Friday, June 17, 2005

Big weekend for the Yanks?

This is the type of thing that excites Cubs fans and baseball geeks more than Yankees fans: for the first time since 1938, the Cubs will play at Yankee Stadium. The last time, the Yanks finished off a four-game sweep of the Cubbies by winning games 3 and for of the WS at home.

Yankees fans don't care that the Cubs are coming to town, just as they didn't care that the Pirates wandered by for the first time since the 1960 Series. That nostalgia and the "ooh, we're playing the ____" feelings are not for Yankees' fans. Why? Because those are issues for the NL teams, all of whom wish they had even 40% of the Yankees' championship totals. Harsh, but true.

This weekend, FOX gets the Yankees-Cubs Saturday game and it's the pitching matchup for the ages: journeyman Glendon Rusch against rookie Chien-Ming Wang. Real headliners. Tonight, it's Zambrano/Pavano in a rematch of . . . absolutely nothing because they themselves didn't start against each other in the Marlins-Cubs NLCS in 2003 (Zambrano had games 1 and 5, Pavano game 6). On Sunday, Moooooooooooose goes against Sergio Mitre, the unknown who is almost single-handedly plugging the holes in the Cubs' rotation.

And your two notes for the weekend: (1) the Cubs are 34-30 despite a shattered bullpen and major injuries to Wood and Prior; the Yanks are 33-32 despite a top-of-his-game Rivera and ARod, healthy Pavano/Johnson/Moooooooooose and healthy Jeter; (2) the Yanks are 2-9 in three-game series against teams with a .500 record or better -- they've swept no one and have an overall 12-21 record in those series. The only one they've won since the opening series against the BloSax was their series last month against the Mess.

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