Good morning, good afternoon or good evening to you my reader - whichever of those three applies to you at the current time. Welcome to the first September/Labor Day edition of The Gospel According to "L". This week we'll be reviewing the six-game homestand with Cleveland and Baltimore, and we'll be discussing some other topics relating to the Yankees and/or baseball.

I first want to let you know of a new addition to this website. A new Yankee Trivia page is now running. If you think you know the Bronx Bombers better than anyone, play Yankee Trivia and see how high you score. I wanted to give this site a little bit of flavor, and to try and attract more visitors, therefore I decided to add this little quiz to L.O.T.M. Yanks. So like I said - if you think you know the Yankees better than anyone else - come on and play Yankee Trivia. All right let's get down to business.

Let's first begin with the first three games against the Cleveland Indians. Now we have to disgracefully start off with Tuesday night. That was a total embarrassment; I mean it was an atrocity. Those two words I just wrote are understatements. I couldn't even watch the entire game. I started off watching the roll call at the RNC and then I remembered there was a game today. I might as well have forgotten about it - I mean did I really miss anything? I tuned in for the second inning - and I saw on the Yankee Stadium scoreboard the Tribe had 3 in the first and 3 in the second - or at least I was hoping it was just blurry from the lights. Nope, it was 6-0 Cleveland in the second inning! Friends this was Murphy's Law at its best - everything that could go wrong did went go wrong - EVERYTHING! I kept on flipping back to channel 143 (YES on Time Warner) and kept seeing the Cleveland run total increase: 9-0, 12-0, 16-0 - I mean it was a nightmare! I exercised and showered in time to tune in for the ninth inning when it was now 19-0 Cleveland with Esteban Loaiza on the mound! I then took my radio with me since I was going for a smoke (I never smoke indoors). Victor Martinez is at the plate with two on and two out, and I hear John Sterling scream out "THERE IT GOES TO RIGHT" and my stomach began to hurt. Twenty-two to nothing! I heard it was a new AL record - beating a team by 22 runs in a shutout. While this is happening - the Red Sox are winning and cutting the lead to 3½! The tortoise is gaining on the hare and the hare's getting too overconfident. The only positive about this game is that the Bombers went over the 3 million mark in attendance - if I'm not mistaken that's the earliest it's ever happened. Now Wednesday night was better, but only marginally. As George W. Bush's motorcade drove a few blocks from my residence, El Duque pitched as beautifully as he always does, and if it wasn't for Flash Gordon's incompetence in the ninth, it would have been a somewhat convincing win. I'll tell you something - when I saw Jorge Posada's homer in the fourth - I became one of these parishioners at a Black church - "thank ya Jesus thank ya!" The Sox beat the Angels again and the lead remains 3½. Now Thursday was a little bit more like it. Jon Lieber's very few mistakes were nowhere near costly, and the offense sent Cliff Lee to the showers before 8PM (so he'd have plenty of time to kill before Dubya began to speak at 10.) It was good to see Steve Karsay back. This was the perfect time for him to pitch - his team up by nine runs in the ninth inning. Sure he gave up a homerun to Victor Martinez, but it was with a nine-run lead. I'll admit - it would have been nice to shut down the Tribe after what they did on Tuesday night. Either way - it was a good little spring training-type game for Stefan (that's his given birth name - thank you Baseball Reference.com.) If it wasn't for Tuesday night I'd be satisfied with this series - but I stuck in between mortified and ticked off. The Sox swept the Angels and the Bombers lost one game of ground. If God forbid the Sox win the AL East by one game, we'll remember the 22-0 game all winter long.

