Yankees Close It Out

The Bronx Bombers lived up to their name and closed out the World Series in six games, scoring seven runs in Game 6 and getting enough pitching from their tired starters to get leads to their bullpen.

While I’m never particularly thrilled about the Yankees winning yet another World Series, I can certainly live with it when it only happens once every nine years.  Also, the Yankees really did have a great team this year and a lot of great stars.  It’s not entirely disappointing to see some of the big stars from the 1996-2000 period win one last World Series to put a cap on their careers and this era of Yankees.

I thought the Yankees were asking for trouble going with a three-man rotation, but they made it work, mainly because the Yankees scored 28 runs in the last four games, and never fewer than six in any of those games.  There’s no substitute for the bats getting hot at the right time.

I was also pleased to see Hideki Matsui have a great Game 6 and win the World Series MVP award.  I’ve liked Matsui ever since he decided to leave Japan, where he was an enormous star, to see if he could play with the World’s best in MLB.  He’s been a very good, but not great, player in the U.S., taking all elements of his game into account, but he’s a dignified player and real professional.

I wonder what World Series viewership was like in Japan.  Now that Japanese players (at least one or two) have been in the World Series more often than not in recent years, are Japanese fans giving new attention to the U.S. World Series.  One would certainly think that Japanese fans would have wanted to see Matsui’s performance in last night’s game or Dice-K’s start in Game 3 of the 2007 World Series.