[新聞] 紐約時報

[WangVictor (但願人長久)]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/sports/baseball/09yankees.html?_r=1&
hp&oref=slogin

Season Over: Yankees Out, and Torre ...

Everything changes. Things fall apart. Summer does not last forever, though
it seemed that way at Yankee Stadium last night. It was 87 degrees at game
time, one last day of warmth, perhaps, for Joe Torre.

For 12 seasons, there was sunshine on his shoulders. But now there is
darkness, and the condemned old ballpark is shuttered again for the winter.
The Yankees are a first-round playoff casualty for the third October in a
row, and Torre will almost certainly lose his job as manager.

The Cleveland Indians eliminated the Yankees, 6-4, in Game 4 of their
American League division series. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ owner,
was said to be fuming in his office.

The Indians will now play the Boston Red Sox in the A.L. Championship Series
starting Friday at Fenway Park.

Steinbrenner had already tied Torre’s future to the outcome of this series.
Torre became an icon — and a very wealthy man — while guiding Steinbrenner’
s players to four World Series titles. But the last was seven years ago, a
drought too long for a famously impatient owner.

Four of the unfulfilled seasons have come with the game’s best player, Alex
Rodriguez, anchoring the lineup. Rodriguez was 2 for 12 in the series until
adding a single and a homer after the Yankees had fallen far behind. He can
now opt out of his $25.2-million-a-year contract and is expected to seek
untold riches in a new contract.

If he leaves, his last at-bat in pinstripes will be remembered as a harmless
fly ball to right field for the second out in the ninth with the potential
tying run on deck.

Two mainstays from the championship years, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada,
can also become free agents. Keeping both, and Rodriguez, will be expensive
but affordable for the Yankees, whose business model thrives despite repeated
playoff failures.

In his first two at-bats, Rodriguez struck out twice on six pitches against
the soft-tossing Paul Byrd, who fanned no others in five innings. But other
batters were worse in the series — notably Derek Jeter, who hit .176 and
made the first out in the ninth. 

Most damning for the Yankees, though, was the performance of their ace,
Chien-Ming Wang. The major league leader in victories over the past two
seasons, Wang was 0-2 with a 19.06 earned run average against Cleveland.

In Game 1, Wang matched his career high by allowing eight runs. In Game 4, he
set a career low for innings pitched, with one. Wang gave up two runs in the
first and was charged with two more in the second after leaving with no outs
and the bases loaded. Mike Mussina, who replaced him, allowed two runs in
four and two-thirds innings.

The decision to start Wang on three days’ rest, for just the second time in
his career, could haunt Torre. He had resisted the urge to do it last fall,
and Jaret Wright lost the elimination game. With Wang another year removed
from his rookie shoulder problems, Torre trusted him.

He also hoped that, with short rest, Wang might be just tired enough for his
sinkers to fade properly. In Game 1, Wang had been too strong and the pitch
did not sink, causing him to abandon his game plan and throw more sliders and
changeups.

But the short layoff, and the comfort of pitching at home, did not change
much for Wang. Again, his sinkers were not sinking.

Grady Sizemore led off the game with a home run into the bleachers in
right-center field. Travis Hafner took a sinker to the opposite field for a
one-out single, and he scored when Wang missed with a pitch up in the strike
zone to Jhonny Peralta, who singled to center.

The Yankees wasted a scoring chance in their half of the first, when they put
two runners on with one out for Rodriguez, who whiffed on an 86-mile-an-hour
fastball. Posada then flied out to left fielder Kenny Lofton, who made a
sliding grab.

Lofton was dynamic in the series, and his bunt attempt in Game 3 caused a
lurching Roger Clemens to aggravate his strained hamstring. Lofton’s success
seemed to almost mock Torre, who never wanted Lofton in 2004 and did not get
along with him.

The Yankees signed Lofton that season because Steinbrenner was envious of
Juan Pierre, a speedy leadoff hitter who tormented the Yankees for Florida in
the 2003 World Series. Steinbrenner no longer exerts such direct influence
over player moves, leaving General Manager Brian Cashman to make those calls.

