ALCS Figures to Haunt Sloppy Halos

NEW YORK -- The Angels will be haunted all season by their failure to do the little things correctly, such as not treating the baseball as if it were a ripe pumpkin. The Yankees, especially the unrivaled core four, played and then celebrated as if they had been there before, even if it has taken six long years for them to figure the way back.

Therein lies the difference between going home and booking a trip to the World Series, in two quick sentences. On a night when Andy Pettitte's cutter was nearly as biting as it was in 1996 when he pitched one of the greatest playoff games in Yankee history, the Angels tussled through more misplays in a series plagued with them. On a night when Mariano Rivera reached deep for a six-out save, the Angels strangled all opportunities to extend the American League Championship Series into a Game 7. They clumsily ran the bases, made some atrocious errors, stranded more runners. And the manager probably has a move or two he'd like to have back in the Yankees' 5-2 win that crushed the Angels' postseason and jump-started a New York-Philadelphia World Series.

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And so here was Mike Scioscia, glumly walking around the visitor's clubhouse at Yankee Stadium as the strains of Frank Sinatra kept the party down the hall raging well into Monday's early morning hours. Scioscia shook hands with Joe Saunders, the Angels' starter who battled high pitch counts in 3 1/3 shaky innings, and Scioscia hugged Vladimir Guerrero, the enigmatic slugger who might've just played his last game with the Angels, and the scene went on like this for quite awhile, until Scioscia had run out of players he could pull aside and say how proud he was to be their manager.

"Although this stings right now, what our guys in that room accomplished is very, very important. And we just are going to take that forward and hopefully get better."
-- Angels manager Mike Scioscia on his team Class and dignity drip from Scioscia's pores; we wouldn't expect him to react any other way to such a bitter ending to a season that began with true tragedy. So Guerrero strayed too far from first base and was doubled off on a shallow fly ball in Sunday's first inning, an ominous sign of things to come and a nasty reminder of how they had been? So Howard Kendrick added to the Angels' string of blunders by failing to handle Nick Swisher's finely laid bunt in the eighth? So reliever Scott Kazmir, never one to harness his control, made an ugly throw to first in what was still a close game, with the season on the line?

They'll be troubled by all of the above and more, dating back to the two-out pop up shortstop Erick Aybar and third baseman Chone Figgins allowed to drop between them in Game 1. Surely Scioscia will wonder if he should have summoned Jered Weaver and not Kazmir in Sunday's eighth, when the Yankees had a skinny 3-2 lead. Scioscia doesn't have a binder like Yankee manager Joe Girardi, but it's still easy to mock the Angels' skipper for failing to be the Uber Genius he's been most of his career.

But in the midst of the Angels' clubhouse, the answers to the pointed questions -- "Vlad, what were you thinking, trying to run like that?" -- kept spinning back to a reminder of the vacant locker, and the Angel who is no longer here. Their season began with the death of Nick Adenhart, a young pitcher who was killed along with two friends by an alleged drunk driver, and the Angels hoped it would end with the presentation of a World Series ring to Adenhart's family. Scioscia wasn't about to diminish his players' tears by dwelling on the negative bumps.

"This is tough for our team. It's tough for our guys to get this far and not quite get to your final goal, making it to the World Series. But I don't think any of us have ever been prouder than a group of guys that we had in that room all season for the Angels in this clubhouse," he said. "And the character they showed the whole season is something that we certainly will remember and move forward with.

"So although this stings right now, what our guys in that room accomplished is very, very important. And we just are going to take that forward and hopefully get better."

The Angels' sloppiness wasn't just anathema to their steadiness throughout the regular season; it was blood to piranhas hungry to restore their place in baseball's food chain. It's been an interminable, unbearable six years for Yankee fans since the pinstripes reached the Fall Classic, and now MLB has a beauty in the New Jersey Turnpike series. We get Joe Girardi and his trusty binder vs. Charlie Manuel and his sneaky brilliance. We get Joba Chamberlain vs. the crazed Philly fans (oh, please, let this roll into an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.) We get CC Sabathia vs. Cliff Lee in Game 1 Wednesday, an event sure to make Cleveland fans' heads explode.


Go ahead and decree Philadelphia-New York to be the fantasy ratings grabber that Bud Selig and his blind umps had in mind, once Joe Torre's Dodgers decided not to torment Brooklyn anymore. Annoying East Coast bias will be as large a storyline as uncooperative weather patterns. On the MLB Web site a few hours before Sunday's Game 6, the league was selling shirts and caps commemorating the Yankees as the 2009 American League champions. Pettitte had yet to throw a pitch.

One of Pettitte's rare mistakes in his otherwise brilliant blast from the past (seven hits, one run, one walk, six strikeouts in six 1/3 innings, not a bad line for a pitcher signed as an afterthought), came early, a single by Guerrero through short to lead off the second inning. It would be an odd night for Guerrero: he patiently dueled Rivera in an eight-pitch at-bat before rifling a two-out RBI single that got the Angels within a run in the eighth, he hit a double on a pitch from Pettitte that was just a few inches from the dirt and he finished what could be his Angels career by going 3-for-4, 10-for-27 with five RBI in the series. Guerrero's six-year, $85-million contract expires at the end of this season; he's unlikely to return to Anaheim.

But it's his baserunning blunder in the second that stung. Guerrero failed to get back to first in time on Kendry Morales' fly ball to Swisher in shallow right, another mindless mistake for a team that pats itself on the back for being airtight on defense and smart with fundamentals.

"I thought for sure it was going to drop," Guerrero said.That's been the problem: the Angels test gravity, and gravity always wins. Swisher made the catch and fired to nimble first baseman Mark Teixeira before Guerrero could return to the base.

A couple weeks ago, the Angels closed out a sweep of the Red Sox on the road, with a late-inning comeback that suggested fate and talent were teaming up to bring Los Angeles its first championship since 2002. That's impossible to pull off when spotting the Yankees more than 27 outs per game.

"At times we played good baseball. At times we shot ourselves in the foot. The Yankees are a team that you can't give extra outs to. We did it in a couple of games. And obviously it cost us," said Scioscia, after his Angels recorded eight errors in the series. "You know, I think the bottom line is they played better baseball and they beat us. And they deserve to win."

A few of the Angels stuck around the dugout to watch the Yankees celebrate winning their 40th pennant. "Imagine having that many banners," Torii Hunter said. "It's just incredible."

It truly is, and a 27th world championship would be equally astonishing, even to those who grumble about the Yankees' massive payroll tipping baseball's equilibrium.

But here was the vision that stuck with Hunter and other observers who've witnessed this scene before: Rivera, upon getting Gary Matthews Jr., to swing through a pitch for the final out, raising a fist and hugging Jorge Posada, as if they had just completed any other save. And Pettitte, having set a record for postseason wins with 16, joining the battery in a subdued hug, and then Derek Jeter, rushing over, and as the younger Yankees partied hard near the mound, the core four smiling and embracing as if they knew something others had yet to learn.

"You really have to admire that," Hunter said, as equipment bags were zipped tight on the end of the Angels' season. "How can you hate the Yankees when they play baseball the way it's supposed to be played?"