For your viewing pleasure

MLB.com has some pretty amazing video archives. They go quite a ways back, and, well, I've been hooked, looking up all of the moments I've enjoyed, this season and previous.

So I figured, why not share some of them?

Here are some of my favorites. I'll put a link to this post on the sidebar, so you can always come back and find it without needing to bookmark it.

I'll add more as I find them--still need A-Rod's bottom 15th inning HR, and all of the other walk offs, but I figure it's a start.

If there's something you'd like me to try to find, just leave it in a comment.

MLB.com doesn't provide an embedding option (yet), so for the moment, they are just links.


Yankee Moments, 1996-2003


Chris Chambliss 1976 ALCS walk off home run



Jim Leyritz home run ties Game 4 of 1996 World Series

Joe Buck with the call.




Final out, 1996 World Series


Final out, 5/17/98, David Wells' perfect game. Jim Kaat calls.


Final out, David Cone perfect game. Tim McCarver calls.


Tino Martinez grand slam, 1998 WS game 1. Joe Buck calls.


Tino Martinez bottom 9 two out game tying home run and Jeter's game winning HR, 2001 WS. Joe Buck calls.


Scott Brosius bottom 9 two out game tying home run, 2001, Joe Buck calls.


Aaron Boone game winning home run, 2003 ALCS. Joe Buck calls.


2009 Yankee moments


Melky Cabrera, walk off home run vs Oakland, April, Micheal Kay


Jorge Posada, walk off single vs Anaheim/LA, May, Michael Kay


Walk Off Weekend, May, various calls.


Swisher, Canó and Cabrera go back-to-back-to-back, May, Michael Kay.


Melky Cabrera, walk off single vs Phillies, May, Joe Buck


Luis Castillo drops pop up, June, TV and Radio calls


Mariano Rivera's RBI, June, ESPN, John Millar, Joe Morgan, Steve Phillips


Jorge Posada, walk off single vs Toronto, July 4th, Michael Kay


Hideki Matsui, walk off HR vs Baltimore, July, Michael Kay


Melky Cabrera hits for the cycle, August, CWS broadcast


Alex Rodriguez bottom of the 15th HR vs Red Sox, August, John Sterling


Damon and Teixeira hit back-to-back home runs to sweep Red Sox, August, ESPN and radio calls


Robinson Canó walk off hit, vs Toronto, August, Michael Kay


Robinson Canó walk off home run, vs Chicago White Sox, August, Michael Kay


Nick Swisher walk off home run, vs Tampa Bay, September, Michael Kay


Francisco Cervelli walk off single, vs Toronto, September, Michael Kay


Juan Miranda walk off single, vs Kansas City, September, Michael Kay


Alex Rodriguez game tying HR ALDS game 2, October, TV and radio calls


A-Rod ties it and Teixeira wins int, game 2 ALDS, October, TBS, Chip Caray


A-Rod ties it in the eleventh, game 2 ALCS, October, Fox, Buck and McCarver


Hairston scores winning run on error in 13th, game 2 ALCS, October, Fox, Buck and McCarver


TV/Radio calls of the ALCS game 2 winning play


TV/Radio calls of Alex Rodriguez game-tying HR


Final out, 2009 ALCS, Fox, Buck and McCarver


TV/radio calls of final out 2009 ALCS

Thanks to Replacement Level Yankees Weblog for the list of the 2009 walk offs!

Derek Jeter and All That

The first time I heard of Derek Jeter, he was not a star shortstop, but instead a politician.

In 1996, my fifth grade teacher, Ms. S, tried to teach a group of fidgety ten year olds about the presidential election between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

To do that, she had the class divide in two, and each group had to dress up a life-size paper doll, come up with a name and come up with a platform for the candidate. Someone in my group decided that ours should be Derek Jeter. I didn't know who Derek Jeter was, and I didn't ask.

When I did start to follow the Yankees closely, I made a conscious decision that Derek Jeter could not be my favorite Yankee. Everyone loved Derek Jeter, and I needed to be different. I chose Mariano Rivera instead.

I don't regret my choice, but I've also come to realize that there's a reason everyone loves Jeter, and it's not entirely about his looks.

It's hard to explain Jeter to the uninitiated--he's not the most prolific home run hitter nor is he the greatest fielder--but there's only one Derek Jeter.

