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As the New York Yankees’ 2010 Spring Training accelerates in its slow pokey way, we’re told that all eyes in Tampa are on the competition between Joba Chamberlain and Phil Hughes for the fifth spot in the team’s pitching rotation. It is, we’re reminded, the most “delicious” story at camp.

This is probably good for Javier Vazquez, who was immediately slotted in as the Yanks’ fourth starter after Brian Cashman’s stealth trade for the righty in December, which brought him from the Braves in exchange for outfielder Melky Cabrera and two prospects.

Vazquez is not known for craving the limelight in either his personal or professional lives. That, however, was impossible during his first ill-fated tour with the Yankees in 2004, when he was in the unenviable position of being paired with Kevin Brown as part of a duo meant to replace Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens—most especially Pettitte, whose departure from the Yankees after an extraordinary 2003 season would be as much of a surprise to Vazquez as it was to fans, and perhaps to Pettitte himself.

Then 28 years old, Vazquez had spent six seasons starting for the small-market, perennially noncontending Montreal Expos. Few fans of American league baseball had seen much of him on the mound, but his rep was outstanding, with frequent mentions of his durability and comparisons of his evolving skills to those of a young Pedro Martinez.

Based on Vazquez’s statistics, the advance word seemed warranted when the Yankees acquired him in exchange for two of their most prized young position players at the time, first baseman Nick Johnson and outfielder Juan Rivera, with reliever Randy Choate thrown into the swap for good measure. Vazquez had pitched 172 innings as a rookie with Montreal, and after a dip to 152 innings in his sophomore year, threw well over 200 innings in each of the next four seasons. Though his fastball did not consistently light up the radar, it would sometimes approach the mid-nineties and was part of a large array of pitches he was said to throw with impeccable control. His strikeout totals were impressive.

Vazquez had always admired Pettitte and was eager to join—and learn from—the lefty veteran as a fellow member of Yankee rotation. In a conference call with the New York media after last December’s trade returned him to the Bronx, he recalled his disappointment on finding out Pettitte had not been re-signed that offseason. Vazquez would reiterate these sentiments when he reported to training camp about a week ago.

“I’ve always looked up to Andy from afar, just because of the professional pitcher that he is,” he told the press.

Vazquez’s struggles during his short-lived initial tenure with the Yankees have been amply covered in print. No fan of the Bombers will ever forget his first pitch to Johnny Damon after he entered Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS. But it might be worth remembering that a horribly ineffective Brown had already put the Yankees down 2-0 to the Red Sox in the first inning—and that he loaded up the bases for Damon before Vazquez relieved him in the second.

In Yankees universe, Vazquez’s infamous cookie to Damon was the oft-cited “one bad pitch” at its lowest possible extreme. It doomed the Yankees in that championship series and helped propel the Red Sox beyond it to a historic World Series victory. It also sealed Vazquez’s fate with the Yankees; his spottiness throughout 2004, and unfortunate role in the Yanks’ infamous postseason collapse, virtually ensured he would not be back in pinstripes the following year. Although he would never use it as an excuse, Vazquez's ultimate failure may well have been due to arm problems from which he had had suffered for much of the season.

“In the second half, my arm didn’t feel as good as it did in the first half, and it was really the first time in my career, and really the only time in my career, that I felt my arm wasn’t where it’s supposed to be,” Vazquez told reporters last year. “I started getting treatment a little later than I should have. I never said anything. I went out there every five days. I hated not being out there. That might have been my mistake, I never said anything.”

Be that as it may, Vazquez was gone at the start of 2005, traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks for an aging Randy Johnson. His performance in the desert was middling—he pitched to a 4.42 ERA and gave up too many hits and home runs. But his strikeout total (192) and number of innings pitched (215) remained notably high.

The next year Vazquez was again traded, this time to the Chicago White Sox, where he would remain through the end of 2008. In the Windy City, his career was marked with some of the same up and downs that had frustrated Yankees fans. He ate up innings and struck out batters and looked brilliant at times, but had an elevated earned-run average and losing record for two of his three seasons there. The exception was 2007, when he at last seemed to fulfill his early career promise, going 15-8 with a 3.74 ERA while pitching his customary 200-plus innings. Though he still gave up too many homers, the rest of his statistics—including his strikeouts—were mostly very good to excellent.

