New York Yankees

The first road game for the Yankees in the 2009 Playoffs was taking on the red-hot Minnesota Twins.

After three games of dominating pitching and late-inning clutch hitting, the Yankees disposed of Minnesota in a series sweep and moved on in the playoffs.

Starting on Friday, the Yankees will take on the Los Angeles Angels in the American League Championship Series.

The Angels are no strangers to the Yankees in the playoffs, and quite frankly, have been a pain in the Yankees' rear-ends in recent time.

Watching Nick Punto face reporters on Sunday night was almost hard to watch, even for a Yankees fan.

Almost.

A fringe player who looks more like a plumber than a professional athlete, Punto sat ashen and bleary-eyed in front of his locker trying to explain why he had barrelled around third base in the eighth inning like Rex Ryan toward a buffet table. His blunder had doomed the Twins, and now he was the man responsible for turning the lights out for good at the Metrodome.

Recently, the home movies of a New Hampshire family contained new, never before seen footage of the legendary Babe Ruth.

The footage can be seen here: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/10/08/sports/baseball/1247465064285/the-great-bambino-resurfaces.html?th&emc=th

Among the 134 pitchers Derek Jeter has faced at least 20 times in his Hall of Fame career, he has the lowest batting average against Scott Kazmir (.111) and Jered Weaver (.118).

That's not a good sign.

What is a good sign is the way the Yankees beat the Angels the last two times they played them on Sept. 22 and 23 in Anaheim—previously a graveyard for New York victories.

The Halos ousted the Bombers from the playoffs in 2002 and 2005, but this year, the two teams split the 10 games they played and were first and second in the Majors in runs scored.

The Arizona Fall League began today, with the first pitch at 12:35 in a matchup between the Surprise Rafters and Peoria Javelinas. The Yankees have seven players on the Rafters, most of whom are worth keeping an eye on. Here's a very quick rundown on which Yankee prospects to watch for in the AzFL:

If there was any doubt about who was the best closer in the postseason, last night proved that Mariano Rivera is the man that all managers want to send out in a close game. Last night, the Colorado Rockies lost the third game of a best-of-five series to the Philadelphia Phillies.

Looking back at the game, the blame can easily be put on the closer. Huston Street entered the game with a two-run lead and watched it vanish before his eyes. The day before that game, the Red Sox experienced a similar heart-breaking experience with their closer, Jonathan Papelbon.

The New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers have a lot in common.

Each has a fan base of little or no merit: witness LA's failure to sell out its Game Two NLDS win over St. Louis, even though the Redbirds' fan base travels exceptionally well. Nor are Yankees fans, who have come out in numbers 12.7 percent smaller than last year despite the Yanks' 103 wins, especially worthy of the fruits they now enjoy.

One of the best sidelines to the upcoming New York Yankee vs. Los Angeles Angels American League Championship is that each team will go against one of their former players. Mark Teixeira was traded for by the Angels last season, hoping that his acquisition will lead them to the World Series.

I waited a few days before writing this piece so I could read most of the reports on the great Friday night comeback for the Yankees. Most of the talk in the papers, on the sports talk radio stations and on television was about the missed call on the ball hit by Joe Mauer and how it cost the Twins the game.

It goes without saying that the better team won this series.

The Yankees hit better with runners in scoring position over the three-game set; their three starters combined for 19 innings, a paltry four runs and fourteen hits allowed with  and twenty-one strikeouts. The defense saved three crucial runs in close games—including Teixeira's two outstanding defensive plays with the bases loaded in the 11th inning of Game Two.

But among all the missed opportunities that caused the Minnesota Twins' ouster, I'd like to take a moment to mention some of the things they did well.