave up four consecutive hits within the space of seven more pitches, and not a soft one in the bunch. That’s right, it took only 12 pitches for it to be 4-0 Angels. After that, Burnett got a fly ball and a double play to end the inning, and he settled down, allowing only three hits over the next five innings and striking out three, despite losing his personal catcher in the fifth to a pinch-hitting Jorge Posada. Unfortunately, Lackey got Posada looking for the sixth Yankee K of the night.

Lackey retired Nick Swisher, who has been struggling the whole postseason, on a pop fly to center to start the seventh, then gave up a double to Melky Cabrera. This time Posada worked a walk, ball four coming on a pitch Lackey (and Fox PitchTrax) thought was strike three on the inside corner. Rattled, he then walked Jeter on four straight, but got Damon to fly out.

That was when Scioscia brought out the hook. Lackey was vehement on the mound and reading the word “mine!” on his lips repeatedly was not difficult. But Scioscia took the ball anyway, and handed it to Darren Oliver.

Oliver is a lefty pitcher the Yankees have seen a lot in his lengthy career, since he used to be a starter for Texas, and also passed through Boston briefly. If memory serves, they used to pound him pretty good, leading to the expectation (or perhaps the hope) that pretty soon they would pound him again.

The pounding didn’t go on for long. Teixeira, who had been oh-for-the-postseason with runners in scoring position, doubled on Oliver’s very first pitch to bring in three runs. After an intention walk to A-Rod (c’mon, WHY would you pitch to this guy right now?), lefty Matsui brought Tex in and tied the game with a base hit, and that ended Oliver’s night. On came Kevin Jepsen, who then gave up a double to Robinson Cano, insuring that Oliver earned all three runs from the three batters he had faced, while Oliver allowed all three inherited runners to score–six runs in all.

But the Yankees gave one back right away when Burnett went back to the hill. After the long, long inning, Burnett thought he wasn’t stiff or tired. But he gave up a base hit to Mathis, then walked the number nine hitter, Erick Aybar. Mathis is the guy who hit the game-winner the other night, and he was now three-for-three on the night, prompting me to wonder why Mike Napoli has been in there at all. Probably Napoli is better against lefties in career numbers, and with Sabathia and Pettitte, slated to see more action. But Mathis has been hot. Burnett left the game having put the tying runs on base. He looked just as morose as Lackey as Damaso Marte faced Figgins. Figgins dropped down a tectbook bunt to move the runners up, and then Marte got a ground ball to first from Abreu, which brought in a run.

Out with Marte, who did get two outs but allowed an inherited runner to score, and in with Phil Hughes.

This was not the time to get bat shy, but Hughes faltered, admitting after the game he was “trying to be too fine.” It looked to me more like he just didn’t have control, and so a pitch he said was supposed to be “up and in” was right through the heart of the plate. He walked Torii Hunter, then threw that meatball to Vlad Guerrero, who laced it for the game-tying RBI. Then Kendry Morales did the same thing, making it 7-6 Angels. Hughes struck out Maicer Izturis to end the inning, but the damage was done.

Jered Weaver then pitched the eighth, one two three, including strikeouts of Posada and Jeter, so maybe he was happy, although it probably doesn’t feel great for a starter to come out of the bullpen like that. I’m sure since they won he was happy to contribute.

In the bottom of the eighth, the Yankees went to Joba, who didn’t look that dominating either, giving up a leadoff double to Juan Rivera. He was the guy who finally retired Mathis, though, striking him out, but Erick Aybar got just enough of the bat on the ball to get it through the infield, and with men on the corners and one out, Girardi went to Mo.

Mo got a rare fly ball from Figgins (I thought surely if Scioscia was going to put on the squeeze, it would have been here, but he decided not to over-manage) into short right. Nick Swisher put on the biggest crow hop I’ve ever seen–more of a pterodactyl hop–and they had to send the runner back to third. Then a harmless fly to center from Abreu, and Mariano had done it again… except it wasn’t a save situation. The only way to make Mo happy would be to score some runs in the top of the ninth and then give him the ball to shut the door.

It almost happened. Almost. Brian Fuentes, the Angels’ closer, came on to get the final three outs. Johnny Damon pulled a laser shot but right into the glove of Morales at first. Teixeira flew out quickly. With two out and no one on, they elected to intentionally walk A-Rod (and Guzman ran for him). THen Fuentes unintentionally walked Matsui (and Gardner ran for him). Then he hit Robinson Cano on the second pitch of the at bat to load the bases.

