The Embassy Celebrates

My good friend Dave the Tall Jew spent about three years living on the West Coast in the years shortly after college, and I really would not have been surprised to see him stay there. He's such a laid-back guy, he would seem to fit in nicely in California.

Except for one thing: the guy's a die-hard Yankee fan. And when he moved back, one of the things he told me was how hard it was on him to be so far away from his Yankee-fan friends as the Bombers won three straight titles from 1998 to 2000.

I now know how he feels. I lived my entire life in the Greater New York area until last September. I had never been away from a place where the basic cable package included the Yankees' primary TV carrier. And I watched a TON of games. From 1985, when I was 12 years old, until 2007, I probably averaged about 120 games a year and never saw fewer than 100 (excluding the strike year of 1994).

Moving to Boston this year was not a test of loyalty. Watching the 1989-1992 Yankees was a test of loyalty -- passed with flying colors. This year was just a unique experience for this Yankee fan, but a common one for baseball fans of most any era. My Yankee-fan experience this year has been a mixture of post-modern, merely modern and positively ancient. A hundred years ago, fans who could not get to games followed their teams through the newspapers. I did that this year, though I read said papers online.

In the first decade of the 20th century, not only did newspapers post game stories and box scores, but some, during the World Series, would post giant displays on the sides of their buildings that showed the scores, the balls, strikes, outs and positioning of baserunners. If that sounds a little like MLB GameCast to you, you're 100% right. I followed plenty of games that way. I caught grainy broadcasts on AM radio, and those got a little easier to hear as the darkness came earlier and earlier as the season got later and later.

I made two long trips from Boston to New York to go to games at the new Yankee Stadium because I could not bear the thought of not going there this year. And yes, I even saw the Yankees play at the wondrous Fenway Park -- and let me tell you this: I don't like Red Sox fans, and I don't think they're the great fans that, well, THEY think they are. But the experience of being a sports fan in Boston is absolutely fascinating. It's just very hard for a Yankee fan to enjoy it because clearly we are not welcome -- though I did find a neighborhood bar around the corner from the Embassy that would let me watch the games there in relative peace.

But tonight's pennant-clinching win was a unique experience for me. I was always surrounded by other Yankee fans -- in 1998, by about 57,000 of them at Yankee Stadium. Tonight, I was in an apartment, alone, and not even in the same place in time as other Yankee fans, because I had to work and started watching the game on the DVR at about 9:45 or so.

So when I saw Mariano Rivera strike out Gary Matthews, it was an hour after it had happened and I was in the same empty apartment in a city full of sleeping Red Sox fans.

It also was an entirely different experience than any Yankee title I've been old enough to see -- which is to say, the ones that have come from 1996 on, as I barely remember the 1981 World Series and knew nothing prior to that other than Reggie and the Yankees were champions twice in my toddling years. I spent the 15 years leading up to 1996 not only wondering if I'd ever see the Yankees win a title but pretty well convinced I would not. So when they did, indeed, win that '96 championship, it was more satisfying than anything I could imagine. And when they won four more pennants and three more titles in the five years after that, it remained so sweet, because the taste of the years of not just failure but near incompetence remained fresh.

The last nine years have brought so much frustration, compounded by the newfound success of our chief rivals, that it has made the 1996-2003 glory seem so long ago, as the Yankees ceased to conjure fear, maybe even respect. And the Yankees spent and traded and rebuilt and reloaded and came up empty year after year.

But you knew something was different this year. You just felt like they had the right guys. Guys like the old Kevin Brown and the old Randy Johnson and the one-season teases Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright and the enticing but untested Jeff Weaver and Javier Vazquez -- you always knew these guys were the type that would be good pitchers on other teams but not aces on a Yankee staff that needed one. You knew that Jason Giambi would put up big numbers but come up short as a championship piece.

Enter C.C. Sabathia, who everybody in baseball knew was an ace; and A.J. Burnett, who is frustrating but does not have to be a No. 1 guy in New York; and Mark Teixeira, whose best years will not rival Giambi's but has made more great plays with his glove this month than Giambi has in his whole career.

