The Yankees Look Meek And Flubby

You've been fighting it off as best you can, but the weight of the evidence is starting to hit your hips, knees and ankles in a series of small electric spasms. You've tried to explain it away as "Well, the league's weird this year," and while you're right no matter what league you're referring to, the disorientation is still there and getting worse. The Tampa Bay Rays look like they are going to win their American League Division Series, but that's not the thing that's making you nickname your persistent migraine as though it were a mischievous nephew. It's that they're making the New York Yankees look like the Los Angeles Angels, which is not just laughing at the power of branding but making a fresh mockery of a town that already has to put up with the Mets. The Rays gnaw at a game like hyperactive beavers, eschewing home runs (except for Junior Caminero) and embracing the annoying little things that modern baseball once disdained: speed, defense, and even the occasional bunt. The Yankees have struggled with stuff like catching the ball or throwing it in a useful direction, which have always been in fashion. That is how Game 2, a 5-2 Rays win, played out Monday night. The Yankees' four errors were spectacular, the second-most put up by the team in its 448 all-time postseason games, highlighted but by no means concluded by Jazz Chisholm Jr.'s comprehensive mangling of a double-play pivot on the Rays' third at-bat of the game. Had it not been for Ben Rice's two solo homers, the Yankees would have looked utterly Angelic in all the worst ways.

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