Mark Spector is in the Bronx for the start of his road trip to see the Fall Classic and a little East Coast puck as well.
NEW YORK - So here's the plan: Two baseball games in New York, into Montreal Saturday night for the Toronto Maple Leafs' first win of the young season, and down to Long Island next Monday to chronicle the duelling hat tricks of John Tavares and Dustin Penner. Then we're back to the Bronx for the gripping conclusion of Yankees-Phillies, to be decided in the late innings of Game 7 on a Ryan Howard versus Mariano Rivera at-bat.
How do you like a guy's chances of all this working out?
Closing costs
Watching Rivera all these years has been like getting a front row seat in da Vinci's studio as he painted the Mona Lisa.
How long have we known for certain that the Yankees closer was headed for the Hall of Fame? There haven't been many players in any sport who passed that threshold of "Living Legend," yet remained effective enough in a younger man's game to hold on to the role and remain a key contributor for as long as Rivera has.
He is nearly 40 now, and yes, Rivera must have lost a couple of inches off his cutter, and an MPH or two on the gun. So now, in a Series that could possibly be his last, he is forced like all of those great closers of the past into the sticky situations that all the mortal stoppers find themselves in every day.
He'll give up a lead-off single here and there, and at this stage of his career hitters foul off his best stuff likely more than they used to. But still he gets it done, on Sunday giving up his first earned run in the playoffs since 2005. It was the first playoff run he has surrendered in New York since the Subway Series of 2000.
We remember Bruce Sutter, Lee Smith, Kent Tekulve and Goose Gossage. All were great, but none - in our opinion - had the same aura Rivera has when walks up the back of the mound to go to work.
Watch him closely this week. You'll want to tell the grandkids one day that you did.
Brawl classics
This is the Yankees first trip to the World Series in six seasons, while the Phillies are defending champs. So why does it seem like the Yankees are the favourites, and the Phillies the underdogs? (The Yanks are early favourites in Las Vegas).
We will say this though: If anything that happened 12 months ago can tell us something about the 2009 Fall Classic, we're willing to bet that Philadelphia will have to play a better brand of ball than was required to defeat the upstart Tamps Bay Rays a year ago.
Through the first three games last year the Phillies were hitting just 2-for-32 with men in scoring position, yet held a 2-1 Series lead over Tampa. We can't see that happening against a line-up as relentless as this Yankees order.
Could there possibly be a better matchup, as the best team in baseball this season meets a steeled, defending champ? Then there is the relationship between Philadelphia, which can't stand the fact that it lives in the sporting shadow of The Big Apple, and New York.
In Philly, nothing could taste sweeter than champagne drank at the big, bad Yankees' expense.
Yankees-Dodgers would have been romantic, sure. But Yankees-Phillies will have a lot more vitriol, perhaps even a little bit of hate.
The first ball some Phillies pitcher buries into the ribs of Alex Rodriguez, this Series will be on.
Starting off
Start times are 7:57 pm ET for all games of this series - except for Game 4 at 8:20 pm ET - which means they will routinely end past midnight in the east.
And this will be only the second World Series in the history of baseball to bleed into November, the first coming when 9-11 pushed back the start of the post-season.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball frets over the fact that kids today don't play the game the way they used to. Despite the fact a New York kid's bedtime coincide with about the second inning of the Yankees game.
What a mystery. Surely there is a consulting firm out there that can bill a few million on a study of how that all fits together.
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