Good morning, good afternoon or good evening to you my readers - whichever of the three apply to you at this particular moment. Welcome to another edition of The Gospel According to "L". This week we're going to recap an awful week for our beloved Bombers and we - as usual - will go deep into two rather significant topics. If you're ready let's get it underway.

First off let's talk about the three games in Minneapolis and the three-game mini homestand against the Anaheim Angels. Friends, since the end of the 2000 regular season, I have not seen the Bombers play this bad this late in the season. Let me begin with the three up at the big Teflon bowl known as the Hubert Horatio Humphrey Metrodome (you people in the Twin Cities need a new stadium badly!) The first two were a complete disaster, and the third was a disaster - only not a complete disaster. To think - this was the team that could not beat the Yankees since the debut of the YES Network. Yet they blew them out on Tuesday night and on Wednesday night. As angry as those two games made me, nothing could top Thursday night. On Thursday night, after 5-and-one-half innings, the Yankees led 7-1! The Twins then scored "two" in the bottom of the sixth - I have two in quotes because that second run was a ghost run. Corey Koskie hit the flyball to right field, Justin Morneau was at third and Jose Offerman was at second. Both runners tagged, Gary Sheffield threw a frozen rope to third to nail Offerman. While Offerman was being tagged out, Morneau did not even cross home plate yet! Nobody argued, that run was allowed to stand and it later would do some damage. "Oh but JC, you can't see that with the naked eye - only replay was accurate." You can't see that with the naked eye, which is true, yet you can see Jeff Maier robbing Tony Tarasco of a flyball out in game one of the ALCS with the naked eye? I'll get back to that later. Ok, then A-Rod homers in the top of the seven to make it 9-3, so now everything should be ok. WRONG! El Duque, who pitched a decent game, come out and Paul Quantrill comes in - he gives up a single, double and a triple! Gee whiz Paulie only a homerun and they'd have gotten you for the cycle! By then it was 9-7 after it had been 7-1! Then Flash Gordon comes in and he gives up a run, but gets the two outs. Then in the eighth Koskie and Cristian Guzman single to put runners on the corners with nobody out. Then the next two batters pop out and strike out respectively, and that leaves Shannon Stewart. He hits one all the way down the right field line and brings in both men to now put the Twins up 10-9. It should have at least been tied 9-9, but thanks to the idiotic non-call, the Yankees are behind. But this is what separates the Bronx Bombers from the rest - they know how to overcome controversy - unlike a certain 1996 team from the mid-Atlantic! They come into the ninth facing one of baseball's best closers in Joe Nathan. Now this guy had not given up a run in a long time. Jeter leads off by grounding out - oh boy, two more and they get swept. But then Gary Sheffield hits one towards Lake Superior - thus tying it up and ending any thoughts of the Twins sweeping this series. I remember being elsewhere and having the game on radio - when I heard Sterling's voice rise, I knew good things were on the way. Well three runs later, the Bombers lead 13-10, Mariano comes in and gets save no. 41. I was not pleased one bit with this series, and I'm sure none of you were either. While the Yankees are toying around, the Red Sox are heating up and chipping away at the East lead. I'll talk more about that later on.

Now let's talk about the three games against the Angels at home. I don't know about any of you, but I smelled disaster from the first pitch on. They couldn't hit a lick against Ramon Ortiz on Friday night, and Jon Lieber did not pitch all that badly. Remember that it was Paul Quantrill who coughed up the last two runs courtesy of Garret Anderson. The only good thing about Saturday was that we got a nice little four-hour break thanks to our friends the clouds. It stopped raining in this area at about 3PM, so I cannot understand why they delayed the game so long - but they did. Either way - same old story - Yankee bats go cold against Angel pitching and Esteban Loaiza proved that the trading of Jose Contreras was meaningless. Loaiza, as I thought, is a flash-in-the-pan. He had one great season and everybody thought he'd make a career of this. I was one of the only ones who knew he was overrated! There had to be a reason that a contender like the White Sox would trade Loaiza. Now the final game the Yankees did take a 2-0 lead, and you figure ok maybe they'll salvage this series. Heh, like hell we'd see that! The Yankees couldn't score another run off Kelvim Escobar or the bullpen, Kevin Brown had only two bad innings, but they turned out to be fatal - go figure. One thing that astonished me is how Ben Molina, who cannot run to save his own life (but I'll bet if there was a plate of rice and beans on first base he'd turn into Rickey Henderson - that's not racist since I am also of Puerto Rican descent), has gotten some big hits against the Yankees. I tell you when you see him run the basepaths he looks like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man wabbling from side to side. Two of his nine homeruns have come against the Yankees this season, including one off Mariano Rivera. It's bad enough guys like David Eckstein, Darin Erstad, Adam Kennedy, and Vlad Guerrero can do plenty of damage - but then their catcher? Let me tell you people something - if this is the way the Yankees are going to plan their games against Anaheim if they face them in the postseason, it'll be a quick exit, and Angels fans will have more reasons to brag - and I don't know about you - but that is the last thing I want! All right let's go on to this week's two topics.

