New York Yankees Baseball Team

Chuck Knoblauch not only is hurting the New York Yankees with his wild throws, he's hurting their fans too. The suddenly scatter-armed second baseman made another wild throw Saturday, this one hitting a woman sitting behind the first-base dugout in a game against the Chicago White Sox. New York newspaper reports Sunday identified the woman as Marie Olbermann, mother of Fox broadcaster Keith Olbermann.

Joe Torre caused quite a stir in 2006 when he dropped Alex Rodriguez to the eighth spot in the New York Yankees' lineup. The Yankees were facing playoff elimination and Rodriguez had one hit in 11 postseason at-bats that year, but the relationship between Torre and Rodriguez was never the same thereafter. Ryan Howard batted .158 through the first five games of the World Series, with 12 strikeouts in 19 at-bats. Philadelphia Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said he gave no thought to dropping Howard from the cleanup spot for Game 6. "What kind of message do I send to Howard, after three or four years he's been in the big leagues, all of a sudden on a big, important game in the World Series, I drop him?"

Deion Sanders still isn't saying much about his verbal exchange with Carlton Fisk that led to a bench-clearing faceoff between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox Tuesday night. But Fisk, who declining comment after the game, had plenty to say in Baltimore Wednesday night. Remembering the third-inning infield pop-up that Sanders failed to run out, Chicago's Fisk recalled yelling to the rookie, "Run the . . . ball out, you . . . ! He said, 'What?' and I said, 'Run the ball out.'

The New York Yankees celebrated their latest championship long and loud, dancing and giggling into the wee hours of this morning. This is the championship the rest of America curses, the title the Yankees bought last winter, not that they really care what anyone else thinks. "You can call us anything you want," General Manager Brian Cashman said. "You're going to have to call us world champions." The Yankees, desperate to end their 0-for-this-millennium rut without a ring, committed $423.

Their name evokes an image that has become shorthand for head-shaking, awe-inspiring dominance, dropped into press box and sports bar conversations 80 years after they pummeled their last opponent: "And then, out of nowhere last September, the Rockies morphed into the '27 Yankees." Their nickname carries the same kind of currency: "Sure, Grady Little had his faults, but that lineup he had wasn't exactly Murderers' Row."

If there was any question as to the seriousness of Curt Schilling's ankle injury, William Morgan, the Boston Red Sox team physician, removed any doubt Wednesday. "If this was midseason, and we had a few months to play with," Morgan said of Schilling, who was rocked for six runs in three innings of the American League championship series opener Tuesday night, "he would have been placed in a cast and potentially undergone surgery."

The New York Yankees celebrated their latest championship long and loud, dancing and giggling into the wee hours of this morning. This is the championship the rest of America curses, the title the Yankees bought last winter, not that they really care what anyone else thinks. "You can call us anything you want," General Manager Brian Cashman said. "You're going to have to call us world champions." The Yankees, desperate to end their 0-for-this-millennium rut without a ring, committed $423.

Dave Roberts, a pinch-runner near the end of a cool Sunday night, stole the base everyone knew he had to have and then scored the run the Boston Red Sox had to have. In the ninth inning, New York Yankee closer Mariano Rivera chased him back to first base with three consecutive throws. And then Roberts stole second on Rivera's first pitch home. Two pitches later, Roberts scored the game-tying run, tearing past third-base coach Dale Sveum.

Billy Martin's funeral Friday was like the most spectacular of his many managerial resurrections, the surprise announcement of his first return in July 1978, before a packed old-timers' day crowd at Yankee Stadium--only five days after his emotional resignation as Billy I. More than 3,000 relatives, friends, fans and members of the Yankee "family" filled St.

He wasn't at his job on the horse farm in Ocala, Fla., nor at a nearby high school where he used to coach the soccer team. Instead, one day after his father was forced to give up control of the New York Yankees, Hank Steinbrenner was "en route somewhere" according to a fellow employee at the Kinsman Stud Farm, a 860-acre business owned by Hank's father, George Steinbrenner.