All right now let's recap the Baltimore series. On Friday night there was not one bit of offense to be seen! Well all we saw was Derek Jeter hit one the other way in the first to give the Yankees a 1-0 lead. But after that there was nothing! Meanwhile Kevin Brown didn't pitch terribly - but he gave up enough runs to lose. Then he goes, like an idiot, to the clubhouse and breaks his left hand! I've recently heard he may require surgery and have to miss the rest of the season. Oh goodie - we're in great shape friends! On Saturday - another day, another no-show for the offense! Mike Mussina didn't pitch badly at all - he only allowed two runs - one was a mistake pitch to Jay Gibbons. Let me tell you - that shot Gibbons hit kind of reminded me of the type of homeruns I saw Bobby Murcer hit in archival footage. Getting back to the Moose - he went seven and only gave up the two runs, zero walks and eight strikeouts! But again, just like they did to Brown, his offense stabbed him right in the back! And then in comes Mariano and immediately gives up a homer to Rafael Palmiero, and three more runs (one when Bret Prinz was on the mound!) When you see Mariano leave like that with tail in between legs, something is very wrong. Now the Red Sox won the night before to cut the lead to 2½, but thankfully the Rangers did us a big favor and beat them on Saturday. I woke up a bit late for Sunday's game since I like to sleep in on Sundays. When I woke up I was away from the TV, so I turned on WCBS radio. Derek Jeter's on second, he steals third, and thanks to a throwing error by Javy Lopez, the captain comes home and I thought the Yankees took a 1-0 lead. Little did I know it was 3-1 Baltimore. I'm thinking to myself you've got to be kidding me - not again! But then another run in the third and another in the fourth and it's tied at three. After seeing two defensive gems in this game - namely in the third and ninth innings - I thought to myself ok; maybe we can win this one for a change. Then comes the ninth - Mariano starts off with first and third and nobody out courtesy of B.J. Surhoff and Jay Gibbons. Oh this not good - Mariano's skills are rapidly deteriorating. Well then Larry Bigbie strikes out - thank God. And then the infield goes into double play depth. Mariano's hits are usually flyballs and soft grounders - not hard hit grounders - is Torre smoking crack? Well Brian Roberts hits one to Miguel Cairo at second - then he looks home and throws to first. "Little Rock" - Tim Raines, Jr. was pinch running at third and he stayed put. Then up comes Dave Newhan - he hits a soft one up the first base line - Mariano fields and fires to first - just in time! A machine gun bullet has been dodged! Then comes the bottom of the ninth - and Jorge Julio is in to pitch. Derek Jeter's up - all of a sudden it's ball one, ball two, ball three and ball four! There's the start we need - the leadoff man on first. Bernie's up and with a 1-0 count, Julio delivers one in the dirt and over the head of Javy Lopez; Jeter's now at second. Now a clean base hit wins it. Well Bernie drops down a bunt! Jeter is now at third base with one man out. Well no surprise Gary Sheffield is walked intentionally, but then so is A-Rod! Apparently Lee Mazzilli forgot to watch game six of the 1999 NLCS when Bobby Valentine elected to IBB two men and then lost on a bases-loaded walk. Well Jorge Posada works a full count, and then the pitch is low, ball four, Jeter scores, game over! At the time I'm writing this the Red Sox nearly blew it against Texas, but hung on to win 6-5. So the lead remains at 2½ in the AL East.

I want to remind those of you viewing this on Sunday September 5 - the doubleheader with the D-Rays on Monday the 6^th will now start at 3:05PM. The Yankees appeased the Rays, who like idiots, decided to stay in Florida with Hurricane Frances destroying most of the state. If it were me - I'd let them show up late and forfeit! But anyway - 3:05PM - a good'ol straight doubleheader with both games on YES. All right, let's now move on to something else.

Now I want to talk about Yankee GM Brian Cashman and his apathy. Cashman made only one lousy trade at the deadline - acquiring Esteban Loaiza from the White Sox for Jose Contreras. What has Loaiza done since becoming a Yankee? He's increased the team ERA enormously! I've said this before in previous Gospels and I will say this again - there was something fishy about the deal. Answer me the following question. Why would the Chicago White Sox, a team that has been in contention, deal what was their best pitcher last season to a team that has been in first since about May? This is a team they could hypothetically face in the Division Series, and they deal what was their ace to them? Something smelled about that trade from the minute it was announced. Low and behold - Loaiza turned out to be what I like to call a "veteran flash-in-the-pan." He had one great season and was then having a mediocre season the next. So far as a Yankee he's 0-2 with an ERA over 8! I'm writing this section before the rubber game of the Cleveland series so the numbers may have changed. In 27 and two-thirds innings, he's given up 28 runs (all but two earned) 45 hits, eight homeruns, and opposing batters are hitting .366 against him! That is absolutely grotesque my friends. We might as well have kept Jose Contreras - at least he showed signs of great pitching. They say Contreras couldn't handle the Red Sox, and he couldn't. But can you imagine a pitcher with these numbers pitching a huge game against a Pedro, Schilling, or Wakefield? The Sox would make the 22-0 Cleveland game look close! And we thought Denny Neagle and Sterling Hitchcock were bad deals.

