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Philadelphia Phillies beat Los Angeles Dodgers 10-4, return to World Series
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 22, 2009
PHILADELPHIA — Powered by Ryan Howard, Jayson Werth and all those other big bats, the Philadelphia Phillies are headed back to the World Series.
Werth hit two home runs, Shane Victorino and Pedro Feliz also connected and the defending champions beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-4 in Game 5 on Wednesday night to win their second straight NL pennant.
Brad Lidge closed it out and the Phillies became the first team to reach consecutive World Series since the New York Yankees in 2000-01.
Now, Jimmy Rollins and crew wait for their next opponent. They’ll go for their third World Series title beginning next Wednesday night at New York or Los Angeles. The Yankees lead the Angels 3-1 in the ALCS, which resumes Thursday night at Angel Stadium.
Philadelphia overcame another shaky outing by 2008 NLCS and World Series MVP Cole Hamels.
Meanwhile, slugger Manny Ramirez, manager Joe Torre and the rest of the Dodgers go home after leading the NL with 95 wins in the regular season and sweeping the St. Louis Cardinals in the division series.
Los Angeles closed to 9-4 in the eighth, but Ryan Madson escaped a bases-loaded jam by striking out Russell Martin and retiring Casey Blake on a grounder to shortstop.
After beating Tampa Bay in last year’s World Series, the Phillies are trying to become the first repeat champions from the NL since the Cincinnati Reds in 1975-76. The Yankees were the last team to win consecutive titles when they captured three in a row from 1998-2000.
Andre Ethier, James Loney and pinch-hitter Orlando Hudson hit solo homers for the Dodgers, who also lost to the Phillies in five games in last year’s NLCS.
Five pitchers tossed 4 2-3 strong innings in relief of an ineffective Hamels, who hasn’t been the dominant ace he was last postseason. Chad Durbin earned the win by retiring all four batters he faced, including Ramirez representing the tying run in the fifth.
Lidge, who has bounced back from a rough season with a 0.00 ERA during the playoffs, worked a scoreless ninth.
Hamels allowed three runs and five hits in 4 1-3 innings. Still, he got a standing ovation on his way to the dugout.
Vicente Padilla, the former Phillie who was excellent in his first two playoff starts, lasted just three-plus innings and gave up six runs.
The teams combined to tie the record of seven homers in a postseason game. It was the fifth time that’s happened.
Once considered the NL’s laughingstock, the Phillies have been thinking dynasty since riding down Broad Street on flatbed trucks during the city’s first championship parade in 25 years last October.
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Yankees fans strike out trying to buy World Series tickets at Yankee Stadium box office
BY Rachel Morgan and Samuel Goldsmith
October 21, 2009
The Yankees are on the verge of a World Series berth, but many fans struck out trying to score tickets Wednesday.
A Daily News reporter signed on to Yankees.com before tickets went on sale at 10 a.m. At 10:01, the page redirected the reporter to Ticketmaster, where seats for Games 1, 2, 6 and 7 were up for sale.
The News selected "Best Available" for each game - but went 0-4. The tickets were gone just minutes into the sale.
Fans who still want tickets can buy them on Web resale sites - but the markup is higher than A-Rod's postseason batting average.
Face value for field-level seats in sections 115 to 125 is $431, according to the Yankees.
On the resale Web site Fansnap.com, the same tickets run from $2,035 to $3,850.
Face value for the worst seats in the house - "obstructed-view" bleacher sections 201 to 239 - are$51 at face value. They run anywhere from $432 to $963 on resale.
About a dozen fans went to Yankee Stadium about 6 a.m. to wait for the box office to open. Around 9 a.m., a box-office employee emerged to say tickets are not available at the Stadium - only at Yankees.com.
"I'm devastated," said life-long Yankees fan Lu
is Segarra, 30, of the Bronx. "I woke up this morning believing I would make it to my first World Series."
"I'm very mad because some of us have waited in the cold for three hours," said Joe Amankwah of Long Island. "If I can't get tickets, I won't watch the game on TV. I took off work to be here."
Amanda Cancel, 21, of the Bronx, got $100 from her uncle to stand on line and buy tickets.
"My uncle just called and he's cursing up a storm," she said.
Series tickets will be available at the box office starting at 9 a.m. on the day of the first World Series home game.
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CC Sabathia wins Game 4, proves he's worth more than A-Rod to New York Yankees
Mike Lupica
October 21, 2009
ANAHEIM — This continues to be the October of Alex Rodriguez, who hits the ball so hard and so often that he makes the way he can play baseball the lead paragraph of his own story again, his baseball back to being played ahead of steroids and strip clubs and all the scoring opportunities he wasted in all his other Yankee Octobers. He hit another home run Tuesday night, got three more hits and scored three more runs and the Yankees kept their manager in the dugout and are one win away from their first World Series in six years now.
But CC Sabathia gives you more October than anybody on the team. Sabathia went out Tuesday night on three days' rest at Angel Stadium and went to 3-0 for the postseason, with a 1.19 earned-run average, and continued to be the kind of star ace pitcher in games such as these that he was hired to be, that he was paid a fortune to be. And clearly relishes being. Even on a night when the Yankees scored all those runs, turned the thing into a jailbreak in the late innings, the big man put them on his back again. This is how you accept the responsibility of New York, and all the money.
"For me every game is a big game at this point," Sabathia said in the interview room later, in a white T-shirt that looked roomy enough to serve as a hospitality tent.
"Whether we came into this game ahead three games to none or two games to one, it was a big game for me."
He is as much an ace at this time of year as the Yankees have had in what feels like about a hundred Octobers. He wants the ball, he wants this stage, he wants to make things right for himself after he could not pitch the Indians into the World Series two years ago.
