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Monday, November 6

October Archives

By Rob Neyer
ESPN.com

MONDAY, OCTOBER 30
Because I was at Shea Stadium last Thursday night, I did not see Game 5 of the World Series, or its immediate aftermath, on television. But a reader named Zachary Scherschligt reports that Tim McCarver said of the Yankees' third straight championship, "What a remarkable achievement in this day of free agency." And a few minutes later in the visitors' locker room, Commissioner Bud parroted McCarver, calling the threepeat "a remarkable achievement in this day and age."

And then there's Buster Olney of The New York Times.

I like Buster Olney. After spending four days in New York, I can tell you that despite veritable scores of scribes writing about baseball for the various newspapers, there ain't much going on, baseball intelligence-wise. No, the sabermetric revolution has not reached the mainstream press, even in our biggest city. Olney, though, is really a talented guy. Read this paragraph, written at the conclusion of the World Series:

The Mets advanced further into the postseason than they had in more than a decade, and there will be some solace in that. But for their fans, this is the worst imaginable fate: not only did the Mets lose the World Series, but they were also beaten by their cross-city rivals; this was the big brother whipping the little brother and then rubbing his face in the slush, an indelible memory that can be mitigated only by revenge that may not come for years, or may never come.

I doubt if any other writer summarized the situation with quite the same verve. (Or maybe I just like the name: Buster. With all due respect to my folks, "Rob" simply doesn't have the same ... well, verve that "Buster" does.)

And if you read Olney's game stories over the course of the season, I think you'll find that in addition to writing well, he does have an advanced understanding of the game, especially compared to most of his colleagues. That's why it pained me to read the following:

The Yankees recovered from seven consecutive losses at the end of the regular season and scares in the first two round of the playoffs to become the first team since the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics to win three consecutive championships, the first team since the advent of free agency, a change that has made it far more difficult to maintain continuity.

Buster, Buster, Buster ... we had such high hopes for you.

It's simple, it really is. So simple that I'm slightly surprised that Selig doesn't get it, somewhat surprised that McCarver doesn't get it, and much surprised that Buster doesn't get it. So what is it?

Quite simply, free agency is not a real hindrance to a team with virtually no financial constraints.

The Expos? Yes.
The Yankees? Fuhgeddaboutit.

The current core of Yankees won its first World Series in 1996. Let's look at the primary position players -- the core -- for that season and this one:

    1996        2000
 C  Girardi     Posada
1B  Martinez    Martinez
2B  M Duncan    Knoblauch
SS  Jeter       Jeter
3B  Boggs       Brosius
LF  G Williams  Justice
CF  B Williams  B Williams
RF  O'Neill     O'Neill

The Yankees held on to Girardi through the '99 season, and then they let him go because they had a much better player with which to replace him. Duncan was a stopgap at second base, and in 1998 the Yankees traded for Knoblauch, an All-Star. Boggs was 38 years old in 1996. And Gerald Williams was nothing special.

That leaves Tino Martinez, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Paul O'Neill. The core. The four guys the Yankees wanted to keep, and did keep. Where, exactly, are the debilitating effects of free agency?

Ah, but we haven't checked the pitching staff. Well, in 1996 the Yankee pitchers compiled a 4.65 ERA, just fifth best in the American League. Their top five starters were Andy Pettitte (34 starts, 3.87 ERA), Kenny Rogers (30, 4.68), Jimmy Key (30, 4.68), Dwight Gooden (29, 5.01) and David Cone (11, 2.83). Mariano Rivera pitched brilliantly in the set-up role, and John Wetteland saved 43 games.

Did the Yankees lose any of these guys that they wanted to keep? Pettitte and Cone are still around. Key was 35 years old, and not pitching particularly well. Rogers, considered a poor match for the pressures of New York, was traded for Scott Brosius. Gooden left after the 1997 season, but not because the Yankees couldn't afford him.

John Wetteland is the only truly valuable, high-priced player the Yankees have lost to free agency since 1996. But of course, they didn't need Wetteland. Mariano Rivera took over as closer in 1997, and here's how he and Wetteland have fared since:

              1997         1997-2000
           Saves  ERA     Saves   ERA
Rivera       43  1.88      160   2.14  
Wetteland    31  1.94      148   2.95

OK, so who do you want for your team? I'll take the skinny Panamanian who pitches like Walter Johnson in October.

To this point, I have attempted to demonstrate that the New York Yankees have not been adversely affected by free agency. And of course, it's quite possible that the Yankees have benefited from free agency.

Free agency drives salaries up. If not for free agency, would Roger Clemens be a Yankee? Would David Justice be a Yankee? Would Chuck Knoblauch be a Yankee?

What makes the Yankees' achievement impressive is not the existence of free agency. What makes the Yankees' achievement impressive is the existence of three rounds of postseason play. From 1998 through 2000, the New York Yankees are 33-8 in the postseason. Thirty-three and eight!

As for the Yankees' place in history, I don't have a lot to say. In "Baseball Dynasties," the book I wrote with Eddie Epstein, I rated the 1997-99 Yankees the No. 3 dynasty of the 20th century (Eddie had them No. 4.) Was their 2000 season -- let's be honest, they didn't play particularly well until October -- enough to move them ahead of the 1936-39 Yankees (four straight championships, 16-3 record in World Series) or the 1969-71 Orioles (318 regular-season victories)?

I don't think so. But these Yankees certainly must rank among the five greatest dynasties in baseball history. Free agency or no free agency.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 27
The New York Mets have always been The Amazin's, ever since Casey Stengel couldn't believe what he was seein'. But this year, it was the New York Yankees who were amazing. Remember, the Yankees entered October with absolutely no claim on another World Championship. They won 87 regular-season games. Eight clubs won more, including all three of the other American League teams that reached postseason play.

Then again, it's often been said that the Yankees were built for the postseason, and perhaps there's something to that. Combine a good lineup, four solid starters and a trio of relievers who become unhittable when the leaves turn color, and you've got a pretty good recipe for postseason success. Or so it would seem.

And of course, it doesn't hurt when opposing managers let their starters throw 140-some pitches. (This will be my only dig at Bobby Valentine, who can't be blamed for his team's abject failure to hit the baseball.)

One of the things that struck me about the three Series games I saw -- 3 through 5 -- was the complete absence of violent behavior during and after the festivities. I'm not saying that not a single drunken idiot threw a punch or bellowed profanities. I'm just saying I didn't see or hear anything of the like.

After much ugliness at Fenway Park this season, when the Yankees visited, I expected to see some of the same at Shea Stadium. But I didn't, and I've invested a fair amount of intellectual capital in trying to figure out why this didn't happen. I've got three theories:

One, the police presence. There were cops, cops, and more cops. You know that movie, "Copland"? If somebody makes "Copland II," it'll be about the 2000 World Series. If the Mets had counted police officers in their attendance count, they'd have set a new stadium record. I would guess there were at least 500 cops at the ballpark each of the last three evenings, and that estimate may be way low.

Two, the composition of the crowd. Let's face it, most of the violence at sports events is fueled by ridiculously priced beer inhaled by poorly raised hooligans. And most of those guys -- yes, they're all guys, which isn't something that makes me particularly proud, given that I've often been accused of guy-ness -- don't buy tickets that cost more than a hundred dollars apiece. We complain, and reasonably so, about high ticket prices driving off the true fans. But getting rid of the idiot drunks is perhaps a lucky benefit.

And three, a lot of Mets fans are friends with Yankees fans. Wednesday night before Game 4, I hung out with my friends Pete Fornatale and Matt Blankman. Both grew up in Port Washington (on Long Island), but Pete loves the Mets and Matt loves the Yankees. From what I could tell, though, it didn't affect their friendship much.

I attended Game 5 with another friend, A.J., and three of his buddies. A.J. is a Yankee fan, and so is Tom. But J.B. and John were both wearing Mets caps, and both were miserable when the Series ended. But how could J.B. and John hate, let alone fight, Yankee fans, when some of their best friends are Yankee fans?

As John sat there and watched the postgame celebration, he said, "This just makes me sick." But he didn't feel the need to go out and slug somebody.

What will Mets fans remember about the 2000 World Series?

They'll remember Timo Perez failing to hustle in Game 1, which cost the Mets a run that would likely have been decisive. Also from Game 1, they'll remember Todd Pratt not heading home on contact in the ninth, which was, and still is, truly inexplicable.

But you know, this reminds me of 1941, when the Yankees and Dodgers met for the first of their many Subway Series. Brooklyn catcher Mickey Owen was anointed the goat of that Series for committing a passed ball in Game 4, that facilitated a game-winning Yankees rally in the ninth inning. But the Dodgers only wound up winning one game that year. Why bother remembering one unfortunate play when you managed only one victory?

What will Yankees fans remember about the 2000 World Series?

I asked a bunch of them this question, and got a bunch of answers: Jeter's home runs, El Duque's strikeouts (and his escape from a bases-loaded jam in the sixth) in Game 3, Clemens' eight brilliant innings in Game 2 ... there's just a bunch of stuff.

I'll remember, more than anything, the simple thrill of attending three World Series games in three days, after attending only two World Series games in the previous 34 years.

Waiting for the No. 7 train 45 minutes after the game, I ran into a couple of Yankee fans I know, MLB Radio producers Andy Ross and Mike Siano.

They asked if it was a great World Series. I had to say no. It was a good World Series, certainly. Three games were decided by one run, and the other two were decided by two runs. In fact, this was the first Series since 1916 in which every game was decided by two runs or fewer.

I'll tell you what separates a good World Series from a great World Series. If Piazza's drive in the bottom of the ninth flies over the center-field fence rather than into Bernie Williams' glove, and the Mets go on to win Game 5, it's a great World Series. A World Series that heads back to the Bronx with everyone's nerves tighter than a new jar of spaghetti sauce.

Look at it like this .. If this same World Series had been played by the Cardinals and Mariners, would anyone (outside of St. Louis and Seattle) be suggesting that it was truly a great Series? I doubt it. And yeah, the Series gets a bit of extra credit because it was the Yankees and the Mets. But just a bit.

Or perhaps I'm just stomach-sick on sour grapes. If the Mets had won another game, I'd have gotten to see a World Series game at Yankee Stadium.

Oh well, there's always next year. For me and the Mets.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26
Game 4. Instead of the famous No. 7 train, this time I traveled from Manhattan to Flushing on the Long Island Rail Road, which costs a few dollars more but is a lot faster (only one stop between Penn Station and Shea Stadium). Whereas Tuesday night on the subway I talked to a man who saw Joe DiMaggio hit a home run at the Polo Grounds in 1951, last night on the LIRR I met a man who saw Roger McDowell tending bar (as a prank, naturally) at Finn MacCool's, a Long Island bar, in 1986.

After arriving at Shea, we made our way to Gate C, avoiding the crowds by walking along an access road separating the stadium from a parking lot. Before we reached our destination, however, we were shunted aside by a police motorcycle, lights flashing and siren blaring. Behind the motorcycle, a motorcade. As it happened, the motorcade ground to a halt just opposite Gate C, and out stepped Rudy Giuliani, decked out in a Yankees jacket and a fitted Yankees cap.

Of course, this resulted in some colorful comments from the Mets fans around us, just one of which was, "Ay, what's wit da #%@& hat?!"

(On the eve of the World Series, The New York Times ran a comparison of the Mets and Yankees. The Mets, the Times noted, feature a mascot with a huge head named Mr. Met. The Yankees, on the other hand, feature a mascot with a slightly smaller head named Mayor Giuliani.)

After witnessing this strange sideshow, I finally made my way to my seat.

Have you ever sat in the upper deck at Shea Stadium? I don't suppose it's a particularly unique experience, but it's certainly a particularly interesting one. For one thing, the upper deck is a long ways from the field. When Safeco Field opened, and people described the Mariners' new ballpark as "intimate," I was aghast. Leapin' lizards, the upper deck at Safeco was actually farther from the field than it had been at the Kingdome! Back in the old days -- that is, the spring of 1999 -- a typical Mariners game would see five or six baseballs fouled into the upper tank. Shoot, once I almost caught one of them! But at Safeco, only a ball or two per game reaches the highest level.

Ah, but compared to Shea Stadium, Safeco Field really is intimate. In two World Series games, no foul ball has landed in the upper deck. No foul ball has come close to landing in the upper deck. A young Mets fan sitting in the front row -- I was sitting in the second row, just to the first-base side of home plate -- claims that he once saw three fouls into the upper deck, all within just a few minutes. Maybe so, but such a display would seem to violate all known laws of physics and gravity.

It's a little scary up there, too. When the fans really get going -- and they never really got going in Game 4 -- the upper deck moves. I'm not kidding. I have complete faith in the structural integrity of the building, but it's still a bit unsettling, especially when you're sitting so close to the edge.

Anyway, I ain't complaining. A few minutes after settling into my seat, I suddenly thought, "Hey, I'm at the World Series." (I didn't cry or anything, but that tingly feeling did scurry down my back, and up again.) And a few minutes after that, I heard the father behind me ask his son, "Can you believe we're at the World Series?"

One word in reply: "No."

And when I thought about where I was 15 years ago -- the World Series in Kansas City, with absolutely no designs on a career in journalism (or anything else, for that matter) -- I couldn't believe that I was at the World Series, either.

Oh, about Game 4 ... As my friend Jim Baker said when we met afterward, "There's not much to say."

What he meant was, there's not much for an analyst to say. Certainly, one could write a poem about Derek Jeter's power to all fields, or an ode to Mike Piazza's Bunyan-like strength. But of course, I don't get paid to pen poetry (or assemble alliteration), and what I saw last night was just a good, solid baseball game, both managers doing everything they could, playing the percentages at least reasonably well.