The 2008 season was another difficult one for Vazquez, one in which he seemed to backslide in almost every area. As had been his career pattern, he was still taking the mound every fifth day and whiffing men at the plate. But hitters were also getting plenty of hits and walks off him, his ERA spiked up to a so-so 4.67 and all of that was reflected in a losing 12-16 record. As the White Sox made a late-season run for the playoffs, manager Ozzie Guillen reportedly asked Vazquez to “step up” and show some of the capabilities he’d demonstrated the previous year. Unfortunately Vazquez would go on to lose the next four games he started, prompting the always quote-worthy Guillen to publicly remark that he “wasn’t a big game pitcher.”

In 2009 Vazquez went to the Braves in a five-player deal. He’d been traded for the third time in six years and essentially been written off as one of those pitchers who never quite panned out to be what baseball people had projected. Sure enough, he had his best season ever, pitching to a 2.68 ERA and a 15-10 record with loads of other exemplary numbers to boot. In fact, he might have even won a Cy Young award if Giants ace Tim Lincecum hadn’t pitched even better (he finished fourth in writers’ voting).

Asked about his bounceback season, Vazquez has been at a loss to find reasons for it. “I just felt good. I felt good in Atlanta,” he said. “I was glad to be back in the National League. I just pitched. It’s tough to say this went good, this went bad. Obviously I had a good season and everything was working for me, but I can’t pinpoint everything.”

Now back in New York and the American League, Vazquez isn’t expected to repeat the career year he had in the NL East. But if he does, or even comes close to his 2007 performance with the ChiSox, wouldn’t it be a nice surprise to Yankee fans still queasy with memories of 2004?

“As a baseball player, you know you're going to have some good times and some tough times," he’s said. “For me, ‘04 was a tough time, but this is a great opportunity to come back. Hopefully I can erase those memories.”

Catcher Jorge Posada, with whom Vazquez has remained friends since his original tenure with the Yankees, expressed confidence in the pitcher’s successful return, saying, “Right now, he’s at the peak of his career. We got a guy that takes a lot of pride in how he pitches. He’s been throwing 200 innings for a long time.”

There is no telling how valuable he may be if he is as effective as he’s proven he can be in those innings.

In 2009 it was Andy “The Afterthought” Pettitte, signed very late in the offseason as a fourth or fifth starter, who proved one of the biggest difference makers in the Yankees’ eventual fortunes. Conversely, for all the season-long debate about Chamberlain’s role on the team—and the mutable Joba Rules—the young right-hander was not one of the players whose season contributed most to the team’s ultimate success.

When Chien-Ming Wang—who’d been penciled in as the rotation’s No. 3 starter—became a virtual no-show due to injury, the 36-year-old Pettitte quickly stepped in to fill his role and did so in superb fashion with a 14-8 record and 4.16 ERA. Meanwhile the fourth spot would be reserved for Joba’s abbreviated training wheel rides, with the fifth starter’s role remaining in constant flux throughout the season. And it was of course Pettitte who won the clinching games in all three postseason series.

Even as eyes remained on Joba, Pettitte became the Yankees’ best and most reliable starter after CC Sabathia. It bears repeating that the Yanks did not sign him up for the 2009 campaign until close to the last minute, and then only on the relative cheap after offering him a highly incentivized take-it-or-leave-it deal.

As with all teams that win a championship, the Yankees had many things go their way last year, one of which was that they were pretty much injury-free down the stretch run. This applied as much to the starting rotation as position players, and doesn’t happen too often. There’s some luck involved in a pitching staff staying healthy and intact over the course of 162 games—and then some if you were the 2009 Yankees.

But Pettitte is a year older this year—surprise, surprise. Based on the past, A.J. Burnett remains a higher-than-average injury risk. Hughes has yet to demonstrate that he can stay healthy and effective as a starter and the same goes for Joba the Unruled. The Yankees have sufficient pitching depth in Alfredo Aceves, Chad Gaudin and Sergio Mitre to sustain them for a while should one of their starters go down, but if there is any single member of the staff whose individual success or failure may be pivotal to the entire team’s, it is likely to be Javier Vazquez.

And he is motivated.

“Everybody knows I didn’t want to leave here the first time around,” Vazquez has said. “I’m glad I’m back. You don’t like to leave anywhere with a bad taste in your mouth.”

No, you don’t. Especially if it’s New York, and especially if millions of Yankee fans share that bitter taste with you.

