DISGRACE!

Cleveland cound't do anything and still the Yankees managed to lose this game. Amazing! Base on balls, wild pitch,bunt , two outs and a wild pitch. Please! Posada has yet another passed ball, this time on a strikeout. Vizcaino gets too fine and has to groove one to Hafner. And that's not even mentioning the utter futility at the plate: Damon looked pathetic, Matsui looked worse than pathetic, Cano was impatient, Mankiewitcz was in April form, Jeter was pretty bad and AROD, well AROD was OCTOBERROD, 3 strikeouts and a pop out, extending his streak of RBI-less at bats in the post-season over 60 and his hitless streak to 17. But the truth is he didn't even stick out in his chokishness: the Yankees have indeed become his team.

The criminal thing is they got the performance they needed out of Pettite and the performance they needed out of Rivera, but just like the regular season, they just stopped even putting men on base once the game was tied. This loss was decidedly not on slow Joe; the players lost it for themselves. Remember in September when Torre and Damon and Jeter kept saying, in explanation of their hot streak, "Well we know we're a good team." Eh, not so much. This series is now looking exactly like the Detroit series of last year, only worse, just as Detroit looked the the Angels series of the year before, only worse. The Yankees are a still a team in decline, by inches, increasingly painful inches.