Philadelphia Phillies

Not only does Cliff Lee compLEEte me, he pulled another compLEEte game out of his hat. His domination of the team with the best record in the majors, the most home runs, and the highest payroll was something out of a storybook.

Hey, they should act that out on Broadway.

Wait, they are.

I find headlines like "Phillies stun Yankees in World Series Game One" comical because the Yankees are not the team to beat. It's almost like last year when the Tampa Bay Rays went through the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox on their way to the World Series.

The Rays were never given a chance to beat the Red Sox after taking out the White Sox. Yet, if you were listening to the broadcast, you would automatically assume that the Rays were the wild card team and that the Red Sox had won the American League East.

Entering the 2009 postseason, only four pitchers in playoff history had recorded double-digit strikeouts while issuing zero walks.

Cliff Lee has now done it in back-to-back outings.

In Game Three of the NLCS, Lee navigated eight innings of shutout baseball while posting 10 strikeouts and zero walks against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Lee did it again on Wednesday night in Game One of the World Series, tossing a complete game six-hitter and recording 10 punch outs, with zero free passes, against the potent New York Yankees’ lineup.

Chase Utley hit two solo home runs and Cliff Lee pitched a complete game gem as the Phillies beat the Yankees 6-1 in Game One of the World Series. 
 
In what was billed as a pitchers' duel on a cold wet night in the Bronx, it was a lights-out Lee who came out on top over CC Sabathia to dampen the spirits of Murderers' Row. 
 
A dazzling Lee pitched nine innings of six-hit ball, striking out ten and walking none on 122 pitches. Lee pitched with confidence and swagger, seemingly unphased by the magnitude of the occasion. 
 

Finally, after 4,860 games from 30 teams, we have the World Series that we had all hoped for. We have the two juggernauts of baseball. The two cities, separated by 26 exits of Turnpike through the great state of New Jersey, will indeed give us the World Series that we could only wish for at the beginning of the season.

The 2009 World Series has arrived after a long and quite interesting season. Along with the arrival of the Fall Classic comes the World Series buzz and debates on who's got the edge. The Phillies and the Yankees make great cases for themselves, respectively.

The New York Yankees are trying to get back to their previous state of baseball dominance. Yankees like Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, and Andy Pettitte hope to end this decade the way they started it, with a World Series Championship.

So, I’ve been trying this week to actually write some insightful columns and conduct some interviews, both for the folks over at CBS and here. In addition to that, I’ve been accumulating a tremendous amount of notes that I’ve slipped into various columns or interviews.

However, not everything made the cut, or fit, or whatever. So, just for the sake of having everything in one place, or in case this is the only Web site you go to on your Internet machine, let’s review the events from the last few days:

Tonight, if the rain lets up, the World Series will begin between the Phillies and the Yankees. While on paper this seems like a great matchup, featuring the teams that have been the best in their respective leagues all season, I'm completely uninterested.

At the risk of sounding like a whiny blogger, this is not a World Series that captivates my interest.

Perhaps it's the story, or lack there of. While A-Rod's rise from a playoff failure to juggernaut has been interesting, I honestly can't get into it.