By Staff
"You can't script October," but that doesn't mean their own message means much to the myth-making media mavens.
For Detroit Tigers fans who feel their American League Division Series champions are a team of destiny to rank with the 1968 and 1984 world champions, Bondermania takes an undeserved back seat to Detroit's depiction as the Fernando Rodney Dangerfield at baseball's ball.
The Tigers, even with a major leagues-leading pitching staff, get no respect, even after shaking the Big Apple to its core.
According to the script, New York's "modern-day Murderers' Row" didn't just defeat Detroit in the opener, they "overwhelmed the young" Tigers because they are the greatest club ever.
In the 8-4 loss Oct. 3, before Detroit rebounded to finish off the Yankees three in a row, they didn't close the gap, they "crawled" within two runs of the media darlings with the "mighty offense."
How many times did we have to hear that all nine New York starters are current or former All-Stars? Or that Robinson Cano became the first player to ever start a postseason game batting ninth after finishing among the top three in his league in batting? The Tigers outscored the Yankees, 22-12.
The sound of media myths exploding is why they still play the games, even if they seem to not last as long as the pregame hype.
They're still the Yankees, a collection of the best millionaires money can buy who never quite get the job done against a real team blending enthused rookies and hungry veterans.
The Yankees' m.o. is eerily predictable. New York managed two hits in the final five innings in Game 2, never advancing a runner past first.
It must have felt like last year all over again (or the year before that with Boston) to the stunned 56,252 faithful fans.
In 2005, the Yankees won the playoff opener against the Angels, then went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position as they lost the second game, 5-3, and Los Angeles went on to win in five games.
Little did New York count on being shut out 8-0 by former Yankee Kenny Rogers, 41, and no-hit through five innings by Jeremy Bonderman, 23, who lost 19 games his rookie season.
For every Randy Johnson and Mariano Rivera they've got in the Bronx, when they go to their bullpen they don't have Joel "Zoom Zoom" Zumaya, they have former Tiger and Cub Kyle Farnsworth.
The look on A-Rod's face when he felt a 102-mph fastball sizzle past? Priceless.
Now I know why they call the over-rated Yankees the Bronx Bombers. They could move them to Manila and call them the Folders. They'll probably fire Joe Torre.
With that smug certainty befitting the New York media, Sports Illustrated had already anointed Derek Jeter AL MVP because he is the "clutch-hitting shortstop and pillar of reliability for the best team in the league."
He'll also be sitting home again this October. Rely on that.
In fact, the only active players to crack SI's top 10 list are Frank Thomas of the Oakland A's (last laugh on the White Sox) at No. 5 and Tigers shortstop Carlos Guillen at No. 7.
Like SI's chatter about "another inevitable Subway Series," its MVP prognostication was premature.
"Rarely have the best teams in each league been more obvious leading into the postseason than they are this week," leads off an Oct. 2 piece, "and not in half a century have both those favorites been from New York. Whether or not Bud Selig, Fox TV executives, fans in the Heartland and John Rocker want to hear it, the World Series figures to be like a grotesquely thick pastrami on rye: pure New York and difficult for an out-of-towner to stomach."
What's grotesque and difficult for Heartland out-of-towners to stomach is the elitist snobbery that flies in the face of facts.
Even if New York truly fielded the "most menacing lineup in baseball history," a study of every playoff team from 1972 through 2005 concluded there is no relationship between regular-season offense and post-season success.
The three most important postseason factors are a team's ability to strike out batters, its defense (Placido Polanco was much missed down the stretch, but he's back now) and its closer.
Don't diminish Detroit just because it lost 119 games three summers ago and hasn't been a winner since 1993.
Apparently, SI didn't read its own Tom Verducci's indictment of Alex Rodriguez, "a baseball Narcissus who found pride and comfort gazing upon the reflection of his beautiful statistics," even though "the major league equivalent of the prettiest girl in high school who also gets straight A's" is "viewed with equal parts admiration and resentment."
His teammates' confidence in the man with the 10-year, $252 million contract eroded badly this summer because numbers don't matter in the Bronz Zoo and money can't buy you love.
"Winning is all you're judged on here," a "Yankee veteran" told the national magazine.
And that judgment is in again, whether New York's shameless media cheerleaders like it or not.