One More for the Road

The Yankees won their 27th championship tonight, roughly three times as many as any other franchise. They won their second this decade, to go with 4 pennants and 8 division titles, making them once again the team of the decade. I say once again because the Yankees have been the team of the decade 7 times (20's, 30's, 40's, 50's, 60's, 90's, 00's) out of the 10 full decades in which they have played. The Red Sox were TOTD once, in the 19-teens, the A's were once, in the 1970's, and the dodgers were once, in the 1980's. To beat Pedro not once but twice this Series, to wrest the Team of the Decade mantle out of the hands of the Red Sox, who looked to get it entering the season, is to banish the ghosts of 2004, and even to mitigate the more powerful ghosts of the 2001 desert.
Although this blog has long since been abandoned, I felt I had to mark this occasion if only for one reason. None of this would ever have come to pass had the Yankees stuck with the slow Joe. Giarardi had them playing better fundamental baseball, had them committing to situational hitting, had them running the bases and taking risks, had them playing small ball, had them fielding their postions, all of the things that Torre failed to do. We were right on this blog from day one and the WS championship just proved it. Start Spreading the News. Slow Joe Left Yesterday. And we made a brand new start of it, New York, New York.