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Yankees 27 outs from 27th title

By RONALD BLUM, AP Baseball Writer 6 hours, 42 minutes ago

PHILADELPHIA (AP)—It was all starting to slip away from the Yankees.

CC Sabathia and Joba Chamberlain let the Phillies tie the game and Brad Lidge was on the mound in the top of the ninth, looking like the closer who brought his team a World Series title a year ago.

He dominated pinch-hitter Hideki Matsui and struck out Derek Jeter.

Then up walked Johnny Damon. Ball one, three fouls, two more balls and a full count. Another foul, then another. Lidge was consistently clocked in the low 90s on the radar gun and Damon was struggling to keep up.

“I kept sitting slider, and he kept throwing the fastball. They really don’t teach you to do it that way,” Damon said after the Yankees’ 7-4 victory over the Phillies put them within a game of title No. 27. “But I felt like his slider made me look silly on a couple pitches, so I kept sitting slider and just reacted to the fastball.”

Some reaction.

Damon sliced the ninth pitch of the sequence into left field but the really hard work was just beginning.

On the first pitch to the next hitter, Mark Teixeira, Damon took off for second. On the throw down, Phillies third baseman Pedro Feliz made a nice stop on a low throw from the catcher. Damon popped up, realized that the Phillies infield had shifted to cover the left side against Teixeira and saw third base uncovered. He took off.

“I kind of had to see all that stuff develop,” Damon said. “I’m just glad that when I started running, I still had some of my young legs behind me.”

Teixeira’s at-bat was cut short when he was hit with a pitch by Lidge. Damon could have walked home after Alex Rodriguez delivered the biggest hit of his life, a hard-hit double into the left-field corner. The next batter, Jorge Posada, followed with a two-run single to put the game out of reach.

Mariano Rivera closed it out with a 1-2-3 ninth.

“Somebody has got to be covering third base,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said afterward. “Usually it’s the catcher tries to get down there.”

But it’s clear the Phillies weren’t prepared. They never talked about how they would deal with Damon.

“We never got anybody to say, `OK, you’ve got to go in there; you’ve got to go here,”’ Feliz said.

But once Damon realized the Phillies weren’t where they were supposed to be, he displayed the guile gained during 15 major league seasons.

He ran faster than his 35-year-old legs seemed capable of.

“That’s instinct. You better be sure because you’ve got Tex and A-Rod up behind, and you’d better be sure,” Yankee manager Joe Girardi said. “It was a great instinctual play by Johnny.”

The Yankees had been trying to get back to this point ever since a broken bat single by Arizona’s Luis Gonzalez ended their run of three straight World Series titles in 2001.

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Yankees christen new stadium with a title

By Gordon Edes, Yahoo! Sports
2 hours, 59 minutes ago



NEW YORK – The ghosts may have been abandoned across the street, where the House that Ruth Built is awaiting the imminent arrival of the wrecker’s ball. But from old to new, the New York Yankees left no doubt in the House that George Built that their championship tradition runs as straight and true as a pinstripe.

The Yankees won their 27th World Series title and first in the new Yankee Stadium by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 Wednesday night to take the 105th World Series in six games.

They christened their new $1.5 billion home in the same style as the original back in 1923, when the heroes were a left-handed slugger named Babe Ruth and a left-handed pitcher named Herb Pennock. Ruth hit three home runs, including one in the World Series clincher, and Pennock won twice, including the finale.

Eighty-six years later, only the names changed. Left-handed slugger Hideki Matsui, in possibly his last game in a Yankee uniform, tied a Series record by driving in six runs and hit his third home run of the Series, a two-run blast in the second that was the Yankees’ first shot across the bow against Phillies starter Pedro Martinez.

Matsui, whose aching knees limited him to a pinch-hitting role in the three games in Philadelphia, had hit a tie-breaking home run off Martinez in the Yankees’ Game 2 win and demonstrated anew that if Martinez wanted to discuss his ancestry, his Yankee “daddy” was the venerable Japanese star.

Matsui hit a two-run single in the third off Martinez, then doubled in two more against Phillies’ rookie J.A. Happ in the fifth to earn Series MVP honors.