But his public threat to fire Torre if he lost this series, which was
reported Sunday, showed that it was still Steinbrenner’s decision on the
manager. Cashman talked him out of firing Torre after last year’s
first-round loss, but with Torre unsigned for 2008, it is easy now for
Steinbrenner to make a clean break.

“I do respect the fact that he is the boss,” Torre said before Game 4. “It
’s not about how much money he pays me. It’s that he trusted me with his
team, and I take that as a very serious and personal responsibility. And I
hope that I do well enough for him to be proud of what we do.”

The Yankees failed to win the A.L. East this year for the first time in a
decade, but their effort to capture the wild card was a source of pride for
Torre. The Yankees won 73 of their final 112 games to overcome a horrid start
that had put Torre’s job in jeopardy in late April.

It is trendy now to call the postseason a crapshoot, where the unforeseen —
 like a swarm of midges from Lake Erie disrupting Game 2 — can obscure which
team is really best. But Steinbrenner has never believed that, and when Torre
won four titles so quickly, he set an almost impossibly high standard for
himself.

The Yankees’ last pennant was in 2003, when Aaron Boone smashed an
extra-inning homer to cap a stirring comeback against the Red Sox in Game 7
of the A.L. Championship Series. The scoreboard played those highlights
before the bottom of the sixth last night and, as if on cue, Robinson Cano
led off with a homer to chase Byrd.

It cut Cleveland’s lead to 6-2, and during a pitching change, the scoreboard
showed Tino Martinez, sitting by the home dugout, just behind the former
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Soon, the crowd was standing and roaring.

But with runners at the corners and one out against Rafael Perez, Jeter
grounded into a double play, ending the inning. The crowd grew silent, then
booed when Kyle Farnsworth came into the game in the seventh.



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※ 發信站: 批踢踢實業坊(ptt.cc) 
◆ From: 203.203.37.12
→ sylvia1105:被批了-.-
推 smallallen03:sinkers not sinking ...
推 kauw:當王牌就是要擋子彈 去年RJ被轟 今年輪到王了
推 Raducan:對啊  仔細想想 RJ在洋基投的比王遭多了吧
推 ha:被轟才會成長....很多王牌都是這樣走過來的   這就是MLB!
推 richard1003:兩場都爆炸,被批也無可奈何....
推 dashi:挨轟了 = =|||
推 kauw:兩場都一開局就讓球隊陷於苦戰 可以說王輸掉這系列不為過
推 james1027:想到去年RJ被滿場球迷噓到爆...唉....
推 mkoo:RJ老將被轟還OK  小王被轟不知道會不會信心崩潰 >"<
→ kauw:打線其實在王投那兩場也還有 3,4分 不多 但對王牌也勉強夠
推 ROCAF:Mo有一年WS救援失敗輸掉他也只能一臉囧樣
→ ha:現在反而是建立心理素質的時候  危機常常是轉機
推 rota:才第2年，不用想這麼多，努力比較要緊
推 Boyzone:鞭的很大
→ ha:看看王能不能自己走出  有一番蛻變
→ kauw:聽說王有請嬰中三日?他自己怎麼這麼有信心 冏...
推 rupcj:因為回頭一看洋基沒有更好的投手啦！
推 kians:RJ薑是老的辣啊,被洋基全場球迷噓還面不改色,好像沒聽到一樣
→ kians:這就是Ace中的Ace啊
推 whogotme:torre工作可能不保 以及幾個被點名拉正的球員...= =
推 danbin:可是我還是很喜歡RJ
推 yashingno:其實被轟很正常 意料中的事 q_q
→ WRS: @.@  我覺得這篇講到王都在陳述事實啊，批史坦比較多XDrz
推 qaz2004:看了文章的用字  感覺跟文字獄差不多了..
推 bravee:明年就知道了...會變6勝19敗嗎?? (逃)
推 overhigh:隨便喇,被轟一轟也好,這種狀況在投手生涯遲早該經歷...
推 pig70189:小王投的不好是事實阿~