As much as I was rooting for the Marlins to win the World Series anyway, it just increased exponentially last night, with the evil New York Yankees taking the American League pennant. Just like the Cubs, the Bosox came within five outs of a trip to the World Series, but couldn't seal the deal.

As some wit once said, "rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel." The reference is a bit outdated, for course, for the 21st century, so perhaps a better way of putting it might be: "Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for the IRS." Of course they're going to win. The whole system is stacked in their favor. That's why it's so sweet when they lose.

On a side note, I covered Joe Torre for a couple of years when he was the St. Louis Cardinals manager. I like Joe Torre. The very first game I ever covered, being pretty green, I got lost trying to find my way to the locker room. I had my tape recorder with me, and was charged with the task of geting some soundbites for the post-game show I was involved in.

By the time I stumbled my way into the clubhouse, the gaggle in the manager's office had already ended. The way it works in Major League Baseball is that at the end of the game, all the reporters (radio, TV, and newspaper) congregate in the manager's little office all at once and pepper him with questions about the game. That way, he doesn't have to answer the same question over and over again. After that, the reporters fan out into the larger locker room to interview whichever individual player(s) they want to get something from. Except that I didn't know that all the reporters interviewed the manager en masse after the game.

By the time I got there, the reporters had spread out into the locker room, and I only knew that I had to get some comments from Joe Torre. Like an idiot, I went to Torre's office where he was getting changed, and said "Uh, hey, Joe, can I get some comments from you?"

I'll always be grateful for his response. Half-dressed, he took a look at me (probably recognizing "This kid doesn't know his butt from left field"), and said "sure." He sat down and answered my stupid questions for five minutes. Never did he let on that this isn't the way it's done, and that I'm supposed to talk to him when everybody else does. I never realized the grace he had extended me until I learned later how things normally work, what a breach of protocol I had committed, and how much he absolutely despised the station that I was working for, on which many of the hosts were daily calling for his firing. Despite all that, he took pity on me.

So I'll always like Joe Torre for that. But I've gotta say, I still hate the Yankees, and I still want to see them get stomped. Good a guy as Torre is, he's got enough stinkin' rings already.