Tuesday, October 09, 2001
Baseball readies for wild postseason
Plot points: wartime worries, sentiment for Yanks
By Mike Lopresti
Gannett News Service
The season that just finished ... with its home run records and bobblehead days?
Doesn't matter now.
Here comes a postseason layered with plots, and a bittersweet atmosphere, to be decided in the end by a World Series that probably will stretch into November.
It is to be a wartime postseason with guards by the door, and fans trying not to look over their shoulders.
The Yankees, from a shattered New York, will get something they hardly ever see. National sympathy. For what would be better emotion, this dark fall, than a World Series in Yankee Stadium?
There is a poignant feeling of the passage of time in the air, and not only from what has shaken the nation that calls baseball its pastime.
This is probably it for this crop of mighty Yankees as we've known them. Some — Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius — will begin to flake away.
Elsewhere, too. How many more Octobers might there be for Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, Mark McGwire and Randy Johnson?
We'll find out what 116 Seattle Mariner victories mean ... If the Yankees are too old or the Oakland A's are too young ... or if the Atlanta Braves have another championship run in them with a lineup card that has more patches than a bicycle tire.
We'll see if the Houston Astros can redeem a past of playoff bellyflops. What the St. Louis Cardinals can get without Mark McGwire hitting much, how far the Arizona Diamondbacks can go with two starting pitchers, and how troublesome of an underdog the Cleveland Indians can be.
The Indians, by the way, authored the season's must
shocking game, coming from 14-2 back to beat Seattle 15-14.
Ah, the Mariners. The joyride is over. They are not 116-46 anymore. As of today, they are 0-0.
(Pause for history lesson. The 1906 Chicago Cubs, whose win record the Mariners just tied, promptly blew the World Series. Luckily, there were no radio talk shows back then to dismember them).
The burden is plain. Anything less than a World Series trip will stamp them as notorious disappointments.
And what of the Yankees? If this were the NCAA Tournament, you'd say the pinstripes got the tough draw.
Before any Seattle showdown, they'll have to survive the A's, something they barely did in five games last October.
Oakland has all sorts of splashy numbers of momentum. The 58-17 record since the All-Star break, the 29-4 record the past five weeks, the six wins in a row over the Yankees.
They also have young and fearless starting pitchers who are confident they can gun down a dynasty.
All signs point to an Oakland coup. Except for two — the Yankees are healthy, and this is October.
As for the National League, Atlanta still has its pitching, which is just as well. The Braves were 13th in the league in runs scored, went 40-41 at home, and because of injuries and attrition now field a lineup that includes Paul Bako catching, Julio Franco at first, Marcus Giles at second, and Rey Sanchez at short.
They'll probably need photo ID to get into the postseason.
The Astros are 0-6 in postseason series, mostly because their bats routinely turn into licorice.
Take 1997-98-99. Houston lost to Atlanta, San Diego and Atlanta again, hitting .167, .182 and .220.
Meanwhile, the Cardinals will try to survive Arizona's 1-2 punch, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson — though the Diamondback bullpen is unsteady and the rest of its rotation is about as known as an unlisted phone number.
It's a matter of poker in the National League. Can two aces beat any other hand?
The guess here is no. St. Louis and Seattle in the World Series. The Mariners in six. Ichiro Suzuki, meet October.
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Baseball readies for wild postseason