It's not just that Derek Jeter has a knack for doing the right thing at the right time, like that October night in Oakland in 2001, or that he won four World Series rings in his first five years (discounting 1995), or that he's now tied with Lou Gehrig as the Yankees all-time hits leader, but that he's done it all in a simple way: team first. Always, always, team first.

During Spring Training, Jeter was asked if he'd consider batting leadoff instead of batting second, to reduce the chances of him hitting into a double play. Jeter has the pull and the clout that he could have said no, and it would have gone unchallenged, but that's not who Jeter is. Jeter agreed, and now not only is 2009 a great year for him, but it's also been a great year for the guy with whom he switched places--Johnny Damon.

If ever the Yankee ghosts and the baseball gods have blessed someone, they've blessed Derek Jeter, and they've blessed all of us who have had the ability to watch him for these fourteen years.

It strikes me that Jeter should be tying a mark set by Lou Gehrig, because in many ways the two are similar: they play(ed) with grace and with class, role models in every sense of the word.

Gehrig and Jeter will likely have the two most well-known speeches in Yankees' history--Gehrig's already is, and Jeter's, given at the end of last season, will be made more with the passage of time. There aren't any other two Yankees you would want to give such speeches.

***

My nephew's much too young to understand all this--he's only four months--but when he's old enough, I'll take him to a Yankee game, and if his father hasn't already, I'll tell him to be like Jeter. To put one's team first. To play hard, even if you don't play well. To behave with dignity and class.


That's just the Jeter way.

Jeter Would Be First Yankee to 3000 Hits

With Derek Jeter only nine hits away from breaking the Yankees all-time hits record, it struck me the other night that the Yankees have, in their illustrious history, not had a 3000 hit hitter--certainly not one that was a Yankee his entire career.

Yesterday, I was talking to Mike McCann of WFAN, when I brought this up, and we devolved into a long conversation as to why this has happened.

As it turns out, most of the everyday Yankees that we idolize as part of the team's storied history have legitimate reasons as to why they were never able to play long enough to collect 3,000 hits:

• Lou Gehrig got sick with ALS, a disease that now commonly is referred to as Lou Gehrig's Disease.  There is little question that had Gehrig remained healthy he would have broken the record.

• Joe DiMaggio lost seasons due to World War Two, as did many other of the best players of that era.

• Mickey Mantle's career was derailed by injuries and some not-so-good off field habits.

These are only three  examples, but they are among the most high-profile Yankees (you could also consider Babe Ruth and Yogi Berra here) to have ever worn the uniform.  If they never reached 3000 hits, that tells you two things:

1) It tells you just how hard it is to achieve this feat--how long one has to play and how long one has to remain healthy.

2) It tells you just how good Derek Jeter really is.  No, seriously.  He might never win that MVP award (Gehrig never won a World Series without either Ruth or DiMaggio; this is baseball, strange things happen), but Jeter is easily one of the ten best Yankees to have ever put on the uniform.

How I Could (and Do) Like the Yankees

Over the weekend, while seeing relatives I see on average once every ten years, there were some questions that kept getting asked:

"So what are you doing?"

"Do you enjoy grad school?"

"Sports? Really?"

"Ugh, the Yankees? How could you like the Yankees?"

Both sides of my family, if you go back far enough, have Brooklyn--and thus Dodgers--connections. When the Dodgers were replaced by the Mets, the transition was (or, seems to have been) seamless: Dodgers fans, who by the very definition could never become Yankees fans, switched to the Mets instead of trying to keep track of a team all the way out in California.

So the question becomes: how does someone in this family become a Yankee fan?

The answer-the long and true answer-is a complicated thing, with direct and indirect causes.

For example, consider this: the very first Yankee game I ever watched on TV was the 1996 Jeffrey Maier game, and I remember it only because at the time it was unheard of for our family to watch baseball at the dinner table. My brother must have said something, the game went on the TV and I was momentarily transfixed without understanding its real significance.

I hadn't much cared for the Yankees except for that my fourth-grade teacher, the one we all said was a witch and hid a dead cat in the cupboard hated the Yankees and would make those wearing Yankee shirts turn them inside out, so on the last day of school we all wore Yankee shirts, just to spite her. It was so worth it, even as it is fourteen years later.

