Left field

Cliff Lee’s best curve ball yet

Cliff Lee threw his best curve ball of the year this week, freezing the anxious New York Yankees and Texas Rangers in their tracks by deciding to rejoin the Philadelphia Phillies.

The decision came out of left field, as the Rangers and Yankees did all the public wooing of the 2008 American League Cy Young winner, while the Phillies worked the back channels.

The Yankees offered seven years, the Rangers were believed willing to put six seasons on the table for the 31-year-old lefty from nearby Arkansas who helped them reach their first World Series.

The Phillies won his services with a five-year deal worth a reported $120 million with an option for a sixth season.

Why that choice by Lee?

The money was right, the team was right and the pressure on the slender lefty eased by joining a rotation of four magnificent starters with Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels already in place.

Lee has pitched in the last two World Series on the losing end and longs for a championship after coming close with the Phillies in 2009 and the Rangers this past season.

Jeter’s exquisite timing fails him as Yankees play hardball

One might have expected a cordial meeting of the minds between a grateful Yankees ownership and the classy face of baseball’s bellweather franchise when it came to agreeing one last contract for captain Derek Jeter.

One would be wrong.

The spendthrift Yankees, whose $200 million-plus annual payroll is far and away the most in Major League Baseball, are playing hardball with the 36-year-old shortstop.

And Jeter, who has comported himself impeccably in the clubhouse and as one of the most dependable players on the field in five World Series title teams, appears to be reaching for riches now well beyond his value on the diamond.

The Yankees have offered Jeter a very respectable three years for $15 million per.

Jeter’s agent is pressing for more years and a bigger annual figure.

A compromise resolution is the most likely outcome, but the negotiation has turned bad-tempered and public with comments inspiring headlines in the local papers and the unseemly posturing has polarised the Bronx Bombers’ fan base.

It’s open season on baseball’s free agents

After a World Series and San Francisco Giants triumph that fittingly capped a Major League Baseball campaign known as the Season of the Pitcher, the sport has barely skipped a beat before quickly beginning its next chapter — open season on free agents. 

License to begin the hunt in a season of big spending has been granted 10 days earlier than in the past due to rules changes intended to make the wheeling-dealing easier.

The top ticket item among more than 150 free agent players is Texas Rangers pitcher Cliff Lee, and as expected the deep-pocketed New York Yankees have already reached out to his agent to express their interest.

Lee, who had amassed a 7-0 postseason record the past two years before two uncharacteristic Fall Classic stumbles against the Giants, figures to command in the neighborhood of his old Cleveland Indian team-mate CC Sabathia’s deal with the Yanks at $23 million per year.

The Yankees might have to sweeten the pot for the best pitcher available after the sour treatment Lee’s wife met at her last visit to New York’s new $1.6 billion stadium.

Kristen Lee said she was spat on and cursed at by fans at Yankee Stadium during Game Three of the AL Championship Series. “It’s hard not to take it personal,” she told USA TODAY.

Lee, a brilliant 48-25 with a 2.98 earned run average over the last three regular seasons, said he wouldn’t hold it against prospective buyer Yankees, brushing off the incident to a few “goofballs” among the 50,000 packed into the seats.

If no one shows up for a baseball game…

In North America sports culture summer is the time for baseball. The MLB season kicks off in early April and for the most part flies under the radar for the first few months as fans’ attention is focused on the NBA playoffs, the NFL draft and to a lesser extend the NHL playoffs.

By the middle of June an NBA champion is crowned, (sorry LeBron, maybe next year with your new team) the NFL is as far removed from the ever watchful media’s eye as it ever is, (thank you Brian Cushing, OTA’s were still a few weeks away) and the NHL playoff run receives unprecedented media coverage…in Canada.

Until then, baseball only dominates the headlines for three reasons. Fame, finances, and futility.

But when the middle June rolls around this year a disturbing trend will begin making headlines, one that could dominate baseball for the rest of the season.

Since the implementation of the luxury tax in 2003, the average number of teams that failed to fill at least 50% of their stadium for the season was 3.5. The three years before the tax twice 10 teams failed to hit the 50% mark and once nine teams were under.

But this season a whopping eight clubs are already below the 50% threshold. Two other teams, the Kansas City Royals and Arizona Diamondbacks, are barely filling half of their stadiums and with both clubs already 10+ games out of the division lead, attendance numbers may well decrease as the season wears on.

Sports villains need apply

Steve Nash’s swollen right eye. Tim Clark finally tasting victory. The Montreal Canadiens’ continued Cinderella playoff run. Dallas Braden simply being perfect.

The past five days have been a microcosm to why sports are so compelling. It is the dramatic stories that draw fans in, the underdog prevailing against insurmountable odds, that has viewers sitting alone and screaming in ecstasy at the television just as loud as fans in attendance.

But without Tim Duncan’s elbow, Clark’s eight second place finishes, Stanley Cup favourites Washington and Pittsburgh, or the Tampa Bay Rays vaunted offense, these stories would have been quickly forgotten.

Just like any good fairy-tale, the hero needs a villain. David needs a Goliath. But unlike the stories we tell children, sometimes in sports the Wicked Witch of the West pries the ruby slippers away from Dorothy. Heck, the New York Yankees, aka the Evil Empire, have captured 27 championships.

What keeps viewers’ attention is knowing that in sports, good does not always triumph. In fact, it is the unknown that makes the improbable special.

What also makes these stories fascinating is not everyone is cheering for Dorothy to get back to the farm in Kansas. Washington and Pittsburgh are the second and third most purchased jerseys in the NHL. It is almost impossible to find someone who has a bad word to say about Duncan. And just two years ago, the Rays were the underdogs trying to write a Hollywood ending.

