Author: IronHorse - YF

The past few months have been bizarre for Yankee fans.  CC stinks, Kuroda is having a Cy Young-worthy season but can’t rack up wins because the Yankees have no offense, and the only real constant – the A-Rod Circus – keeps throwing up fresh fodder for the back-pages and radio talk-shows with none of it having anything to do with what is actually happening on the field.

And then there is Mariano Rivera, turning in another stellar year to close out a career full of them.  The guy’s performance is simply unbelievable, which is a very over-used word but is appropriate in his case.  If he is perfect over his next three innings, then his career WHIP will dip below 1.000, putting him in the company of just two other pitchers in baseball history, both of whom have been dead since long before anyone reading this was born.

I have been sparse around these parts of late for many reasons, with the diminished state of the Yankees actually being pretty far down the list.  And for those same reasons I have been unable to get to a single Yankee game for the first time in years and won’t be able to do so before re-locating my family overseas next week.

But by the grace of the same God that Joe DiMaggio thanked for making him a Yankee, work will bring me back to NY for a few days that happen to coincide with the Yankees’ last home-series of the season, and so yesterday I splurged on tickets to the September 26 game against the Rays for me and my brother.  The game will almost certainly mean nothing for the Yankees’ post-season prospects, as they will probably have long-since  been mathematically eliminated from October ball.  But I am praying that Mariano will still be healthy and that Girardi will bring him in for that last home game regardless of the score so Yankee fans can watch him trot in from the bullpen just once more and give him the goodbye he deserves.

As tough as this season has been to watch, that memory alone will make the 2013 season a very rich one in my life as a Yankee fan.

Already preparing for Opening Day without Granderson, Teixeira, A-Rod, Hughes, and now likely Jeter, the Yankees – owners of the worst contract in baseball – are apparently looking to buy a piece of the second worst.  Let’s hope it’s a very small piece.  All signs point to Vernon Wells joining the Yankees in the next few days though details, including how much the power-packed Angels will eat of his contract, are still to be hammered out.  I can’t recall ever feeling so ambivalent about the start of a baseball season.

In his last nine games of the 2012 regular season, Robinson Cano went an astonishing 24 for 39, yielding a line of .615/.628/1.026, practically single-handedly keeping the Yankees a step ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the race for the division title.

In the eight games of the World Baseball Classic he hit .469/.514/.781 on his way to winning the MVP and helping the DR take the title.

Unfortunately, in between these stretches of batting genius, he went 3 for 40 in the 2012 ALDS and ALCS, yielding a line of .075/.098/.125.

Baseball is such a tease.

Please just go away Alex.

Fractured ankle.  Broken team.

2012 post-season “hitting” of Alex Rodriguez, Nick Swisher, and Curtis Granderson as of the 7th inning of Game 1 of the ALCS.

Comment away.  Please.

I’m no Ansel Adams and there is good reason why my blackberry (yes, I still have one) is not known for its camera feature, but here’s the one shot I took of the post-game celebration as the Yankees ended the 2012 season 2.0 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles to clinch the AL East title and the best record in the American League.

Tonight brought to a close an extraordinary month of baseball during which at no point were the Yankees more than 1.5 games ahead of Baltimore until tonight.  Indeed, the last time The Yankees’ division lead swelled to 2.0 games was one month and one day ago – September 2.

Baltimore proved an incredibly persistent and scrappy club, not only sticking with the Yankees but pulling even with them repeatedly throughout September.  But even on those days when the Orioles won and edged in front of the Yankees by a half-game while the Yankees were still playing their own game, the Yankees held the line and ensured that no day of baseball ended with Baltimore sitting alone atop the standings.  It is perhaps not as amazing as an Oakland A’s team that spent exactly one day in first place all year – the only day that matters – but YFs have been treated to an incredibly resilient team that never panicked, even while many of us did.

Enjoy a well-deserved 3 days of rest fellas.  And see you on Sunday!