But Lincecum had some help from the rest of the Giants’ historic pitching staff. Along with Matt Cain, Jonathan Sanchez, Madison Bumgarner, and even Barry Zito, the Giants went on an unparalleled run in the last two months of the season. They allowed 2.31 runs per 9 innings. The entire staff. So the bullpen gets some credit, too. But the postseason is where the top four really stepped up. It wasn’t too impressive when they shut down the Braves, but then they shut down the Phillies, and then the Rangers. The Giants rode their horses and managed to get production from the unlikeliest of places. Cody Ross hit two home runs in one game off of Roy Halladay. Edgar Renteria hit two home runs in the World Series. Buster Posey stepped up in every series, making everyone forget who Jason Heyward is.  Hot streaks might not truly have predictive value, but goddamn if the Giants weren’t the hottest team I’ve seen in a long time. Good pitching, timely hitting — that’s the name of the game. You can’t plan for the timely hitting, but the Giants sure planned for the good pitching.

It’s the perfect finale to what was already referred to as The Year of the Pitcher more times than there are atoms in the universe. Maybe there was something to it after all. Or maybe the Yankees are going to come back next year and pummel everyone into oblivion. After making sure to buy Cliff Lee — even if he’s been proven human.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4b_-TMdRIY

Unless you’re a Cablevision customer or not a baseball fan, you’ve noticed that FOX has replaced this theme with their NFL on FOX theme (which I won’t even link here). It’s one thing to move on from a sports theme you’ve used for years; it’s another thing to replace it with a well-known theme associated with an entirely different sport. It’s not like this theme is amazingly iconic like the NBA on NBC or NHL on ESPN themes, but it’s total garbage to condition your audience to expect to see a football stadium and/or Terry Bradshaw making an ass of himself after hearing a certain minute of music, only to be greeted by the terrifying faces of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. I can only imagine how confused a thick-headed football fan would be after such a traumatic experience.

Perhaps FOX figured this would be the best time to make their NFL theme their universal sports theme, seeing as the bigger issue at the moment is millions of New Yorkers not being able to watch the World Series. Although, Cablevision now says you can order the MLB.TV World Series package and they’ll refund your $10. Classy move. Unfortunately, while it seems like News Corp. is being the more unreasonable of the two companies, Cablevision is going to be the one to suffer in this dispute, as customers are just going to start switching to Verizon, DirecTV, etc. On the other hand, it’s not like I can feel sorry for any hardship endured by James Dolan. So yeah, everyone just switch. I can vouch for the greatness of FiOS, at the very least.

The half-billion dollar shopping spree paid off. The Yankees have opened their new monstrous stadium with a World Series Championship. I still can’t believe SI picked the Mets instead. How could have anyone picked a team other than one with All-Star caliber players at almost every single position, a decent pitching staff, and the best closer anyone will ever see? Oh well, hindsight is 20/20 and all that bullshit.

If Game 6 wasn’t over when Hideki Matsui hit the double that made it 7-1 in the 5th, the Phillies were buried when Chase Utley struck out with two on to end the 7th. So Utley has to share the World Series HR record with Reggie Jackson, unfortunately. Ryan Howard did manage to put himself on top of the World Series record book, though, with his 13th strikeout of the series. Without him, the Phillies had almost no chance to pull out the series; only Utley going apeshit kept the Phillies going this long. I told you Utley was awesome.

I was hoping for a Game 7, but five days’ rest wasn’t enough for Pedro, apparently. Meanwhile, Andy Pettitte gave the Yankees all they could have hoped for on three days’ rest. Mike Francesa proven wrong. And a 41-pitch non-save for Mariano Rivera? No problem.

I wonder what Mike Mussina is doing right now.

How did I ever decide to root for the Phillies?

Actually, in practice I’ve been seemingly going back and forth by player this entire World Series.

Cliff Lee? Wow, he’s a pimp, I want him to throw a shutout.

Jimmy Rollins? Shut the fuck up and strike out, please.

A-Rod? You fucking suck. Six Ks? Is Kate Hudson on the rag?

Chase Utley? Oh my God, you truly are my forbidden crush.

Mariano Rivera? No way I want to see the Phillies beat you.

Shane Victorino? Die in a Hawaiian volcanic eruption.