Bringing up Nick Swisher. Swisher, who has been scuffling, striking out when he should be walking. Maybe even pressing. Swisher chopped a ball right to Figgins at third, who gloved it and stepped on the bag and it seemed like the game was over. But no! It was called foul and Swisher was giving a new lease on life. Could this be one of those magical moments any championship team needs to win? Another changeup, another foul. The count mounted. Soon it was 3-2. Now all it would take is a wild pitch, a hit batter, ball four, any of the above, to tie the game and give the Yankees a chance to bury the Angels for the year. But all it would take is one strike, or one out, to ensure they would live to see at least one more game. Fuentes had pitched horribly, but if he could make this one pitch, all would be erased.

On the seventh and final pitch of the at bat, Fuentes challenged him, a fastball in the middle of the plate, a four-seamer at 91 miles an hour. And Swisher popped it up to short to end the game.

You could start a club this winter for elite closers whose blown saves sent their teams to early ends. Jonathan Papelbon, Huston Street, and Joe Nathan can start a therapy group. Or maybe they just need one more to make a golf foursome.

What people are forgetting is that Mariano Rivera could join that group. Rivera’s hall of fame credentials and consistency over so many years have softened the sharp facts that he, too, has several high profile blown saves in his career.

Take a look at 1997. It was his first year as closer. After spending 1996 being the 7th and 8th inning guy in the “Mo and Wett Show,” Mariano moved into the closing role when the Yankees let World Series hero John Wettland (who was always a heart-attack closer) move on. At that point, there was no dynasty yet, just a World Championship in 1996, the first since the 1970s, and the team could have faded back into the doldrums of mismanagement that had crippled them for so long. Instead, they managed to win the Wild Card and then faced Cleveland in the ALDS.

Going into game four, the Yankees held a 2-1 series lead and needed just one more win to advance, and they held a 2-1 lead in the game going into the 8th inning.

The Retrosheet recap tells the tale in bald language:

INDIANS 8TH: Justice was called out on strikes; RIVERA
REPLACED STANTON (PITCHING); Williams flied to right;
Alomar homered; Fernandez grounded out
(first unassisted); 1 R, 1 H, 0 E, 0 LOB.
Yankees 2, Indians 2.

It was Ramiro Mendoza who then gave up the walkoff in the ninth, on a single-sacbunt-single, but it was Rivera who blew the save, and who meditated on it all winter. (They had to lose the next day also to be bounced out, but as with Bill Buckner in the 1986 World Series, no one remembers the next day.)

Mariano, and the whole team, came back with stronger resolve. The 1998 team won a then-record 114 games — 125 if you include their cruise through the postseason. World Championships followed that year, and in 1999, and in 2000, making it three in a row.

And nearly four, when in 2001, the Yankees and the Diamondbacks went to game seven of the World Series, and went into the 8th inning with a 2-1 lead, thanks to an Alfonso Soriano solo shot off Curt Schilling. With everyone emotionally exhausted from the aftermath of 9/11, the incredible events of the two back-to-back walkoffs in the Bronx, and all the rest of it, no one had any nerves left to fray. Rivera struck out the side in the eighth, but then sat in the dugout looked utterly spent. When he went back out for the ninth inning, disaster loomed. Then crashed in.

DIAMONDBACKS 9TH: Grace singled to center; DELLUCCI
RAN FOR GRACE; On a bunt Miller reached on an error
by Rivera [Dellucci to second]; BELL BATTED FOR JOHNSON;
On a bunt Bell forced Dellucci (pitcher to third) [Miller to second];
CUMMINGS RAN FOR MILLER; Womack doubled to right
[Cummings scored (unearned), Bell to third]; Counsell was
hit by a pitch; Gonzalez singled to center [Bell scored,
Womack to third, Counsell to second];
Arizona wins Series 4 games to 3
2 R (1 ER), 3 H, 1 E, 3 LOB.  Yankees 2, Diamondbacks 3.

(from Retrosheet)

That surely has to be the mother of all nightmare scenarios for a closer. Not just to lose a game, but the entire World Series on your watch?

But there might be one even worse when you consider that it was Mariano on the mound not one, but two nights in a row, when the Red Sox finally reversed their curse. The Yankees had completely dominated the Sox in game three of the 2004 ALCS, beating them 19-8 and taking them to the brink of elimination.