The only move that really struck us, sitting up there in Box 725, came in the bottom of the fifth, when Joe Torre lifted Denny Neagle with two outs and the bases empty. The occasion, of course, was the imminent plateward journey of the aforementioned Piazza, who had already hit two long line drives off Neagle, one of them (quite) fair and one of them (just) foul.

Just yesterday, Piazza "wrote" of David Cone in his New York Post diaryy, "[H]e's capable of going out there and throwing a no-hitter every time up if he's locked in."

That's pretty silly, of course. But Cone is apparently capable of retiring Piazza on a high pop to Luis Sojo, because that's exactly what happened. Cone spent the rest of the evening in the visitors' dugout, giving way to Jeff Nelson, who gave way to Mike Stanton, who gave way to Mariano Rivera. And all of them gave the Mets more than they could handle, the only scary moment coming when Benny Agbayani lined one of Nelson's offerings up the middle ... where it was caught by Nelson, who threw to first base for an easy double play. The Mets never really threatened again.

Along with Torre's artful use of Cone, we might also applaud his somewhat unorthodox use of Rivera for two innings. The Yankee closer recorded 36 saves during the regular season, but only two of them were of the "long" variety (two innings or more). Yet with Game 4 on the line, Torre didn't hesitate to use his best pitcher to finish things up. And as Mickey Lichtman points out, there's another bit of logic involved here: if the Yankees had scored two or three runs in the top of the ninth, Torre would have been free to remove Rivera after one inning, thus saving him for Game 5 (though I don't think Torre would have done that).

Postscript: Just how obsessed can a baseball fan get when his team reaches the World Series? Before heading to the ballpark last night, I spent a few minutes with a Yankees fan named Matt Blankman, who related the following dream ...

I am at a barbecue or some sort of outdoor party. The weather didn't seem autumnal, more like early September, perhaps summer. I'm with a small group of people, at a home I can't say I recognize, when I am called to the telephone. I answer the phone, and on the other end was Bobby Valentine.
"Matt, I've got some strange news. You've been traded."
At this point in the dream, it's apparent to me that I am a long reliever and spot starter for the New York Mets. Odd, because I've been a Yankees fan since the 1970s, when I started watching baseball.

So it seems that I am sort of the 2000 Mets' version of Dick Tidrow (during his late '70s Yankees heyday).
At this point, Valentine informs me that I was part of a three-team deal involving the Yankees. However, instead of being shipped to the Bronx, I am being traded directly to the Columbus Clippers, the Yankees' Class AAA farm team.
"Well, Bobby," I say, "I'm sorry to leave, but I always have been a Yanks fan, so in a way, I guess it's good, too."
"Yeah, and they should bring you up by the end of the season for sure," Valentine says, "Listen, we really appreciate all you've done for us, we just had to make a move for an outfielder."
"No problem Bobby," I tell him, "You've always treated me fairly."
I hang up and return to the party, and inform everyone that I have just been traded.
"It's funny," I tell someone, "Everyone complains about Bobby Valentine, but he's always been nice to me."
Soon thereafter, I awoke to find that I had not been traded, nor was I a major leaguer at all ... certainly not "Dirt" Tidrow.
Strange things happen when you've got baseball on the brain.

Indeed they do. One day maybe I'll "collect" baseball dreams, including a few of my own, and publish them in the strangest book you've ever seen.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 25
Waiting for the 7 Train at Grand Central Station Tuesday night, and four young men wearing Mets jerseys paraded among us, slapping hands and whooping and chanting ...

We had to roll our eyes at the last of those, but it was refreshing to know that some people don't give a damn about historical precedent. Shea Stadium would have been a sad place for Game 3 if a good percentage of the fans didn't think their team still had a decent chance.

A couple of misconceptions about the game:

1. Orlando Hernandez vs. Rick Reed was a big mismatch
Hernandez finished the season with a 4.51 ERA, Reed finished the season with a 4.11 ERA. No, I don't think that Reed is really the better pitcher, but once you get past the ridiculous idea that Hernandez is somehow unbeatable, there wasn't any reason to give the Yankees a big edge in Game 3. (By the way, the Mets are now 23-10 this season in games started by Reed.)

2. Orlando Hernandez pitched brilliantly
Jiminy Christmas, if you watched SportsCenter last night, you'd think that Hernandez came within a whisker of throwing the second perfect game in Series history. However, the facts are clearly etched in my scorebook: seven (and one-third) innings, nine hits, three walks. Now, I know that I'm just a hick from the Midwest, but where I come from, a dozen baserunners in seven-plus innings qualifies as something less than spectacular.

A few other random notes:

Everybody knows all about Armando Benitez's postseason struggles, but if I were a Mets fan, seeing Dennis Cook jogging toward the mound with a game on the line would make me afraid. Very afraid. Last night's outing was particularly gruesome, as Cook pitched to three batters and didn't look good against any of them.

Cook faced David Justice, and hit Justice with his first pitch.
Cook faced Bernie Williams and struck him out, but only after the count went full.
Cook faced Tino Martinez, and walked him on four pitches.

You see what I'm getting at? I hope so, because it's nearly four in the morning and I don't want to explain it.

Has anybody else noticed that the pitch velocities displayed on the Fox broadcasts seem a tad questionable? This occurred to me Sunday night, when Roger Clemens' fastball was showing up at 97. I know that Clemens has been pitching brilliantly as of late, but 97 seemed high. Well, last night I discovered that I was right. There's a display board at Shea that lists the type and velocity of every pitch, and I actually jotted down the displayed velocity of a number of pitches in my scorebook. Lo and behold, when I got back to my hotel room and watched the Game 3 highlights on TV, I found that the velocities displayed by Fox were consistently one or two miles an hour higher than those displayed at Shea.

For example, El Duque's slider was consistently reported as 78 miles per hour on the Shea display board, but 80 miles per hour on Fox. It seems fairly apparent that though most teams (and TV networks) have settled on the so-called "slow gun," Fox is using the "fast gun." They have every right to do this, of course, and we can probably assume that the higher velocities fit nicely with their more-is-better production values. But I just thought you might like to know.

One more thing about El Duque. I thought Torre should have pulled him after the bottom of the sixth, when he gave up two walks and two doubles but just one run. Hernandez was due to lead off the seventh, and he did, striking out. He then retired the Mets in order in the seventh, but gave up three straight hits in the eighth before getting lifted.

Hernandez totaled 134 pitches, which seems like a lot for a guy who was reportedly suffering from a minor illness.

After Benitez retired David Justice to end the game, the sound system immediately blared forth with "Who Let the Dogs Out," a "song" that I heard plenty of back in Seattle. There's one big difference, though. While this "tune" is apparently played only when the Mets conclude a victory, at Safeco Field they were playing it on multiple occasions; whenever Alex Rodriguez batted, and then a few more times just for grits and shiggles.

As we fans made our way back and forth down the ramps leading to the exits, like two-legged insects stuck in a giant ant farm, spontaneous "Let's go, Mets!" chants kept breaking out. Later, when New York's Finest prevented us from going through a gate to the subway stop for more than five minutes, one fan yelled, "Charge!"

Another, wiser fan argued, "Naw, they got guns. It'd be like the Little Big Horn."

Postscript: Taking the 7 Train back to Manhattan, I struck up a conversation with the couple next to me. He grew up loving the New York Giants, and she grew up loving the Brooklyn Dodgers, the two united in their hatred of the Yankees. She kept score last night, for the first time in her life. He remembered, quite clearly, listening to the radio when Bobby Thomson homered off Ralph Branca to give the Giants the 1951 National League pennant. And he was at the Polo Grounds a few days later, when Joe DiMaggio hit his last home run, a long drive into the upper deck in left field, as the Yankees drove toward yet another World Championship.

Only in New York, my friends. Only in New York.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 24
Ah, Game 2: the World Series contest so nice, I've now written a column about it twice ...

Keith DeCandido noticed something obvious that I, who left for the airport just a few minutes after Kurt Abbott struck out to end Game 2, somehow missed ... Why the hell was Kurt Abbott hitting in that situation, anyway?

At that point -- top of the ninth, two outs, nobody on base, Mets trailing 6-5 -- here were Bobby Valentine's viable options:

           2000 OPS   Career
Trammell     802        837
Pratt        841        745
Abbott       672        729 
M Franco     653        703
McEwing      614        699

Keith argues, "Valentine has Matt Franco, Valentine has Todd Pratt, Valentine has Bubba Trammell. Heck, Valentine even has Joe McEwing, who shouldn't bat any more than Abbott, but at least could play the infield in a pinch if the game goes to extra innings. But by letting this no-hit wonder bat, Valentine all but conceded the game. Naturally, he struck out on three pitches."

Oh, I left out the funniest thing in Keith's e-mail message, the part where he described Kurt Abbott as "the Defensive Replacement That Walks Like a Man."

I do think Keith overstates his case a bit. True, Abbott didn't hit at all this season. But he was better than McEwing, and better even than Franco. Pratt's been a lot better this year, but on a career basis -- and given the number of at-bats we're talking about, it probably makes more sense to look at the career numbers -- Abbott's been about as good as Pratt.

And Pratt, like Abbott, is a right-handed hitter. (Therein lies the only argument for Franco, by the way, as he's a lefty hitter.)

What would I have done? I'd have batted Bubba Trammell, also a right-handed hitter, but clearly the most talented of this group.

I skimmed the New York newspapers yesterday, but couldn't find anyone questioning Valentine's decision to leave Abbott in. So maybe I'm missing something.

I just can't figure out what it is.

Dead or Alive: The headline atop the blurb for yesterday's column read, "Neyer: The Mets are dead."

Just so everyone knows, I don't come up with those headlines. And as you know if you actually read the column, I never actually said the Mets are dead. Zed, yeah. But the Mets? No.

Historically, teams down 0-2 in a best-of-seven series have won exactly 20 percent of those series. But as Mickey Lichtman points out, the Mets actually have a lower probability of winning. Not because they're not as good as the Yankees -- I would argue that they're actually better than the Yankees, at least on paper -- but rather because they're down 0-2 after using their two best pitchers, with a pair of big, big question marks starting in Games 3 and 4. Mickey gives the Mets a 15 percent chance of winning the World Series, and that sounds about right to me.

But of course, 15 percent is not zero percent, so the Mets are not dead. Not yet.

Another note on The Rocket: I have watched the videotape a few more times, and spend the better part of an afternoon thinking about it ... and I still say the Clemens/Piazza "Incident" has been overblown by both the media and the fans.

Look, I don't have an axe to grind here. I've been accused of bias against both the Mets and the Yankees, over the years, with approximately equal vehemence. So when I examine the evidence at hand, I'm not particularly inclined one way or the other (unlike most of the people who have been sending me e-mail messages). And after looking at that evidence -- the videotape, along with Clemens' explanation -- I remain convinced that Clemens had no malicious intent when he threw that hunk of bat.

First, the videotape. If you watch it, I mean really watch it, you'll see that Clemens wasn't aiming the bat at Piazza. It's hard to throw an irregular piece of wood in a straight line, and it appears that the barrel slipped from his hand, angling to Clemens' right and nearly skipping into Piazza's feet. If Clemens had really been trying to hit Piazza, don't you think he would have aimed at him? And if he wasn't aiming at him, then what's all the fuss about?

Second, the explanation. As I'm sure you know, Clemens argues that he was simply pumped up, and wanted nothing more than to fling the piece of bat toward the Yankee on-deck circle, where a batboy could dispose of it. Clemens also argues that he didn't even realize Piazza was running, which makes a certain amount of sense when you remember that Piazza had no reason to run, as the ball veered well foul.

No, I can't read Roger Clemens' mind. But when an explanation makes enough sense, as this one does, then I think we have to give the explainer the benefit of the doubt. All of Clemens' actions after the incident -- his reaction to Piazza's anger, his explanation to plate umpire Charlie Reliford, his postgame comments -- suggest that there was no malicious intent.

Of course, he might have been lying to Piazza and Reliford and the sporting press. But is Clemens really devious enough to get all his stories so straight? I mean, he's obviously an intelligent person on some levels, but such a brilliant coordination of lies would require the mind of Lex Luthor. And Clemens, his superhero nickname notwithstanding, is not a comic-book character.

So let's give the thought balloons a rest, and remember Game 2 for what it was.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 23
Last night, I took a red-eye flight from Seattle to Boston (via Washington). The in-flight movie was "Rookie of the Year," released more than seven years ago and featured because it's that time of year, when the leaves change colors and Tim McCarver annoys me nightly rather than weekly. The audio portion of the movie didn't work, but that was OK because I'd seen it before and it's not hard to figure out what's happening.

See, it's a kids' movie through and through, but that's OK, too, because if you're a baseball fan, there's probably still plenty of kid in you. There are two wonderful sights in the film: the great Eddie Bracken (as The Team Owner) and the great Wrigley Field (as The Ballpark), which is featured throughout in its wonderfully green glory. In fact, someday when Wrigley is gone, baseball fans will turn to "Rookie of the Year" to see what it was like.

I bring all this up only because it struck me, this morning when nearly everyone else in North America was fast asleep, that the chances of the Mets winning the 2000 World Series are just slightly better than those of the Cubs winning a World Series other than in a movie written for 12-year-olds.

Yes, that's something of an exaggeration. It's certainly possible to imagine a scenario in which the Mets would win this thing, whereas only a madman might even conjure up circumstances leading to the Cubs' first World Championship since 1908. Still, as we saw last week, the Mets are now attempting to buck some big odds. Since 1922, 50 best-of-seven postseason series have seen one team win each of the first two games. The team that won the first two games eventually won the series in 40 of those 50 scenarios.

