Schadenfreude 103 (A Continuing Series)

Updated!
Mark Feinsand, Daily News:

Joe Girardi won't have to change his uniform number next season.

Mike Lupica, Daily News:

The end of it for the Yankees, the end of a four-game sweep that just happened to take six games, was the bat on Alex Rodriguez's shoulder against a kid closer named Neftali Feliz. It was 6-1 for the Rangers in Game 6 by then. The Yankees hadn't just been beaten. They had been bounced around most of the last week, Arlington to the Bronx and back, and finally been embarrassed. So there really was no need for A-Rod to take the bat off his shoulder. The Yankees had stopped playing an hour ago. ...

This wasn't as bad an AL pennant defense as we got from the Yankees in 2004, when the Red Sox came back from 0-3 down. It was bad enough. ...

One out away. A-Rod. Of course. Of course it had to be him. Took a called third strike. They paid him $252 million once to put the Rangers in the World Series. Now he had.

The Yankees hit .151 (8-for-53) with RATS, and after the eighth-inning gift-wrapped rally in Game 1, it was 5-for-47, .106. New York hit .201/.300/.370, with a 6.58 ERA and 1.673 WHIP.

In Game 3, the Yankees had the fewest baserunners they have ever had in a post-season game. Last night, they set a record for the fewest hits in a post-season elimination game in team history.Joel Sherman, Post:

... here we were last night, when the old shortstop was Jeter, the cornerstone cracked. He is 36. He couldn't get to the ball in the hole much any longer [a statue already before he ever reaches Monument Park]. He managed to hit a low-impact .231 in the ALCS. ...

His final game of 2010 felt like an endless loop of the season: Three meek groundouts and, in conceivably his last Yankee at-bat, being overmatched and struck out by Colby Lewis.

Jeter was the little engine that couldn't ...

John Harper, Daily News:

It was another bad decision in an ALCS full of them for Girardi.

Good thing for him these aren't the days of Hurricane George, when Boss Steinbrenner just might have fired a manager for a series like Girardi and the Yankees had against the Rangers. ...[H]e appeared awfully tight when the Yankees struggled in September, and that seems to be an ongoing issue.

Mike Vaccaro, Post:

Girardi’s penchant for autumn over-managing only cost the Yankees one game last year, when they already were comfortably ahead of Anaheim in the ALCS. This time, it probably cost them the season, or at least a legitimate shot at Game 7. Four times, Girardi ordered intentional walks last night: They should have a program at Betty Ford for that addiction.

Girardi:

I don't know how you measure any of it. It all stinks. It's no fun to be in this position. It's no fun sitting here after a loss. We take this extremely serious. It stinks.

Before the game:Nope!