With financial turmoil encompassing the globe, oil being spilled into the ocean and volcanoes spewing ash into the sky, people need a diversion from everyday life. They need a good story, they need an escape.

Japan: key to a truly global World Series?

The story goes that shortly after baseball great Babe Ruth had settled into the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo while touring Japan in 1934, there was a knock on the door. He opened it to see a Japanese man in a kimono. ”Sign baseball,” the man said.

As soon as the Babe autographed that baseball, the man pulled another out of his kimono. Then another. And another. And another.

If Japanese media coverage of home-grown players plying their trade in the United States is anything to go by, Japan’s love affair with baseball is alive and well.

In 2001, Major League Baseball’s decision to allow All-Star voting in Japan helped Ichiro Suzuki lead all players in voting for the All-Star Game. That same year, Ichiro won the American League Most Valuable Player and the Rookie of the Year awards, becoming only the second player in MLB history (after Fred Lynn) to receive both honors in the same season.

Last fall, Hideki Matsui of the New York Yankees became the first Japanese-born player to be voted World Series Most Valuable Player and the first to win it as a designated hitter.

Yankees back winning — good for baseball?

Homegrown talent and store-bought superstars — the Yankees formula for success for their 27th World Series championship claimed Wednesday with a Game Six victory over the Philadelphia Phillies that returned the team to the winners’ circle for the first time in what seemed to Yankee Nation like an endless nine years of waiting.

A bottomless checking account for free agents is not the only thing making the Yankees great.

Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada, four pillars of the Yankee teams that won four Fall Classic titles in five years starting in 1996, all came up through the farm system and were still thriving on the October/November stage in 2009.

Young fireballers Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes were developed by the Yanks, as was second baseman Robinson Cano.

There is no question, however, that the New York high-rollers have a big advantage in their gambles to hit the jackpot with the right free-agent signings, and the Yankees have been vilified in some quarters for outspending the competition to win their titles.

Their 2009 payroll of $200-plus million was about $100 million more than the Phils. More than $420 million in off-season free agent signings netted the Bronx Bombers CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira.

Baseball’s highest paid player, Alex Rodriguez, mans the middle of the batting order, and Japanese slugger Hideki Matsui single-handedly overpowered the Phillies in the Series clincher with a record tying six RBIs.

A Reuters Sportswrap of heroic proportions

Sportswrap is back with a bang, as we take in Hideki Matsui’s heroic performance for the New York Yankees, Usain Bolt bottle-feeding a creature that will one day outrun him and Rafa Benitez trying to invoke the spirit of You’ll Never Walk Alone only to come a cropper in the Champions League.

Written by Kevin Fylan, presented by Owen Wyatt from our Canary Wharf studios and with a jaunty hat tip to Half Man Half Biscuit for the Liverpool joke.

from Raw Japan:

Japan’s Boys of Summer

Eleven years ago I sat near a high school-aged Daisuke Matsuzaka as he used field glasses to watch a Japan-MLB All-Star game at the end of both leagues' seasons.    I wrote a story based on that image about Japanese wanting to know "How good are we?" It was a question encompassing more than sport, as the same doubts existed for Japan in terms of corporate or diplomatic might, while the way the nation usually measured itself was in comparison to the U.S.   The 2009 baseball season, which began with Matsuzaka and Ichiro Suzuki leading Japan to its second World Baseball Classic title and ended with Hideki Matsui winning the World Series MVP in helping the New York Yankees to the crown, hasn't ended that self-assessment. Instead it has widened it to "How good can we be?"   Matsui, whose decision to leave the Yomiuri Giants at the end of the 2002 was broadcast live across the island nation, hit a grand slam in his first New York home game but has been hobbled by injuries in seven seasons that may have made his Series heroics a Yankees coda.   Ichiro, who set the record in 2009 for most consecutive MLB seasons with 200 hits and delivered the winning RBI in the WBC title game, is the greatest baseball export Japan has produced so far, but his zen approach to hitting and perceived statistics orientation have not always resonated with fans or teammates.   Matsui, meanwhile, nicknamed "Godzilla" in high school for his power display at the national baseball championship, is less polished and a little more rough and ready. But he's a player that nary a cross word has been said or written about, rather a "slugging salaryman" portrayal whose team focus is absolute, who even hit his sixth game Series homer to the Komatsu banner in rightfield.   An MLB-insider told me after Game Six of the World Series: "Ichiro Suzuki will be elected into the Hall of Fame, Hideki Matsui will not. But Ichiro will never achieve what Matsui did last night."

Ichiro may not, but another Japanese player may, as the once distant fields of dreams across the Pacific have grown closer thanks to the countrymen's feats in 2009, with Japan's questions about how it rates becoming easier to answer.

Photo credit: REUTERS/Mike Segar

A Japanese feel as Yankees win 27th World Series

The New York Yankees beat the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 Wednesday to win the World Series.

The 4-2 series victory gave the Yankees their 27th Fall Classic crown and first since 2000.

Hideki Matsui was named Most Valuable Player after batting .615 with three home runs and eight RBIs over the series.

The Japanese slugger drove in six runs in Wednesday’s clincher, tying the World Series record for most RBIs in a game set in 1960 by Yankee second baseman Bobby Richardson.

PHOTO: New York Yankees players (L-R) Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada (obscured), Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera look at the World Series trophy after the Yankees defeated the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 6 to win the 2009 Major League Baseball World Series in New York, November 4, 2009. REUTERS/Pool-David J. Phillip