The Pittsburgh Pirates have some things going for them. They may be one of the two least valuable teams in baseball, they may play in the sport's fifth-smallest market, and they may endure all the woes that come with holding the record for most consecutive losing seasons in a major American sport, but they don't spend a lot, and like all other low-end ball clubs they have the help of rich cousins.
The news that Los Angeles Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt are divorcing came with a bitter kick: Team chairman Frank's first move against his soon-to-be-ex was to fire her from her job as the Dodgers' chief executive.
The Diamondbacks announced that they acquired Aaron Heilman in a trade with the Cubs on Thursday in exchange for a pair of minor leaguers.
Inside the no-frills Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport for Major League Baseball's General Manager meeting, there were signs of tough times ahead for ballplayers. While agent Scott Boras -- who represents Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon and about a dozen other free agents -- went on the other night about how revenues spiked by nearly 600 percent from 1990 to 2009, he was standing in a lobby that was decorated sometime in the '80s, a sharp contrast to the opulence of past GM events.
The late, great ink-stained orator Mike Royko was the wise-guy voice of Chicago on myriad matters large and small, pitch-perfect in articulating his city's sensibilities and proudly unwavering in his disdain for all things New York.
CHICAGO -- Jim Riggleman, the Nationals' interim manager for the second half of the 2009 season, will be elevated to the permanent managing job, SI.com has learned.
CHICAGO -- Beyond the "Big Three" free agents (Matt Holliday, John Lackey and Jason Bay), there's still some decent action going on here at the GM meetings. And if there's a fourth coveted free agent, it just might be versatile leadoff man Chone Figgins, who is drawing interest from some unexpected sources.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs are trying hard to dump the perennially malcontented Milton Bradley here at the GM meetings, as it isn't just manager Lou Piniella who didn't connect with him in his season here. Apparently, several key members of the team -- including Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Zambrano -- barely speak to Bradley.
Breaking down each team in the NL East heading into the offseason. Teams are listed in order of 2009 finish. Check out the other division previews here:
It's 1988. What a slice of time in Los Angeles!
The Pittsburgh Pirates have some things going for them. They may be one of the two least valuable teams in baseball, they may play in the sport's fifth-smallest market, and they may endure all the woes that come with holding the record for most consecutive losing seasons in a major American sport, but they don't spend a lot, and like all other low-end ball clubs they have the help of rich cousins.
The news that Los Angeles Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt are divorcing came with a bitter kick: Team chairman Frank's first move against his soon-to-be-ex was to fire her from her job as the Dodgers' chief executive.
The Diamondbacks announced that they acquired Aaron Heilman in a trade with the Cubs on Thursday in exchange for a pair of minor leaguers.
Inside the no-frills Hilton Chicago O'Hare Airport for Major League Baseball's General Manager meeting, there were signs of tough times ahead for ballplayers. While agent Scott Boras -- who represents Matt Holliday, Johnny Damon and about a dozen other free agents -- went on the other night about how revenues spiked by nearly 600 percent from 1990 to 2009, he was standing in a lobby that was decorated sometime in the '80s, a sharp contrast to the opulence of past GM events.
The late, great ink-stained orator Mike Royko was the wise-guy voice of Chicago on myriad matters large and small, pitch-perfect in articulating his city's sensibilities and proudly unwavering in his disdain for all things New York.
CHICAGO -- Jim Riggleman, the Nationals' interim manager for the second half of the 2009 season, will be elevated to the permanent managing job, SI.com has learned.
CHICAGO -- Beyond the "Big Three" free agents (Matt Holliday, John Lackey and Jason Bay), there's still some decent action going on here at the GM meetings. And if there's a fourth coveted free agent, it just might be versatile leadoff man Chone Figgins, who is drawing interest from some unexpected sources.
CHICAGO -- The Cubs are trying hard to dump the perennially malcontented Milton Bradley here at the GM meetings, as it isn't just manager Lou Piniella who didn't connect with him in his season here. Apparently, several key members of the team -- including Aramis Ramirez and Carlos Zambrano -- barely speak to Bradley.
Breaking down each team in the NL East heading into the offseason. Teams are listed in order of 2009 finish. Check out the other division previews here:
It's 1988. What a slice of time in Los Angeles!
The remarkable thing about baseball in the 21st century is that there really is no break in the action any longer. On the first day after the World Series ended, we had one trade, one near-trade, and the news that one of the top potential free agents, Bobby Abreu, would not be reaching the market. So even as the Yankees celebrate with a parade and the Phillies pack up a season two wins short of their goal, both front offices are looking ahead to 2010 and the decisions that will have to be made to get the teams back to the World Series.
