Yanks Reveal Cracks, Make Life Harder

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- "This is mine! Come on, Scioscia! This is MINE!" John Lackey shouted at his manager on the mound, scowling at him, then inserting a spicy word or two. Mike Scioscia, long respected as one of the game's wisest tacticians, didn't agree with his pitcher's assessment. He asked for the baseball and told Lackey to leave, even though he owned a 4-0 lead over the Yankees, had just retired the second out of the seventh inning, was burned on a ball-strike call to Jorge Posada -- now there's a shock, more bad umpiring -- and wanted very much to face Mark Teixiera and end a based-loaded rally.

For a time Thursday night, this stood as one of the most embarrassing managerial decisions in recent playoff history. Rather than stick with his best and gutsiest starter, Scioscia out-strategized himself and summoned veteran lefty Darren Oliver to face Teixiera, who was hitting .133 for the postseason when a wild night began near Disneyland. Teixeira promptly ripped a shot out by the rock pile and fountains at Angel Stadium, clearing the bases with a double. When Scioscia followed by intentionally walking Alex Rodriguez, Hideki Matsui made him pay again with a game-tying single. Scioscia made another move, going to young righty Kevin Jepsen. You know what was next: Robinson Cano said hello with a triple, driving in two runs for a 6-4 lead.

And where was Lackey? Oh, walking disgustedly through the dugout and disappearing into the tunnel, where I wouldn't have wanted to be a water fountain, card table or flat-screen TV. As baseball's next super-rich pitching free agent, Lackey may have been wondering if Boston, Chicago or even Texas made more sense than re-upping with a dope like Scioscia.

But what we learned in Game 5 of the American League Championship Series is that the Yankees are hardly infallible. As the National League-champion Phillies nursed hangovers and planned their rotation so a well-rested Cliff Lee can start in Game 1, the Best Team Money Can Buy couldn't hold a two-run lead with an overpaid pitcher, $82.5-million A.J. Burnett, and a bullpen that left a creaky bridge to Mariano Rivera. The plan was to bury the Angels, who came in hitting .202 in the ALCS with two stolen bases and a .138 average with runners in scoring position. That way, the Yankees could have five days to rest themselves, prepare CC Sabathia for the Game 1 duel with Lee and let America salivate over the hottest (and coldest) World Series matchup in years.

They couldn't close the deal, though, which complicates matters more than they think. Not only have the Yankees handed the Phillies an early psychological edge, they now must return home and face the Angels in Game 6 on what is forecast to be a Saturday night of heavy rain at new Yankee Stadium. Andy Pettitte lives for those moments, but should the Yankees lose, they'll face Game 7 and a fatigue factor entering the Series -- assuming they enter the Series at all. You don't want to give the Phillies any more confidence, considering they're 18-5 the last two postseasons and have outscored foes 55-31, out-homered them 14-8 and out-walked them 48-22 in their current playoff run. But by losing 7-6 as the Rally Monkey and 45,000 Thunderstix-clacking fans celebrated, the Yankees have done exactly that.

They've made the Phillies think they're vulnerable. They've made their own lives tougher. They've given those Angels, a dangerously pesky team with persistent tendencies, a dose of life when they seemed dead. And, oh yes, they're triggering memories of 2004, when they held a 3-0 lead over the Red Sox and were swept out in an all-time choke job.

"Yeah, any time you have a chance to close out a series and you don't win, no matter what the score is, it's a missed opportunity," manager Joe Girardi said. "But we get a chance to go to our ballpark where we've played extremely well. You know, we've had a lot of come-from-behind wins there. So, yeah, it's a missed opportunity, but we still have another game. We've bounced back from tough losses all year long. We've had it happen to us before and been able to get off the carpet."

The pressure clearly is on the Yankees, the team with the $210 million payroll, the team that has spent billions of dollars in payrolls the last nine years trying to win a World Series trophy they haven't owned since 2000. Torii Hunter seconds the motion. "Yeah, anything's possible, man. This is baseball. Baseball is a crazy game, man," said the Angels center fielder and designated spokesman. "You see some crazy things. Every time you come to the game, you've probably been to 1,000 games and you see something different every year. My hair is falling out, man. We came out kicking, scratching, punching."

Just so you know, Hunter shaves his head. But you get his drift. "We're excited about this. I mean, we're going out there to win," he said. "We've got Pettitte on Saturday, we're going to take it one game at a time. That's all we can do. We can't think about Game 7 or CC, or anything like that of the we're just going to take it one game at a time and be ready to go. And that's what we did today. I mean, the pressure's not on us, definitely."

Only six teams have erased a 3-1 deficit to win a League Championship Series. But only the Angels have the Rally Monkey. They also have Scioscia, who is allowed a goof-up every so often, seeing how his moves usually work.

"Maybe John still looked like he maybe had a little bit left. In making that move, I said with my heart, 'Hey, leave John in.' But my head said, 'Let's try to turn Tex around [as a switch-hitter] and get out of that inning right there,'" Scioscia said. "I think I just have a lot of confidence in John. He might have had enough to get in there and get Tex out, but I thought to turn him around at that point was the move. Obviously, it didn't work."

Said catcher Jeff Mathis, who continues to rip the Yankees with six straight hits after batting .210 in the regular season: "I'm not going to repeat [what Lackey told Scioscia], but, you know, it's just how he is. Any time he's getting taken out of the game, he doesn't want to come out. That's just him. That's how he is. And, you know, he's a bulldog, man."