“Not only did [Matsui] hit fastballs, he was on everything we threw up,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. “He had a big night.”

Left-handed pitcher Andy Pettitte, pitching on three days’ rest, won the duel of old goats, as it was called by Martinez, holding the Phillies to a single run while the Yankees built a 7-1 lead against the 38-year-old Martinez and relievers Chad Durbin and Happ.

Pettitte, a sellout crowd of 50,315 creating chills independent of the 47-degree temperatures by thunderously chanting his name, came out in the sixth after giving up a two-run home run to Ryan Howard, the strikeout-ridden Phillies slugger, and a two-out double to Raul Ibanez.

Despite walking five batters, a number he has exceeded just once in 40 postseason starts, the 37-year-old Pettitte won for the second time in the Series and joined Boston’s Derek Lowe (2004) and Chicago’s Freddy Garcia (2005) as the only pitchers to win the clinching game in all three rounds of the playoffs: the division series, the LCS and the World Series.

Pettitte has won 18 postseason games, the most of any pitcher in history, including four this season. He also was the winner in a clinching game for the sixth time in his career, the most of any pitcher.

The last 10 outs were recorded by the Yankees bullpen, the final five by Mariano Rivera, who with Pettitte, catcher Jorge Posada and shortstop Derek Jeter are the only players left from the last Yankees team to win it all, in 2000. Joe Girardi, in his second season as Yankees manager, was with the team as a reserve catcher for World Series titles in 1996, 1998 and 1999 but left as a free agent before the 2000 season.

“It’s where we wanted to be,” said Girardi, whose first season as manager ended with the Yankees missing the playoffs after 13 consecutive appearances, “and the guys did it.

“This is what the Steinbrenner family has strived for year after year after year, and has tried to deliver to the city of New York. George Steinbrenner and his family are champions. To be able to deliver this to the Boss, in the stadium that he created and the atmosphere he has created around here is very gratifying for all of us.”

With their bookend Series titles, the Yankees now can make a compelling case that they are the team of the decade, having won more regular-season games (965) and playoff series (10) than any other team, and joining the Boston Red Sox as the only teams to win two Series titles.

The Yankees had four 100-win seasons in the decade, including 103 in 2009 after new owner Hal Steinbrenner, taking over for his ailing father, George, gave general manager Brian Cashman the green light to spend over $423 million on three players – starting pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and first baseman Mark Teixeira.

Sabathia and Burnett each won a game in the Series while Teixeira, who came into Wednesday night batting just .105 in the World Series and .172 in the postseason, singled home a run in the Yankees’ three-run fifth.

And, of course, the Yankees are the most successful franchise of all time. Their 27 titles are 17 more than that of the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won the second-most in baseball.

The Phillies fell short in their quest to become the first National League team since the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds to win back-to-back Series titles.

Martinez, the self-styled “old goat” who didn’t join the Phillies until August, had counted upon “experience and survival” and his “frog’s blood” to carry him in a quest to add a triumphant coda to his rich history against the Yankees.

But Martinez lasted just four innings, succumbing to the master strokes of Matsui.

Known as “Godzilla” when he starred for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan, Matsui hit a grand slam in his Yankee debut in 2003 and called it the greatest moment of his career. This was even sweeter, he said.

“My first and foremost goal when I joined the Yankees was to win a world championship,” said Matsui, who is eligible for free agency after the season and at 35 may not be re-signed by the Yankees.

“Certainly, it has been a long road and a difficult journey, but I’m just happy we were able to win and I was able to (achieve) this goal.

“For us, winning as a team … is such a great feeling. I guess you could say this is the best moment of my life.”

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Matsui becomes 1st Japanese-born World Series MVP

By BEN WALKER, AP Baseball Writer
4 hours, 40 minutes ago

NEW YORK (AP)—Hideki Matsui(notes) took a meaty cut, watched the ball fly and winced when it hooked a foot foul.

That’s about all that went wrong for him.

Matsui put the world in World Series MVP, earning the award by homering, doubling, singling and driving in six runs Wednesday night as the New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 to claim their 27th championship.