When you look at Javy the Invisible, though, it is easy to imagine him as this year’s version of Andy the Afterthought. He is capable of winning 15 or more games and being a No. 2 or 3 starter. One of the all-time goats in Yankee history, he is capable of turning his legacy around and becoming a champion.

In a game so rich in storylines of failure and redemption, that would be something to behold.

It was Game 2 of the 2003 World Series and Yankee Stadium was quiet as a sleeping kitten. From the stillness of the crowd, you’d have thought the Yankees were on their way toward defeat instead of a crucial victory, having lost the first game of the series to the upstart Florida Marlins by a score of 4-2.

I was watching from out in the right-field bleachers with my wife. I don’t remember how we got hold of our tickets, which is to say that I’m not sure if our partial season plan had a guaranteed postseason ticket option yet or if we’d bought our tickets from Ticketmaster over the phone. Back then I had all sorts of sneaky tricks for getting through the telephone logjams. You wouldn’t believe some of the ploys I devised. Once, a Ticketmaster employee actually nailed me. “Nice stunt,” she said at the conclusion of our transaction, just when I thought I’d had her snookered. She sold me my playoff tickets anyway.

In 2003, you couldn’t buy postseason tickets directly from the Yankees or Ticketmaster over the Internet. StubHub was already in existence but not many people had heard of it. There were of course ticket brokers in offices and scalpers on the street. As far as I could tell, the main difference between them was that the brokers were licensed to rip people off and the scalpers were not. I don’t recall hearing the term “secondary market” in those days -- maybe it had been coined, although I couldn’t tell you for sure. It certainly hadn’t entered my personal phraseology.

For the game in question, I had brought a pair of opera glasses but didn’t use them a whole lot. I clap and yell too much at baseball games to hold anything in my hands, so the glasses mostly stayed in my jacket pocket. But out in the bleachers, where most, though not all, the people around me had actually laid down hard cash for their tickets -- as opposed to having gotten comped, that is -- a bunch of us were wondering how come the rest of Stadium seemed to be snoozing while the Yankees took a three, then four, then six-run lead while Andy Pettitte was shutting out the Marlins for almost nine full innings.

At one point I pulled the glasses out of my pocket, scanned the crowd along the infield lines, and got an answer. Very few of the people there looked like people I ordinarily saw in those seats at regular-season games. Many of them seemed overdressed -- I don’t mean too bundled up for the weather, I mean too formally attired. They stayed in their seats while everybody in the bleachers was up on their feet. I felt like tossing them my opera glasses, being that they resembled an opera crowd waiting for some tenor to break into Nessun Dorma.

It was obvious to me this wasn’t the crowd that usually filled the Stadium. Obvious that most of these people hadn’t stood in line or hung on the phone for hours to get their ducats. Obvious that they were there only because Yankee Stadium was the in place to be, and had gotten their tix slapped into their palms by Mr. Dithers back at the office ... or whomever.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when then-Marlins outfielder Juan Pierre and some of his teammates made public comments about the Yankees’ home-field advantage being overblown. Yankees fans weren’t anything like what they’d expected, they said. I didn’t feel disrespected by those words. They had no reason to believe anything but what they had experienced. And what they had experienced was the same thing I had experienced. A dead Stadium. In contrast, their home ballpark would be jumping when the World Series moved to Florida for the next three games.

In New York, afterward, most members of the media attributed the lethargic Stadium crowds to a kind of collective hangover from the Yankees’ epic ALCS against the Red Sox. As a fan, I thought it a facile and downright insulting explanation. But you have to understand that the media will never talk honestly about real, regular-season Yankee fans being unable to get tickets for the World Series. Media members get into games for free all the time. If you work for certain radio or television outlets, there's a good chance that you and everybody you know-- and his or her mother-- is comped for the World Series.

They will not talk about it. It's almost impolite to raise the subject, like introducing politics or religion into a dinner party conversation. The fans are jaded, the fans are drained after that last series, maybe all the fans have even caught colds. Comps? Pish-posh. No sense starting a commotion that might scatter the feathers that line your little nest.

To some degree or other, you have to accept this sort of thing as a reality of life. There are always gimmes at major sporting events -- or major entertainment events period. But the 2003 World Series was the first in which I felt Yankee fans were almost entirely squeezed out of the Stadium. Although I have no hard evidence of it, it is my belief that the Yankee brass took notice as well, because the very next season various new policies were instituted that seemed designed to let more fans attend postseason games. Dedicated fans who couldn’t afford to buy plans at all pretty much remained left out of the picture, because very few tickets were made available at the box office. But more of the partial season plans were given guaranteed postseason ticket options, and pre-onsales were implemented for some of the smallest, most affordable plans.

