So Cliff Lee is a post-human model of remorseless efficiency and the Yankees have only barely escaped being down three games to none. There’s no shame in being beaten 2-0 by a performance like that, especially given how well Andy Pettitte pitched. There is, however, shame in a six-run ninth inning bullpen implosion. On the [...]

Whatever, Professor Farley. Whatever its first-week-of-Logic-101 failures, any true Yankee fan has to embrace this meme, right? To be self critical: the truth, of course, is that New York has not been thugged out for many, many years — “I’m from the murder capitol where we murder for capital” was a weird mix of nostalgia [...]

I’ve been “watching” the past month’s worth of Yankee games on the MLB iPhone app when they’ve not been televised in the D.C. market, and it’s predictably been a roller coaster. The past week’s exceedingly narrow losses to Texas and now Tampa Bay are the worst kind of false indicator for the postseason: it’s hard [...]

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — You eat at enough DFACs and you’re going to see some awesomely bad Armed Forces Network commercials. One series that I actually like features MLB players, vets and managers telling the troops how much they appreciate them and want them to get home safe. (Josh Hamilton, Mike Scoscia, Dave Winfield, [...]

Before the persona of Ricky Ross, George Steinbrenner was the biggest boss that you’ve seen thus far. I don’t have it in me to do a thorough accounting of his Gaius Baltar-like triumphs and mistakes. So let’s just say, respectfully and appropriately: Rest In Peace.

“The Stadium is not the same without his voice.” Well said, Bernie. RIP.

OK, I like Ben Shpigel’s Yankees coverage for the New York Times, but this is getting absurd. From today’s write up of the Yanks’ win over Seattle last night: Rodriguez is no longer just climbing the career home run list. He is scaling it at a feverish pace, crushing two mammoth blasts to the nether [...]

The career of Mariano Rivera, and James Traub’s excellent, exquisite, superlative profile of him in the New York Times Magazine. The former has a few flaws — the ninth inning of Game 7 in the 2001 World Series, the Alomar homer — but so few as to be statistical noise. The latter has one big [...]

Satisfying Opening Day, which is the metric according to which Opening Day ought to be evaluated. If one were to foolishly generalize from Opening Day 2009, for instance, CC Sabathia would have been judged a failure. Instead: a well-capitalized-upon subpar performance from Josh Beckett; a strong performance from Sabathia that ran out of steam and [...]

True story: I only own one non-Yankee baseball t-shirt, purchased during a reporting trip to Detroit during the Tigers’ dream season of 2006. It’s Curtis Granderson’s number 28. (Tigers beat the visiting Rangers during that August game, if I recall by 5-2 or 5-3.) Curtis Granderson’s first at-bat as a New York Yankee came at [...]