That's 80 percent. You probably don't need me to figure the math, but this also means that only 20 percent of the teams that lost Games 1 and 2 came back to win the series.

Now, as a few readers pointed out to me, this most certainly does not mean that the Mets now have a 20.0 chance of beating the Yankees. It all depends, we can all agree, on the respective qualities of the two clubs. That said, We can also agree that while the Mets don't have exactly a 20.0 chance of coming back, the number can't be much higher (or much lower) than that. It's simply very difficult to win four out of five games against a good team. And I think all of us can certainly agree that the Yankees are a good team.

Of course, if the Mets lose Game 3 tomorrow night, it's over. I mean, the wonderful thing about sports, and especially baseball, is that we can never know for sure what's going to happen next. But they've been playing this game for a long, long time, and no team, no team, has come back from a 0-3 deficit in a best-of-seven series. Yes, it will happen someday, and someday certainly could be next Sunday. But while an infinite number of World Series means an astronomically high probability that some team or another (the Cubs?) will come back from a three-game deficit, the probability of a particular team coming back from a three-game deficit in a best-of-seven series is astronomically low.

A note on The Rocket: In Friday's column, I floated the possibility that Roger Clemens should have been held from the Yankee rotation until Game 3, thus allowing him to pitch in Shea Stadium, a favorable park for power pitchers.

As reader Ray Murphy pointed out, however, "the rotation was apparently made with days of rest in mind. Assuming no rain during the Series, the Game 2/6 starter is the only one who gets five days of rest between starts, rather than four. Torre tried giving Clemens extra rest by holding him until Game 4 of the LCS after his disappointing Game 4 ALDS start, and was pleased with the results. If Clemens is sharper on five days rest than four, the benefits should far outweigh the marginal benefit of Shea's ballpark effect."

Ray sent me that note Friday afternoon, and of course last night Clemens made Ray (not to mention Torre) look like a genius. As for the Rocket's bat-throwing incident -- in the photos, he calls to mind Zeus hurling thunderbolts at disobedient gods -- aren't we making a bit much of this? He was pumped up, and he did something silly. Did he hurt anybody? No. Was he trying to hurt anybody? I don't think he was.

So let's focus instead on a brilliant pitching performance, the second straight for a truly great pitcher, a pitcher whose career postseason ERA is now 3.59.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22
A few random thoughts on the best Game 1 in my memory, enjoyed from the comfort of someone else's soft couch, in the company of three women who were about as distracting as three non-fans can be ...

Before the Series, most everyone figured that Bobby Valentine would use Bubba Trammell as his DH against Andy Pettitte, and Darryl Hamilton against the righties. But Valentine did something moderately bold last night, DHing Piazza and putting Todd Pratt behind the plate. Here's Pratt vs. Trammell:

         AB+BB  OPS vs LHP
Pratt     173      874
Bubba     303      904

Neither of these guys played much this season, so the stats above include the last four seasons. I had sort of assumed that Pratt was the superior hitter, but that's not born out by the stats, or at least not the stats this simpleton prefers. And the difference was truly sharp this season, when Pratt compiled a 719 OPS against lefties (in only about 50 plate appearances), and Trammell hit lefties well, to the tune of an 899 OPS in nearly 100 plate appearances.

So based on the obvious evidence, I'd have used Trammell at DH. But it's quite possible that Valentine is using this chance to keep Piazza fresh, and that may well be worth using Pratt, the lesser hitter. And he rewarded Valentine by reaching base three times.

When I see Valentine carrying two catchers on his roster, and putting both of them in his lineup, I can't help but think of Bobby Cox, who for years would carry three catchers, and use just one of them, thereby wasting two roster spots that might have been useful.

With all due respect to the Yankees -- and of course they deserve a heaping helping of respect -- I can't shake the feeling that they've gotten somewhat more than their fair share of the breaks over the last five years.

That said (and I hope you Yankee fans are still with me), while it's true that Zeile, in many alternate realities, did indeed hit a two-run home run, it's also true that in this reality, the Mets would have scored at least one run if only Timo Perez had sprinted around the bases rather than jogging part of the way. (And that was, at least according to Tim McCarver, the fourth baserunning gaffe committed by the Mets.)

Speaking of Todd Zeile, does anyone reading this think that he's not better than Tino Martinez? I ask this only because, in USA Today's World Series preview, Chuck Johnson gave Martinez, rather than Zeile, the laudatory check mark. This is one of those things that seems so completely silly that one's initial impulse is that the newspaper suffered some sort of computer glitch. Unfortunately, the real problem was likely that Johnson didn't think things through, and none of his editors knew enough to ask the right questions.

        Runs  RBI    OBP  Slug
Zeile    67    79   .356  .467
Tino     69    91   .328  .422

Yes, Martinez is presumably more accomplished with the glove than Zeile, but I can't imagine it's enough to make up for 73 points of OPS. Can you?

Postscript: I've now been writing about this for years, but I won't let that stop me from writing about it again ... Nothing exposes the World Series patches for the hideous things that they are, more than their presence atop the Yankee uniform. As you know, I'm no particular fan of the Bronx Bombers, but one certainly can't deny the classicism of their uniforms. The pinstripes, the interlocking NY over the heart, the absence of names on the back of the jersey ... the Yankees, as do the Dodgers, have the classic uniforms to match their classic history.

And then you have that gaudy World Series patch, mucking things up. But don't take it from me. As noted above, I was lucky enough to watch Game 1 in the company of three women, all of them possessed of, if not a Costasian knowledge of baseball history, at least good fashion sense. Here's what they had to say about those patches:

Kathleen: "They're dorky. They just throw off the balance. You need symmetry on things like that."

Meghan: "If they really need the patch, they should have put it on the back, above the MLB logo."

Kristien: "Which patches? Oh, those are distracting. You know what they do? They skew your vision. And they steal your attention from the team's logo on the front."

And you know what? If MLB didn't put those patches on the hats worn by the players, but did put them on the hats sold to ordinary Joes like you and me, people would still buy them. Maybe not quite as many of them. But enough to justify not marring the appearance of the players in the biggest baseball games on the planet.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 20
In my chat session yesterday, the most common question was:

Rob, how much money does ESPN pay you? Whatever the amount, it's way too much!

Actually, that's a question and a comment, so let's move on. The most common question (without a comment) was:

C'mon Rob, give us your World Series pick!

I never did answer that one, either, because, 1) I hadn't done any analysis yet, and, 2) I'm not sure that doing any analysis would have done me any good.

Sometimes it's easy to pick the World Series winner. In 1998, for example, it didn't take a genius to pick the 114-win New York Yankees over the 98-win San Diego Padres. Of course, the Yanks disposed of Pads in four games.

Likewise, in 1990 it didn't take a genius to pick the 103-win Oakland Athletics over the 91-win Cincinnati Reds, and in 1954 it didn't take a genius to pick the 111-win Cleveland Indians over the 97-win New York Giants. And of course, both of those World Series resulted in sweeps, too.

The problem is that in both 1990 and 1954, it was the favorites, the powerhouse clubs, who got swept. It's a cliche, but it's true: Anything can happen in a short series. What's a "short series"? I don't know, but I do know that seven games aren't nearly enough to prove much of anything between two teams.

That said, how can we possibly forecast, with any degree of certainty at all, the results of a best-of-seven series between two teams as evenly matched as the Mets and the Yankees?

Answer: We can't.

So I'm sorry about this, but I'm not going to make a World Series prediction. I know I'm supposed to, and of course I'd have a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly. But I'm not gonna do it, because nothing in my contract says I have to.

What I can do, however, is discuss some of the questions, some of the issues related to the Series.

The Yankee rotation: Seems pretty cut-and-dried to me, as it apparently does to Joe Torre. There has been some ongoing speculation that Torre might start David Cone instead of Denny Neagle in Game 4, but that's crazy talk. Neagle's been getting roughed up lately, but unless he's hurt, he's the clear choice over Cone.

It's also been suggested, by some of my old sabermetrician pals, that Roger Clemens should start one of the games at Shea Stadium -- Game 3, presumably -- and then Game 7, if things go that far. As the thinking goes, Clemens is a power pitcher (and a right-handed power pitcher at that), and Shea favors right-handed power pitchers. This makes sense to me, and since he would get two starts anyway, what difference does it make if he pitches Game 2 or Game 3?

But frankly, managers don't generally think this "deep," and the ones who do (Tony La Russa, for instance) often think so deep they drown.

The Met rotation: Bobby Valentine is apparently going to use Bobby Jones in Game 4 rather than Glendon Rusch, which certainly doesn't make any sense to me.

Here are their season ERAs and their ERAs since September 1 (including postseason):

        Season   Sept/Oct
Jones    5.06      4.88
Rusch    4.01      2.29

The only argument for Jones is the one-hitter he threw at the Giants in the Division Series, but that's just one game. Weighed against the last six-and-a-half months, or even the last one-and-a-half months (which includes that one-hitter), 'tis but a trifle.

The Yankee bench: Maybe this decision has already been made, but I think the Yankees need Jose Canseco on their World Series roster. Don't you think he might come in handy in the late innings, with all those left-handed starters the Mets have?

Speaking of right-handed power hitters, I agree with Joe Sheehan ... Glenallen Hill should replace Paul O'Neill against the Mets' lefties. Look at Hill's stats this season against left-handed pitchers, and O'Neill's:

        OPS vs LHP
Hill       963
O'Neill    836

Actually, Tino Martinez is worse against lefties than O'Neill (who had an uncharacteristically good year against southpaws), so I suppose the ideal lineup would have O'Neill and Hill in the outfield, and David Justice at first base. But that's so radical, we might as well forget I ever brought it up.

What to do with Knoblauch? As of late, the erstwhile second baseman has been DHing, with Luis Sojo assuming keystone chores. That won't work in Games 3 through 5 of the World Series, though, which leaves the Yankees without their leadoff man unless Knoblauch goes back to second base.

Sojo, notwithstanding his recent performance, is a terrible hitter. But Knoblauch's not great, either. In very rough terms, if we assume that Knoblauch is going to make one error per three games, then it's not worth playing him at second base just to get his bat in the lineup. But can we make that assumption? Honestly, I have no idea. I don't think anybody does. Joe Torre gets paid a lot of money to figure out things like this, so I think I'll leave this one to him.

Conclusion: OK, I lied. Now that I've written all this pap, I feel compelled to offer a wishy-washy prediction.

The Yankees have the homefield edge, but the Mets' reliance on left-handed starting pitchers wipes that out. I think the World Series hinges on the performances of Andy Pettitte and Orlando Hernandez. Everyone sort of assumes that they'll continue to pitch well in the postseason, as they always have. But if they don't -- say, if they merely revert to their performances of this past regular season -- then the Mets will win.

Postcript: Last week, I promised advice on how to enjoy the Subway Series even if you don't give a hoot for the Yankees or the Mets. Ideally, I'd have written some sort of humorous column, filled with clever jokes and such.

I didn't get around to that. So instead, please accept a serious suggestion: Beg, borrow, or steal a copy of Peter Golenbock's wonderful book, "Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers." Recently reissued in paperback, "Bums" can be found in most big bookstores, and the material on the seven World Series featuring the Yankees and Dodgers should help you get through the next week or so.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 19
It's been quite some time since I devoted a column to my e-mail, so I hope you'll indulge me today ...

Rob, No one else will dare write about it, so I think you should: Subway Series mystique aside, this World Series matchup stinks. If the Yankees win, they will have the second-fewest wins of any World Series champion ever, better only then the 1987 Twins (excluding incomplete seasons like 1918 and 1981). Remember, these Yankees posted just the fifth-best record in the American League. And if the Mets win, the World Champs will be a wild-card team with only the fourth-best record in the National League. The won-loss record of the two teams combined is the fifth-worst in history for two Series teams, trailing only 1926, 1973, 1987 and 1997. Don't get me wrong, it should be an exciting, balanced matchup that may well make good television. It may well be competitive and dramatic and memorable. But the overall caliber of play is going to be subpar, at least compared with other World Series. When the wild-card Marlins and the 86-win Indians met in the World Series in 1997, everyone in the media railed about a mediocre division champion playing a wild-card team, how this had diluted the World Series. Well, here we are again, and where are the railers now? That was an exciting seven-game series, but it was also a very sloppy, ugly series (you can look it up). I expect this to be more of the same. Tobias A. (Toby) Dorsey

Toby writes me quite often, and generally makes good sense. This time, though, I think he's a bit off the mark. First of all, one minor correction. The combined winning percentage of the two teams (.560) is the fourth-worst in history for two Series teams, trailing only 1973 (A's/Mets, .545), 1997 (Indians/Marlins, .551) and 1987 (Twins/Cardinals, .556).

While it's true that the Yankees posted just the fifth-best record in the American League, it's also true that just one year ago, they won their third World Series in four seasons. Roger Clemens, arguably the greatest pitcher of the last two decades (if not the last century, as my friend Allen Barra has argued), will start two games for the Yankees. Clemens is backed by Andy Pettitte, Orlando Hernandez and Denny Neagle, giving the Yankees one of the stronger rotations in recent American League history. Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams are both superstars, and Jorge Posada is the best catcher in the American League (until Pudge Rodriguez returns to the field).

Are the Yankees a great team? No, they're not. You can say whatever you want, but you're going to have a tough time convincing me that an 87-win team is legitimately great. The Mets won 94 games, of course. But as I've written before, they did overachieve to some extent. For the sake of argument, let's assume that, on some fundamental level that doesn't allow for good luck, the Mets are actually a 90-win team.