Still, when the Yankees made the World Series that year, somewhere along the line I had to realize what was happening.

I knew nothing about the Yankees except that they had some rookie shortstop named Derek Jeter, and a young pitcher named Andy Pettitte, and I knew nothing about the Braves except that they were supposed to be unbeatable. Still, my mind was a little too rational at the time: I knew it was a best-of-seven series.

When my dad drove me to school the morning after game two, I asked if the Yankees had won the game the night before-I wasn't allowed to stay up and had yet to learn as I would in not-so-much later years that games are, in fact, also broadcast on radio, and since my clock was also a radio...

My dad's response was simple: "Of course not." Of course the Yankees didn't win. There was no way they could win.

I was confused. "Isn't it a best of seven?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"So doesn't that mean that they [Atlanta] have to win four games?"

"Yes," he said, "but the Yankees aren't going to win."


Chances are, if you're reading this post, you know how that turned out.



I didn't follow baseball much after that until 1998, when I came home from summer camp and asked my brother how the Yankees were doing.

"If they don't win the World Series," he said, "it would be a major shock."

So that October, I watched.

I watched them sweep Texas, I watched them fall behind to Cleveland (thank you Chuck Knoblauch) and then overtake them, I watched as my brother decreed the new Cuban import El Duque as his favorite because of the leg kick (I picked Paul O'Neil. It was the hair.).

I watched as my math teacher's mood was solely based on how the Yankees performed the night before--and I must admit, I picked up the habit.

I watched the Yankees fall behind in game one of the World Series to San Diego, with my parents in the family room. I watched as Tino Martinez stepped up to the plate and my dad said that his .125 postseason batting average was really good. I told him it was not, and one full count later, I watched as Tino launched one into the right-field upper deck. I wanted to scream for joy, but my other brother was fast asleep, so I screamed silently, trying not to jump up and down too much so the dog-we had one then-wouldn't bark.

I watched as El Duque shut the door early in game two, and I watched as the Yankees took two on the West Coast to nab crown number twenty-four.

You could say that the rest is history.

You don't not become a Yankees fan after watching that, even if you don't entirely understand what is going on or why Scott Brosius is the most unlikely of all playoff heroes or what's so special about Trevor Hoffman or what going 125-50 really means.

I didn't understand why the Yankees traded David Wells, who had pitched a perfect game, to Toronto for Roger Clemens in the offseason, but I remember the look my brother gave me when I dared to express my opinion.

I had a lot to learn, but I was hooked.


We all know what happened since then: a threepeat of championships at the cost of an impoverished farm system that led to the current "drought" (something other teams might consider a minor dry spell).

I cried in 2001, not just because the Yankees lost but because of the circumstances surrounding it-by then Mariano Rivera had filled the role as favorite player. The best memory from that year was Game Five in the world series, thinking there was no way the Yankees could hit another bottom-of-the-ninth two out two run home run...and then they did. There was still some baseball magic in New York.

In 2003, Aaron Boone provided such jubilation-and such a catharsis-that the only thing I remember about that World Series is Jorge Posada making the final out. Even six years later, the World Series seems almost trivial when compared to Aaron Boone.

In 2004, I didn't cry. I couldn't cry. I was angry and at the same time, once the Yankees lost game four, some part of me knew it was going to happen, and once it did, there was a release. The Red Sox had won and the world hadn't ended, and once the curse was broken, it was broken. No longer could Sox fans retain righteous indignation and the downtrodden loser identity that had been theirs for so long.

As a Yankee fan I've never known bad years, not in the ways I have as a Nets and a Jets fan, or in the ways that Cubs fans have for so long.

Last year was a disappointing year, but all things considered, in the end not nearly the collapse some would have you believe.

The thing is, however, even if the Yankees went and lost 100 games in a season, I would still be a Yankees fan.

Becoming a fan of a sports team is more or less, in my mind, like becoming right-handed or left-handed. There's a brief period of time at the very beginning where you can choose, but if you're serious about it, once the choice is made, it's final.

So I've developed an affection for Brooklyn, and Jackie and Pee Wee and Branch, and even for the Cubs, and Ernie Banks and the Ivy and Harry Carey, but I will never be a Dodgers fan or a Cubs fan.