And enter Nick Swisher, the posterboy for Moneyball. His batting average is not good, yet he's always on base and he hits home runs. I watched Sox fans berate him during batting practice before the first Yankees-Red Sox game this year at Fenway and scratched my head, knowing this is exactly the type of player Boston keeps digging up and plugging in, to great effect (Kevin Millar, anyone?).

And re-enter Melky Cabrera who struggled through an absolutely pathetic offensive season last year, finally suffering the indignity of a demotion to the minors three years into his major-league career. What a difference a dose of humility can make. Swisher, Cabrera and Brett Gardner are a great reminder of the importance of role players to a championship team. They are the guys who find a way to come through because nobody necessarily expects them to. They are not chokers when they fail, so they don't.

So yes, so much was different this year, both for me and for the Yankees. But the core of a New York pennant, now as a decade ago, is the same, minus O'Neill and Bernie. It's Andy Pettitte taking to the mound and showing you in the first inning that he's not getting beaten tonight. It's Jorge Posada's fiery leadership keeping everyone "grinding it." It's Mariano Rivera being completely dominant -- and in the rare instance that he fails, getting right back at it the next day and dominating again.

And it's Derek Jeter playing like a Hall-of-Famer again. So much was made this year about the fact that Jeter will make the Hall, but mostly because of his great "longevity" and "intangibles." No. That's not why. He has longevity and intangibles because he is a great player. Check out the numbers. The guy has a career batting average of .317 and an OPS of .847. His OPS in the postseason rises to .858. Is there anyone else in baseball you'd want up in a big spot? Me neither.

That leaves Alex Rodriguez. Rodriguez's failure to come through for the Yankees has been documented well. Neither Rodriguez nor any Yankee fan -- or Yankee hater, for that matter -- needs to be reminded that Rodriguez's first year in New York coincided with the exact season in which the Yankees' 80-plus-year dominance of the Red Sox came to a pronounced interruption if not an end. No one has to be told of his collossal failures in the postseason leading to his being dropped to eighth in the batting order in the Yankees' last game of the 2006 Division Series against Detroit.

Rodriguez had failed in the clutch over and over, during the regular season as well. So when he put up a monster season in 2007, including what seemed like nightly big hits in big spots, it still was not enough to make you think he'd come through in the postseason, and he didn't.

But something was different this year. It started disastrously enough, with the public discovery of his steroid use, followed by hip surgery that kept him out until May and clearly hobbled him all year. But it became obvious that the steroid revelation made him want to keep his mouth shut and let his bat do the talking. It also appeared quite clear that being without some of his incredible physical ability made him realize that he'd be better off just blending in with his team, because he was not going to carry them on his own.

And then something funny happened: he did carry them. Mystique and Aura, thy names had never been Rodriguez -- until this month. Rodriguez's late-game heroics against the Twins and Angels might have stood out against the backdrop of his putrid post-season tableau from Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS right up through 2007, but they were right on par with his 2009 season, except for one thing -- through 2009, he was clutch, but his average said he was a lesser player. This month, he has been clutch, and he has been a superior player to everyone out there.

Yet he has blended in. The Fox cameras showed cutaway shots of almost everyone during the ninth inning of Game Six, as it was obvious, with a 5-2 lead and Rivera on the mound, that we were watching the countdown to a championship. It would have been understandable for Fox to keep flashing over to Rodriguez, inferring that Rodriguez's finally getting to the World Series was the story. They never did. Only after it was over did they show a tight replay of Alex's reaction to the final out -- mixed in with the same shot of Jorge Posada, Joe Girardi, Derek Jeter, Mark Teixeira, Mariano Rivera and Robinson Cano.

I think it's fitting that C.C. Sabathia won the series MVP award over the equally deserving Rodriguez. It might not have mattered, but maybe "ALCS MVP" is not a label Rodriguez needs. Maybe "Yankee third baseman" is best. That would make him the one thing that so many people have said, over the last six years, he is not.

A Yankee.