"I felt like I got to the point in the game where I should have been able to determine it," Lackey said. The bulldog only wants to win, which means he was fine by game's end. Whether he remains in Anaheim next season is another story, but for now, Lackey and the Angels got what they wanted: a return trip to New York.

"Oh, this is going to be a good trip, and we still have a huge challenge in front of us. But, you know, you're still in the game," Scioscia said. "You know, we're going to come out and hopefully have a good game Saturday and, you know, we'll just take it one step at a time, obviously."

Of course, it couldn't have been a night of postseason baseball without more umpiring snafus. If it's Thursday, it must be the first-base umpire. There was Johnny Damon of the Yankees, ripping a hard groundball in the third inning. Kendry Morales, the Angels first baseman, fielded the ball and flipped it late to a charging Lackey. The replay -- that would be the video recording played back on TV, in case commissioner Bud Selig didn't know -- showed that Damon was safe. Dale Scott, the first-base ump, naturally called him out. It was merely the third out of a 1-2-3 inning for Lackey, but a wickedly missed call is a wickedly missed call for the men in black and blue, all of whom qualify for LensCrafters commercials assuming they pass the eye exams.

And we weren't done. In the Yankees' six-run seventh, Lackey should have had the second out earlier when a replay showed that he struck out Jorge Posada. But the call was ball four, which contributed to Lackey being pulled and the Yankees extending the inning.

Shall we call it an epidemic, a crisis, a tragicomedy? How about all of the above? What should be a memorable postseason for all its drama -- 11 games decided by one run, six won by walk-off hits, Alex Rodriguez dressing up for Halloween as Reggie Jackson, Lee and Sabathia all but unhittable and not missing Cleveland for a nanosecond -- continues to be overwhelmed by clownish umpiring. Even after Selig stuck his bifocals in the mess Thursday and ruled with his minions that only the best and most experienced umpires will work the World Series, it occurred to us that Scott has been a major league ump for 23 years. And that Tim McClelland, who botched both the Nick Swisher third-base tag play and the Cano double-play-that-wasn't in a now-infamous ALCS Game 4, is a 28-year veteran considered one of the finest and classiest in his profession. I ached for McClelland when he said of the two gaffes, "The first one, with Swisher leaving too soon, in my heart I thought he left too soon. On the play with Cano and Posada, I was waiting for two players to be on the base. When he tagged Cano, I thought Cano was on the base." Cano wasn't anywhere near the base, sadly.

Swisher and Teixeira didn't ache for McClelland at all. They were laughing about his comment. "In my heart ..." Teixeira muttered as he walked through the clubhouse. "That's funny. That's a good one."

Selig's solution, according to the Associated Press, is to use longtime crew chiefs at the Series: Joe West, Dana DeMuth, Gerry Davis. They'll be joined by Brian Gorman, Jeff Nelson and Mike Everitt. This time, Major League Baseball will forgo its regular practice of allowing a first-time umpire work its showcase event, figuring the climate is too risky and the public too angry to gamble on newcomers. C.B. Bucknor was supposed to work his first Series, but he apparently blew his shot with two bungled calls in Game 1 of the Angels-Red Sox Division Series. And none of the umps who've humiliated themselves in the ALCS will be working the Series, including McClelland.

"I'm just out there trying to do my job and do it the best I can," McClelland said. "And, unfortunately, there was, by instant replay, two missed calls."

Of course, it couldn't have been a night of postseason baseball without more umpiring snafus.
Consider it the defining quote of a month of mishaps. If a universally respected umpire can blow two calls in a night, as revealed by replay, then I repeat my longstanding cry for expanded replay -- beyond the current use for home-run calls only. Selig should realize by now that umps of all experience levels can screw up. To truly get the calls right and stop making a mockery of an otherwise terrific month, the 75-year-old commissioner needs to grasp that it's 2009, TV technology never has been better and that viewers at home know more about the umpiring decisions -- right or wrong? -- than the umps themselves. Selig is throwing these men into a hot pit and humiliating them on a nightly basis. So why not give them help?

The solution is easy. Position an "eye in the sky," another umpire or league observer to simply watch the replays on the clearest TV screen possible. When a call is blatantly wrong, as so many have been, the man in the booth quickly buzzes down to the crew chief and says, "Cano was clearly out at third, too." And the crew chief calls Cano out.

Selig is worried such situations will be too time-consuming. "Baseball is a game that has a flow, and it's the pace I worry about," he told USA Today earlier this month. "We don't want constant interruptions. That said, nobody is more sad about [bad calls] than I am. Fortunately, they haven't happened very often. We made the change to review home runs because the new ballparks offered up new challenges to the umpires. I'm really satisfied where we are now. Once you start opening up Pandora's box, there's no way to stop it. I believe that would be a disservice to the game."

Sorry, Bud. Wrong again. What's happening now, every evening, is a disservice to great baseball. And as commissioner, it's your job to tweak the game so we see it at its best in October. Anything less means you're lazy and shouldn't be the commish. Of course, we knew that long ago, when Selig dawdled during the Steroids Era.

My concern is that we'll have a wonderful World Series, game after game, night after cold night. And that in Game 7, another ump will make another bad call and mortify us all.

Or, maybe it will happen in Game 7 of this series. As the Phillies grin and wait and rest.