It was largely for this reason that plan sales soared. Almost everyone I know who bought a partial plan did so in part for the postseason options.

From 2004-07, fans with partial season plans were able to get decent seats to potential Yankee World Series games that unfortunately were never played. In 2008, postseason tickets never went on sale, rendering the issue moot.

Then last season, the first at the new Stadium, the Yankees partial plans were restructured. Very few fans were pleased, this writer included. Our seats weren’t as good as they’d been in the past. Rough equivalents to plans that had existed for years were widely stripped of guaranteed postseason options. These were now reserved for the biggest, most expensive plans. There was still a so-called “pre-onsale” that gave you a chance at buying tickets, but it was an oxymoronic term. So few postseason tickets were available to the general public, it was, for all intents and purposes, the only onsale date for those who did not have guaranteed tickets.

For most partial-plan holders I know, the pre-onsales worked passably well for the ALCS and ALDS. They were able to buy tickets. The better seats in the Stadium were taken -- that is, except for some those pricey $1,000 seats, which stayed empty -- but there were seats nonetheless. If you didn’t have a ticket plan, though, good luck. A few tickets were available at the box office, but you were likely stiffed unless you went to the secondary market and were able to pay double or triple the face value ... or whatever sellers decided to ask for their tickets

The World Series was another story. The number of tickets available to non-planholders had dwindled even further ... I think, there were a couple of hundred, if that many. If you had a partial plan without a guaranteed ticket option, there was a nominal online pre-onsale. Nominal because not a single one of the many people I know or spoke with was able to get hold of tickets. Riding home on the No. 4 train after Games 1 and 2 of the ALCS, I heard people all around me gripe about it. Their grumblings echoed conversations I’d had with my friends. Where were all the World Series tickets?

One place they seemed to be was on StubHub. I don’t know how so many tickets got there, but StubHub had tens of thousands of tickets -- whole rows of seats -- for sale. If you could afford to pay between $300-$400 and several thousand dollars apiece for a World Series ticket (the former were mainly way out in the left field bleachers) it was there to be bought on that so-called secondary market. Otherwise, though, you were out in the November cold.

On the radio, John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman commented on the sedate crowd at least one of the World Series games. They wondered if it might be the cold weather. They wondered if Yankee fans in the Stadium were “waiting.” For what, I don’t know, you would have to ask them. Meanwhile, Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillén was far more vocal about the lack of energy at the Stadium in his televised commentary. Ozzie only ever says good things about the Yankees and Ozzie only ever speaks from his heart, even when he comes off as vulgar, outrageous or boneheaded. But his observations about the crowd were right on. He talked about all the people in the shops buying merchandise during the games, milling about the jerseys and caps and whatnots even while a World Series was being played on the field. He talked about feeling as if he was in a shopping mall somewhere rather than at Yankee Stadium. I know Yankee fans, he said, and these aren’t the fans I know.

He was right. They mostly weren’t. The Yankee fans he knew were watching the World Series games at home, and in sports bars, and on a jumbo video screen in Times Square . . .  where incidentally the atmosphere was a lot louder and wilder than at the Stadium. The Yankee fans he knew had very little chance to acquire tickets without taking out second mortgages. They had been aced out of their seats by people with complimentary passes and wrist bracelets or big, fat wallets. People who were there only for the spectacle and might as well have been at the opening of a Broadway musical. The Yankee fans Ozzie was talking about, the very fans that the team’s owners and executives and players and manager would eventually thank for their support as they held up the World Championship trophy ... those fans were nowhere around.

In New York a few days after the Yankees won the World Series, I overheard a couple of guys in suits talking as I waited for some Chinese takeout. They’d been at the series, gotten comped with excellent seats behind home plate, and were speaking highly of the sophisticated fans who’d sat around them ... contrasting these fans with the usual rabble that attends baseball games. The sophisticated fans around them, they said, had known better than to get to their feet at any time, including when Mariano Rivera was closing out Game 6. The sophisticated fans around them understood that standing and clapping during a game was nothing more than a complete and utterly unsophisticated nuisance.

Uh-huh. Okay. There went my appetite. Well, okay, almost.

