Yankees Moment Has Two Challengers

ANAHEIM, Calif. -- This A-Rod thing is getting scary.

The same goes for this umpiring thing.

In the end, when somebody on the New York Yankees squeezes the last out of the 2009 season, it only will be about this pinstripe thing, because the Yankees are destined to finish early November as bigger than anything in baseball.

I think. It's just that those two other things spent a gorgeous Tuesday night at Angel Stadium continuing their habit of overshadowing the Yankees' inevitable march to a 27th world championship.

The A-Rod thing? Well, if you're into baseball lore, this is a beautiful thing since Alex Rodriguez keeps showing dramatically and emphatically that his Louisville Slugger isn't spooked anymore by late autumn. It happened again this time. From nearly beginning to end, Rodriguez was the dominant force during the Yankees' 10-1 smacking of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. As a result, the Yankees are a victory (or shall we say more A-Rod moments) on Thursday from reaching the World Series.

"I will say that in other postseasons, I failed, and sometimes failed miserably," said Rodriguez, telling the truth about his four-something-year-old habit of playing with one hand on his bat and the other around his throat in October. "It certainly feels good to come through for my team and help the team win."

That's opposed to feeling however umpires feel these days after they make fools out of themselves. You know, like they did Tuesday night. And this is a disgraceful thing, because despite two extra guys working the playoffs, this was another October evening filled with calls ranging from bad to awful to brutal.

Some were worse than that.

"You've got to tell me which ones you're talking about," said Derek Jeter, the Yankees captain, practicing umpire diplomacy with reporters in the aftermath of his team winning for the third time in four games during this best-of-seven series. It was a game that left another set of umpires looking goofy.

Where should we start? How about in the fifth inning, when Angels catcher Mike Napoli alertly raced to third on a rundown to tag both Yankees Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano who clearly were off the bag.

They both should have been called out. Instead, third base umpire Tim McClelland called Posada out and Cano safe as most among the packed house of 45,160 chanted something not fit for even the Rally Monkey to hear. "I was on deck, so I didn't see what was going on," said Jeter, with wide eyes, before claiming he also didn't witness McClelland blow another call involving Nick Swisher.

On that one, McClelland claimed Swisher left third base too soon on an apparent sacrifice fly and thumbed him out.

Both blown calls were so outrageous that McClelland even admitted as much later, saying in hushed tones, "Obviously or not obviously, but there were two missed calls. And I'm just out there trying to do my job and do it the best I can."

Not good enough. Not since this has been a postseason loaded with blown calls, including the glaring one in the Division Series when Minnesota's Joe Mauer watched his double become a foul ball in the mind of an umpire stationed in the outfield. That game also involved the Yankees. Jeter shrugged, saying, "I mean, people are human. They make mistakes sometimes. Umpires are trying their best. Sometimes you get calls. Sometimes you don't, but I don't think it had an effect on this game."

It didn't. A-Rod did. And remember: Rodriguez was an accomplished regular-season Hall of Famer after starting the playoffs with zero hits during his previous 19 at-bats with runners in scoring position. So who IS this guy? Suddenly, nearly every postseason hitting record of Yankee all-time greats are in danger, which means the same goes for nearly every one of those postseason hitting records, period.

Such records usually are Yankee records. At this rate, they will be A-Rod records, with much help from his various contributions to the Yankees on Tuesday night. He scored three times, including his nifty power slide under Napoli's mitt at home plate for the game's first run. He doubled. He singled. He walked, and he stole a base. Oh, and he slammed a two-run homer. It was his fifth blast during a single postseason to tie somebody named Reggie Jackson for the second highest such total in Yankee history. He also has homered in three consecutive postseason games, and surely that puts him closer to more than a few things involving Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle.

With much help from A-Rod, this isn't 2004, when the Yankees choked away the American League pennant. For one, courtesy of overcoming a 3-0 deficit to all things pinstriped in that ALCS and later Babe Ruth's ghost to win the World Series, those Boston Red Sox were magic. For another, even though these Angels are located next to Disneyland, they aren't sprinkled with pixie dust.

The Angels do have that Rally Monkey, though. It's just that the Yankees have everything else.

This is such a mismatch. To keep from getting bored, the Yankees allowed Jeff Mathis to leave the shadows with his usually sickly bat during Game 3 to win it during extra innings for the Angels.

Then along came Game 4 and that man again.

"He's pretty much carried into the postseason what he did in the regular season, and it seems like he's swinging at strikes, and he's making contact, he's hitting it hard," said Jeter, whose team was a baseball-best 90-44 after Rodriguez returned from hip surgery in early May. During the spring, he also made news for joining the infamous list that features some of baseball's steroid guys. Even so, that A-Rod thing ranks behind these other A-Rod things at the moment.

That umpiring thing?

Nothing ranks behind that.

It's too big and ugly.

Terence Moore is a national columnist and commentator for FanHouse. He is a frequent panelist on "Rome Is Burning," an ESPN show hosted by Jim Rome, that is seen Monday through Friday at 4:30 PM ET. Moore spent more than three decades working for major newspapers, including 26 years as an award-winning sports columnist for the San Francisco Examiner and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He resides in Atlanta.