Pirate Galaxy » for assistant captain duties.Watson jo

The time of the superpowers, when the Yankees and Red Sox were the greatest show in baseball, is over, and at Yankee Stadium this week the final pieces will fade into history. Roger Clemens and Mike Mussina are gone. Pedro and Gary Sheffield are in the broadcast booth, retired. Joe Torre is in the commissioners office, and Terry Francona in the Cleveland dugout.Chapters are closing. In the last two years alone, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte have retired. Rodriguez didnt last the season, and now Mark Teixeira and David Ortiz will exit. Ortiz and Rodriguez were the last active links on each team to the last border war, in 2004, the last time the Red Sox and Yankees met in the postseason.In between has been clubhouse beer and fried chicken, the boom-and-bust of last place or championship on one side, yearlong drug suspensions and yearlong goodbyes on the other, and with the Blue Jays, Rays and the Orioles in the playoffs reviving themselves in between. Baseballs 50-year assault on the Yankee brand, the inability to get younger and a heavy caboose of big contracts have finally taken a toll in the Bronx.There was a time when we were the sun and all the planets revolved around us, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman told me. Today, were Pluto.September, however, suggested an awakening of the force, and maybe, just maybe, Red Sox-Yankees is ready to resume hostilities atop the AL East, and maybe once more atop baseball.The rest of the country might blanch at the thought of Boston and New York reloading for another takeover, but baseball desperately needs this revival. Individually, the leagues players do not rank on the same level of national mega-stardom as Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, LeBron James or Steph Curry, even though Mike Trout is just as good at his job as they are at theirs. Trout is the best player in the game and on a national scale barely anyone knows who he is. Baseball has chosen regional money over national prominence, and while it might not seem to be paying much of a financial price, it is paying a heavy one in the imagination.The Red Sox have already arrived. They have David Price, and theyll enter this last game at Yankee Stadium having clinched the division after losing 84 games last year. The Red Sox entered Tuesdays final series with the Yankees having beaten New York 11 of 16 times. They have three MVP candidates in Ortiz, Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts, and an outside fourth in Dustin Pedroia.For now, the Red Sox have the advantage. Jackie Bradley Jr., who at one point looked like the center-field version of Rey Ordonez, proved that the wizard with the glove could also swing the bat. Betts is a star, and Bogaerts doesnt even look as if he has yet hit full throttle. Their young nucleus will get its first taste of October. This team could very well win the World Series.Unless the Cubs and Red Sox are on a collision course, a Boston World Series run isnt nearly as attractive as a Boston run with New York standing in the way. Even a one-time dream matchup between Theo Epsteins past and present isnt as good for the sport as a sustained return of Sox-Yankees. The San Francisco Giants, after being a version of the Red Sox in terms of success, heartbreaks and living in the shadow of a bigger, more successful rival in the Dodgers, won three World Series in six years but with one gigantic hole -- the Dodgers and Giants still have never met in the postseason.If baseball cannot generate a LeBron James/Reggie Jackson/Ken Griffey-style box-office hit, then it is up to the historical rivalries to give the sport games worth circling on the calendar. The Yankees folded in September, but the sudden star Gary Sanchez didnt. During a four-game sweep by the Red Sox at Fenway, Sanchez hit .368 (7-for-19) with two home runs. In the opener against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday, Sanchez took David Price deep. The Yankees, old for so long, finally looked fresh. The day after Rodriguez was released, Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge hit consecutive home runs in their first at-bats as Yankees, then hit .197 and .179, respectively. Austin, on the bench much of this month, also took Price deep Tuesday.After dropping the enormous ballast that was Alex Rodriguez in mid-August, and now with no players on the roster who made their big league debut in the 1990s, the Yankees -- on the strength of their young players and the recognition that, yes, finally, the team was ready to move on from the old days -- have begun embracing the future.The month of September was brutal for the Yankees. They started off 0-2, won seven in a row, and started thinking big, in reach not only of the arsenic-laced wild-card game that is baseballs nonsensical one-game postseason, but also of the division. But the consecutive stretch of playing Boston and the NL West-winning Dodgers three times finished them -- at least for 2016.Baseball might have succeeded in neutering its most valuable asset in order for that dreaded word parity to have some sort of meaning, but the game loses power when there are no villains, no mountains to overcome, no wars worth fighting. Unless September will be remembered as nothing more than an empty tease, 2017 will begin with the Red Sox and Yankees as the favorites in the division: youth versus youth, the games greatest street fight renewed with new names finally unsaddled by the old ones.Peyton Manning Youth Jersey . PETERSBURG, Fla. Darius Leonard Colts Jersey . Anthony Davis had 31 points and 17 rebounds in his seventh straight game with more than 20 points, but that was only enough to keep the Pelicans competitive into the final minutes. Andrew Bogut had 10 points and 15 rebounds for Golden State, which rebounded from a loss a night earlier in Oklahoma City and snapped a two-game skid. http://www.officialindianapoliscoltspro.com/Marshall-faulk-colts-jersey/ . Instead of dwelling on the negative, Oates focused on what was good about the clubs recent play. It worked. Marvin Harrison Jersey . Louis. To which I would say two things: 1. Where there is smoke, there is or perhaps has been a little fire. Or, in other words, the two teams would appear to have at least spoken. And spoken is defined as one calling the other to inquire, no more, no less. Darius Leonard Jersey . PETERSBURG, Fla.CHASKA, Minn. -- Bubba Watson will be at the Ryder Cup, even if its not exactly the way he imagined it.U.S. captain Davis Love III announced Monday that Watson has been added to the team as a fifth vice captain. The two-time Masters champion and 7th-ranked player in the world competed as a player on the last three U.S. squads, and said at the start of the year that his goals were to play in both the Olympics and the Ryder Cup.Watson finished tied for eighth at the Rio Games, but he wound up just outside of the eighth and last automatic qualifying spot as a Ryder Cup player. He then began lobbying behind the scenes for one of the four captains picks at Loves discretion.Watson was described as heartbroken after the first three picks went to J.B. Holmes, Rickie Fowler and Matt Kuchar. But he also made it a point to let Love know he still wanted to be part of the team, even if it meant as a non-playing assistant.That appeared to count for little after Love used his final pick to add Ryan Moore just hours after he lost the Tour Championship to Rory McIlroy in a playoff Sunday. But the U.S. captain said he remained impressed by Watsons unselfish gesture and decidedd to add him the following day.dddddddddddd.I told him we had an extra red cart and wed love to have him, Love said. So hes back at the hotel trying to get his clothes fit and get ready for assistant captain duties.Watson joins Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker, Tom Lehman and Jim Furyk as assistants. Love told at least one PGA of America official that hed have this figured out way before the Tour Championship starts.And I was, of course, completely wrong, he said, laughing.Love also talked previously about trying to balance all the outsized personalities that will make up the U.S. squad, as well as his assistants. After some review, he decided Watson would be a valuable complementary part.We felt like we needed experience with our assistant captains. We needed some former captain experience and some possible future captain experience. Obviously Bubba rounds that out; major championship experience, Ryder Cup experience, on our side, Love said.He adds a lot of fun. He adds a different personality. But, Love added, he brings a great heart. ' ' '