So, since the World Series is over, here are some articles I read over the past month that I found interesting:

Bill Reynolds: It’s win it all or else for Yankees

01:00 AM EDT on Tuesday, September 29, 2009

By BILL REYNOLDS Journal Sports Writer

On the front page of Monday’s New York Daily News was a huge picture of a joyous Derek Jeter, blue cap turned backward, awash in champagne.

UNCORKED, the headline read. “Yanks sweep Boston to clinch AL East.”

There was a similar full-length picture on the back page, one of A-Rod being doused over his head by unidentified hands.

Am I missing something here?

Did the Yankees just win their 27the world championship?

Did A-Rod finally win a title?

Did Joe Girardi just exorcise the ghost of Joe Torre and save his job in the process?

Did general manager Brian Cashman get redeemed?

Did the Yankees finally slay the Red Sox, the franchise that used to their whipping boy, but now has won two world titles since the Yanks last won in 2000?

Am I missing something here?

For these weren’t the Texas Rangers celebrating a trip to the playoffs here, not the Kansas City Royals, or the Pirates, or the hapless Orioles, or any of the other franchises that probably have a better chance of going to the moon than they do of ever going to the playoffs in the foreseeable future.

These are the Yankees, with all their storied history and all their great tradition. These are the Yankees with all their money and all their clout, and their state-of-the-art new stadium, and they are celebrating about winning the American League East?

Am I missing something here?

For this is not big news that the Yankees have won the AL East and are in the playoffs. It was big news last year when they weren’t in the playoffs. When you have the largest payroll in the game, you are supposed to be in the postseason. When you went out in the off-season and got CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira, you are supposed to be in the postseason. Anything else is failure.

This is the standard in New York, the price the Yankees pay for their payroll and the huge expectations that come with it.

So why all the champagne and all the celebration, which on the surface, anyway, seems like much ado about nothing?

Good question.

Part of it is no doubt tradition, a leftover remnant from the days that teams won the pennant and celebrated on the field, and dumped champagne all over themselves in the clubhouse afterward because they were going to the World Series, the game’s Holy Grail. That was as much baseball then as twi-night doubleheaders and cheap beer, back before the wild card changed everything, and took much of the importance away from winning the division, especially in the American League East, where it almost seems etched in stone that two teams are going to the postseason.

But now it all seems like the major league equivalent of a kids’ tournament, where everyone gets a trophy.

For what exactly were the Yankees celebrating Sunday?

Winning the A.L East?

Getting the home-field advantage in the postseason?

What?

So let’s not kid ourselves here.

If the Yankees flame out in the postseason, those two huge pictures in the Daily News yesterday are going to haunt them, postscripts to another disappointing season, another season that ends in finger pointing and blame. That’s just the way it is.

Girardi began the season at the end of the plank, courtesy of last year’s disaster and the fact he follows in Torre’s enormous wake. He has no margin of error, not in a city where the tabloids all but come delivered with fangs every morning, and in an organization that views every season that doesn’t end with a parade through the canyon of heroes as a failure. It’s no sure thing he’s back in pinstripes next year if the Yankees don’t win everything.

And what about Cashman, who has seen Theo Epstein essentially put two World Series banners in Fenway Park, while he has thrown the Steinbrenner money at too many aging pitchers who didn’t deliver? He, too, needs to deliver a 27th banner. He, too, can’t sleep too soundly until the Yankees win the whole thing, not just an A.L. East title.

Then there’s A-Rod, who can have all the gaudy stats he wants, and move through a bevy of Hollywood stars, and seemingly make enough money to buy Staten Island, but until he carries a team through the postseason his career will always come with an unwritten asterisk.

In a sense, he mirrors the Yankees, full of too many guys who are high-priced, high profile, no rings.

Matsui, Sabathia, Teixeira, Burnett, Cano, Cabrera, Damon in pinstripes.

All have to win if they ever are going to be accepted into the pantheon of true Yankees, the ones that have world champion on their resumé.

This is a team that has to win it all, fair or not, or else suffer the consequences. They have to win it all, or there will be endless finger-pointing to all the reasons why they didn’t, the blame pie cut into a lot of pieces.

That is the pressure that’s still on the Yankees, even with those pictures of the Yankees spraying champagne on each other as if they had just won their 27th banner. That is the pressure that’s still on the Yankees, regardless of the fact they just won the A.L. East and had champagne afterward, the same champagne that’s going to feel like oil in their throats if they don’t win in October.

And if they don’t win?

Those pictures in Monday’ New York Daily News are going to seem like accusers.

Source: Providence Journal