The Yankees have made some good player acquisitions in the offseason. Curtis Granderson, Javier Vazquez and Marcus Thames are definite plusses. I’m not so sure about the breakable Nick Johnson, who’ll likely be fine until he winds up in traction halfway through May.

I will miss Hideki Matsui and Johnny Damon, and remain convinced the Yankees should have re-signed one or the other -- Damon probably having made the most sense. But as Hot Stove season winds down, and the promise of Spring Training sparkles around the bend, I am mostly hoping the 10th man will be re-signed should the Yankees again make the postseason.

Too many Yankee fans were left out of Yankee Stadium when they won their 27th World Championship.

There’s still time to let them back in as the team makes a run at No. 28.

So a funny thing happened to my previous official YES column, Deep in the Red, after the New York Yankees won their 27th World Championship.

It came to an end.

Which was sorta planned. 

The first part of the sorta plan was to take a break from baseball writing to catch up on book deadlines—and I’m happy to report I’m getting there without having totally gone kablooie.  I recently finished a novel called SKIN DEEP, my second based on the TV series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. I’m almost done with another novel that’s currently unnamed. I’ve completed most of the research for a nonfiction book about an incredibly fascinating and surprisingly little-known battle at sea during World War 2. And I’m doing some other stuff. 

The second part of the sorta plan had been mulled and discussed for a while. DIR was originally conceived after the Yanks’ 2004 ALCS debacle vs. the Red Sox, which of course would eventually lead to the Sox winning their first World Series in almost a century and the end of the “Nineteen-eighteen!” chant at the Stadium (which I always thought was a jinx anyway, but that’s beside the point).

Back then I was spending most of my time in New England, and as longtime readers will recall from my personal anecdotes, it was a true joy being surrounded by cocky Red Sox fans coming off their historic toppling of the Pinstriped Goliath. Thankfully YES gave me an opportunity to write about all that joyousness on behalf of every expat Yank fan in New England and just about everywhere else outside the New York area. I considered it a form of group therapy.

Over the past couple of years, however, things gradually changed: I’d found the balance of the column had increasingly tilted away from personal anecdotes about my experiences living in Red Sox-land toward (hopefully) objective reporting, commentary and analysis of the Yankees. I was spending more time in New York overall for personal and professional reasons, and was also attending more Yankee games as a fan or covering them for YES. 

Moreover, when I was in New England, and occasionally managed to venture from behind my computer to catch the light of day, I’d begun catching less and less torment from Sox fans.  The reasons for this are twofold and contradictory. In 2008, when the Yanks did not make the playoffs for the first time in almost a decade and a half, the cockiness of Red Sox Nation had grown to the point where its denizens no longer considered the Yankees a threat or felt annoying Yankee fans worth much time and effort.  There’d be derisive snicker here, a minor insult there, but the old inflammatory spark had gone out of the fight. Then midway through 2009 . . . they reverted to their former downtrodden kid-brother mentality. I mean, like, in a blink.

By mid-August, as the Yanks charged toward winning the pennant and a World Championship, nobody in New England wanted to talk baseball anymore. Or hear about it. Everybody was suddenly interested in winter sports. Hockey. Basketball. The Pats. Baseball, yawn . . .  was baseball season still happening?

Then in late September, October and November, my Sox fan neighbors disappeared en masse.  I looked and looked for ‘em but couldn’t find any, especially after returning to Maine fresh off being in New York for the World Series and the subsequent victory parade downtown. It was the really strangest thing, and I hope they’re all okay somewhere. The only two I know for sure are still around are the Flying Attorney and his beautiful wife from a couple of houses up the street. They left the congratulatory note pictured here on my front door, proving they not only continue to exist, but are fine, good sports.

Seriously, my wife and I got a kick out of their sign. Not just because it showed that the longtime rivalry Yank and Sox fans often take way too far actually can be fun, but provided a fitting capper to Deep In the Red.  To Jim and Susan—thanks. You are the best.

And to everyone else—welcome to my new official YES column, Yankees Ink.  In many ways, it won’t be all that different from my previous work for YES. But the new title reflects a focus that had already broadened, and will continue to do so in the future. I hope to bring you more coverage from the stands and the clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. I expect my anecdotes will be more New York-centric than before, reflecting recent changes in my general whereabouts. Which means you’ll be hearing more about over-the-top Yank fans in the First Avenue Coffee Shop than over-the-top Sox fans at the local bake shop in Port Getaway. Assuming they ever emerge from the Negative Zone.

