World Series

On a night when Brett Favre’s record for consecutive regular-season starts finally came to an end, Major League Baseball and pitcher Cliff Lee stole the spotlight.

As one of the hottest free agents on the market this offseason, much of the speculation about Lee’s new home pointed toward the New York Yankees.

After all, the Yankees have seemingly had their way in free agency with the ability to throw money at any superstar they thought might help them add to their trophy case.

Cliff Lee has signed with the Philadelphia Phillies one year after they traded him to the Seattle Mariners. The Phillies are the favorite to win the National League and World Series, right?

Wrong.

After the 2009 World Series, the Phillies set their sights on fixing their holes and begin prepared for the 2010 World Series. Philadelphia fell short, dropping the NLCS in six games to the San Francisco Giants, despite adding Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt.

t wasn’t a dream. Carl Crawford, who reached an agreement with the Boston Red Sox late Wednesday night, officially signed a seven-year, $142 million deal on Friday, making him the highest-paid outfielder in baseball, and was formally introduced Saturday morning. No baseball player, or any athlete, should be making that much money.

Just three days after completing the trade for Adrian Gonzalez, the Boston Red Sox have pulled off an even bigger stunner--- agreeing to terms with 29-year-old outfielder Carl Crawford on a 7-year, $142 million mega-deal that is almost certain to propel the Sox into the front-runners to win it all in 2011.

If baseball is in the mood to fix things that may or may not be actually broken, then why not fix everything, all at once?

First, there is the "Texas Rangers Problem": The 2010 AL champs, who make their home in the Central time zone, find themselves marooned in the same division—the American League West—with three teams from the Pacific time zone (the Angels, A's and Mariners), which is two time zones away. 

The silence of the offseason has abruptly ended.

There are many fans of the Colorado Rockies out there who simply don't understand how the organization works.

Half a dozen teams are interested in free-agent ace left-hander Cliff Lee. Three are known—the New York Yankees, Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals—while the other three are left to speculation.

The 27 New York Yankees World Series Championships span over 87 years, hitting every decade but the 1980's.

I scoured YouTube for the best video representation for each of the Yankee Championship years and this is what developed - everything from Ken Burns to old Newsreels to television and radio broadcasts to fan video.

Arthur Daley was a sports columnist for the New York Times from 1942-73. In 1956, he became the first sportswriter to win a Pulitzer Prize. Daley knew baseball, but this is not about him. It is about his take on the upcoming 1954 baseball season.

The New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers had met in the World Series in both 1952 and 1953. They were the popular picks of most fans and "experts" to meet again in 1954, but Daley had doubts.