Line drives from the baseball playoffs, wondering how many Orange County sports fans have tickets for Game 5 of the Angels-Yankees series tonight andthe Mighty Ducks’ home opener at The Pond:
Obviously, it’s bad timing for the Ducks, who are playing their first meaningful home game in 18 months, because the Angels will be hogging the spotlight locally with their must-or-bust showdown at Angel Stadium.
If you don’t have a ticket to either game, I would advise you to stay away from Katella Avenue unless you’re into gridlock.
Tonight is the reason the Angels signed Bartolo Colon, and he can extend his probable Cy Young season by snuffing the Yankees’ postseason hopes.
For what it’s worth, I like Colon’s chances in his rematch against Yankees right-hander Mike Mussina.
I’m also guessing Colon would relish an opportunity to pitch against his former White Sox teammates in the American League Championship Series.
It’s a moot point, because John Lackey pitched superbly as an emergency replacement for Jarrod Washburn in Game 4, but if Colon hadn’t gone back to Southern California early, you have to wonder how he would have pitched had he been handed the ball.
The Yankees scored what proved to be the winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning when third baseman Chone Figgins rushed his throw home and bounced it in front of catcher Bengie Molina, who somehow made it a close play by scooping the throw and belatedly tagging the sliding Jorge Posada.
Replays, however, appeared to show Molina first tagged Posada with an empty catcher’s mitt with the ball in his bare right hand.
Is there any reliever more automatic in the postseason than Yankees closer Mariano Rivera, who picked up his record 34th postseason save Sunday night with two innings of shutout relief?
And I found it interesting that Yankees manager Joe Torre said Rivera would have gone in the game in the eighth even if the Yankees had been trailing by a run.
There are such high expectations for the Yankees, they of the $203 million payroll, somebody in the New York media figured out the Yankees’ championship drought is 1,807 days since winning the 2000 World Series.
I’m sure George Steinbrenner keeps track of such things, too.
If the Angels win tonight, they will be ecstatic to fly to Chicago, but is it fair to have to fly on back-to-back days – from New York to O.C. after Sunday’s game and from O.C. to Chicago after Game 5 – then open the ALCS without a day off?
Because both NLDS series ended by Sunday, Commissioner Bud Selig should have changed the NLCS opener to Tuesday in St. Louis and moved the ALCS back a day until Wednesday.
Of course that makes too much sense.
The furor has died down, but it still bugs me when I see LAA on the TV screen while watching an Angels game.
Be honest. How many of you had heard of Chris Burke before his winning homer in the 18th inning catapulted the Astros into the National League Championship Series on Sunday?
Another division title for the Atlanta Braves, another disappointment in the playoffs.
Unfortunately, the Braves won’t get the credit they deserve for a remarkable 14 consecutive division titles because they have only one World Series title during that span.
I still like the St. Louis Cardinals, my preseason pick, to win the World Series, but the Astros also have a shot to win it all because they have three starters capable of dominating: Roger Clemens, Roy Oswalt and Andy Pettitte.
OK, and also because the last three World Series winners qualified for the playoffs as wild cards: the 2002 Angels, the 2003 Florida Marlins and the 2004 Boston Red Sox.
Sweeping the Red Sox gave the White Sox their first postseason series victory since winning the 1917 World Series over the New York Giants, ending a drought of 87 years.
Now that dubious distinction goes to the Texas Rangers, who haven’t won a postseason series in a 45-year franchise history dating to their 1961 expansion birth as the Washington Senators.
White Sox closer Bobby Jenks, the former Angels farmhand, became the fourth rookie to save two games in the same postseason series, joining Seattle’s Kazuhiro Sasaki (2000 ALDS), Milwaukee’s Pete Ladd (1982 ALCS) and Cincinnati’s Don Gullett (1970 NLCS).
If the Angels play the White Sox in the ALCS, Angels general manager Bill Stoneman will be asked a lot of questions about why Jenks is pitching in Chicago.
If Colon pitches a shutout tonight, do you think there’s a chance I can still get over to The Pond for the end of the Ducks-Oilers game?
Ba-da-bing!From Dan Daly of the Washington Times: “You have to like the White Sox’s chances in the American League Championship Series – especially if they keep getting this kind of production out of Ray Liotta.”
