A NEW ERA

New York baseball finally feels whole again as the Yankees have once again reached the top of the American League and won another pennant. After a hard fought Game Six, with Andy Pettitte fittingly leading the way to victory, the Yanks find themselves looking ahead to tomorrow's start of the World Series and the Philadelphia Phillies. For once, the two best teams in baseball are accurately facing each other, and it should amount to a hell of a match-up, but while the Phillies are the defending world champions, these Yankees feel fresh. The kind of freshness that follows a new era.

The way I see it, since 1996, there have been three specific Yankee eras. The first, of course, is the championship era. This one begins in 1996 with their first World Series win, and goes to 2003 with their last Series appearance. I really believe that this is when that initial run ended. The pitching staff was almost completely changed over after this season, seeing guys like Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, and David Wells go. All of whom were staples of those years. Their replacements, Kevin Brown, Javier Vasquez, and Jon Leiber just did not match-up.

The personality of the roster changed, and with it the magic. ARod and Gary Sheffield arrived to mark the beginning of a new era, one that had already started to plant its seeds in the championship era with Jason Giambi and Mike Mussina. An era that saw a lot of money being thrown around. Basically, this was the start of what I call the "bad decision era". This one is thankfully short, going from '04-'08, but the guys already mentioned, plus others like Randy Johnson, Jaret Wright, Carl Pavano, Kei Igawa, and Bobby Abreu just helped this team go south. Sure, they made the playoffs, but they lost, and lost badly. It caused Joe Torre's tenure to finally end here, and it ushered in Joe Giradi's first year. It was a year that saw the Yanks finally miss the playoffs.

That was the final straw for General Manager Brian Cashman and the Steinbrenners. Last winter saw the investment in better, younger players like CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira, and the acquisition of Nick Swisher. These guys not only brought prime-time talent, but added much needed personality to the crew, and with Mussina, Giambi, and Abreu leaving, it just felt like a cleansing was happening. Don't get me wrong I liked those particular players, but the sweeping changes were good. Besides, this remade team gelled well and is now in the Fall Classic.

Whether they beat the Phillies or not doesn't matter. The personnel has changed for the good. The team is now made up of some of the better players of all three eras. Derek Jeter is still leading by example, ARod is now a leader in his own right, there is a true staff ace, and we have a first baseman that can actually play the position! These guys seem to feed off each other in a way that hasn't been seen in quite awhile. How long this lasts depends on the team's make-up going forward, but they've gone a long way in solidifying themselves already; a World Series win can only help cement it.