Wotta Game! Angels Send the Yankees Home
 Tonight the Anaheim Angels beat the New York Yankees and moved into the American League championship series that begins next week. An October Surprise, the witty and cutting account in the New York Times about today's game, is withering toward New York's vanity. Ah, how the mighty Yanks are humbled -- by that pre-fab, suburban housing track of a team, the Anaheim Angels, winning their first post-season series in franchise history.
I remember well when Angel Stadium was constructed during my boyhood in the late 1960s, four miles from where I grew up in North Tustin. I've watched the Angels play many times, and usually it was heartbreaking. Our team -- owned by Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy -- was a perennial also-ran.
How delicious then that not only have they emerged victorious in this year's post-season play, but against the dreaded YANKEES, American League champs in five of the last six years, World Series champs for four of those. I watched tonight's game in the weight room at the New York Sports Club on 94th and Broadway here in Manhattan, and of course I didn't breathe a word that I was rooting for my hometown team or I would have been beaten to death on the spot. (Rather reminiscent of my blogging last June, when the LA Lakers demolished the New Jersey Nets.)
Didja see the EIGHT RUNS the Angels scored in the 5th inning? The Angels were as gods and the Yankees their hapless playthings. Joe Torre had to use three different Yankee pitchers. The Angels tied the record for most runs in a single inning of post-season play, a record set in in the 1929 World Series, 73 years ago.
The photo, giving a hint of the embarrassing theme-parkish interior at Angel Stadium, is courtesy of the Associated Press.
11:59:39 PM 
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