So what? Should a World Series matching 87- and 90-win teams really look all that different from a Series matching 93- and 96-win teams? Maybe, if you ran the Series through a computer simulation a few hundred times, you might notice a difference. But to the naked eye, like the ones you and I have on both sides of our noses? Nah.

To this point, I've been defending the Yankees and Mets, after a fashion. But I suppose that I've also offended partisans of those teams, merely by suggesting that they're perhaps something less than the '27 Yankees.

Look, I've been a sports fan for a long time, and I've been on both sides of this. In 1985, my Kansas City Royals won the World Series. And in 1988, my Kansas Jayhawks won the NCAA basketball tournament. Neither team was great -- in fact, both teams went in the tank the next season -- but both teams got hot at the right time, and both teams caught enough breaks to win. In 1998, my Minnesota Vikings were, statistically at least, the best team in the National Football League, but they didn't even reach the Super Bowl, let alone win it.

These three teams taught me at least two things: sometimes good teams beat great teams, and it's better to have loved a good team that won, than to have loved a great team that didn't win. There have been several Royals teams better than the 1985 edition, but that team will always be my favorites. There have been many Kansas basketball teams better than the '88 version, but they'll always be my favorites. And the 1998 Vikings? When I think of them, I'll always remember Gary Anderson missing an easy field goal.

So my advice to any Yankees and Mets fans who might be offended by reality? Get over it. While it's true that your teams aren't going to remind anyone of the '27 Yankees or the '75 Reds, you should still enjoy them for what they are: winners.

Hi Rob, I know you're busy, so I'll keep this short. In today's column, you suggest that if you lose Game 2 after losing Game 1, your Series chances drop by half. Coincidence does not imply causality. It's not like if you won Game 2, you would suddenly become a better team. Either you are good enough, or you are not. Then, either you get lucky, or you do not. If you are good, and lucky, you win. Your analysis is relevant for those who might be trying to predict the outcome of the series, but it's not appropriate for substantiating statements like, "The Reds must win Game 2, if they want to have a shot at the 1990 NLCS." Just a nitpick from an obsessive stathead ... Later, Brian Jones

I couldn't agree more, Brian ... sort of. There's some truth behind your comments, I just can't quite put my finger on what that truth might be. Because if the Reds hadn't won Game 2 of the 1990 NLCS, it would have been more difficult for them to win the whole thing, because they would have to have won four of the next five games, and that's really, really difficult when you're trying to beat another quality team.

Hey Rob, Your ESPN column on must-win games really got me thinking. Suppose for a second that two teams were evenly matched, so that the result of each game could be decided by a coin toss. Assume also that the result of one game doesn't affect what happens in the next game. You can then calculate the probability of various outcomes for a seven-game series. (You can either work it out on paper, or with a computer; I did both.) For instance, how often should the Game 1 winner go on to win the series? If you work through the numbers, you find that the probability of the Game 1 winner taking the series is 84/128 = .656. As you've noted, in the real world Game 1 Winners have only won .581 of the series. So we can conclude that Game 1 winners have historically won fewer series than we would have expected. What are the chances of a team coming back from an 0-2 deficit? For our hypothetical evenly-matched teams, it works out to be 6/32=.188. This is very close to the real-life number of .200. Once again, the real-life teams do slightly better at coming back from a deficit than chance would suggest. To fill out the table, here's a comparison of the historical outcomes to the the predicted outcomes, assuming that the teams are evenly matched: Historical ?Random? Down Win Chance Win Chance 0-1 .419 .344 0-2 .200 .188 0-3 .000 .063 1-2 .339 .313 1-3 .179 .125 It seems that in real-life, a team which is down a game or two has come back to win more often than chance would predict. Isn't that completely surprising? I would have thought that a team down 0-2 or 1-3 was in that unenviable position because they were the worse team. Yet they seem to come back more often than they would if they had even a 50-50 chance of winning all the rest of their games! There are several possibilities. Perhaps a team which gets ahead in a series relaxes, and doesn't play as well. Maybe a team which falls behind tends to rise to the occasion, and has a greater than 50 percent chance of winning its next game. My favorite explanation, though, is that in a seven-game series, the winner is chiefly determined by pure chance, more than any other factor. As a Cardinals fan, this gives me some comfort this morning. Cheers, Scott Oser

Great stuff, Scott. Thanks for sending it along. I had some thoughts on what might cause the differences between the Historical Win Chances and your "Random" Win Chances. But then I realized that the difference between Historical and "Random" just might be attributable to nothing more than statistical aberration. And once I say that, I don't have to come up with any more thoughts!

Dear Rob, I'm sure you've gotten plenty of e-mails from ecstatic Met fans today, so I'll go a different route. Many people (well, you) are quick to point out that the Mets played "above their heads" this season by Pythagorean standards. Sure, the Mets did get a few lucky breaks, but one would say the Mets were due to have their luck change: From 1989 to 1998, a span of 10 non-playoff seasons, the Mets finished a combined 44 games below their Pythagorean projections. One could talk a lot about coulda and shoulda, but there's no need to pontificate on the subject. That's just a lot of bad bounces, maybe a few too many for me to put my wholehearted faith in Pythagoras (how did his name get attached to that formula, anyway?). It'll be worth a decade of shame, though, if a few good bounces help us win a World Series this year. But it does make me wonder where all you sabermetricians were in 1993, when the Mets finished 14 games below their shoulda total, and thus were the laughing stock of baseball. Here are the stats (from baseball-reference.com, a great site that I'm sure you've seen): RS RA Rec Pyth Diff 1989 683 595 87- 75 91-71 - 4 1990 775 613 91- 71 98-64 - 7 1991 640 646 77- 84 80-81 - 3 1992 599 653 72- 90 75-87 - 3 1993 672 744 59-103 73-89 -14 1994 506 526 55- 58 54-59 + 1 1995 657 618 69- 75 76-68 - 7 1996 746 791 71- 91 78-84 - 7 In 1997 and 1998, Pythagoras was right-on, matching exactly the Mets' 88-74 records both years. Enjoy the Series! -- Dave Stolzar

Gee, Dave, don't you think this is something of a reach? There's no question, the Mets endured some pretty lousy luck from 1989 through 1996. But does it make any sense to throw 1997 and '98 into the analysis, given that the Mets exactly hit their Pythagorean projection both years? What's more, you don't even mention 1999, a year in which the Mets' actual record (97-66) exceeded their Pythagorean projection (95-68) by two games, two games that made the difference between reaching the postseason and not reaching the postseason.

And then there's this year, when -- as I'm sure you all remember -- the Mets exceeded their Pythagorean projection by six games. So if we consider only the last five seasons, the Mets are actually one game to the good, which isn't particularly out of the ordinary.

My real point, of course, is simply this: Not only were the Mets not "due" for a change of luck -- their luck had been just fine for three straight seasons -- but no team is ever "due" for a change of luck, at least not from a statistical standpoint.

This is the oldest one in the book, but apparently it bears repeating ... Let's say you flip a coin nine times, and it comes up heads each time. What is the likelihood that it will come up tails the 10th time? I'm sad to say, any number of adult humans still don't understand that the answer is exactly the same -- 50 percent -- that it was for the first flip, the second flip, the third flip, ad nauseum.

Of course, baseball teams are not coins. But when it comes to the Pythagorean method, they might as well be.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18
Last night, when Carlos Guillen launched a Brett-ian homer into the right-field upper deck, Bob Costas exclaimed, "The lineup change by Lou Piniella pays off big."

Well, yeah. But it's not like Piniella invented edible paper or something. ("You eat it, it's outta there.?) All he did was bench David Bell, a decision that requires only slightly more brain power than breathing. Here are Guillen's and Bell's stats against right-handed pitchers this season:

          OBP  Slug  OPS
Guillen  .322  .395  717
Bell     .312  .358  670

No, neither one of these fellows bring Ted Williams to mind. Or Matt Williams. Or Spencer Williams, who was one of my best friends in junior high. But if you're going to play Mark McLemore at second base, then you've got to choose between Guillen and Bell at third. And Guillen's the obvious choice.

What wasn't so obvious, at least to me, were the other left-handed bats that Piniella wedged into the lineup. Particularly Raul Ibanez, who (I might have mentioned this already) doesn't much more business in a major-league lineup than you do. What's worse, Ibanez replaced a man who slugged .507 this season ... against right-handed pitchers.

Yes, Hernandez is a "tough" right-hander, but if Hernandez brings his tough stuff to the mound, Raul Ibanez ain't going to get anything done anyway, sure as shootin'. And if Hernandez doesn't have his tough stuff, then I'd want Buhner in the lineup, because he can hit the ball over the fence. And while I know that Lou prefers small ball over long ball these days, it's important to remember that these are the New York Yankees. You're not going to beat them with a run here and a run there.

Lou Piniella didn't lose Game 6. Dame Fortune and Arthur Rhodes can take plenty of the credit for that. But Uncle Lou didn't do much to win it, either.

A note on the aforementioned Costas: I occasionally write well of Bob Costas, and afterward I invariably receive three or four e-mail messages in which the correspondent enumerates, with some measure of glee, Bob's deficiencies as a play-by-play man.

And do you know what? The deficiencies are there. Nobody's perfect. The question is, do the deficiencies outweigh the positives? I don't think that they do. And with this week being Costas' last as a baseball guy for quite some time, here's a nugget from last night's first inning:

No disrespect to Chuck Knoblauch, but this is baseball's problem. After each pitch, he steps out of the box, and takes some sort of personal inventory. Then, apparently unchanged, Knoblauch steps back in the box.

I don't suppose it comes across in print, but Costas has the timing and inflection of a fairly skilled comic actor. He doesn't make you laugh out loud, but I would guess that he elicits close to a chuckle per inning. More important, he generally knows what he's talking about. One of baseball's problems really is guys like Knoblauch taking pointless journeys away from the batter's box after every pitch.

And that, even more than his sense of humor, is what distinguishes Costas. While discussing Alex Rodriguez and Safeco Field during Game 5, he noted, "A lot of this has to be coincidence, but Rodriguez had 81 RBI on the road this year, and only 51 at home. It probably wouldn't play out like that over a long period of time, but that's a dramatic difference."

Many of you reading this are probably saying, "Well, duh." The problem is that the great majority of broadcasters wouldn't say what Costas said. The great majority of broadcasters would either suggest that the difference in Alex's home and road stats were due completely to the ballparks, or meant nothing at all. It's as if, the day they were hired to sit behind the microphone, a neurosurgeon swooped in, and with a tiny laser beam excised the word "coincidence" from their vocabularies.

I would argue -- hell, I will argue -- that if broadcasters and writers would simply sprinkle words like "coincidence" and "random" into their largely pointless drivel, the public's understanding of baseball would increase by roughly 25 percent. In other words, we need more guys like Costas, not fewer of them. And that's why I'm going to miss him.

(I will also miss NBC's relatively understated production. With Fox taking over the postseason TV rights next season, October baseball will consist of close-ups, close-ups, and more close-ups. Oh yes, and silly sound effects. God help us all.)

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17
As you might remember, a couple of weeks ago I mocked a Seattle baseball writer for labeling games as "must-wins" when they quite obviously were not.

But now that we're nearly two-thirds of the way through Fall Foolishness, it strikes me that there really are must-wins, and it might be amusing to figure out those situations.

Late in the Mets' Game 2 victory over the Cardinals, for example, the director of the Fox broadcast ordered up a graphic that (approximately) read, "Teams that win first two games are 28-4 in LCS."

That's 32 LCS, a pretty good sample. If we divide 28 into 32, we get 0.875; in other words, teams that have won Games 1 and 2 have gone on to win 87.5 percent of the time. But then it struck me: There can't have been 32 best-of-seven LCS in which one team won the first two games, because they have been only 28 LCS since 1985 (when the best-of-seven format was changed from best-of-five). So either I read the graphic wrong, or Fox was including the best-of-five LCS (1969-1984), which wouldn't make much sense.

Whatever. The graphic got me to thinking, and that's all that really matters. So let's start at the top. We all can agree that winning the first game of a postseason series is better than losing it. And we can also agree that losing the last game of a postseason series is a whole lot worse than winning it. But just how important is Game 1 to winning the series?

Game 1 Winners
Win  Loss  Pct
61	  44  .581

Before we go any further, I should mention that I started with the 1922 World Series. Before that, you had all sorts of postseason weirdness, including (but not limited to) crooked ballplayers losing games on purpose and best-of-nine World Series. So those 105 Game 1 winners include the World Series from 1922 through 1999, and the LCS from 1985 through '99. I won't be so silly as to suggest that winning the opener of a best-of-seven series is not important. But Game 1 certainly can't be considered a must-win, given that the Game 1 loser has eventually won 42 percent of the best-of seven series.

What if you lose Games 1 and 2? By my count, there have been exactly 50 best-of-seven series in which one team won Games 1 and 2.

Game 1 Winners
Win  Loss  Pct
 40   10  .800

Those teams wound up winning the series 80 percent of the time. What's more, 19 of the 40 teams that won the first two games went on to sweep the series. Looked at from the other side, if you lose the first two, you've got nearly a 40 percent chance of getting swept. (Of course, this assumes that history is an accurate guide. It's a conceit in which I hope you'll allow me to indulge for the remainder of this discussion.)

Let's look at three more of these situations. This will sound complicated, but it's really not ... the chart below describes the historical chances of winning a best-of-seven postseason series (since 1922) after losing a game, and thus being behind in the series by the particular count listed. I should stress that the numbers below do not describe the chances of winning after a series reaches a certain point; that's a different study, and one I didn't feel like messing with today.