But the next night wasn’t such a blow out. The lead was a slim one run when Mo entered the game in the eighth. Once again it wasn’t the eighth that was the problem. It was leading off the ninth inning that Kevin Millar worked a walk off Rivera. Many people don’t remember but Rivera arrived for that series physically and emotionally exhausted. A tragedy at his home in Panama just a few days before had left him with two close relatives dead on the property; reports were that both had been electrocuted in Rivera’s swimming pool after a housekeeper had left a live wire in the water to keep the dogs out. He had flown to Panama and back just in time for the series. But he never mentioned that or used it as an excuse. He walked Millar, and speedster Dave Roberts pinch ran and stole second, and the next batter, Bill Mueller, singled him in. Tie game, and the Red Sox would win it in the twelfth inning on a David Ortiz walk-off homer.

The next night the refrain had not changed, except that this time Millar had already walked and Roberts was already on the basepaths when Rivera entered partway through the eighth inning, and he scored on a Varitek sac fly. And this time Ortiz’s walk off came in the 14th inning.

That makes four rather high profile blown saves in a man’s career, and yet the fact remains indisputable that he is one of the best (if not the best) relief pitchers of all time. I know it hurts in New England and Colorado and Minnesota, but the lesson to learn is the one that Rivera learned himself back in 1997. “It happens.” If you are going to do the high wire act, sometimes you will fall. It happens, and you deal with it, and move on, and come back stronger. Or at least you do if you’re Mariano Rivera. It remains to be seen if Papelbon, Nathan, and Street will.

As a member of the Baseball Bloggers Alliance, I am putting in votes for season awards. You’ve already seen my vote for AL Cy Young Award (Zack Greinke), but for me the end votes are sometimes not as important to me as people’s reasons for voting, or not voting, for various candidates.

When it comes to manager of the year, there are several potential candidates in my book:

• Honorable mention: Joe Girardi, NY Yankees
• Third Don Wakatmatsu, Seattle
• Second: Ron Washington, Texas
• First: Ron Gardenhire, Minnesota

I’m discounting Mike Scioscia and Terry Francona, who are both just plain terrific. Props to Scioscia for leading his team through the Nick Adenhart tragedy (and overcoming their inability to beat the Sox when it counts… but this award is only for what happens in the regular season). And Francona has become a master at handling the rabid Boston media, weathering Big Papi’s woes and drug test upset, but it is old hat at this point.

When it comes to Joe Girardi, I give him credit for drawing together a club that could have been in rough waters all season, beginning with the February steroid news about A-Rod, the always tricky integration into the clubhouse of the “new guys”–both big money guys in Teixeira/Sabathia/Burnett and the fill-in guys like Nick Swisher. Girardi changed the feel of the club, allowing Swisher to crank up the boom box in the clubhouse (Joe Torre had mandated headphones), standing up to the veterans (allowing Molina to be Burnett’s personal catcher), and taking the whole team out for some fun in the spring with a pool tournament outing that set the tone for a year of energetic fun. This is a huge step and a great thing for the team and their fans, but ultimately hasn’t made him Manager of the Year for me, though I gave him serious consideration. If Alex had been hurt for longer, or if the loss of Wang had hurt them more, but they had still won, perhaps. I still wish there hadn’t been so much mystery around Joba Chamberlain, too.

The next two, Ron Washington and Don Wakamatsu, get major points for having done so much with so little. Wakamatsu’s team wasn’t expected to do anything, and they managed to put up a nice showing. And Washington’s Rangers hung in there for a long time, despite injuries and scandals and the usual problems that it’s so difficult to pitch in Arlington, TX.

But the award has to go to Ron Gardenhire of the Twins. He managed to lead his club to the postseason despite losing half the major power in his lineup when Justin Morneau was shut down for the season with a stress fracture in his back. His starting rotation was gutted by injury as well, but he turned Brian Duensing into a decent starter, and kept all his many fill-in parts clicking as they overtook the Tigers in the final month of the season. Gardenhire definitely squeezed every ounce out of every player to get them to October. Regardless what happens in the postseason, win or lose, Gardenhire gets my vote for AL Manager of the Year.

Well, so much for my postseason prediction that the Red Sox would manhandle the Angels. The Red Sox strengths and Angels weaknesses should have matched up entirely in Boston’s favor. But ultimately it was necessary for several key Sox to perform up to expectations for it to work.

David Ortiz’s oh-fer and Papelbon’s blown save combined to sink the Sox.

