Did the Yankees Throw Game 6 of the ALCS?

After the Tiexiera injury in game 4 I saw a most dejected team.

Like there was now no point in contesting the rest of the game... the rest of the innings passing like the last hour of work on a Friday, just going through the motions, back at the real thing on Monday.

Then in game 5, as expected, they come back to life. the last game in New York, and with the veteran CC Sabathia on the mound - pulling every trick out from under his cap, his years baseball experience to find one last trick to fool just one more hitter - to find a way sans his 'A' game to keep the run happy Rangers at bay.

Then in game 6, after the 4 run 5th, the Yankees went back into their shell.

"Oh pitiful me! Oh, from want of will to live."

How fragile the Emperors, all the power but a mystique, a magic the court astrologers concocted that fooled us every time.

And now the team who play little ball quite well - from Texas, the biggest state in the Union - the unsophisticates, the know-nothings - they go right in and point it out to everybody, just like that. How regional, how provincial.


Can it be that simple? Some old myth repeated again, as just as they persist they must have some truth? That with out the spark plug Jeter, they are nothing?

Derek Jeter's Batting Line ALCS Game 6

Robinson Cano's Batting Line ALCS Game 6

So close to being normal, mere man-gods, that Tiexiera's being carried off the field on his shield destroys it all? What happened to these centurions? This mighty unstoppable army? The Empire at an end? Corruption eating at the core of the thing - the Senate fundamentally corrupted?

Surely there must be other logic; it must be 9 men out... the starting pitchers the key... then just a few at the top of the line-up... . The odds beyond cognition, the stake beyond dreaming.

Phil Hughes' Pitching Line ALCS Game 6

Did the Yankees throw the ALCS?

Or did the myth run out of magic. Did the chicken come home to roost? The ugly bleacher creatures and their homophobic delights too late to repent; the cock-sure interfere-rs too many; the Rodriguez cheats over years; the unabashed spending that has dwarfed any in either league - for so long.

Has the crash finally come? Have the Barbarians arrived at the gates? Has Faust come to account?


Or did they just do us one better? I'm wondering if the Yankees' threw the series.



mh