Down    WinChance
 0-1      .419
 0-2      .200
 0-3      .000
 1-2      .339     
 1-3      .179

So what's a must-win? Losing Game 1 still leaves you with nearly a 40 percent chance of winning. Not too bad. But lose the next one, too, and your chance of winning drops almost exactly in half, to just 20 percent. And if you follow up those first two losses with yet another ... well, in 22 tries, nobody's come back from a 3-0 deficit in a best-of-seven series. Not in baseball's major leagues, anyway.

Losing Game 3, after splitting the first two, leaves you with roughly a one-in-three chance of winning. Again, not too bad. This was the Mariners' situation after Friday night's game. But if you're down 1-2 and then you lose Game 4 -- as the M's did Saturday (yes, applying the numbers to a "real-world situation") -- and again, your chances are cut roughly in half, from 34 percent to 18 percent. Now, 18 percent is a hell of a lot better than zero, but I'm not betting the family cow on an 18 percent chance.

So again, what's a must-win? Technically, the only game you must win is the game that, if lost, will eliminate you from the tournament. Practically, though, it seems that falling behind three games to none does seal one's fate. Yes, eventually some lucky team will overcome this deficit. But if you're already down two games to none, Game 3 is, in our experience, a must-win.

Aside from those obvious situations, I suppose it's a matter of taste. My threshold would be somewhere between 80 and 90 percent; yours might be something else. But at least now we've got a crude way to frame the discussion.

A note on two Macs: Last week I mentioned, in passing, Tim McCarver's tendency toward smugness. Well, Monday night, while discussing Mark McGwire's inaction during this National League Championship Series, McCarver popped off with the following: "I don't understand how any reasonable baseball fan could argue that McGwire should have batted in the eighth inning last night."

I was sitting on a wood floor when I heard that, and my jaw dropped so fast and so far that I'm lucky I didn't split my chin open like a jack-o'-lantern the day after Halloween. I mean, jeez, people say that I'm arrogant. And I suppose that I can be, depending on which day of the week you catch me. But when it comes to arrogance, I can't touch Tim McCarver.

A fair percentage of you, the Constant Readers, are "reasonable baseball fans," and if there was a dominant theme to my e-mailbox yesterday, it was, "Why the hell didn't McGwire get into the game Sunday night?"

As you might remember, the Cardinals had two runners on base in the top of the eighth, and two outs. They trailed the Mets by four runs, and J.D. Drew was due up next.

With left-hander John Franco on the mound, La Russa wanted to replace Drew with a right-handed hitter. Made sense, as Drew was hopeless against lefty pitchers this season, and Franco shut down lefty hitters. If there was ever a match-up the Cardinals didn't want to see, this was one.

The problem here is that of all the players available to La Russa, Craig Paquette was perhaps the least likely to reach base. His OBP against left-handers this season was .286! OK, so maybe that was a fluke; after all, it came in only 125 plate appearances. Well, his OBP against righties was .297. If you need a baserunner, Paquette is not your man. (I don't think he should be on the roster at all, but that's another argument.)

Meanwhile, McGwire posted a .507 OBP versus lefties, and an .830 (!) slugging percentage. Yes, I know it was a tiny number of plate appearances (approximately 75), but it's not like he hasn't done this before. So let's say Big Mac hits a three-run homer -- and this was a distinct possibility even if Bobby Valentine had summoned Armando Benitez from the bullpen -- leaving the Cardinals still a run behind (10-9). Would that have been so awful?

This brings to mind one of those ultra-violent video games, where you've got a special grenade that will instantly destroy all the bad guys. Sure, you're going to die eventually, but why not take some of those bastards with you?

It always irks me when a great player -- usually, a visiting closer -- never gets into a game that his team loses, because the manager is waiting for a situation that never occurs. I'm reminded of what Leo Durocher said about saving a pitcher for tomorrow .. "Tomorrow? Hell, it might rain tomorrow."

Do I think La Russa screwed up? Yeah, I do.

Do I know La Russa screwed up? Hell no. But I do know that a reasonable baseball fan might question the tactics of even a genius manager.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 16
You knew things were going right for the Mariners, Sunday in the fifth inning, when Dan Wilson drew a walk. No, it wasn't a hit -- Wilson is now 2-for-57 with a .035 postseason average, which certainly is the worst in history for a player with that many at-bats -- but hey, at least he got to run the bases this time.

Things went so right for the Mariners, in fact, that another of Lou Piniella's bone-headed moves didn't keep the M's from extending the American League Championship Series. At the conclusion of Seattle's Division Series against Chicago, I wrote (or meant to write) that Piniella's love affair with "small ball" might eventually cost the M's a postseason game. And yesterday in the fifth, I was almost sure that Uncle Lou would make a genius out of me.

Mariners trailing 2-1, runners on first and second, nobody out. Mike Cameron, a right-handed hitter with some power, at the plate. What do you do? If you're Earl Weaver, you figure that your next three hitters, Cameron and Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez, give you three chances for a three-run homer. But if you're Lou Piniella, you figure that Alex Rodriguez and Edgar Martinez give you two chances for a two-run single. Because Cameron's going to sacrifice himself.

Sure enough, Cameron was bunting, even after the count went to two balls and no strikes. Now, bunting in this situation doesn't make a lot of sense when there's no count, but do you know how stacked the odds are in a hitter's favor when the count goes to 2-and-0?

It's substantial. In 1999, hitters hit .346 when ahead in the count and .208 when behind in the count. Throw in the platoon advantage and that it was 2-and-0, and you have to let Cameron swing the bat in that situation.

Instead, he bunted and Rodriguez followed with a two-run single to give Seattle the lead. So I suppose the bunt "worked," notwithstanding the fact that Edgar followed Alex's single with a homer, and Olerud followed Edgar's homer with a homer of his own. The Mariners scored five runs in the fifth, and they might have scored more if Piniella hadn't gifted Joe Torre with a free out.

Conversely, I loved Torre's decision to bring in Jeff Nelson to face Rodriguez. It didn't work out, obviously, but Nelson is the Yankees' best non-Rivera reliever, so why not use him with the game apparently on the line, no matter the inning? Despite Nelson's failure, my opinion of Torre went up a notch anyway. As a friend of mine likes to say, "Don't confuse the intelligence of decisions with their outcomes."

Dispatch from Section 326: As the Mariners were cruising to defeat in Game 3, a fan sitting near me said, "Oh well, we should be in pretty good shape tomorrow, considering Clemens' history in the postseason."

With all due respect to those who give big weight to small samples, there was absolutely no reason to expect Roger Clemens, the greatest pitcher of our time and the man with the second-lowest ERA in the American League this season, to pitch anything less than well in Game 4

Of course, he pitched a bit better than "well." He threw the seventh one-hitter in postseason history, and he just might have thrown the most overpowering game in postseason history. Of the aforementioned seven one-hitters, Clemens' featured the most strikeouts ... by seven. Due to the strikeouts, his game score, 98, is the highest in postseason history.

I don't have any personal feelings about Clemens, one way or the other. But I'm happy to see him do well in October -- a year ago, he pitched brilliantly in Game 4 of the World Series -- because it means that we won't spend the next 50 years having to listen to idiots blathering that Clemens, while a great regular-season pitcher, "always choked when it mattered."

Another good start or two in the World Series, and we'll never have to hear that again. And while I'm pulling for the Mariners in the ALCS, I felt lucky to be at the ballpark Saturday evening, watching a Hall of Fame pitcher at the top of his game.

In the sixth, I turned to my season-ticket partner, Scott Stone, and said, "OK, say it's a meaningless regular-season game. Do you want to see an enemy pitcher throw a no-hitter against the Mariners?"

Scott: "Does it have to be the Yankees?"

Me: "No, it can be anybody. It can be the Devil Rays if that makes you feel any better about it. You wanna see the no-hitter or not?"

Scott: "No, I don't think so. I'm enough of a homer to want to break it up."

So am I, but only when it comes to the Royals. I don't have any real emotional attachment to the Mariners, so I'd have been absolutely thrilled to see Clemens no-hit the Mariners, Yankees or no Yankees. League Championship Series last for a week, but no-hitters last forever, at least in one's memory.

Al Martin led off the top of the seventh with a line drive down the right-field line. At the time, we knew that it was the first hard-hit ball of the night for Mariners. What we didn't know was that if the ball had been an inch lower, or Tino Martinez an inch taller, Martin's liner would have gone down in the scorebook as nothing more than an L3.

After spending Games 3 and 4 in my accustomed seat, in the third row of the upper deck behind home plate, I stayed home for Game 5. Frankly, I just didn't want to be at Safeco if the Yankees clinched. Not because I hate the Yankees -- in fact, last week someone at the Rob Neyer message board called me "a Yankee lover" -- but rather because I didn't want to be in a big house with 45,000 sad people.

And mind you, most of them wouldn't have been all that distraught. After all, a fair number of the people in the Safeco stands have been fans for only five years, if not five days. I don't think I could handle the collective psychic distress of an elimination loss at someplace like Fenway Park, where the fans die a little death with each loss, whether it comes in April or September. And a loss in October, I can only imagine, must be something like the loss of an uncle. A good uncle.

All that said, now I'm wishing I'd have been at the ballpark, and not only because the Mariners won.

I arrived in Seattle shortly after Alex Rodriguez did, and though I'm almost exactly a decade older than he, in a way I feel like the two of us came of age together here in Seattle, him as a baseball player and me as a columnist. And seeing him in a uniform other than that of the Mariners will be like seeing Big Macs at Burger King, or a tutu on Tex Cobb.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 13
At 21, Rick Ankiel still calls to mind the character played by River Phoenix in "Stand By Me." And just as it's hard to avoid pitying a 12-year-old Little Leaguer who can't find the strike zone to save his life, my heart ached with every pitch that Ankiel fired to the backstop Thursday night.

In the postseason, starters are rarely allowed to lose a game all by themselves, and the Cardinals escaped the first inning with just a two-run deficit. They later came back and tied the contest twice before eventually losing, so at least Ankiel didn't take the loss.

Anyway, Ankiel's postseason performance leaves Tony La Russa in an unenviable position, in the unlikely event that the NLCS goes to seven games. As the Game 2 starter, Ankiel would also have been the likely Game 6 or 7 starter, but I would be shocked if we see him pitch again (late-innings mop-up duty notwithstanding).

Of course, I'd simply give Britt Reames the ball. He posted a 2.88 ERA during the regular season in 40.2 innings, and he's pitched even better in the playoffs. But though he's 27, there will presumably be some reluctance to start Reames, simply because he's a rookie.

Then again, worries about a Game 7 starter would be one of those "good problems to have." Given that teams down 0-2 in League Championship Series have gone 4-28, the Cardinals will need some luck just to reach a seventh game.

Early in Game 2 last night, one of the Fox broadcasters -? I think it might have been Bob Brenly, who's better in the stands, i.e. in small doses, than in the booth ?- opined that Edgardo Alfonzo just might be the best baseball player in New York. And when Alfonzo came to bat in the eighth, Joe Buck parroted that theory.

Uh, no offense to Alfonzo, who's obviously a fantastic player, but without checking I have to think that he ranks somewhere between No. 3 and No. 5.

                           OPS
                 Pos   2000   Career
Bernie Williams   CF    957     885
Derek Jeter       SS    897     862
Edgardo Alfonzo   2B    967     820
Mike Piazza        C   1012     972

No, OPS isn't perfect. It doesn't consider baserunning ... but Jeter stole 22 bases this season, Williams 15, while Alfonzo swiped only three (and was caught twice). So it's hard to see where Fonzie would have any advantage there. OPS also doesn't consider clutch hitting. And Alfonzo has done well with runners on base this year, and in the postseason, which of course the TV guys blow completely out of proportion. Yes, Alfonzo does get some extra credit, but this doesn't tell us anything about his fundamental abilities.

I promise you, if this were a debate tournament, I could construct a compelling argument for any of the four New York players listed above. But let's dispense with the rhetoric. Frankly, anyone who thinks that Alfonzo's a better player than Piazza ought to have his head examined by a team of skilled neurologists.

Piazza is simply the best-hitting catcher in the history of the game, and he's still near his peak. You can say what you want about Piazza's defense -? we've all trod that ground too many times -? but there's simply no way that his deficiencies, whatever they may be, drop him to the level of Alfonzo, who may or may not be a Hall of Famer someday.

You could certainly also argue that Jeter is more valuable than Alfonzo, given his superior career stats and his position. I'll not belabor this point, but ask yourself this: If you were drafting a team, which of these two would you rather have?

At this point, I hope that you Mets fans have already forgiven me for suggesting that Alfonzo is something less than the best player in New York, because I've written some mighty kind things about his teammate behind the plate.

That said, there's another New York catcher who just might be better than Alfonzo ...

                           OPS
                 Pos   2000   Career
Edgardo Alfonzo   2B    967     820
Jorge Posada       C    944     832

Do I really think that Posada's better than Alfonzo? No, not really. While Posada's 2000 OPS nearly matched Alfonzo, his career OPS is slightly better, and he plays a tougher position, this was Posada's first great season. Alfonzo's been consistently great for at least two years now, plus he's two years younger.

It's not a slam-dunk, though. And more to the point, I don't think anybody really knows just how good Posada was this year. I've heard people wonder how the Yankees survived this season, given the ineffectiveness of Messrs. Brosius, Martinez and O'Neill. Well, Jeter and Williams were both excellent, as usual. And Justice was awesome after coming over from the Indians. But from Opening Day to the last weekend, the single most valuable Yankee was Jorge Posada, and it's a shame that nobody seems to have noticed.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 12
Admit it.

When the Yankees loaded the bases in the bottom of the first, nobody out, you were thinking, "This time, these upstart Mariners are going to get their comeuppance. The Yanks'll score four or five runs now, and then El Duque will shut the M's down."