I am excited about Yankees Ink and hope you’ll all feel the same as we get rolling—slowly   during the offseason, and moving into full gear as we get closer to the 2010 campaign.

Meanwhile, and briefly, here’s what I think the Yanks’ offseason moves to date.

Great Move
Resigning Andy Pettitte for another year after his stellar 2009 regular and postseason, and doing it without protracted contractual dickering. Pettitte is one of the all-time great Yankees and in my opinion a Hall of Famer.  He earned the respect the Yankees gave him.

Very Good Move
Curtis Granderson was a nice pickup for the Yanks. He’s young, durable, scrappy, smart and quick on the bases, plays an excellent centerfield, and has pop in his bat. When you look at his swing, you imagine him hitting a million or so homers to right field. Yes, we know, he strikes out too much. We also know he’s bad against lefties. And he had a rough end to the 2009 season running some strange routes in the outfield—but he’d played in 160 games and was likely just plumb worn out.

As far as the players given up to acquire him: Austin Jackson struck out too much and had no power numbers . . . in fact, it looked as if he was at best going to be Granderson lite.  Phil Coke was a good, earnest guy who did have his effective moments, but too often helped boost the power numbers of opposing batters by surrendering bombs to them at some glaringly inopportune times. And righty pitcher Ian Kennedy was never going to be a starter in the Yank rotation.

Major Bummer Move
Recently signed Nick “If Healthy” Johnson will be making a guaranteed $5.5 million with the Yanks in 2010 as their primary DH, with another million bucks in incentives to kick in if . . . . well, y’know.

While I’m neither a betting man nor an odds-maker, let’s look at Johnson’s history going back to his second season in the minor leagues as a Yankee prospect, and see what our gut feeling is about his staying healthy.

In 2000, his second year as a Yankee prospect, Johnson missed the entire season with a muscle strain in his right hand incurred during a checked swing in spring training. The good news? Baseball America had ranked him the #1 Yankee prospect that year.

In 2002, Johnson’s first full year in the majors, he missed almost a month with a bone bruise to his wrist. This was sustained while catching a line drive.

In 2003, Johnson missed 61 games with a stress fracture in his right hand. The good news is that it was a better year than his next one would be.

After being traded to the Nationals in 2004, Johnson played only 74 games. Lumbar strain, fractured right cheekbone.

2005 continued Johnson’s injury hot streak with his seventh consecutive year on the disabled list. A right heel contusion.

Then, in 2006, Johnson almost broke the streak. But the Baseball Gods deemed it continue with a fracture of his right femur in September. A “freak collision” according to MLB.com.

Johnson’s “2007 Highlights” are interesting as posted on MLB.com’s player bio page. So interesting, I think I’ll just quote them directly:

Worked in conjunction with Nationals doctors, training staff, as well as strength and conditioning staff on intense rehab program constructed to overcome affects of fractured right femur, sustained on September 23 at NYM...had 2 subsequent surgeries in 2007 to remove hardware . . . .on January 16, had a distal screw removed in a procedure performed by Dr. Richard Marder...on August 21, had final hardware removal performed by Dr. David Lewellen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN...began taking batting practice on July 31.

Okay, onto 2008. The good news is that no problems were reported with the femur. The bad is that Johnson tore a right wrist tendon sheath on a swing in May and missed the final 4 ½ months of the season, having surgery in June.

2009 was an unusual year for Johnson. He played in 133 games. I’m not sure what happened to keep him out of the remaining 29 and am frankly afraid to ask.

Let’s compare and contrast to ex-Yank Hideki Matsui, who was not offered a contract by the Yankees this offseason and signed for $6.5 million with the L.A. Angels of Anaheim last week.

After playing 1,250 consecutive games with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan, Matsui played every single game of the 2003, 2004 and 2005 seasons with the Yankees. By 2006 he’d tacked another  518 games onto his streak before sustaining a fractured right wrist while making a hustle slide attempting to catch a flyball to left (vs. the Red Sox) in 2006. Missed 12 games in 2007 with a hamstring injury. Missed six weeks in 2008 with a knee injury. In 2009 he played in 142 games and was the World Series MVP.

I know, I know. Johnson’s younger than Matsui. He’s got that incredible on-base percentage and that sweet leftie swing that will really loft balls over the current Yankee Stadium’s shorter-than-ever right field porch to raise his homerun total from the total of 8 that he hit last season.

If healthy.

Nice going, Yanks.