I want to begin with one piece of news. In case you have not heard, this past week it was announced that Astros' pitcher Andy Pettitte will require season-ending surgery on his left elbow tendons. It's a sad situation - he is taken for granted by the Yankees after over eight great seasons, so he decides to go home to Houston. Well fate can be a cruel mistress sometimes. The Astros are going nowhere, and now Andy will have to have his season cut short. And thanks to the fact that he now pitches in the National League, has to bat and batting hurt his elbow.

I heard somebody on ESPN, I cannot remember who - they're all the same to me; all a bunch of anti-Yankee commentators - the so-called commentator said that the Yankees knew something others didn't, and that was maybe why they didn't fight to keep Andy Pettitte. Well friends, I actually believe that. Now I ask myself - why would Steinbrenner and Cashman allow one of the biggest name pitchers since Ron Guidry leave without a fight? So maybe they knew his elbow was vulnerable - maybe they knew his elbow would eventually lead to an early retirement, God-forbid. So to everybody, including my mother, who complained about losing Andy Pettitte, just imagine how bad the pitching situation would be now anyway. At least El Duque is healthy and he has re-invented himself - becoming a changeup artist. The rest of the staff has been on-and-off, especially Javy Vazquez. Maybe if Pettitte had stayed in the AL, he may never have suffered the elbow injury since he wouldn't have to bat until interleague in an NL park - but then again maybe his elbow would have been injured anyway since he is a workhorse. That's all I have to say about that - now let's get to the final topic.

Now I want to talk about one final thing. A few weeks ago, when the Yankees had a huge lead in the AL East, every baseball pundit and even some fans said the AL East race was over. Did you ever hear me say it? Absolutely not and there was a good reason why! History has shown that the Yogi Berra theory is more than accurate. What is the Yogi Berra theory? It ain't over 'till it's over! Just ask the 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers, the 1964 Philadelphia Phillies, the 1978 Boston Red Sox, the 1993 San Francisco Giants and the 1995 California Angels. Remember also that in 1996, 1999 and 2000 the Yankees came very close to blowing the AL East title - 2000 was the most tense since the Bombers couldn't win a game in the final weeks of September.

As late as last Monday the Yankees led the Red Sox by 10-and-a-half games in the standings. At this current time - Sunday night/Monday morning - the lead is down to a thin five-and-a-half! I was probably the only one who thought a ten-and-a-half lead was not enough! If you know me well, you know I believe in the philosophy of crush, kill and destroy! This is what happens when you get too relaxed - it's like the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. The hare is a much better runner in the race and sees that he's so far ahead and decides to relax - but he relaxes so much that before he can finish the race, the tortoise wins because the tortoise never gave up despite the overwhelming odds. In 1978 the Red Sox were the hare and the Yankees were the tortoise, and so were the Angels and Mariners respectively in 1995.

All the baseball pundits were saying that the Sox needed to now focus on the wild card instead - but now, thanks to the fact that the Yankees have decided to lax, the Sox can now focus on the East! If I were Joe Torre, I'd start throwing around some objects in that clubhouse in order to wake up his team. This week the Yankees play in Cleveland and in Toronto. The Indians are still in an AL Central pennant race, and they can be dangerous. They're young and very underestimated. If the Yanks go to the Jake thinking gimmie, they can get swept or lose two of three, and that could really do some damage in the standings. It's never over until the division is clinched. Maybe this is what they needed - maybe they needed the lead to be cut down so drastically that they'd actually realize they need to start showing some fire on that field. But that's just me talking - I could be wrong. See you next week friends.