OK, maybe you weren't thinking that at all. I certainly was, though. Game 2 was 10 minutes old, and I'd already conceded the contest, if not the entire series, to the Bronx Bombers.

But if there's a single thing that makes sports great, it's that we don't know what's going to happen. There's no script. If there were a script, we would have seen the Yankees unleash Hell upon Halama, driving him from the mound with a fusillade of line drives and free passes.

If there were a script, Bernie Williams wouldn't have "hit" a tiny dribbler right in front of the plate, and Dan Wilson wouldn't have grabbed the ball, stepped on the plate to record one out, and thrown out Williams at first base to complete the easiest of double plays.

If there were a script, Tino Martinez wouldn't have grounded out to end the inning, yet another scoreless frame for the inexplicably non-explosive Bombers.

If there were a script, John Halama, who posted a 5.08 ERA this season, wouldn't have tossed six shutout innings at the defending World Champs.

And if there were a script, the Seattle bullpen, a big strength this season after years of ineptness, wouldn't have blown up in the eighth inning.

So yeah, the Yankees won Game 2, just like they were supposed to. But they didn't win the way they were supposed to, and that's why we watch the games ...

Early on, Joe Morgan observed, "Teams that play small ball will invariably have a better record in one-run games than the teams that depend on their sluggers."

"Invariably" is a strong word, but now that he's completed his work with ESPN for the season, perhaps I can question his wisdom. Anyway, the great majority of my baseball books are a continent away, so I don't have any way to check Morgan's comment on teams that play small ball. Speaking of theories, Bob Costas theorized that the Yankees, laden with players in their 30s, are simply tired. This is, again, a testable hypothesis.

If anyone's interested in running some numbers, and then writing up the results with some degree of brevity, I'd be happy to publish your work in this space. (However, be aware that if nine of you send me essays, at least seven of you will be rewarded with nothing but a note of thanks, no matter how brilliantly conceived those essays might be.)

In contrast with Game 2 of the ALCS, Game 1 of the NLCS went pretty much according to form. Everybody said the Cardinals would have trouble against the Mets' left-handed starters, and last night they indeed had a ton of trouble against Mike Hampton. Now St. Louis is in a precarious position, with the pitching matchup for Game 2 looking like the biggest postseason mismatch since Twins vs. Cardinals in 1987 ...

And of course, we all know how that one turned out. So who knows? Rick Ankiel just might throw a no-hitter. There's really no telling, because there's no scripting in baseball.

Another note on the talent: While flipping between the Cardinals vs. the Mets and Bush vs. Gore, it occurred to me that Tim McCarver is the Al Gore of broadcasting. Like Gore, McCarver is intelligent and opinionated, with a wondrous grasp of the details. And like Gore, McCarver is (at least on TV) overly smug, and prone to forced, mostly failed attempts at humor.

I want to like Tim McCarver, I really do. And a significant portion of the American electorate wants to like Al Gore, it really does. But all of us are having some problems getting past the public personalities.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11
I suppose that today the baseball columnists in the New York papers, and for that matter those in the Seattle papers, will attribute last night's result to a difference in character or effort between the two clubs, but let history remember that if Justice's drive to center field in the sixth inning had traveled eight or nine more feet, the Yankees would likely have won the game.

Let history also remember that if Posada's drive down the right-field line in the ninth inning had landed fair rather than foul, the Yankees would likely have won the game. In fact, I suspect the Yankees actually hit the baseball "better" than the Mariners did. So while the M's clearly have the edge now (if they didn't already), I'm not writing off the Bombers until they're down two games.

Not much to second-guess in last night's game. I thought Freddy Garcia should have been lifted after the sixth inning, when he got in a jam and had to make some big pitches to escape it. But Piniella allowed Garcia to face two Yankees in the bottom of the seventh, and he retired both of them with apparent ease. And then with Luis Sojo due up, Piniella summoned Jose Paniagua. Joe Morgan surmised that Piniella made the change because Sojo had already collected a pair of hits, but Costas correctly noted that neither of Sojo's bingles were exactly ringing line drives. Piniella's actually been careful with his starters this season (note to self: find out who's behind this unexpected turn of events), and Garcia was lifted after throwing 103 pitches.

Pinch-hitting Glenallen Hill for Paul O'Neill in the eighth certainly might be considered an unorthodox move, especially given that O'Neill slugged .462 against left-handed pitchers this season (but just .410 against righties). And Arthur Rhodes has actually been slightly more effective this season against right-handed hitters (though it's also true that he only faced 122 left-handed hitters, and there's a selection process there, because some of the crummy left-handed hitters were undoubtedly benched at the sight of Rhodes.) Of course, Hill's been pretty good this season.

There's a sabermetrical question here, too. Actually, two of them. First, what happens to a player's performance when he's pinch-hitting rather than taking his normal turn in the lineup? The Conventional Wisdom says that pinch-hitting results in a drop in performance. Second (and problematically), what happens to a player's performance when he's asked to pinch-hit against a power pitcher in chilly weather?

All things considered, you have to assume Joe Torre knows his players better than we do. At least in this case.

A few words on postseason excitement: As a baseball fan, I am a product of my youth. I realized this last night, as I was barely able to watch the bottom of the ninth inning, so tense I was. Last week, I attended Game 3 of the Division Series in Seattle, and despite the ensuing dramatics, I never did quite feel like I was watching a postseason game.

In my heart, I just can't get worked up over the Division Series, just as I'm sure that many baseball fans who grew up in the 1950s and '60s were never quite able to get excited about the League Championship Series. But of course, it's those same LCS that now have me excited to wake up every morning this week.

A few words on the broadcasters: Was anyone else disoriented at the sound of Skip Caray calling games that didn't involve the Braves? During the Division Series, Caray filled in for Bob Costas, who apparently returned from Australia via tramp steamer. And I can't help but wonder if it felt as strange to him as it did to me.

Speaking of strange, I'm not quite used to the fact that, beginning next October, there will be no Jon Miller or Bob Costas or Joe Morgan. With all due respect to the broadcasters employed by Fox, you can't take that much talent out of the mix and not have the broadcasts suffer.

I'll miss Costas the most, as we'll still get our helping of Jon and Joe most Sunday nights during the baseball season. Yes, I know that Costas isn't perfect, but I'll maintain, until my dying day, that he's one of the best play-by-play men of our time. Early in last night's game, for example, he said, "People talk about Rickey Henderson as the greatest leadoff hitter in history. But really, he's gotta be one of the 25 or 30 greatest non-pitchers ever."

That's actually an understatement, but does contradict the Conventional Wisdom. I won't get into the argument here -- I have devoted at least a few columns to Henderson's place in history -- but I did want to commend Costas for daring to question the CW.

Costas also pointed out one of the most interesting scenes I've ever seen during a baseball broadcast. Near the end of the Mariners' half of the ninth, we briefly glimpsed at the Yankee bullpen. There, limbering up their right arms were both Dwight Gooden and David Cone, two of the most talented pitchers of this or any other era. Sadly, though, it's unlikely that we'll see either of them in a key situation this month, and one can't help but wonder why Cone is eligible to play. This year, the Yankees probably are not good enough to waste a roster spot like this.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 10
Yesterday, we discussed Rule 6.06. Well, here's another rule regarding The Batter ...

6.02(a) The batter shall take his position in the batter's box promptly when it is his time at bat
(b) The batter shall not leave his position in the batter's box after the pitcher comes to Set Position, or starts his windup.
PENALTY: If the pitcher pitches, the umpire shall call "Ball" or "Strike," as the case may be.
... Umpires will not call "Time" at the request of the batter or any member of his team once the pitcher has started his windup or has come to a set position even though the batter claims "dust in his eyes," "steamed glasses," "didn't get the sign" or for any other cause.
Umpires may grant a hitter's request for "Time" once he is in the batter's box, but the umpire should eliminate hitters walking out of the batter's box without reason. If umpires are not lenient, batters will understand that they are in the batter's box and they must remain there until the ball is pitched.

Of course, the umpires are lenient. Exceptionally lenient. I would list the players who violate this rule with great frequency, but the list of players who do not regularly violate rule 6.02(b) is far shorter.

Last week, Commissioner Bud noted that, despite MLB's best "efforts," the time of a typical major-league game went up again this year, to nearly three hours. Selig suggested that, with a new labor agreement with the umpires in place, a more vigorous enforcement of the rules might finally result in shorter games.

Methinks that Commissioner Bud is being, at best, a bit disingenuous about this subject. When he talks about the ever-increasing length of games, somehow he always neglects to mention one of the single biggest reasons for the increase: the commercial breaks between innings have gotten longer and longer. It's now, what, two-and-a-half minutes? Back in the 1950s, it was less than a minute. Do the math -- in a nine-inning game, there are either 16 or 17 breaks between half-innings -- and you'll quickly realize just how much difference it makes. (And while those two-and-a-half minutes pass quickly when you're watching at home -- plenty of time for a visit to the head, or the refrigerator, or another game -- when you're at the ballpark those two-and-a-half minutes can seem interminable, especially if the team uses that time to play some horrible pop song.)

Commissioner Bud doesn't mention another big reason, which of course is the ever-increasing offense. Now, we can go round and round about that, but Commissioner Bud certainly can't argue that Major League Baseball has made any efforts, any at all, to limit offensive production. There's no policy regarding steroids, and there's no policy addressing the tendency to build new ballparks with dimensions resembling Twiggy's.

That said, enforcement of Rule 6.02 might well shave off a few minutes per game, or more in games involving Rickey Henderson. But there's another rule that the umpires might be convinced to enforce ...

2.00-Definitions of Terms.
... The STRIKE ZONE is that area over home plate the upper limit of which is a horizontal line at the midpoint between the top of the shoulders and the top of the uniform pants, and the lower level is a line at the hollow beneath the knee cap ...

Sandy Alderson has suggested that the strike zone will be addressed after this season, but after watching the umpires do whatever they hell they wanted for so many years, I'm not going to believe anything until I see it. But at least now there is hope. The umpires' new uniforms are quite attractive, and we'll apparently be spared those hideous red tunics seen the last few years. But fashion is but a trifle compared to The Rules and the Regulations. If Alderson can make a difference there, perhaps he deserves a plaque in Cooperstown someday.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 9
Saturday morning, while walking down to my favorite bagel place for breakfast, I happened upon two honor boxes, one containing the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the other containing The Seattle Times. I'm never quite sure which to buy, but this time I gave my 50 cents to the P-I because it devoted nearly the entire front page to the Mariners' Game 3 victory over the White Sox.

While munching my bagel and slurping my fruit smoothie, I read all the stories and columns about Game 3, initially amused, then bemused.

On the way home, I spent another half-dollar, this time on The Times. And as I read Larry Stone's column and Bob Finnigan's gamer and Steve Kelley's column and Bob Sherwin's feature, and more, my bemusement turned to disbelief and, finally, a fair measure of disgust.

Together, the two newspapers published four columns and 13 other stories about Game 3. Thousands and thousands of words. Yet somehow, some way, the editors of these two fine newspapers couldn't find the space for a single word on this most salient of facts: Carlos Guillen's game-winning bunt was performed illegally.

If you watched ESPN, you know what I'm talking about. In the bottom of the ninth inning, the Mariners had runners on first and third, one out and the game tied. Guillen, bunting on his own (although Lou Piniella had told him to push the ball towards first baseman Frank Thomas), bunted the ball so hard that it snuck through the infield, Rickey Henderson trotting home with the decisive run.

The problem was -- or should have been, if the umpire had done his job -- that Guillen's left foot was sitting atop the plate when his bat made contact with the baseball, and the rules are quite clear about this:

6.06 A batter is out for illegal action when ...

(a) He hits a ball with one or both feet on the ground entirely outside the batter's box. If a batter hits a ball fair or foul while out of the batter's box, he shall be called out ...

The replay left absolutely no doubt in my mind that Guillen, rather than becoming a hero, should have been called out. When ball hit bat, a goodly portion of his left foot was touching the plate, and even if you assume that the batter's box extends upward from the ground, like a goal line in football, there's no way that Guillen's left foot was in any part of the batter's box.

But as I said, there was nary a mention of Rule 6.06 in the Seattle newspapers. And in response, I was taking my gloves off and baring my fangs, in anticipation of taking those baseball writers to task for ignorance at best, or naked provincialism at worst.

And then I checked the Chicago papers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, on the Internet. Lo and behold, neither of those proud institutions mentioned Rule 6.06, either. Now, it strains credulity to presume that none of the professional sports journalists employed by The Times or the P-I or the Tribune or the Sun-Times watched SportsCenter on Friday night. So instead, I am led to the inescapable conclusion that Rule 6.06 has no meaning, that its non-enforcement is so common and blatant that such non-enforcement, even in a game that decides a postseason series, is non-newsworthy.

(Before I let my colleagues off the hook, though, I have to take them to task for completely missing the point of the Mariners-White Sox series. Despite what you might have read if you live in Seattle or Chicago, we did not learn that the M's have more character than the Sox, nor did we learn that Lou Piniella is a genius. We did learn that the Mariners are, perhaps, a slightly better team than the White Sox. And we learned that there's a lot of luck involved in baseball. By my count, five balls scorched by Sox hitters resulted in five outs. And while the Mariner fielders certainly played a part in those outs, Lady Luck did more than her share, too.)

A few random postseason notes

As a number of readers pointed out, the last pitcher to start three games in one World Series -- or any series, for that matter -- was Jack Morris in 1991. But as a few other readers pointed out, only two World Series in the 1990s even lasted seven games.

