Still Looking for That 27th Out

NEW YORK â€”  The momentum of an organization stands on the blue 26, on the concrete front of Yankee Stadium.

Laid on pinstripes, used to be they coated it in fresh white paint once a year or so, stenciled in a new standard, dried it through another winter reload.

On a brisk, damp Saturday, streams of rainwater shellacked the old 26. At ground level, new and familiar Yankees passed beneath it, another baseball season a day away.

“Once, that’s a son of a gun that changes every year,� Joe Torre said. “All of a sudden you realize it’s still there.�

Still there, massaging 2000, waiting on a ninth inning of World Series Game 7 in 2001, waiting on a division series in 2002, waiting on two more wins in 2003, waiting on a Mariano Rivera cutter in 2004.

Torre can’t forget a moment from spring training, four months after they’d all come within a few feet of a blue 27, having lost in Arizona on the last pitch of the ’01 season. He stood on the warning track at Legends Field in Tampa, signing autographs, when a fan confided in him, “We’ll do better this year.�

He stopped Saturday in the hallway that leads to his manager’s office and smiled.

“I realized at that point in time,� Torre said, “that we had spoiled everybody.�

And so the Yankees are back to the Boston Red Sox, four years without winning a 27th World Series championship, brisk and rainy, national television, 350 media credentials, the back pages all over town.

They are who they are, more than $200 million worth, playing off the greatest collapse in baseball postseason history, starting tonight, starting with the Red Sox, somebody’s blue number seven months off.

Torre never believed much in the Yankee mystique, but he believed other people believed in it, especially the people in other organizations. The Yankees won too much, and their luck was too predictable, and they closed too well. But they stopped winning World Series going on five years ago.

“You don’t have the fact the other team thinks you’re going to win all the time,� he said. “If there was any of that working against the other teams, we may have lost that a little bit.�

Another lost October or two, George Steinbrenner ages and gets out, the next guy has a conscience and, well, things change.

For now, they win 100 games, and they win division titles. They buy the best players. They make the most money and underwrite half the league. They are the Yankees, only without the ring ceremony. A few years ago, a writer asked Brian Cashman if the Yankees -- and not the Atlanta Braves -- were “the team of the decade,� meaning the ‘90s. Cashman pondered that and answered, “Weren’t we the team of the century?�

Cashman maintained the same broad perspective on the eve of his eighth season as Yankee general manager.

“It’s such a small difference between the wins and the losses,� he said. “Some of the years we won, we came so close to losing. So just because we haven’t won the last few years, you have to recognize how small a difference it is. It’s been successful, despite not having the hardware to show for your year’s work.... I don’t think our momentum has been disrupted.�

Asked if the entire organization felt the same way, the obligatory Steinbrenner reference, Cashman said, “Joe and I do.�

The sport has for the moment come to the Red Sox and Yankees, their consecutive seven-game league championship series, their 53 regular-season and postseason games in two years and a day, and their habit of finding each other in spring and fall, when the air is cold and the games feel enormous.

It is the Red Sox who are defending and the Yankees who are climbing, a historical modification that was plain in both clubhouses.

“It’s more of a rivalry by definition,� Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said, “because they won.... There’s no Game 8 or 9. So that’s pretty much as far as it can go.�

Thing is, there’s always more. The Red Sox crop-dusted the Yankee camp with Alex Rodriguez insults, the schedule-maker set up a Sunday night in Yankee Stadium between Final Four games, Randy Johnson for the Yankees, David Wells working his way through every team uniform Babe Ruth ever wore, Jason Giambi on the field again, it never ends.

“It feels like we were just here,� Red Sox center fielder Johnny Damon said. “It’s going to be another battle to the end.�

*

Standing alone, Dr. Elliot Pellman’s airbrushing of his life’s work would not be particularly newsworthy, though it was unkind of him to blame his secretary; her resume probably is accurate.

A few years in Guadalajara can slip a man’s mind. And, in fairness, his official retelling does appear loosely based on real-life events, though he does not have a medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, as his biographical statements claimed.

But here’s the thing.

Baseball can’t have this.

Not now. Not with Congress having nothing better to do than haunt Bud Selig, and it was clear in the March 17 hearing the House Government Reform Committee didn’t much care for Pellman.

The small details are killing baseball and its attempt to either deal with the steroid issue or replace it with a few actual baseball games.

It can’t announce automatic suspensions for positive tests, then have the small print read on national television by a U.S. congressman suggest otherwise. It can’t announce rigorous testing procedures, then have it revealed that a player can leave an empty beaker for an hour or more. It can’t claim steroid ignorance, then have decade-old quotes show up.

And it can’t insist on an expert witness who can’t remember where he went to college.

Not all at once. Not now, when the overlords are telling people they’ve got their acts together this time, and as Barry Bonds begins the most uncomfortable season in baseball history, and as Hall of Fame votes are tallied and declared for players not yet eligible.

Baseball has to stop the bleeding. Problem is, can it trust its medical advisor to know how?

*

Had Adrian Beltre signed with the Seattle Mariners and simply resumed his 2004 season, everybody would have been satisfied.

Instead, he has astounded Mariner management with his work habits and, at 25, his developing leadership skills, critical in that Beltre walked into a clubhouse nursing a 99-loss season.

Seizing the responsibility of his five-year, $64-million contract, Beltre wore out fungo bats on the back fields in Peoria, Ariz., most mornings taking 200 ground balls at third base before the days began.

Former teammates say Beltre became a complete hitter when he no longer lunged at pitches, a practice made too painful by a sore left ankle. Forced to keep his weight on his back leg, Beltre saw pitches longer, and his hands went to the inside of the ball far more often, the result being power to all fields and a batting average 94 points higher than the previous season, 72 points higher than his career average.

Healthy again, Beltre maintained those mechanics through spring and hit .333. Against Kansas City last week, Beltre took a 1-and-2 fastball just off the outside corner, a pitch he would have flailed at two seasons ago. He doubled on the next pitch.

“The fans are going to love this guy,� said Dan Evans, who is scouting for the Mariners.

*

Madonna didn’t mind Jose Canseco as “the Chemist,� as he so reverentially calls himself in “Juiced.� Presumably, she didn’t know.

But she wasn’t so thrilled with him as “the Mullet.�

It was 1991 when the agents for Madonna, the material girl, and Canseco, the medicinal boy, brought the two kids together for lunch at the pop singer’s Hollywood Hills estate. They dined, they chatted, they did the things they do, such as watch Madonna’s movie.

A few days later, according to someone familiar with the relationship, Madonna sent word that she’d had a fine time, that she’d love to see Canseco again, but she preferred he trim his hair in the back.

Seems she has a thing for the nape of a man’s neck. So she got out just in time. Soon, he’d have no neck.

*

All of the home-run hitters who passed Roger Maris have either sat before a federal grand jury or a congressional panel, which isn’t sitting well in Maris’ home state, North Dakota.

Legislators voted, 45-0, to ask Selig to reinstate Maris’ 61 home runs in 1961 as the record. Whatever, it killed an afternoon.

Steroids may be bad for the game, but they’re great for politics.

“In North Dakota when we think something has been wrong, we try to make it right,� said Joel C. Heitkamp, a Democratic state senator. “And when it comes to Roger Maris, and when it comes to steroids, and when it comes to how people have taken this record away ... that’s not right.