Yankees Lose ALCS to Rangers in Six

There have been one hundred and five World Series’ since 1903, when the Boston Americans defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates. Twenty years later the New York Yankees brought home their first MLB Championship, and out of this victory was borne a passionate zeal for the boys in pinstripes, or a fiery contempt for their tendency to win. Since their first in 1923, the Yankees have won twenty-six more World Series.

The Yankees are one of those entities that bring out the worst in my unbiased sporting self (See: Pittsburgh Steelers; Pittsburgh Penguins; Manu Ginobli.) As with the rest, my disdain comes from their ability to consistently perform at a high level and beat the teams I root for. Long reigns of success in baseball, however, are particularly maddening, as baseball lacks the salary cap installed in the other major professional leagues, seemingly to prevent, say, the Rooney or the Kraft families, from purchasing the best players and gutting every other team that storms the field. A team like the Yankees isn’t built as much as it’s assembled from the best pieces of the previous season.

The positive side of this argument is the satisfaction of watching a team reviled for buying championships like the GOP buys elections when they’re unseated by an organization whose pockets are significantly shallower. The Yankees payroll in 2008 was $209,081,579. Last night they were defeated in the American League Championship Series by the Texas Rangers, a franchise that’s never made it to the big dance until now. The Rangers’ 2008 payroll was $68,239,551: that’s just under a third of the New York bankroll.

The fact that the Rangers all but dominated the series is a testament to all that makes modern American sports exhilarating: emotion, chemistry, faith, and a bit of luck. And while it was disarming to watch to Texas’ Josh Hamilton, the ALCS MVP, point to the sky during his acceptance speech and explain that it was all due to God and our Lord, Jesus Christ, it was refreshing to think of the remainder of the postseason sans pinstripes.

It was also interesting to think about a loss like this, in six games, the significance of a failure to live up to expectations. The Yankees bats didn’t crack the way they’ve seemed to in recent playoffs, and the Rangers put themselves in a position where all they had to do to win was to rally around good pitching and play mistake-free baseball. One has to wonder what they took away from this elimination, and what kind of effect it will have on the organization. The honest answer: probably not a whole lot, as next year they’ll probably have signed, for a hefty sum, Cliff Lee, his generations greatest clutch pitcher, who beat them in Game 3, as well as several other studs who made a name for themselves in 2010 and are looking for a slightly larger check after every game. Because the Yankees dynasty is just that, a rule of such a sequence, one of big baseball money.

Questions Abound in Roethlisberger's Return, Including the Real McCoy

Full disclosure: While I would like to project the idea that I am a somewhat objective sports fan and can chronicle my experiences with ego and human frailty as such, there are certain cases where I may not be able to restrain myself from allowing subjectivity to invade my writing. The Pittsburgh Steelers can bring this out in me. Now, I understand that success begets more success, and the kind of sustained dominance the Steel Curtain have displayed in recent years breeds contempt in every fanbase outside of northern Pennsylvania. So I can hate the Steelers with the passion of a Denver Broncos fan who watched his team lose to them in the 2006 AFC Championship, and I can respect Troy Polamolu on defense, Mike Wallace on offense. I have trouble, however, respecting Ben Roethlisberger.

While out with friends last Monday, watching the 49ers-Eagles game, I happened upon, as they seem to be everywhere, a Steelers fan. I expressed my sympathy, as I always do in these situations, regarding her allegiance, to which she responded by smiling and holding up six fingers. I laughed, and asked how she felt about having an alleged sexual predator as the face of her franchise. She said she was proud that that sexual predator had won her team two Superbowls.

Now, I don't necessarily believe that Big Ben is a sexual predator. As a fan in a bar confronted by a rival fan I exaggerated a well-known story that no one, outside of the parties involved, really knows anything about. What I do know is that two women in two years have brought charges against him, and I'm also aware of the nature of elite athletes, at every level, and their tendency to feel entitled to a great deal of things.

Say the allegations against him are true. What kind of message does it send when a two-time alleged sexual assailant receives a standing ovation after returning from a four-game suspension for off-field misconduct? When Michael Vick, clearly the former face of the Falcons franchise, was caught dog-fighting he was eviscerated in the court of public opinion, run out of Atlanta, the NFL, put into prison. PETA protested outside of Lincoln Financial Field upon his release and subsequent trade to Philadelphia. Every fan of sports, no matter how rabid and committed, should possess an understanding of circumstance and maintain a certain distance from a role model who's displayed a kind of reckless abandon and penchant for putting himself in bad situations.

But, onto actual sport. Ben Roethlisberger's return to play overshadowed an interesting aspect of his team's game against the Browns: Cleveland rookie quarterback Colt McCoy's impressive debut outing against a defense that, when all is said and done, may be one of the best in recent memory. While his numbers on their own, 23/33 for 281 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions, aren't exactly extraordinary, when compared to how other opposing QBs have fared against the Steelers D one begins to see his performance as notable. McCoy finished the day with an 80.5 passer rating. Josh Freeman of the Buccaneers managed a 67.1 rating in Week 3. Matt Ryan's rating was 67.3 in both teams' season opener. Fellow Texas Alum Vince Young could only muster 66 yards and a passer rating of 48.3 before giving way to Kerry Collins, who found a bit more success with an 80.3 rating in the second half of play. The only signal-caller to best McCoy's rate is Baltimore's Joe Flacco, who finished at 82.7 in a Week 4 victory over Pittsburgh.

No one has thrown for more yards against the Steelers this season than McCoy, but perhaps the most impressive stat that also ranks as the highest thus far is his 8.6 Yards Per Attempt. That's higher than Peyton Manning against the Washington Redskins D, who threw for 8.1 yards an attempt.

Could the Cleveland Browns have found a quarterback who is the real McCoy? Or will his performance slip by the wayside at a raucous Heinz Field, lost in the shuffle of a sell-out crowd rising to their feet to cheer for a man returning from a suspension for conduct that will be questioned for the remainder of his career?

And They're Off...

Is baseball still America's favorite sport, or is it NASCAR? Is Greg Oden just a draft bust, or the biggest draft bust of all time? Does rugby really have a place in American athletics, or just outside frat houses on the front lawn? Is Tom Brady actually Justin Beiber? Is Sidney Crosby actually Taylor Swift? All this and more following the break.

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