However, I would still argue that it's more difficult for a single pitcher to dominate a postseason than it once was, due to the simple fact that while an ace may well start 42.9 percent of his team's World Series games, he certainly will not have started 42.9 of his team's postseason games. The schedule simply won't allow it. These days, it certainly does behoove a team to have at least three quality starters. As we saw with the Red Sox in 1999, one ace simply isn't enough.

The Mets' and Mariners' Division Series victories have been, or presumably will be, billed as upsets, because the Giants and White Sox entered the postseason with the best regular-season records in their respective leagues. However, I cannot classify the Mariners' victory an upset (though of course the sweep could not have been reasonably predicted), for two reasons.

One, according to the Pythagorean method, the M's and Sox might both have been expected to win 93 games (same as the A's, by the way). That the Mariners won 91 and the Sox 95 is statistically insignificant. Two, the White Sox entered the series with their pitching rotation in a shambles, and for that reason alone the Mariners should actually have been favored going in.

Speaking of the Mariners, their fascination with the sacrifice bunt may cost them a game this month. On the final day of the regular season, Jay Buhner, who had homered in his previous at-bat and has only two sacrifices since 1995, laid down an ugly bunt (apparently his own decision) that resulted in the lead runner being forced at second base. And then Friday afternoon, Alex Rodriguez also sacrificed. In the fourth inning. No, not Alex Gonzalez. Alex Rodriguez. The guy who hit 41 home runs this season. Rodriguez later suggested that he'd been bunting for a base hit, on his own. But it sure did look like a sacrifice to me. All this bunting is, I suppose, symptomatic of "teamwork," but the most effective teamwork comes when two guys get on base, and then somebody like Alex Rodriguez hits the ball out of the park.

Bobby Jones' one-hit shutout Sunday just might constitute the greatest start by a No. 5 starter in postseason history. Of course, that's something of a dubious distinction, because No. 5 starters simply don't start postseason games. And that this No. 5 starter did start a postseason game is a stupendous feather in Bobby Valentine's ball cap.

Most of us would, I suspect, enjoy seeing a World Series that doesn't include a team from New York. That said, the baseball fan in me would be more than a little thrilled if both New York teams wound up in the Series. Yes, the media coverage would go from annoying to obnoxious to completely unbearable ... but only if you let it. This would be a great story, if you're careful. If the Yankees and Mets do face off, I'll have some hints on how best to enjoy the first Subway Series since 1956.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 6
Still trying to figure the odds of both Maddux and Glavine getting plastered in consecutive games, and what would happen if Armando Benitez and Barry Bonds ever faced off with a postseason game on the line.

But in the meantime, I've got some postseason-related email ...

Hey, Rob... Something has always [ticked] me off about the postseason, and I'm wondering what you think of it. It drives me crazy that a combination of various factors allows the teams in the postseason to shorten their pitching rotations to three starters. The result is that postseason play bears little resemblance to the regular season, and probably doesn't end up being indicative of which team truly has the best roster and/or maximizes the potential of its complete roster. Teams that spent all year moaning about the lack of fifth starters (and even fourth starters) are suddenly able to conceal that hole in their roster. Baseball is a game of endurance, attrition, and long-term averages. It seems to me that the postseason should be a continuation of the same principles. The teams should be forced to play virtually every day -- as they do all year -- and therefore employ their full pitching rotation or at most shorten it to four. What do you think? Michael Ireton

I'm of two minds about this, Michael. In principle, I agree with you. Baseball really is the only sport, to my knowledge, where the game is fundamentally altered in the postseason. In the regular season, your fifth starter is fairly important, and your fourth starter might throw 200 innings. Then October rolls around, and suddenly there's no such thing as a fifth starter, and the No. 4 starter is often merely a figment of his own imagination. This has been a factor in Atlanta's postseason failures, I would argue, because they have always invest a fair amount of their financial resources in the bottom of the rotation, only to have those pitchers play lesser roles in October.

So yes, I would prefer it if the postseason better mirrored the regular season. But you know, it's always been this way. Baseball has always rewarded teams with great ace starters in October. In fact, that was more true in the old days -- that is, before 1970 -- than it is now. Does anyone remember the last time a pitcher started three games in a single World Series? I don't, but I know it happened more than once in the 1960s, when a horse like Bob Gibson could practically win a Series all by himself.

But yeah, the game in October isn't close enough to the game in September.

Hi Rob, I'm sure this is an old subject, but I though I'd broach it since it's that time of year. Jayson Stark's recent column brings up the subject of the length of the Division Series. It's interesting, in part, because he quotes rockin' Leo Mazzone saying how he hates the shortness of the five-game Division Series, feeling that if your team doesn't win, the whole season can feel wasted. Coming from Leo, who seems like a very likeable guy, I suspect that it's a real issue among players and managers. I just don't understand why there can't be some kind of compromise between MLB and the media to allow for a best-of-seven Division Series. Baseball is supposed to be like a marathon, right? Long and steady, like the seasons of life. So why end it with a 50-yard dash, like a thunder storm passing in the night? Thanks, JB

Ah, similes. I might not be poetic enough to come up with them myself, but at least I can use them when provided by correspondents. Anyway, I agree with you, JB, a best-of-five series really isn't long enough. And it's not just you, me, and Leo Mazzone that feel this way. Recently, George Steinbrenner told USA Today's Hal Bodley, "I've never been in favor of a five-game series. It's unfair. We can afford to take an extra two or three days off the season and add two games to the Division Series."

And according to Bodley, "[m]ost general managers favor expanding the Division Series."

But how do you do that? There are two solutions here, both of them quite practical.

One, the season could be shortened by a week, to 154 or 156 games. For that matter, you could shorten it by a week and still play 162 games, but that would require fewer days off and/or scheduled doubleheaders, and nobody's going for either of those.

But if you subtract a week from the regular season, then you've obviously got plenty of time for a best-of-seven Division Series.

Two, you could simply eliminate the off-days built into the current Division Series schedule. I mean, if you think about it, exactly why are those off-days there? During the regular season -- and yes, this relates to the previous letter -- teams play many days in a row, and nobody thinks anything about it. But suddenly October arrives, and we need a "travel day"?

Right now, the schedule works perfectly for the TV networks, who prefer to have four World Series games on the weekend. This means the League Championship Series must both end by the Thursday before the World Series begins. Now that I think about this, it's going to start getting complicated if I get into all the scheduling issues. Suffice to say, the best-of-seven Division Series should start the Tuesday after the regular season ends, and nobody should get a day off.

Problem solved, and you can send my check c/o ESPN.

Rob - I am a Cards fan and Mets hater. That said, your section about the Mets winning 90+ games this season, after you predicted less, sounded fairly petty. I don't care if the Mets should have won only 60 games this season based upon talent, run differential, offensive winning percentage, or a blind guess after throwing a dart at a board. The fact is that the Mets did win 94 games. And to say anything to the contrary diminishes your credibility. What the Mets fans were probably hoping to see was a mea culpa on your part. You guessed, based upon your criteria and assumptions, what you thought the Mets would accomplish this season. There is no reason to apologize for your opinion. But your comment almost sounds like the Mets (and Mets fans) don't deserve to have a column written about their year (after your alleged promise) because even though they actually won 94 games, they deserved to win less. Not a very strong argument, to say the least. If someone else wrote it, how would you critique the statement? MRA

A number of you took umbrage at my comment on the Mets; so many of you, in fact, that I was pelted by pangs of self-doubt ... but they didn't even sting, and eventually they gave up, and went in search of more sensitive prey.

Look, two years ago when the Giants and Cubs faced off in a one-game playoff for the National League wild card, Barry Bonds came up in the late innings with his team trailing and runners on base. This would be his chance to finally answer those who said he couldn't get the job done when the real pressure was on.

I don't remember the score, don't remember how many Giants were on base, don't remember who was pitching. What I do remember is that Bonds absolutely killed a pitch, hit the ball right on the screws (as they say). He could hardly have hit the ball harder ... but he also could hardly have hit the ball straighter to Sammy Sosa, who made the easy-for-a-major-leaguer catch.

Now, if you ask Bonds about that at-bat, he would presumably express regret that his line drive didn't find a gap in the outfield, or the right-field bleachers, or Sheffield Avenue. But Bonds knows, or at least I hope he knows, that he did his job. Eight or nine times out of 10, you hit the ball that hard and you're going to be rewarded with a hit.

And frankly, when I predicted that the Mets would win 88 games this season, I did my job. The Mets scored 807 runs and allowed 738, and eight or nine times out of 10, a team that scores 807 runs and allows 738 will finish with something very close to 88 wins. I can't do any better than that, and to be honest, I feel better about this prediction than I'd feel if, for example, the Mets actually did win 88 games, but "should have won" 94 according to their run differential.

As for the Mets fans wanting a mea culpa ... well jeez, I already wrote that column. Wrote it a few weeks ago, when it seemed fairly apparent that the Mets would indeed exceed 90 victories. And to tell you the truth, I feel sorry for any Mets fans who don't consider this season complete without a mea culpa from a silly ol' sportswriter. Your team won 94 games and still has a chance to win the World Series. Enjoy it magnanimously, because most of us are not so lucky.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5
There are some guys you just gotta pull for.

One of those guys, at least for me, is Kevin Appier.

I know I've written about Appier before, but it's been a couple years so I hope you'll indulge me. A half-century from now, very few baseball fans will remember Appier, and that's really a shame, because in the 1990s he was one of the game's very best pitchers. Even today, very few people know this, because Appier toiled for one of baseball's worst teams, and he was afflicted with poor luck on top of that.

Appier's career can be roughly divided into three phases: Cy Young ability (1990-1993), All-Star ability (1994-1997) and post-injury (1998-2000). The latter of those isn't much fun to look at, but here are the first two:

            ERA  Record   Pct
1990-1993  2.80   58-34  .630
1994-1997  3.66   45-40  .529

Had Appier pitched for a contending team or been blessed with just decent luck, he would certainly have won even more games than he did. In that 1990-1993 period, he started 119 games (and relieved in 11 others), but recorded only 58 victories. At the time, it always seemed to me like Appier simply couldn't finish, but he actually completed 17 of those starts, and he threw his fair share of innings. In 1993, Appier led the American League with a 2.56 ERA, not that anybody noticed. He also threw 238 innings that season, a career high, and perhaps it's not a coincidence that he's never been quite as good since.

Still, Appier remained a fine pitcher, even as his Royals were sinking ever deeper into mediocrity. His run support became something of a sick joke, reaching its nadir in 1997, when Appier went 9-13 in 34 starts, despite a 3.40 ERA that ranked seventh in the American League. The eight other pitchers who finished in the top 10 in ERA and pitched at least 200 innings all won at least 15 games. Appier won nine.

Appier missed most of 1998 with a shoulder injury, but after going 15-11 this season -- yes, this year Appier finally found some teammates who can hit -- his career record is 136-105. That works out to a fine .564 winning percentage. He coulda been a contender for the Hall of Fame, rather than merely an idol of the aficionados. Speaking of which, authors of the 2000 edition of "Baseball Prospectus" dubbed Appier "the unluckiest starter of the decade."

And so Wednesday night, at the conclusion of his 12th season as a major leaguer, and his first season in the new decade, Kevin Appier finally pitched in a postseason game. He didn't pitch particularly well, but of course it would have taken a shutout to beat Andy Pettitte and the Yankees. It is enough, perhaps, that Appier finally got his chance on the national stage, before God and McCarver and everybody.

Next subject: Eric Chavez vs. Andy Pettitte.

Over the last two seasons, Chavez batted .193 in 171 at-bats against left-handed pitchers. Yes, I know that batting average doesn't tell the whole story, so let me tell you that over that same span, Chavez hit three home runs and drew 16 walks against lefties. The walks are actually healthy enough, but of course those three home runs are barely better than no home runs at all.

And those 171 at-bats are a fairly hefty sample size. Hefty enough to tell us that Chavez is fundamentally a .193 hitter against left-handed pitchers? I'm not at all sure about that. Over those same two seasons, Chavez batted .283 against right-handed pitchers. That's a huge platoon split, or at least larger than normal, and there's some evidence that differences like that are generally due to luck rather than ability. As the theory goes, if you keep sending Chavez out there to face the southpaws, eventually he'll have a "normal" platoon split.

And I think I buy that argument. But there are also people who say you can "learn" to hit left-handers. To that, I would answer, "October's not the month for learning." And if Chavez really is a .193 hitter against lefties, then he shouldn't have been in the lineup against Pettitte. I know the Athletics are short of righty bats, but you've got to have an infielder who can play third base (Frank Menechino, where are you?).

And finally, just as we saw something we'd never seen before on Tuesday (a manager calling timeout so he could personally instruct one of his players to steal second base), last night we saw something else we'd never seen before: a second baseman tripping over his own feet, and falling on his keister, while trying to make the most routine play a second baseman has to make.

And the very next batter hit a bad-hop grounder the third baseman, who stopped the ball with his bare hand before recording an assist to snuff out a rally. I don't know if October brings out the worst and the best in players, but sometimes it does seem that way.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 4
When it comes to the postseason, there are two words that keep springing, or falling, into my head: sample size.

Case in point ... Yesterday, just a few minutes before the Braves-Cardinals game, one of the most intelligent analysts I know sent me the following words: "How can La Russa even think of playing Polanco or Paquette in lieu of Tatis? If he does, it will set in stone my well-known opinion of Sir Tony!"

To which I responded, "If anyone plays third base except Tatis, that's of course crazy. But you know and I know that in a short series, it wouldn't make that much of a difference. And as you know, there's a chance that Paquette could hit a home run and make La Russa look like the genius that he isn't."

So what happened? La Russa started Placido Polanco at third base and he went 3-for-4.