"I had an opportunity and unfortunately didn't get it done," Sabathia said.
He gets it done now. Last Friday night, in a fierce cold at Yankee Stadium, he gave Joe Girardi eight innings. Last night, a night when the Yankees needed a big game from him to make Game 3 and the way it ended the day before go away, he pitched eight more innings, gave the Angels five hits and just one run, a home run by Kendry Morales.
There will always be more glamour for home run guys such as A-Rod, especially when the home runs and RBI come from him after years of postseason failures. This has been a stunning reversal of fortune for him, after the years when he became the poster boy for all those Yankee first-round losses. Now, three years after Joe Torre put A-Rod eighth in the order in a playoff game against the Tigers, the crowd goes wild at Angel Stadium when the Angels get him out once in a game.
A-Rod helped carry the offense again. Sabathia does even more to carry the Yankees right now. Joe Girardi had made 14 pitching changes in the last 18 innings before the start of Game 4. Then he gave Sabathia the ball, and that ended that, everybody stayed in the bullpen until Chad Gaudin entered the 10-1game in the ninth. Sabathia didn't throw his 100th pitch until the eighth inning of Game 1 against the Angels, didn't throw No.100 last night until he faced Torii Hunter in the eighth. No. 101 was a ground ball to second, and his work here was done.
Before the game Tuesday, he was in the lounge in the visitors clubhouse, eating Doritos - of course - and watching a replay of Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, Yankees against the Red Sox, the Aaron Boone game, the last time the Yankees played themselves into the World Series.
Mo Rivera was with him.
"How many innings did you pitch in that game?" Sabathia said.
"Just three," Rivera said.
He knew and Rivera knew and the Yankees knew Sabathia would be expected to pitch more than three innings last night. And he did. He sure did. The Yankees would give him a lot more stick than he needed in the baseball home of those annoying thundersticks. Sabathia didn't pitch as if he were working on short rest, he pitched the way he did for most of the second half of the season, the way he has pitched every time he has gotten the ball in this postseason. Try to remember the last time you trusted a Yankee ace starter such as this at this time of year.
"He was tremendous," Rivera said when it was over, 10-1 for the Yankees.
"He does what the ace is supposed to do," Jose Molina said. "He gives confidence to a whole team."
The Angels got two runners on after Morales' home run. Sabathia got out of it. They got their first two runners on in the sixth. Sabathia got a double play. He got the last eight guys he faced. Cliff Lee, his old teammate, has been something to see for the Phillies. Nobody throws better, has more stuff, than Sabathia right now in baseball.
The spotlight will always find A-Rod, found him in bad times, finds him now when they can't get him out in the playoffs. Down the freeway from Hollywood, he tries to write a Hollywood ending to a season that began with steroids. Gives you all this October. Almost as much as Sabathia.
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What's up with the umpires?
BY Mark Saxon
October 21, 2009
ANAHEIM — Slumps tend to take on an ominous tint in October and nobody appears to be in a deeper collective funk this post-season than the umpires.
Tim McClelland's crew blew three calls on the bases in the fourth and fifth innings of the Angels' 10-1 loss to the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series Monday.
None of the calls impacted the game's lopsided outcome, but poor officiating is becoming an increasing embarrassment this month to Major League Baseball.
McClelland said he and the other umpires routinely monitor television replays. What he saw Monday indicated that he made two mistakes while working third base. McClelland, who routinely is among the highest-rated umpires, is the crew chief for this ALCS.
"Obviously or not obviously, there were two missed calls," McClelland said. "And I'm just out there trying to do my job and do it the best I can. Unfortunately, by instant replay, there were two missed calls."
It started when the Angels picked off Nick Swisher at second base after a low throw from Scott Kazmir and a quick tag by Erick Aybar.
Dale Scott signaled him safe, however. Later, the Angels appealed after Swisher scored on Johnny Damon's sacrifice fly and McClelland called Swisher out.
Fox replays, which the network said were synchronized, seemed to show that Swisher left the bag after Torii Hunter made the catch. Swisher didn't want to wade into the controversy.
"That's for y'all, man," Swisher said. "I'm not touching that."
McClelland said he felt "in his heart," that Swisher left too soon.
The most egregious flub, however, came on Swisher's chopper back to pitcher Darren Oliver.
The pitcher threw home and the Angels caught Jorge Posada in a rundown. Posada retreated to third, which was occupied at the time by Robinson Cano, who inexplicably stood several feet from the bag.
Catcher Mike Napoli alertly tagged both Cano and Posada. McClelland called out Posada, but let Cano stay at third. McClelland said he thought Cano was on the bag.
Angels manager Mike Scioscia didn't sound upset about McClelland's call, but that might have been different if the score had been closer or if Cano had wound up scoring.
"The way Timmy described what he saw, you know, he made the call as he saw it," Scioscia said.
McClelland, in his 27th season in the major leagues, gained fame in 1983 for calling out George Brett after a home run because he had applied pine tar incorrectly to his bat. He also was behind the plate the day Sammy Sosa got caught with a corked bat.
The umpiring has come under scrutiny a bit more than usual this October after a series of high-profile mistakes.
In both American League division series, the umpires blew obvious calls. In the Angels' series with the Boston Red Sox, C.B. Bucknor missed two calls at first base. In the Yankees' series with Minnesota, Phil Cuzzi made a bad call down the left-field line.
Strike zones have also taken some heat, but that's nothing new. Kazmir appeared miffed at Jerry Layne's strike zone early in Tuesday's game. Fox had a microphone on Layne that caught him telling Scioscia that Napoli was obstructing his view of low strikes.
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