Perhaps I need to take this advice, and just look at the bright side of each possible outcome. If the Yankees lose, A-Rod still doesn’t have a ring, Yankee fans turn on every possible player, and the Yankees lose any possible claim at team of the decade. If the Phillies lose, they won’t be the first NL team to repeat in over 30 years, Philly doesn’t become the new Boston, and Jimmy Rollins shuts up.

As for comments on the actual game tonight, it was another pitchers’ duel that this time fell on the Yankees’ side. Pedro’s line was dangerously close to my prediction (three runs instead of four), and A.J. Burnett pitched a great, if not brilliant, game. And then of course Mariano Rivera threw 39 pitches in another ho-hum two-inning postseason save. That was the 14th two-inning save of his postseason career, and the 33rd time he pitched at least 2 innings in any situation. Piece of cake.

Succeeding Rivera as Yankee closer will be the worst job in the world.

Cliff Lee looked like didn’t even break a sweat tonight. He made a behind-the-back play later in the game, and also nonchalantly tagged Posada on the ass on another play. He struck out 10 while walking none (the first man to do that since 1903), and only lost his shutout due to a Jimmy Rollins throwing error. I do question the wisdom of keeping him out there for 122 pitches when he has to come back on three days’ rest (possibly twice), but that’s what Charlie Manuel does. This is the manager who left Pedro Martinez in a game for 130 pitches in a regular-season game.

The only man who had Lee figured out was Derek Jeter, of course. A-Rod didn’t fair quite as well, striking out three times and laying the foundation for imminent bashing in the New York Post. The rest of the team didn’t do much better, with the lineup behind Jeter only accounting for three hits. Lee was simply dominant throughout, and the Yankees crowd was consequently subdued almost the entire night.

The supporting star behind Lee was Chase Utley, who supplied enough offense to beat the Yankees by himself. Two solo home runs — I told you he was awesome. If he wins the World Series MVP, I hope it’s sponsored by this:

The man would have fit nicely on the Yankee teams of the 1930s, I’m sure.

So now the story turns to Pedro Martinez pitching tomorrow, and my prediction is for a six-inning, four-run performance. You’re not in the NL anymore, old man! The big question is which A.J. Burnett will show up, especially since having to start Jose Molina isn’t exactly going to help the Yankees’ lineup top tonight’s pathetic performance. I hate to say must-win, but I’m going to say it. If the Yankees lose to Pedro tomorrow, they are in the proverbial shit.

(Thanks to Hootie on GAF for the GIF.)

When the inevitability of this matchup became clear, I had no doubt in my mind that I’d be rooting against the Phillies. My allegiance would be with New York City in the battle against the shithole that is Philadelphia. Philly might have Rocky and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but fuck them, I thought. Their fanbase is probably the worst group of human beings collected this side of an African dictatorship. And they’re not too bright, either.

This is not to mention the team itself. I’ll just quote myself here:

Shane Victorino is a little piece of shit Hawaiian who plays dirty; Jimmy Rollins runs his mouth and wins MVPs due to it, even when he doesn’t deserve it; Ryan Howard is an overrated slugger who strikes out on a lefty slider seemingly every time I see him at the plate; and Brett Myers beats his wife and puts his kid in a Confederate flag shirt.

The Phillies advancing through the postseason on the back of Ryan Howard — while Chase Utley throws away double play balls — is a personal nightmare for me. Utley is a better baseball player than Howard, yet he will probably never win an MVP award, and everyone is on Howard’s jock due to his performance in nine games. Cole Hamels received the same treatment last year and he turned in a down year in 2009 and has now been supplanted by a 38-year-old in the rotation. Pedro Martinez may be no ordinary 38-year-old, but it’s still quite a shift in one season. The small sample size of the postseason means jack shit.

This brings us to the Yankees, and Alex Rodriguez’s tale of redemption. This is where I start thinking it’d be fantastic if the Yankees lost. Who wouldn’t want to see A-Rod fail miserably in the World Series and watch the entire Yankees Universeâ„¢ turn on him once again? I get chills imagining the boos that would cascade down if he grounded into a double play to end Game 7. Isn’t it beautiful to envision the typical Yankee fan turning on a player just as quickly as he was deified? Two series may have seemingly wiped out any bitterness of postseasons past, but a 2-20 performance by A-Rod culminating in a World Series loss would only bring back the cries for A-Rod’s head. He would have proved himself yet again to not be a True Yankeeâ„¢.

