AL Baseball

NEW YORK - The tabloid press is the conscience of the New York sports fan. So when one of them yesterday ran the headline "Earn Your Stripes" on its back page beside Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira's mug, the message was unmistakable.

Been there, done that. Johnny Damon has the World Series ring (2004 Boston Red Sox), the book ("Idiot: Beating the Curse and Enjoying the Game of Life") and the T-shirt. "Looks like Jesus, Acts like Judas, Throws like Mary," was a popular seller in Boston when he left the Red Sox for the New York Yankees.

Isn't this so baseball: Video replay works perfectly, and averts what would have been a travesty, and yet apologies seem to be in order.

The game ended shortly after midnight, with the Yankees going back to the World Series, and with champagne.

And this time it was well deserved.

This wasn't champagne for winning the American League East, which is the baseball equivalent of everyone getting a trophy in Little League.

ANAHEIM, Calif. - It was so quiet in the Los Angeles Angels clubhouse, you could hear Chone Figgins throw in his towel.

Into a laundry hamper, I mean. Not to be confused with a team throwing in the towel, of course.

The Angels would never say it, think it or play like it, even on the bottom side of a 3-1 deficit to New York in the American League Championship Series.

It's too cold. It's too late at night. It's too late in the year. The complaints about baseball's postseason all carry weight and aren't going away. The playoffs are the way they are because the TV networks want it that way and owners who make a bundle off TV don't put up a stink.

The New York Yankees always skim the cream of the free-agent pool, but this is ridiculous.

Now they've landed Kate Hudson. Remember when Hudson helped inspire the lowly Golden State Warriors to their greatest (and only) NBA playoff series victory in the last 15 seasons, as part of Baron Davis' Hollywood posse?

There should have been a sign up around Major League Baseball: "Closers beware. Postseason ahead."

No, it certainly hasn't been a banner week for some of the best relief pitchers. In fact, all four losing teams in the first round of the playoffs had their save specialist cough up a game that looked like money.

"At 12:51 a.m., the Red Sox players began to celebrate in a closed-door party with cigars, champagne and beers. Their alcohol-soaked hats read: Wild Card Champions."

-- Providence Journal's Joe McDonald in Wednesday's editions.

Wild-card champions?

What, exactly, is a wild-card "champion?"

Have the Boston Red Sox very quietly become the best team in baseball?

Don't be surprised.