Baseball

Just a day removed from the Yankees elimination, it isn’t hard to find a disappointed New Yorker. The beloved Yankees are done for the year, and their dreams of a second consecutive world championship are diminished.

As many love to do, we can sit here and talk about what could have happened and what should have happened. We can talk about the mistakes the Yankees made; we can talk about the Yankees lack of luck; we can talk, and talk and talk.

Ichiro Suzuki recently proved he is the greatest hitter in Major League Baseball history. He had his 200th hit for the 10th straight year in the United States. This is a feat no hitter has ever achieved.

Pete Rose is the only other player who had 200 hits in 10 years, which took him 15 years to accomplish. All other great hitters line up behind Suzuki, including Ty Cobb, whose AL record Suzuki shared until this year.

The Reds got decent production from their catchers in 2010 with their trio of Ryan Hanigan, Ramon Hernandez and Corky Miller posting the following numbers:

Let me start by saying congratulations to the Texas Rangers.

The Rangers are the ALCS Champions and well deserve to be just that after winning Game 6 against the New York Yankees, 6-1.

Four days ago, I would have said Joe Girardi. Actually, I would have shouted it. I thought he had made one of the biggest blunders in managing history.

It was Game 4 and A.J. Burnett was on the mound and he actually had a lead. The Yanks were up 3-2 in the top of the sixth inning and Nelson Cruz was standing on second base. He had wisely tagged on a deep fly ball out by Ian Kinsler.

By Tyler Ward

The Texas Rangers are moving on to their first World Series. Their opponent, though, we are still waiting to find out if it'll be the Phillies or Giants. But, for now, it's the Rangers' time. They will be appearing in their first World Series, even though they just won their first postseason series earlier this month when they defeated the Tampa Bay Rays.

What do the years 2001, 2003 and 2010 all have in common? They all involve deep playoff runs and subsequent disappointing playoff exits for the New York Yankees.

Following the 2001 and 2003 seasons, the Yankees acquired a dynamic hitter and veteran pitcher in each offseason, Jason Giambi and Mike Mussina after '01 and Alex Rodriguez and Kevin Brown following '03, and now it is very possible 2010 will also share that distinct similarity.

“In this fall, this is very tough, in this fall I'm going to take my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.”

With that one sentence, a city that once loved NBA superstar LeBron James began to burn his jerseys, t-shirts and anything else with the number 23 on it.

He had become the second most hated man in the city, second only to Art Modell of course, the former owner of the Cleveland Browns that oversaw the move of the beloved franchise to Baltimore.

While Cliff Lee of the Texas Rangers continues his somewhat surprising march toward baseball immortality, each of his subsequent dominant postseason starts helps him climb higher and higher toward the pinnacle of baseball's Mount Olympus.

Already, after only parts of two seasons performing on baseball's grandest stage, Lee has earned himself the right to be mentioned alongside legends of the game like Sandy Koufax, Whitey Ford and Bob Gibson, pitchers who excelled when the stakes were the highest.

It almost seemed that it was over before it started. The Texas Rangers' homecoming to an Arlington stadium full of their rowdy fans and a Colby Lewis gem finally put an end to the Yankees' hopes of defending their World Series title.

Unlike Game 5 back in New York, the Yankees didn't have their ace C.C. Sabathia on the mound. Instead, they were relying on a young and relatively inexperience Phil Hughes who had already taken the Game 2 loss when he gave up seven earned runs in only four innings of work.