Is La Russa a genius? Hell, I don't know. Maybe he is, maybe he isn't. The point I'm trying to make is that one game doesn't tell us anything. The sample size is too small, and if it's my team, Fernando Tatis is out there nearly every day, "slump" or no "slump."

(Another third baseman, Oakland's Eric Chavez, entered postseason play after finishing the regular season 0-for-16. All he did last night was go 3-for-4.)

It was interesting, though. With the Cardinals leading the Braves 6-0 after two innings, Jon Miller and Buck Martinez -- two of my favorites, by the way -- discussed the intelligence of starting Rick Ankiel in Game 1. But after Ankiel blew up in the top of the third -- five wild pitches! -- neither Miller nor Martinez suggested that perhaps starting Ankiel wasn't the brightest move after all.

The White Sox didn't beat the Mariners in the day's second game, but it certainly wasn't because their defense let them down. The Sox flashed their leather more than a few times, and after Ray Durham and Jose Valentin turned a smart double play in the third inning, Chris Berman shouted, "Who says the White Sox can't play defense?"

To which I shouted back at the TV, "You did!"

I didn't mean Berman in particular. In fact, earlier in the game he and Sutcliffe had mentioned that the White Sox turned 190 double plays this season, a huge number. No, by "You" I meant the media in general.

I'm not saying the White Sox are a good defensive club. I've not done anywhere near the analysis necessary to make such a determination. What I do know is that team fielding percentage isn't enough evidence to justify an indictment of the Sox fielders. What I also know is that the White Sox allowed 839 runs this season, seventh-fewest in the American League and only 26 runs from the No. 3 spot. And given that the pitching staff wasn't exactly populated by a host of Cy Young candidates, it's quite possible that the guys wearing the gloves and mitts were more a help than a hindrance. If we can get over this sick fascination with errors and fielding percentage, we'll be better for it.

Same game, I saw something that I've certainly never seen before. Mike Cameron led off the top of the 10th with a single/walk. Rick Sutcliffe immediately speculated that, with the score tied and Keith Foulke -- who isn't too good at holding runners -- on the mound, Cameron would be given the green light to steal second base.

Foulke threw two pitches to Alex Rodriguez (who flied out), and Cameron didn't set sail for second (Foulke also threw over to first several times). Next up, Edgar Martinez. Foulke's first pitch to Martinez was a ball, and that's when I saw the thing I'd never seen before.

Lou Piniella popped out of the dugout, called time out, walked over to first base, and apparently told Cameron that the sign he'd been getting -- right hand touching the bill of the cap, left hand wiped across the chest, right index finger up the nose, whatever -- really did mean that Cameron should steal at his first opportunity.

At least that's what Jerry Manuel thought Piniella told Cameron, because Foulke's next pitch was a pitchout. Cameron didn't budge, though (according to Sutcliffe, Cameron may well have "read" the pitchout). That made the count two balls and no strikes on Martinez. Cameron did steal on the next pitch, a called strike ... and then Martinez mooted the entire incident with a home run over the left-field fence.

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 3
Just a few random notes on the teams that are still alive ...

One of the stranger things this season was the odd performance of Reggie Sanders during the regular season, and I think that he simply wasn't healthy for most of the year. I mean, Sanders has never been a great player, but he's always been a very good player. So how else to explain his .194 batting average through the end of August?

Sanders batted .409 and hit five homers in September. The Braves have often suffered in October because of a weak bench, but that certainly shouldn't be a problem this time. When your fourth outfielder is B.J. Surhoff and your fifth outfielder is Bobby Bonilla, you're going to have some options in the late innings of the close games, and that's something that Bobby Cox has rarely had before.

No matter what happens from this point, I sincerely hope history remembers just how much the Athletics accomplished this season. The A's finished a half-game ahead of the Mariners, despite spending approximately $25 million less on player salaries. The A's won four more games than the Yankees, despite spending approximately $70 million less on player salaries.

And that's what makes the Oakland-New York series so intriguing. Both clubs are run by intelligent general managers, and both organizations stress on-base percentage. But of course there's a huge chasm between the two clubs financially. If the A's beat the Yankees, it will be at least a symbolic victory for those who continue to argue that money isn't everything.

Of course, the class of the American League looks like the White Sox; after all, they won four more games than anyone else, and probably could have won a few more if they had needed to. But the Sox don't have a single starting pitcher who scares you, and there's an unsubstantiated notion in the back of my mind that a postseason team without an ace is a postseason team that's in trouble. Then again, the Mariners don't really have one of those guys, either. In fact, the Sox and M's seem evenly matched to an extreme. Neither club has great defense or a spectacular rotation, but the White Sox led the AL in run production and the Mariners ranked No. 4.

I've already gotten a few notes from Mets fans, demanding to see the column I said I'd write if the Mets won more than 90 games this season. The problem is that I already wrote that column, a few weeks ago when it was fairly apparent that the Mets would indeed win more games than I thought they would.

And the other problem is that the Mets really aren't that good. I know that sounds like sour grapes, but it's not. Two of my best friends dearly love the Mets, so I really can enjoy their successes. But based on their runs scored and allowed, the Mets are really just a 88-win team, and not the 94-win team that you see in the standings.

As you've no doubt heard, Mike Matheny sliced one of his fingers with a hunting knife, and won't play again this year. This obviously damages the Cardinals' chances ... but how much? Yesterday, one of my favorite writers described Matheny as "a tough out," but that seems like a strange label for a guy with a .317 on-base percentage. And yeah, Matheny's great at shutting down the opposition running game, which might be important if (1) this were 1985 rather than 2000, and (2) postseason series were won and lost on the basepaths. Yes, of course the Cards would be better off with Matheny than the two-headed catching monster known as "Carlos Hernandez and Eli Marrero." But if they don't beat the Braves, it's very unlikely that the absence of Matheny will be the reason.

And finally, I saw a humorous note yesterday in a certain newspaper that's widely available across this great land of ours ...

Houston: The Astros became the first professional sports franchise in the state of Texas to draw more than 3 million fans. The Astros drew their 27th sellout crowd of 42,161, totaling 3,020,581.

Sounds impressive, until you think about it for more than, oh, two or three seconds. What does "professional sports franchise" mean? Baseball, football, basketball, hockey. Football teams play eight home games, in stadiums that hold between 60,000 and 70,000 fans. So the upper limit there is barely more than half a million in a season. NBA and NHL teams play 41 home games, in arenas that hold in the neighborhood of 20,000 fans. So the upper limit there is less than a million fans. And the rest of this little essay, you can figure out for yourself.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 2
One of the things I find most enjoyable about this time of year is the overwrought prose that sprouts up in the sports pages, like the mold in my refrigerator after I've been traveling for a couple of weeks.

Case in point, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer on Saturday morning, on the aftermath of the Mariners' 9-3 loss Friday night in Anaheim. As John Hickey wrote,"For the second time in as many days, the Mariners' pitching got mauled in a game the Mariners simply had to win ... The Mariners have two games left in the season. Two must-wins."

Why, exactly, did the Mariners have to win Friday night? They didn't win, yet still owned a one-game lead over Cleveland entering the last two (scheduled) days of the regular season.

So Friday's game wasn't a "must-win," because the Mariners would still clinch a postseason berth with wins on Saturday and Sunday -- and that's exactly what happened. Friday's game wasn't a "must-win," because the Mariners would still clinch a postseason berth with any combination of Seattle wins and Cleveland losses that reached two. Friday's game wasn't a "must-win" because even if the Mariners had lost a game in the standings over the weekend, they'd still have played Cleveland in a one-game playoff (assuming the A's didn't collapse).

Anyway, it's now obvious that the Mariners didn't have to win Friday night, because of course they did not win, yet somehow they're still playing baseball. And it's also obvious that the "two games left in the season" were not "must-wins."

Hickey's a decent writer, so let's blame this silliness on his editor (who I probably won't ever meet). But like I said, the pressure of a pennant race does strange things to baseball writers. And it does strange things to managers, too. Yesterday, Art Howe did something that he probably hasn't done all season. With runners on second and third and one out in the fifth inning of a 0-0 game, Howe instructed his infielders to play in with Scarborough Green at the plate. It was something of a strange move, looking to prevent one run, given that the Athletics have scored nearly six per game this season. It worked, though, as Green hit an easy grounder right to Randy Velarde at second base, who threw out Mike Lamb at the plate, and Tim Hudson wound up getting out of the inning with no damage.

That reminds me, has anybody talked to Steve Lyons lately? Nine days ago, I happened to hear him say that the A's would eventually fall short in their bid for a pennant, because "it's pitching and defense that wins pennants." Now, Lyons is certainly "entertaining," but he doesn't get the label "intelligent" until he reaches the fairly obvious conclusion that hitting might win a few pennants, too.

Unfortunately for all of us who watch TV, Lyons is just one of many "analysts" who propagate this tripe, and by God they're not going to let the successes of the White Sox and Athletics convince them otherwise. However, if the A's keep winning 90-odd games every season with the formula that Billy Beane has concocted, even psychos like Lyons might eventually figure it out.

I don't honestly know what to make of the Yankees' recent slide. As you've heard, their seven-game losing streak to end the season is the longest ever by a team heading into postseason play. However, the rational part of my brain tells me that unless the struggles of the Yankee pitchers are due to injury, then the losing streak probably shouldn't be considered a serious problem, and perhaps it shouldn't be considered a problem at all.

That said, those seven losses do count, and at this point it would be silly to consider the Yankees the favorites, as many of us did a week or two ago. They finished with 87 wins, fifth-most in the American League: not a lot for a team hoping to win a World Series, and four fewer than both Oakland and Seattle. And they'll be the road team in both the Division and Championship Series, which doesn't help, either.

The following's got nothing at all to do with October baseball, but I've got to clear up something related to a past column. As you surely remember, Mark McGwire recently opened a few games listed at odd positions -- shortstop and second base -- then exited after the top of the first inning, having never actually taken the field defensively. The true oddity, I noted at the time, was that McGwire would forever be listed in the record books with games played at those positions, just as Lou Gehrig is credited with a game at shortstop in 1934, though he didn't actually "play" shortstop.

What I didn't mention in that column was Earl Weaver had made a habit of such shenanigans when he managed the Orioles in the 1970s. As Weaver remembered in his classic book, "Weaver on Strategy":

This is something I did in September of 1975. Mark Belanger was a .220 hitter for me during most of his career, but he was also the greatest defensive shortstop I have ever seen. I spent some time trying to figure out how I could get the best of both worlds -- a good bat and Belanger's amazing glove. I came up with this plan, which is still legal.
When my team was on the road, I would list someone else as our leadoff hitter and shortstop. Often it was Royle Stillman, a young outfielder we had brought up from Rochester. Stillman would bat in the top of the first, and then Belanger would go in to play shortstop in the bottom of the inning. For the rest of the game, Belanger was the leadoff hitter and shortstop. But I did manage to get that one at bat from an effective hitter. What's more, Stillman was four for nine in those games.

By the time the 1976 season rolled around, there was a new rule in place. Henceforth, though a player might be listed at a certain position in the starting lineup, he would not receive official credit for playing that position unless he actually took the field at that position. So my earlier column notwithstanding, Mark McGwire will not forever be listed as a shortstop in the record books (at least not unless he loses a lot of weight).

Strangely enough, Royle Stillman's not listed as a shortstop in the record books, either. I've not yet been able to figure out exactly why, but some have suggested that the 1976 rule was applied, though unofficially, to Stillman in 1975. But why Gehrig still is listed as a shortstop for one game in 1934, I cannot tell you.

On a similarly obscure subject, a few weeks ago when I was at Safeco Field, I ran across the following among the game notes distributed by the Mariners:

SCORING CHANGE ... there has been a scoring change from the game on Aug. 18 in Cleveland ...in the third inning, a ball hit by Travis Fryman to Carlos Guillen, playing third, which was ruled an error, then changed to a hit, has been changed back, to an error on Guillen ... the change causes Paul Abbott's ERA to drop from 4.19 to 4.08, and Guillen now has 18 errors instead of 17 errors ...

Like you, I have always heard that a scoring decision may be changed, but within roughly 24 hours, or perhaps before the first pitch of the team's next game. But in this case, the final decision was made 25 days later; the original error was charged on August 18, it was changed to a hit on August 19, and then it was changed back to an error on September 12.

How does this happen? To find out, I called Matt Roebuck, assistant director of baseball information for the Mariners. As mentioned above, the play in question occurred back on August 18. Roebuck wasn't at the game in Cleveland, but he did see it on TV and described it like this: "It was the third inning, runners on, and Fryman hit the ball at Carlos Guillen. It was just a routine ball, but Carlos has a tendency to back up a little bit, and play it off the side. The ball took a routine hope, bounced chest high, and bounced into left, two runs scoring."

The scorer called it an error ... but only for a few hours. He later talked to a few Indians (who of course really didn't care about anything except padding Fryman's RBI total), and they told him it should have been a hit. So, a hit it became. Someone associated with the Mariners would have complained to the scorer the next day, but he wasn't at the ballpark.

And as far as I ever knew, that's where the matter would have ended. However, it turns out that Major League Baseball does have an appeal process for such things. Theoretically, if you can convince somebody in New York that a scoring decision was made in the face of overwhelming precedent, the decision can be overturned.

So on August 25, Matt Roebuck sent videotape of the play to Major League Baseball. They took their sweet time, of course -- we all know about the appeal process when there's a suspension -- but finally contacted the Mariners on September 12. The error that became a base hit became, once and for all, an error.

I don't write about this very often, even though I get plenty of e-mail on the subject, because there's not much I can say that you haven't heard before. Scoring is inconsistent and overly lenient (to the fielders and hitters), but nobody really gives a damn except for perhaps you, me, and the Seattle Mariners.