NEW YORK -- The unique Yankees foursome of Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada probably didn't need to win one more World Series together to prove anything. But they did, anyway. And they did it 13 years after their first one together. No other foursome can say that.
NEW YORK -- The Yankees christened the first season in their new ballpark the same way they opened their old stadium in 1923: with a World Series championship.
Most of his teammates were not even in the showers and Pedro Martinez was already out the clubhouse door, hustled by a handler through the basement of Yankee Stadium, stopped only when he had to wait for an elevator up to the parking lot. As Martinez spoke -- "I'm extremely proud," he said. "I had fun and enjoyed it. I don't regret anything" -- a Yankee fan chanted softly in the background, "Who's your daddy? Who's your daddy?" No matter what he did, or where he went, Martinez could not escape it.
The World Series works best as a concept in Cincinnati and places like it. It's a TV show. When I was in grade school, my teachers would stop instructing long division long enough to let us watch the latest Apollo launch on the black-and-white Philco. We knew we'd probably never get to visit outer space, but it was cool to see the blast-offs. That's what the World Series is like in Cincinnati in the fall of 2009. Strictly vicarious.
The majority of the Philadelphia Phillies' players appear to have come to regard the dozens upon dozens of media members who fill their clubhouse after every World Series game in the same way that a family of picnickers, who had looked forward to an idyllic al fresco autumn meal, might regard a swarm of ants. The strategies that the Phillies -- who seem genuinely surprised that the media's glare is so much more intense during their series against the Yankees than it was during last year's matchup with the Rays -- have utilized to deal with the horde are varied.
PHILADELPHIA -- Just to the left of the 374-foot marker in left-center field at Citizen's Bank Park, sandwiched between advertisements for Southwest Airlines and Budweiser, is a sign that brings in no money but may be just as valuable to helping the Phillies cash in this World Series. It is of a microphone between the letters HK, and it is commemorating late Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas, who passed away earlier this season. For the fans and the team, it serves as a reminder of the man whose distinct baritone was the voice of the team for nearly four decades. For Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard, it is something else: his latest target in an ongoing effort to shake a puzzling and powerful slump.
1. The matchup so nice we had to have it twice: Six days after he used a darting changeup and great movement to hold the Yankees to three runs in six innings, Pedro Martinez will take the mound in the Bronx one more time, this time trying to stave off elimination of his Phillies. In last week's Game 2, Martinez allowed just two solo home runs, both on tough pitches, in his first six innings, keeping the Phils in a game in which A.J. Burnett was just a little bit better. Serenaded by chants of "Who's your daddy?" -- and quietly hearing worse from one fan whom he chose to upbraid at his postgame press conference -- Martinez showed both the showmanship that makes him a star and the skill to back it up.
PHILADELPHIA -- While the Yankees have to be considered a fairly heavy favorite with only one win needed as they head back to the Bronx, the Phillies still have some characteristically serious fight in them. Until last rites are read to the Phillies, they should be assumed to have plenty of life.
Mr. October is taken. So is Mr. November. Chase Utley will have to settle for a historic hot streak that has helped push the World Series to a Game 6 for the first time in six years.
PHILADELPHIA -- That swing is so quick. It's rattlesnake quick. Jai Alai quick. Shell game quick. That swing is so quick, it should make a cracking sound, like the tip of a whip. That Chase Utley swing.
1. With the sound of Alex Rodriguez's ringing double to left field, the Phillies' situation went from "bad" to "desperate" late Sunday night. Philadelphia is now down 3-1 in the World Series, a position from which very few teams have ever recovered: Those in this position have gone 5-28 in best-of-seven Series, and the last team to come back from a 3-1 hole was the 1985 Royals. Teams in the specific position of the Phillies, down 3-1 in the World Series without home-field advantage in 2-3-2 format, have won just two of 13 times: the 1979 Pirates and the 1958 Yankees.
The World Series may not be over, but many fans of the defending Philadelphia Phillies are apparently giving up, leading to a plunge in the asking price for tickets being sold through ticket reselling Web sites.
PHILADELPHIA -- Earlier this week, Jamie Moyer was lamenting that nobody just sits around and talks about baseball anymore. So Jamie Moyer, 46 years old and now in his 23rd season and without much else to do since he is not on the Phillies' World Series roster, decided that he would sit around and talk baseball. And so that is what he did during the Phillies off-day last Friday. Talk. About pitching in general -- how to throw a slider, why cutters can be effective without hurting your arm and the difference between being a pitcher and a thrower -- and about Cliff Lee in particular.
PHILADELPHIA -- Alex Rodriguez has turned around his perennial playoff struggles and with one swing of his bat brought the Yankees within 27 outs of their 27th World Series championship -- and his first.