Matsui became the first Japanese-born player to win the award that started in 1955. He hit .615 (8 for 13) with three home runs and eight RBIs. His performance in Game 6 matched the record for RBIs in a Series game. No one, however, had done it in a clincher.

“It’s awesome,” Matsui said through a translator. “Unbelievable. I’m surprised myself.”

Standing on a podium in shallow center field, Matsui waved his new championship hat and shook hands with commissioner Bud Selig. Matsui won three titles in Japan and was eager to celebrate his first in the Bronx.

“I guess it’s hard to make a comparison. When I was in Japan, that was the ultimate goal. Being here, winning the World Series, becoming world champions, that’s what you strive for here.”

“You could say that I guess this is the best moment of my life right now,” he said. “It’s been a long road and very difficult journey.”

Matsui’s two-run drive off Pedro Martinez(notes) in the second inning put the Yankees ahead for good. Nicknamed “Godzilla” back home, Matsui sent a shot to right field that banged off an advertisement on the facing of the second deck— fittingly, it was a sign for the Japanese company Komatsu, which makes mining and construction equipment.

After his hard foul, Matsui added a two-run single in the third and lined a two-run double off the right-center field wall in the fifth. The giant videoboard in center field showed fans holding Japanese signs and while the sellout crowd roared, he stood placidly at second base.

Fans cheered when Matsui’s feat, matching Bobby Richardson’s 1960 mark for RBIs in any Series game, was posted on the scoreboard.

Matsui drew a standing ovation when he came to bat in the seventh, and chants of “MVP! MVP!” bounced around the ballpark.

“He hit everything we threw up there,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said.

Praised Yankees captain Derek Jeter(notes): “Man, he looked like he wanted it bad, didn’t he?”

“Matsu is one of my favorite players, one of my favorite teammates. He comes ready to play every day. He’s a professional hitter,” he said.

Watching Game 6 on TV in Tokyo, Masanori Murakami echoed that sentiment. He was the first Japanese player in the majors, in 1964 with San Francisco, and fully appreciated the magnitude of Matsui’s honor.

“Ichiro Suzuki(notes) has had many accomplishments, but they’ve all been in the regular season. As the first Japanese to win an MVP in the World Series, this is a great accomplishment for Matsui and will have a huge impact,” Murakami said.

“New York is a tough place to play, so this is a great achievement for him given all he has been through with injuries and missing time,” he said.

Yankees outfielder Nick Swisher(notes) hollered Matsui’s name during the clubhouse party.

“Matsu,” Swisher yelled. “They’re partying in Tokyo tonight, I know that. Man, what a great job Matsu did for us, been coming up clutch for us in situations all year long. He deserved that MVP trophy. There’s no doubt about it.”

An outfielder by trade, Matsui hasn’t played the field since June 15, 2008, because of bad knees. He hit .274 this year with 28 homers and 90 RBIs, and wasn’t much of a force in the AL playoffs against Minnesota and the Los Angeles Angels.

That changed against the defending champion Phillies.

Now strictly a DH and pinch-hitter because of his knees, Matsui accomplished a lot in a hurry. His 13 at-bats tied Baltimore’s Rick Dempsey in 1983 for the fewest by a Series MVP (nonpitchers only, naturally), according to STATS LLC.

Matsui became the first player to win the award as a full-time DH in the Series. Toronto DH Paul Molitor played in the field when the Blue Jays won the 1993 title.

Matsui’s eight RBIs were the most in a World Series since Reggie Jackson had the same total in 1977 and 1978.

“Just wonderful,” Jackson said. “He struggles to play the field now. Great, great player. Represents his country well. He’s a gentleman. He’s a class act. Great player and to put on a performance like that in what may be his last time in Yankee Stadium, you just tip your cap and enjoy it.”

Matsui left Japan and signed with the Yankees in 2003. At 35, his greatest achievement might’ve come in his final game in pinstripes.

This year wrapped up Matsui’s $52 million, four-year contract. It remains to be seen what the aging Yankees will do with him. Whatever happens, he certainly left his mark.

“I hope so. I hope it works out that way,” he said. “I love New York, I love the Yankees.”

AP Sports Writer Jim Armstrong in Tokyo contributed to this report.