Being a Yankee fan has become as much a part of my identity as there is Brooklyn in my grandmother.

It doesn't take a whole lot to become a fan of a certain team-just the right thing happening at the right time-but once it happens, there it is, good and finalized. You may as well have been genetically altered.

I suspect when I die, should they do an autopsy, you'll find navy blue pinstripes coursing through my veins...

Pettitte Rejects Offer and a Vexing Question

Andy Pettite has officially rejected the Yankees' $10 million offer.

The Yankees probably still want another starter, so it will be interesting to see which avenue they pursue.

However, you can read about that on pretty much every Yankee site in existence, so I won't bore you when I just posted about it a couple days ago.

***

A more vexing question:

Tonight I went to the New Jersey Nets/Sacramento Kings basketball game--I go to Nets games about once a year; I went more when I was younger.

Anyway, my party (myself, my brother, my boyfriend and my brother's friend) had Row 1 tickets, but they weren't courtside seats--that is, we were behind the wall that demarcates where the hockey rink would be if we were at a hockey game.

So, when people in the courtside seats got up to use the restroom or get a snack, they would walk past us. Being the stalker I am, I was on the lookout for anyone famous, and while I did not spot Jay-Z or Beyonce, I did see something also interesting:

A man, the same man, walked past me twice, on his left hand wearing a 1998 Yankees World Series ring.

He walked past so fast that I could not grab a picture (anyway, it would have been rude to do so), so I am at a loss as to who said person was, if his ring was an actual 1998 series ring (he's got courtside seats...so...that lends me to believe it is) and what the heck is he doing at a Nets game?

I can only offer vague physical details, but:

Said man was bald(ing), wore glasses, medium height (on the tallish side of medium) and looked fairly out of shape--not horribly out of shape, but not in shape, either.

He had a fairly medium skin tone--at least, as far as I could tell.

So, on these details alone, who did I see?

My guess would be someone on the coaching or front office staff as opposed to a player, but I don't have the 1998 roster memorized and my first guess was off the mark.

So, Yankees' fans, who did I see?

Random Baseball Trivia I Don't Expect to Find

How amazing is this game?

I was in Vermont over the weekend to attend a cousin's wedding--hence the lack of updates.

I had never before been to Vermont, and for a city kid, the fall colors are striking. Everywhere you look it seems like a suitable place for a photograph. There are yellows and oranges and reds in New York this time of year, sure, but it doesn't compare. The colors in Vermont are brighter, fuller, more vivid...as though someone has used a paint brush to accent each and every tree leaf.

I had never before been somewhere where the local news on the radio advises citizens that the year's firewood is too green for use, and that if there is anyone with spare firewood, to please donate it.


So I was there with the family, downstairs in the hotel/motel bar, drinking and catching up with people I see at weddings and bar mitzvahs but not really anywhere else, and eventually we start talking about baseball.

I'm not sure how the conversation arises, but it does, and someone--maybe me, I don't remember--mentions something about the Rays and the White Sox playing, so the hotel clerk/bartender, who sports a Rollie Fingers-like mustache, turns the TV on and mentions that he prefers the Red Sox.

So, of course, I start talking, and he starts talking. The rest of the gathered family moves upstairs, but I remain there for just that extra minute because I can't refuse a baseball conversation--even if it involves the Red Sox.

The man, whose name I don't know, imparts a nugget of knowledge--an answer to a trivia question, perhaps--something inconsequential to probably everyone else in the motel except for him and me. Him, because it involves his family, and me, because, well, I live for such things.

He says that his grandfather, the first name I can't remember, but the surname being Pope, played for the Yankees.

He was a pitcher in the days before relief pitching--a utility pitcher, they were called.

You won't find him in any of the books, and baseball-reference has nothing on him, because back then, in the days between the end of World War I and the beginning of Yankee Stadium (the Original), they didn't keep stats for relievers.

It's not surprising that baseball can reach rural Vermont--in fact, I'd expect it. This is, after all, not unlike the town of Cooperstown.

Still, baseball is timeless here.

The man's grandfather retired and set up a butcher's shop, or so I am told, and if not for the memories, he is lost to the world.

I'm not sure if I'm struck more by the power of the game or the power of the memory, but it's a moment I won't forget.

I can't.