Terence Moore Posts

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Even before the start of both events during the past two days to celebrate the seven inductees into this year's Indiana University Athletics Hall of Fame, everybody hoped. Everybody prayed. In fact, everybody who bleeds Hoosier red meant no harm, but they wanted Bob Knight to do the wrong thing.

Instead, Knight did the right thing.

He stayed away. And, yes, I know these aren't the same folks who used that myth nine years ago to get rid of the greatest college basketball coach ever.

NEW YORK -- Oh, it was a loaded question, all right. The guy that I expected to answer was Bud Selig, whose role as baseball commissioner expands beyond the new sacred walls in the Bronx that feature the plaques of Yankee greats.

I asked the question anyway.

Given the mystique of pinstripes, television ratings that soar toward the farthest black hole at the sight of the interlocking "NY" in white against blue caps, baseball rock stars Derek Jeter, A-Rod, Mariano Rivera and the rest -- I mean, doesn't it help the entire game whenever the Yankees win it all?

Well, it does. Nobody cares about the Tampa Bay Rays in October or November, for instance, except those with too much time on their hands around the Skyview Bridge over the Gulf of Mexico. The world is dominated by Yankee lovers, Yankee haters and few in-between, and everybody knows it.

NEW YORK -- The biggest World Series choke involved the New York Yankees, but they won back then in 1996 over the gasping Atlanta Braves.

The Yankees won this time, too. It's just that they did so to avoid sliding toward the brutal end of the second-worst choke in World Series history.

On a clear Wednesday night in the Bronx, with Hideki Matsui's sizzling Mizuno bat and various pinstriped chants warming the November chill inside the newest version of Yankee Stadium, the home team got a 7-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. It also got a 27th world championship for the franchise.

Plus, it got these current Yankees off the hook.

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NEW ORLEANS -- Go ahead, because this is the right thing to do: You should spend the rest of the NFL season hugging whatever team you traditionally love, but you should kiss the New Orleans Saints in the shadows.

If you prefer to do so in the sunshine, that's fine, too.

The Saints have replaced the folks with stars on their helmets as America's Team. In case you weren't paying attention, Hurricane Katrina blew this franchise into the hearts of all those who had them. That unofficially happened on Sept. 25, 2006, the team's first home game back in New Orleans -- a Monday night when, just like this Monday night, the roof of the Superdome threatened to explode because of the noise generated by inside, as opposed to the wind outside it.

A game that was also against the Falcons. And that, too, was a victory for the Saints, along the way to their first and only NFC championship game.

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NEW YORK -- The slew of left-handed boppers. More speed than you think, along with slick gloves everywhere. Another dose or two of Cliff Lee.

From the start of Saturday night's Game 3 in Philadelphia until whenever the last pitch of the World Series takes place, the New York Yankees will have much to worry about regarding the Philadelphia Phillies.

Oh, the Yankees still will win it all. They have several boppers of their own -- well, if this A-Rod stops resembling that other A-Rod when it comes to vanishing or prospering in October. Plus, despite Lee's Sandy Koufax routine, the Yankees have better starting pitchers. They also have those pinstriped ghosts, their Gipper in George Steinbrenner and the incomparable Mariano Rivera.

That said, the Yankees must understand something more striking about the Phillies than what I just wrote: the Phillies aren't scared.

Some things make no sense.

Just take the way Walter Payton played, for instance. Season after season, game after game, down after down, he destroyed folks. He did so as a running back for the Chicago Bears, and he spent 13 years as one of the most explosive hitters ever at any position, despite wrapping just 200 pounds around his frame of 5-foot-10. After he would belt a heftier defender toward the parking lot with his famously potent stiff arm, he would return to his preferred status of mellow.

NEW YORK -- This was a lousy way for the New York Yankees to hug somebody they supposedly love.

You had their listless ways at the plate. Then, if you combine that with a couple of mindless pitches by CC Sabathia and a shoddy bullpen, they spent Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium playing the opener of the World Series as if they wish to choke whatever life is left inside of the ailing George Steinbrenner.

OK, Cliff Lee is pretty good, but he isn't that good.

Is he?

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NEW YORK -- While making one of those decades-old World Series trips on the subway from Manhattan to the Bronx, the New York Yankees' official theme song kept rattling my bones as much as the D-train.

Start spreading the news
I'm leaving today
I want to be a part of it
New York, New York

Then, all of a sudden, when I arrived at the corner of East 161st Street and River Avenue, another Frank Sinatra song popped into my head. It got louder and louder, especially the closer I got to an 86-year-old structure whose distinctive roar during every summer and most Octobers was gone. So were its seats. So was nearly everything else in the place, including its pinstriped monuments.

This can't end well. In fact, unless the city of St. Louis is just into the bizarre -- you know, such as plans to replace that large arch downtown with a Starbucks or something, this will end sooner than later.

Mark McGwire as Cardinals hitting coach?

I'm still waiting for the punch line.

In order for this to work, McGwire has to discuss what he hasn't wanted to discuss forever, and you know what that is. Instead, he spit at a bunch of congressmen during a hearing on steroids during the spring of 2005 on Capitol Hill by telling them, "I'm not here to talk about the past."

Yeah, well. The guy has no choice now. He will be hounded by his "past" on every Cardinals road trip. I'm guessing that more than a few folks in St. Louis also will have questions about his "past."

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- You should forget the baseball fantasy that took place Thursday night next door to Disneyland, but only if you're among the wise who believe in pinstriped destiny this year. There is no Rally Monkey or Thunderstix at Yankee Stadium, where the American League Championship Series is headed after the fluke that was the Los Angeles Angels' 7-6 victory in Game 5.

The Yankees still will take it all -- the AL pennant, a world championship, maybe the Western Hemisphere -- because they have somebody who won't settle for less.

Derek Jeter.

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