Everything Else You Wanted To Know About Yankees-Twins

I think we got everything else in there. Here are some notes from the Yankees.

Lineup for Game 1:

YANKEES
1. Jeter SS
2. Damon LF
3. Teixeira 1B
4. Rodriguez 3B
5. Matsui DH
6. Posada C
7. Cano 2B
8. Swisher RF
9. Cabrera CF

P. CC Sabathia

TWINS
1. Span CF
2. Cabrera SS
3. Mauer C
4. Cuddyer 1B
5. Kubel RF
6. Young LF
7. Harris DH
8. Tolbert 3B
9. Punto 2B

P-Brian Duensing

John Flaherty breaks down the pitching match-up for Sam Borden. NBC Sports says this game is going to be fun. The New York Times has some great details about afternoon baseball and the shadows.

The picture to the right is from New York Mag and is of a very young Derek Jeter at Yankee Stadium. Even then he looked natural holding a trophy there. Rob Neyer has some nice words of praise for him, his hard work and his defensive improvement.

River Avenue Blues and Sam Borden do a position-by-position breakdown of the Yankees-Twins series. Jon Heyman ranks the Yankees at the top of the playoff teams. Ken Davidoff hands out some hardware and ponders the future of Carl Pavano.

Let's run through the rest of the notes:

Tyler Kepner writes about A-Rod ending the season on a hot streak, though Tyler was short on the number of records broken. His home runs that inning gave the Yankees the most home runs in their history, gave A-Rod the most RBIs in American League history for an inning (7), and gave A-Rod the most 30-HR, 100-RBI seasons in baseball history (13). I think that performance in his last game shows that he's locked in and focused.

Part of the reason the Yankees are in this position: they had some of the best moves of the year according to Jon Heyman. One of those guys, Nick Swisher, is a little nervous before Game 1 according to Mark Feinsand. Mark also has some last minute notes, including some hints on how the Yankees might use their bullpen. Sweeny Murti talks about the 5 defining days of the Yankees' 2009 season.

2nd Ave. Sagas has news about the Nostalgia Train and more Metro-North trips. I took the Nostalgia Train to the last game at the Old Yankee Stadium and it was awesome. If you can ride this, do it! Here's Metro-North's updated Yankees-E. 153rd Street Station schedule for the playoffs (at least the first two games)

In other news: A few Yankees books made the top sold sports books of 2009 according to Darren Rovell. Lots of controversy will do that. Former Yankee Sal Fasano has an inspirational story as he fights for his sick son and Sports Illustrated has all the details about Sal's emotional fight to stay in the majors for his son. There will be a lot more people at Yankee Stadium tonight than were at the 9-24 Pirates-Reds game...jeez. The Albany Times Union rails some more on the "mediocre coverage" last night by TBS and Chip Caray.

Lastly our poll closed just now with the question "who was the best pitcher of the last decade?" Thank you to all who voted. We had a record amount of votes. Here are the results:

Mariano Rivera	57%
Roger Clemens	9%
Curt Schilling	0%
Roy Halladay	7%
Johan Santana	5%
Randy Johnson	7%
Pedro Martinez	12%
Other	0%

Interesting to see the results. Obviously this was a highly biased Yankee crowd, but 57% for Mo is impressive. Interesting to see that Curt Schilling got none of the vote. Thanks to those who voted.

There's a new poll up on the right: who do you think will win the World Series? This will be a quick poll so make sure to vote now!