PHILADELPHIA -- With two out and a tie score in the top of the ninth inning, nobody on base and a 1-2 count to Johnny Damon, Phillies closer Brad Lidge uncorked one of his signature sliders, 84 miles per hour and diving toward the plate. Damon swung. The crowd erupted. Several Phillies lurched toward their dugout. But Damon stood stubbornly in the batters box. He was one of the few people at Citizens Bank Park who recognized that he had nicked a piece of the ball and catcher Carlos Ruiz had failed to glove it. "He kept himself alive," Lidge said.
PHILADELPHIA -- At stake for the Phillies on Sunday night is a season, a repeat, possibly a dynasty. On the mound is Joe Blanton. He is 6 foot 3, 250 pounds, a former first-round draft pick who is built like a beer-leaguer, only with high stirrups and a sharp curveball. He pitched wonderfully in last year's World Series, won more than he lost this season, and was decent enough against the Dodgers in the NLCS. The main problem with Blanton is that he is not Cliff Lee.
Sports Illustrated baseball writer Tom Verducci breaks down Game 3 from Philadelphia: 1. If Game 3 is the turning point of the World Series -- 68 percent of teams up 2-1 go on to win it -- then a Yankees championship began with one pitch from Cole Hamels that will be remembered as one of the great gaffes in recent Series history. The beginning of the end for Philadelphia was a first-pitch curveball Hamels threw New York pitcher Andy Pettitte with no understanding of basic baseball. When Pettitte stepped in, Hamels was working with a 3-2 lead, a runner at second base and -- here's the key part -- one out. Pettitte is a career .134 hitter who has come to bat a total of 12 times over the past three years. Hamels could dispose of him with fastballs, the way J.A. Happ would do the next inning, and he would be one out away from being out of the inning. Instead, Hamels threw a first-pitch curveball up, and Pettitte slapped a single to tie the game. Why in the world would he throw
Andy Pettitte gave up more runs than he had in any of his first three starts this postseason but got them back by singling home the tying run and scoring the go-ahead tally.
1. Unless you were Jimmy Rollins, you had to believe that this World Series was going to be a long one, as closely matched as are the Yankees and Phillies. So while Philadelphia lost Game 2, 3-1, to a stellar pitching effort by Yankees starter A.J. Burnett, they scored a small triumph that may pay dividends as the series is extended: they chipped away at the seemingly indestructible nature of Mariano Rivera.
NEW YORK -- The fabulous Phillies were unfazed by their Game 2 defeat that left the World Series even. This team does not lack confidence. Star shortstop Jimmy Rollins was asked whether he still believed in his prediction of a five-game Phillies victory after the Yankees' 3-1 Game 2 victory, and Rollins responded, nonchalantly, "If that's what it takes."
NEW YORK -- It was an old villain in a new ballpark that did in Pedro Martinez.
Former Diamondbacks third-base coach Chip Hale is being hired to fill that role for the Mets, sources said.
NEW YORK -- Every trade or signing that's involved underrated pitching star Cliff Lee looks like an incredible bargain so far. But pretty soon it will be Lee's turn.
NEW YORK -- When Chase Utley was playing whiffle ball games on Ashbrook Avenue in Long Beach, the best home-run hitter in the neighborhood was Sean Burroughs. In high school at Long Beach Poly, it was Milton Bradley. In college at UCLA, it was Eric Byrnes. With the Phillies, it's Ryan Howard. Utley was always regarded as the scrapper, never the slugger, noted more for his line drives than big blasts. Former coaches described him as skinny, scrawny, lanky and wiry. He grew to 6-foot-1, 190 pounds, but refused to think of himself as a deep threat, not with a swing as compact as a karate chop.
NEW YORK -- Even when he caught a ball behind his back, Cliff Lee merely shrugged.
Sources say longtime scout Sandy Johnson has agreed to return to the Mets as VP of scouting to continue assisting embattled general manager Omar Minaya after suggesting for weeks he was likely to retire, and some Mets officials believe the unusual effort made to retain Johnson is another sign of diminishing faith in Minaya.
In the middle of the night, when he was searching for peace, Dave Stewart would go walk among the bodies.
NEW YORK -- Star Phillies shortstop Jimmy Rollins, an amateur Jimmy the Greek, says his Phillies are going to win the World Series in five games. Rollins is on a few-year roll with his predictions, although the Yankees generally seemed more amused than concerned about Rollins' latest. "Nostradamus,'' Jorge Posada called him, though it was hard to tell whether Posada was lauding or mocking Rollins.
To read Lee Jenkins' five reasons the Phillies will win, click here.
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