If Brian Cashman had done a better job of marketing the Yankee minor league system, Randy Johnson would have been a Yankee by now. The Bombers have some pretty good young talent down there - Brad Halsey, Colter Bean, Juan Padilla, Andy Phillips, Chien-Ming Wang, John Rodriguez (a.k.a. J-Rod), Dioner Navarro (Posada's future backup and understudy,) Robinson Cano, Aaron Rifkin, Mitch Jones, and the list goes on. True - their system isn't as great as say an Anaheim's system, but it is not laughable. But even if not Randy Johnson, how about another lefty for the pen? You think Felix Heredia and C.J. Nitkowski are the answer? The only thing I like about Nitkowski is that we both graduated from the same university - St. John's. The only difference is - I majored in history and he majored in losing ballgames. Mike Stanton could have been available - even that animal Tim McCarver talked about it about a week ago. But Cashman did nothing, and the Yankees go into the playoffs with the same old vulnerable pitching staff. Sure we got Steve Karsay back after nearly two years, but is he going to be ready to face real hitters come October? Remember the Angels torched him in the 2002 (three runs in 2 and two-thirds innings. But even trying to acquire a second baseman would have been nice - how about Roberto Alomar? No they just let him go to the White Sox without a fight. Let me tell you something - Brian Cashman should not have his job back if the Bombers bring home anything less than a 27^th World Championship. His apathy could very well lead the Yankees to an early playoff exit like in 2002. There were rumors of Cashman going to the Red Sox after the season ends - let them have him! Lots of the big names there go free agent after this season, what will he be able to do there? Heed my words - if the Yankees are beaten early, you can thank Brian Cashman, and I'm sure George Steinbrenner already has after witnessing the 22-0 blowout. All right let's go to our last topic for the week.

I want to finish off with a little something I thought of this week - how baseball could be run economically. I am getting sick and tired of hearing these people point to the Yankee payroll. What are they supposed to do - only spend as much money as you want them to! What country are we living in? I will bet you anything that if the Yankees were in first place with a payroll of $10 million, these mentally ill vipers would find some way to criticize them. Well let me tell you how it was done in the old days.

In the old days owners would spend whatever money they had, and they'd be able to have superstar athletes for their entire careers! Jackie Robinson never played for any other Major League team except the Brooklyn Dodgers (for you kids watching this - the Dodgers did play in Brooklyn from 1884 to 1957), Walter Johnson pitched his entire career for the Washington Senators, Al Kaline played his entire career for the Tigers, Ted Williams never played for any other team except the Red Sox, and the list goes on. Some players did, before free agency, retire from their teams and join others - a great example was Ty Cobb joining the Philadelphia A's in 1927 after spending his entire career in Detroit. However you never saw teams having to sell off their players because they rarely had enough money to pay them (Babe Ruth was sold because Harry Frazee wanted to finance a Broadway play.) Most importantly - there was rarely ever any complaining about other teams having more money! Nowadays everybody looks at the Yankees and they get jealous. But they never look at the Red Sox or Dodgers - God forbid they'd ever do something like that! Not only that - these small market so-called franchises get plenty of money in revenue sharing, and what do they do with their money? I ask you fans of those teams - what do they do with that money? THEY POCKET IT! They never spend it! But there's more - some teams sell their stadium's naming rights to corporations. Did you ever see that in the old days? U.S. Cellular Field, Tropicana Field, Comerica Park, Network Associates Coliseum, Miller Park, Coors Field, etc! What do they do with that money? They get all this money - yet they can never re-sign their own players. Even you fans of these teams have to admit that something is fishy there.

Now here's what I would do if I were in charge of baseball's economic structure. First off, I am against the concept of a salary cap - it is the sports equivalent of a socialist economy. Can you imagine if we had salary caps in private industry? What about price caps? Most Americans are against those. So tell me why salary caps should be supported? What I would do is eliminate teams that cannot compete. To hell with them and their fans - their fans have no loyalty! Let's go back to the old days when we only had eight teams per league! Most of these expansion towns and towns where others moved to were minor league towns! When the Milwaukee Braves couldn't draw fans in Milwaukee - do you think they asked for revenue sharing? Absolutely not! They just packed their bags for Atlanta in 1966. The same goes for both Washington Senator franchises (the first moved to Minnesota and became the Twins in '61 while the other moved to Arlington, TX in '72 and became the Rangers) - they just packed up and moved to a place where they could do business! The Montreal Expos are on their way out of French Canada - what good did revenue sharing do for them? I guess it helped cover their moving expenses when they relocate probably to Washington. All of these franchises that cannot draw or make enough money - goodbye and good riddance! Your own fans don't give a crap about you, so why should I?

Baseball will be better off with fewer teams. All these small-market towns, you might as well go back to being minor league towns - that's what you are anyway. I love these fools who have actually wanted the Yankees to be eliminated from baseball. The minute the Yankees are gone, baseball is dead! As much as you hate the Yankees, without the Yankees Major League Baseball will become the equivalent of a banana republic. The Yankees help some of these teams draw fans in their towns - nobody else does. In addition - the Yankees are recognized as baseball's most famous franchise. If you lose your most famous franchise, your league will not last too long. Like I said - let's go back to the good old days, and all of our problems will be solved. See you next week my friends.