Can You Really Count Out Yankees?

Jon Heyman of Newsday wrote this about the New York Yankees after they lost the first two games of their best-of-five American League Division series to the Oakland Athletics:

“They are being outhit, outpitched, outmaneuvered, and pretty soon it appears they will be outlasted by this talented band of A’s upstarts, who aren’t easily impressed or intimidated.

“The Yankees have flashed their four rings, and the A’s have looked away. The Yankees showed them their monuments, and the youthful A’s disregarded them. The Yankees don’t look storied now, they just look old.”

Of course, they looked younger in a 1-0 victory Saturday night at Oakland. Maybe they’ll age a little more this afternoon.

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Trivia time: Who holds the NFL record for the most seasons leading the league in rushing?

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Idle time: While away from basketball helping care for his ill mother, Utah Coach Rick Majerus got to watch something besides hoops on television:

“I found out there was a lot of stuff out there. You watch this guy Jerry Springer on TV. What a show that is!

“It’s got to be like WWF. It cannot be real. There’s not enough trailer parks in the country--and I’m dating a girl from a trailer park.”

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A big tomato can: Rick Telander of the Chicago Sun-Times on Denmark’s Brian Nielsen, whom Mike Tyson stopped Saturday night in Copenhagen:

” ... [He] has a 62-1 record as a heavyweight. Much, if not all, of that comes as a result of the 6-3, 259-pound Nielsen’s professional diet of cupcakes, ripe tomatoes and fine Danish pastry.”

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Goodbye, big guy: Jim Armstrong in the Denver Post: “The time has come to tell it like it is. Mark McGwire can’t handle the top pitchers in the big leagues anymore.

“I’m not talking about home runs. I’m talking about contact.”

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Searching: PGA Tour pro Jay Williamson, on his recent switch from a conventional putting grip to the “Claw” method made famous by Chris DiMarco and Mark Calcavecchia: “I don’t call it a ‘Gator Grip.’ I call it the ‘Desperation Device.”’

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Excused absence: From the Caught on the Fly column in the Sporting News: “Fly knows a conspicuous coinky-dink when Fly sees one, and for Sixers stars Allen Iverson and Aaron McKie, this was more dink than coinky: They wait ‘til a week before October two-a-days start, make little visits to the surgeons’ offices and--voila!--show up at camp with casts and notes from their doctors. Now, while other Sixers are huffin’-n-puffin’ through drills, Ive and McKie will be sipping frosty fruit shakes and giggling.”

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Trivia answer: Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns, eight, 1957-61, 1963-65.

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And finally: Jay Posner in the San Diego Union-Tribune: “Are you ready for some really bad football? The NFL’s two worst teams, Dallas and Washington, will play on ‘Monday Night Football,’ marking the first time in the 32-year history of the MNF that a pair of 0-4 teams will meet.

“The worst thing ABC can do is treat this game seriously.

“It’s a joke, which makes it the perfect game to turn Dennis Miller loose.”