Ortiz had a terrific last two months of the season, but without Manny in the lineup hitting behind him, there was no reason for the Angels to give him anything good to hit. For a while it looked like it might be a wash, given that Vlad Guerrero was also coming up empty in the ALDS, as when he struck out with the bases loaded in game 2. But Guerrero came through with the big hit when LAA-la-land needed it most, after the intentional walk to Torii Hunter in the top of the ninth, bringing in the tying and go-ahead runs.

There were so many times this year that Papelbon seemed to walk a tightrope rather than just dominating in the ninth. Sometimes he needed 35 pitches to nail down that save. His walks were up. Early in the season the Sox put up a smokescreen, claiming Pap was working on new pitches, but as the season wore on, he continued to pitch in that style. The words “heart attack closer” were bandied about quite a lot here in Boston. Ultimately, the margin for error in the ninth inning of this game was too thin. He was one strike away from putting this game in the books as a W for the Sox, 0-2 on Erick Aybar, when Aybar singled.

Was he deflated when he then went 3-0 on Chone Figgins? He came back with two called strikes, then Figgins fouled one off, again one strike away from the win. And then came ball four.

So up came Bobby Abreu, a notoriously patient hitter, who took a ball, but then fouled off three straight fastballs, giving Pap his third opportunity to go one strike away… before doubling and bringing in a run. Then came the intentional walk to Hunter, and the Vladdy two-run single.

Not only did Papelbon blow the save and lose the game, his scoreless inning streak in the postseason is snapped as well. It’s going to be a long winter in the Papelbon household, I think.

It’s always sad when a great team has to go home early. The Sox and the Cardinals deserved to go deeper, but their opponents had other ideas.

The season is over, but it wasn’t without some great moments. Jacoby Ellsbury getting the franchise steals record, and stealing home against the Yankees, some great walk offs, but thinking about those bright moments right now is bittersweet now that they didn’t add up to more.

This did put a smile on my face, though. A tribute song to Joe Castiglione that they played for him on the broadcast:

http://weei.radiotown.com/soxbooth/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/joe-castiglione-song.mp3

See you next year, Red Sox.

Going into the final week of the season, I began to think about the major season awards. I’m a member of the recently formed Baseball Bloggers Alliance, and each member blog will be opining our picks for awards like MVP and so on, so I’ve been thinking about this more than usual.

As of a week ago, my finalists for the AL Cy Young Award were CC Sabathia, Zack Greinke, and Felix “The King” Hernandez.

In CC’s case, there was one thing which would have clinched my Yankee-centric vision of the world, which is if he won 20 games. There is a longstanding tradition regarding the specialness of the 20-game win season. I’m not one who believes that wins are a great measure of how good a pitcher is, since wins (and losses) depend so highly on the performance of other members of the team. However, I do believe that a certain amount of good fortune is always necessary to set one player’s season apart from his rivals. Call it the Mandate of Heaven, if you want…

Well, CC did not get 20 wins. In fact, he outright stank in his final start against the Rays, but the fact that the game would have only meant personal, rather than team, accomplishment, and that he eased off and just pitched an exhibition-like “tune up” makes me happy as a Yankees fan. I would much rather see the players strive for the team accomplishment of winning the World Series than watch them rack up individual awards.

That leaves me with Wonderboy Greinke and The King. Roy Halladay gets an honorable mention, here, and I’m using him as a standard measure against the other two. Ranked by baseball-reference.com’s ERA+ (100*[lgERA/playerERA] adjusted to the player’s ballpark), we find the top three pitchers match in regular ERA, too, and are in the top four in WHIP (Sabathia was 3rd with 1.148).

ERA+   ERA    WHIP   Player
213    2.06    1.066   Greinke
174    2.48    1.151   Hernandez
157    2.79    1.126   Halladay

Ultimately, I give it to Greinke not just because he tops Hernandez in these numerical measures, but because he pitched well for an entire season despite the potentially demoralizing circumstance of pitching in Kansas City all year. The Royals are not a few players from contending. They are bottom-of-the-barrel awful. Greinke had eight no decisions this season. Dave Campbell on teh ESPN broadcast today said if you swapped his run support with CC Sabathia’s, Sabathia would have been 10-11 this year, and Greinke’s season would have looked a lot like Ron Guidry’s 1978, with a 24-3 record.

Plus, what a cute kid. You never know when a kid like that is going to flame out or hurt himself either (think Fidrych) so if it were up to me, I would be putting the Cy Young onto Zack Greinke’s mantelpiece this winter.