Is hope for this outcome enough for me to root for the Phillies? It just might be. You may be asking why I hate A-Rod so much, and it’s a reasonable question. It’s not the money, because every baseball player makes too much money. It’s not his sexual history, because anyone who has sex with Madonna has to be scarred for life. It’s that everything, EVERYTHING he does looks rehearsed and devoid of true joy. Maybe it’s just his face — and my urge to punch it — that clouds my judgment, but I see him as some soulless entity who was created solely to be very, very good at baseball.

An addition consideration is that perhaps I still hate the Braves more than the Phillies. Sure, the Phillies embarrassed the Mets in 2007 and 2008, but that was just as much (if not more) a product of the Mets collapsing than it was of the Phillies rallying. Should I hate the Phillies for the Mets’ bullpen being worthless last year? Or for Jose Reyes forgetting how to hit in September of 2007? Maybe I truly appreciate the team the Phillies have put together, even if I hate them. The organization didn’t sit on its hands after a World Series championship — they went out and got Raul Ibanez (which I thought was a bad move, admittedly), and then during the season picked up Cliff Lee and Pedro Martinez for peanuts. They built a championship team without shelling out almost half a billion dollars for three players.

I didn’t know where I’d end up at the end of this post, but it looks like I’m falling on the side of the Phillies. I don’t even know myself anymore.

In 2006, the Tigers went from a 71-91 the previous season to the playoffs. This year, the Rays went from last place at 66-96 to a AL East division crown. The 2006 Tigers took down the Yankees on their way to the World Series. The 2008 Rays held off an epic 3-1 comeback by the Red Sox to reach the World Series. They both went on to lose the World Series in five games, to an NL team I DEFINITELY DID NOT want to see win a championship. Fuck everything.

I’ve mentioned before how I didn’t want the Rays to end up like the Tigers. Maybe I should’ve known history would repeat itself, but I thought they were better. They managed to be on top of the best division in baseball at the end of the regular season. They kept their shit together in Game 7 of the ALCS, when everyone thought they were done (including me). But then their bats went colder than Jose Reyes at the end of the 2007 season.

And that’s my awful segue into how embarrassed the Mets should feel right now. Everybody already hated them, and now the entire NL East is laughing at them. The past two years, they’ve been the prohibitive favorite to win the NL East, and both years they’ve choked in dramatic fashion. Meanwhile, the Phillies have quietly gotten better each year and have now reached the point the Mets have thought they deserved the past few years. Maybe this year the Mets will actually come out with a chip on their shoulder, instead of thinking that have the God-given right to a pennant. I try not to get into this type of intangible shit, but it’s impossible not to if you’ve watched the Mets the past few years. Goddamn it.

Getting back to what just transpired on my television set, I still can’t believe it was real. That wasn’t really the World Series, right? We didn’t just have another shit finale to the season, one which was delayed both by rain and a presidential candidate who already has the election wrapped up. And Brad Lidge did not just have a perfect season. Now I have to hear about Jimmy Rollins the whole offseason. FUCK. ME.

Hey the Knicks are going to be better this season, right?

*looks at basketball scoreboard*

Holy shit! They won! Isiah should try to kill himself and then say it was his daughter more often.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmc-eg78gTs

If I think of a song (one that I enjoy listening to) about umpires being morons, I’ll post it. For now, I’ll just go with Zeppelin. Can’t go wrong with them.

I still think the Dodgers will beat your team, but if they don’t, I want you to blow the final game of the season. Game 7 of the World Series at either the bandbox that is Fenway Park, or the shithole that is Tropicana Field. I will make sure to have my voodoo doll sitting on top of TV. Maybe I’ll have it pinned to a dartboard. And as I hit the bullseye, you will give up a home run to Pujols. But how will Pujols hit a home run if he’s not in the playoffs, you ask. There will be a rip in the space-time continuum and Pujols will replace whomever is up, doesn’t matter if it’s Dustin Pedroia or Evan Longoria. Nobody will notice. But I will. I will see the flicker of Pujols’ soul engulf the puny mortal’s frame. Mark my words: PUJOLS WILL DESTROY YOU ONCE AGAIN.