He'll be on national television tonight, the worst nightmare of many a Dodgers fan: Pedro Martinez , pitching in the World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies. "I'll be watching," Fred Claire said Tuesday. "I've always wanted to see him do well." Claire freely admits his worst trade in 12 seasons as the Dodgers' general manager: Martinez to the Montreal Expos for Delino DeShields . In 1993, the Dodgers considered Martinez a fragile middle reliever, in part on the recommendation of Dr. Frank Jobe . They needed a second baseman, and the cost-cutting Expos had one of the best in the game.

If the New York Yankees bid for John Lackey this winter, we'll know why. The Yankees ought not to run out of starting pitchers, or anything else, not with their practically infinite resources. But they could not identify four men to whom they would entrust a playoff start, so they demanded extraordinary labor from CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. They got away with it Sunday, with Sabathia. They did not get brilliance. They got just enough. They did not get away with it Monday, with Burnett.

The Phillies are taking the World Series back to New York, but they may be missing their starting center fielder when they get there. Shane Victorino was hit on the hand while trying to bunt an A.J. Burnett fastball in the first inning Monday and eventually had to leave the game because of severe swelling. "He had X-rays, and it's not broken," said Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel . "But as the game went on, his finger kept swelling. He couldn't grip the ball and couldn't grip the bat."

Chase Utley saw his first World Series game when, as a 9-year-old growing up outside Los Angeles, he went to see the Dodgers play the Oakland Athletics in 1988. "Game 2," his father, Dave, said. "The game after Kirk Gibson." For two decades that was the closest Utley would come to a dramatic World Series home run until Monday, when he hit two in Philadelphia's 8-6 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series, extending the Phillies' season for at least two more days.

The Yankees may have scored the go-ahead run on Alex Rodriguez's ninth-inning double. But if you ask Rodriguez, they won Sunday's game two batters earlier, when Johnny Damon fouled off three two-strike pitches before blooping a single to left to start the game-winning rally. "For me, the whole key of that whole inning was an unbelievable, tenacious at-bat by Johnny Damon," Rodriguez said. "This guy is just a great competitor. Put us in a position to get a big hit there in the ninth."

These can be the saddest of possible words: One strike away. Defeat found Brad Lidge one more time this season, perhaps for the last time. He was baseball's perfect closer last year. A generation of Philadelphia fans had lived for the moment when Lidge dropped to his knees last fall, when the Phillies had become World Series champions for the first time in 28 years. The Phillies had been one strike away. Lidge got that strike, and bedlam reigned. The Phillies were one strike away Sunday night, not from winning the World Series but from heading to the bottom of the ninth with the score tied.

Five-time New York Yankee manager Billy Martin died early Monday night in an alcohol-related crash when the pickup truck in which he was a passenger skidded off an icy road near his upstate New York farm and tumbled 300 feet down a gully. Martin, 61, lived on the farm with his wife Jill. Efforts to revive Martin at Wilson Memorial Hospital failed and he died there at about 6:56 p.m. of severe internal injuries and possible head injuries, hospital spokesman Michael Doll said.

The place is majestic. The place is imposing. You can feel all $1.5 billion. As the April sun shone brightly Thursday for the official opening of the new Yankee Stadium, you sensed you were walking into the imperial palace of some 19th century archduke. "You know George will go first class," Yogi Berra said. "It's George Steinbrenner style," Reggie Jackson said. "Forget the cost, just do it right." The 31,000-square foot Grand Hall is, well, grand.

You can tug on Superman's cape. Even spit into the wind. But hitting Alex Rodriguez with a baseball? That's probably not such a good idea. Because he'll make you pay. Just ask the Philadelphia Phillies. They tried to intimidate Rodriguez by plunking him three times in two days only to watch him hit back Sunday with a tiebreaking double, sparking the New York Yankees to a 7-4 victory that moved them to within a win of their first World Series title since 2000. "There's no question I have never had a bigger hit," Rodriguez said.

With the World Series tied at a game apiece as it moves from New York to Philadelphia for Game 3 tonight, the Phillies are counting on a couple of factors to give them the home-field advantage. For starters, the loss of the designated hitter in the National League ballpark will cost the Yankees one of their big bats. And the vocal Philadelphia crowd has unnerved opponents before, helping the Phillies win 11 of their last 12 postseason games at home. "Our club is not necessarily built to come into this ballpark," Yankees Manager Joe Girardi said before his team's workout Friday at Citizens Bank Park.