Doom in Cleveland

Well, that was a typical October Yankee loss, an excruciating extra inning affair where every fan expects the Yanks to finally, finally, break out and hit in the clutch. But no, it wasn’t to be tonight any more than it has been the last six seasons. A-Rod, the great A-Rod, went 0-4 with 3K’s – one of them in a critical situation, with two outs and Bobby Abreu – the potential go ahead run -- standing on second.

Joba Chamberlain was rattled by the crowd, the pressure of a play-off game, and the bugs that swarmed around the mound and home plate. Joba cruised through the 7th and croaked in the 8th, issuing two wild pitches, two walks, and a hit batter. Joba choked, no question. Pitching in October is different than pitching in August.

The powerful Yankee offense, tops in the Major Leagues in runs scored, was completely shut down for the second game in a row. Two games, twenty innings, a pathetic eight hits and four measly runs pushed across the plate in Cleveland.

The longer this game went, the greater the chances were that the Yankees would lose. Once Mariano Rivera left the game – after pitching a strong ninth and a shaky tenth – the odds of a Yankee loss shot up the way the Dow Jones does after the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates. When Joe Torre gave the baseball to Luiz Vizcaino, I knew the goose was cooked. In sixty-plus innings during the regular season, Vizcaino walked forty-plus batters, hardly a sterling recommendation for a set-up man – unless you pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Naturally, Vizcaino threw four straight balls to the first batter he faced. Giving the ball to Luis in a clutch situation is like handing a primed hand grenade to a Sunni in a crowd of Shiites.

Jesus, sweet Jesus, Yogi was right, it’s deja vu all over again. I’m sure Joe Torre was on the phone with his travel agent minutes after the game ended, booking a flight to Honolulu, with a connecting flight to Maui, where he will hole up in a 5-Star hotel for the next eight weeks while the Yankee brass debates his future.

If the Yankees make yet another humiliating first round exit, and it certainly looks like they will, the Torre era is over. It was a fine run. George Steinbrenner may be old and in poor health, but he’s still a proud egomaniac who demands victory, and another dismal playoff performance will make the decision to cut Torre loose easy. The glory years are long ago now, a grainy highlight reel played late at night on ESPN. The magic ended when Luis Gonzalez dumped a hit into left field and drove in the winning run in the 2001 World Series. The Yanks scored fourteen runs in seven games that series, and, expect for the first three games of the 2004 ALCS, the Yankee offense has been a sputtering wreck since.

Yankees fans are again on the Rack of October, being stretched and humiliated.

I switch to the Angels-Red Sox game. The Angels struggle against the Red Sox in a way I have never seen them struggle against the Yankees. The Yankees always look off-balance and out of kilter against the Angels, a half-step slow, dazed, old. That’s how the Angels look in Fenway. The Green Monster looms over them, ominous and intimidating, like the shadow of Darth Vader.

But I’d rather be an Angel in Fenway than a Yankee aboard that quiet charter flight from Cleveland to New York.