Wash Move
Brian Bruney went to the Washington Nationals for their first Rule 5 Draft pick, who turned out to be outfielder Jamie Hoffmann.  I don’t know much about Hoffmann. I do know Bruney had a great power arm but was never quite able to control it.  It was, shall we say, a rogue arm.  Rogue arms are by definition inconsistent and not what you want trying to nail outs in tight spots.

Non-Move
Thank you New York Yankees, Scott Boras and Johnny Damon for managing to blow a good thing. Damon and the Yanks were a perfect match that should not have broken asunder, and sorting through the media coverage of the negotiations between their respective camps, it seems obvious there needed to be greater flexibility on both sides. I’m still holding out hope things shake out for a two-year deal.

Remember it, November 4, 2009.  The Yankees win their twenty-seventh World Series title, one for the Boss. You don't see these things, this special kind of magic, too often.

Magical Andy Pettitte, an afterthought last offseason, a champion on the mound. Magical Hideki Matsui, supposed to be on his way out the door on bad knees, now World Series MVP. Magical Damaso Marte, a bridge out of nowhere. And the one who's always standing there at the finish line, going on a decade and a half now, the closer who closes the door that others can't, Magical Mariano Rivera.

And not to forget Magical Jeter and Posada, Magical Alex, Magical Damon, Magical Swisher, Magical Hairston . . .

Magic cannot be dissected, overanalyzed, mathematized and statistified. Nor can it be bought. And baseball magic is something that brews on the field, and infuses the dirt and grass, and cooks up and back around in the high stands in the summer heat, in the places where the fans roar from April to September, and where many must say goodbye before the fall. But make no mistake, they leave behind their own special magic dust, distilled from their hopes and dreams over the long season, sprinkled in those seats for a later time, a part of them that will not be denied or scattered in the November wind.

Magic cannot be talked into existence. It isn't formulated in radio studios, newspapers, and blogs. Three days of rest, five days, eight -- can you still hear the fading buzz, or is it already too distant, dissipated by the spell of excitement cast by pinstriped sorcerers with balls and bats?  

But try to remember it.  Just for a second. There is a lesson to be learned that may settle you through the ups and downs of seasons to come.

Baseball magic is unpredictable and unquantifiable. It is a wild, elusive, powerful thing, with a curious chemistry that defies easy formulation. It is created in the here and now, in newborn moments that refuse to bow to the past. It is heart, desire and hard work, and it is talent, will and skill, catalyzed into transcendent victory.

Watch it when it happens and be thrilled. And savor it.

World Series Championship No. 27 for the 2009 New York Yankees.  Confetti will soon be falling on them in the Canyon of Heroes.

After nine years without paper snow falling on pinstripes, this team has earned a magical November blizzard.

World Series Game Three, Halloween night, and the Yanks are loose down the 'pike  in Philadelphia.

Andy Pettitte, the afterthought, the complimentary player, the maybe-number-five starter last offseason, earns a come-from-behind swing game win to become the winningest postseason pitcher in baseball history, adios John Smoltz. And, not to forget, while coming from behind ties the game for himself with his bat. Scary to think where the Yanks would be without him.

Alex Rodriguez, booed just for breathing in the past, embarrassed last offseason, in surgery during spring training, returning with a bang to wake up the Yanks in May, becoming the biggest bat all postseason, shows up now with another bang, his first World Series hit also his first World Series homerun, tying Bernie Williams for most homers in Yankee postseason history and sending still another wakeup call to the Yankee offense.

Nick Swisher, starts the season on the bench, becomes a regular by necessity, gets two big hits and catches for every big bungle all year long, does very little that's big at the plate through the postseason, benched in Game 2 of the World Series, first doubles and goes barreling home on Pettitte's single in the fifth, helps him tie the game and then earn the win with a go-ahead solo shot in the sixth. There you have it: Nick Swish, the Redemption Kid, outslugs Rocky Balboa on a Yank-haunted Saturday night in Philly.

Meanwhile Damon starts looking demonic. Matsui rises late to stomp Myers, Godzilla in the flesh, while the Phanatic cringes out of sight in his costume.

Enter Joba and Marte. Then Hughes, who's sorta okay. And finally Rivera, his devilish cutter sending the crowd home in graveyard silence.

World Series Game Three, Phillies tricked and not treated.

Yankees win, up 2-1 in a best of seven that has become a best of four.

A happy Halloween for the boys in pinstripes.