“My brother doesn’t hold grudges. He’s strange that way.” – Rollo

“Burial of the Dead” is a rewarding episode of Vikings, and probably the show’s best to date. The season-long conflict between Ragnar and Earl Haraldson finally reaches its climax, appropriately in the form of a personal combat — a one-on-one fight to the death.

Predetermination is a recurring theme in this episode, and that is what drives Ragnar to propose the personal combat and why Haraldson ultimately agrees to it, despite the obvious risks. Ragnar, remember, is still wounded from last week’s attack on his farm by Haraldson and his thugs, and as his wife, Lagertha, reminds him (during sex, of course), he’s departing from Viking rules of combat by fighting while the odds aren’t in his favor. Believing himself to be destined for greatness, Ragnar is OK with taking this liberty.

As Haraldson prepares, and faces the very real possibility of his own impending death, he comes clean to his wife about his efforts to stifle Ragnar. He knew Ragnar was probably right about the lands to the West, and even concedes that Ragnar is not unlike a younger version of himself — driven and ambitious. He stood in Ragnar’s way merely in the interest of preserving his own power, he explains. But now, finally, he’s willing to submit his will to fate, whatever it may be.

Ragnar wins the showdown, and even in a bloody victory over his mortal rival, his actions underscore why he has risen to power and usurped Haraldson. Rather than spike the proverbial football, Ragnar plays it earnestly. After incapacitating Haraldson with an axe to the back, Ragnar mercifully kills him simply by opening his wrist with the blade of the axe. He’d have been well within his rights to do something horrific after what Haraldson had pulled (and I suspect much of the audience was pulling for that), but again: spiking the football. Haraldson’s wife tries futilely to stem the flow of blood, but Haraldson brushes her away. He’s at peace with his fate — an honorable death in battle is the optimal way to go.

Of course, it is Ragnar who affords Haraldson this honorable death, and it is Ragnar who decides Haraldson should get an elaborate funeral on a burning boat. Athelstan, our eyes and ears on the ground, asks Ragnar the question everyone watching at home is asking: Why go to these lengths for a villainous old man, your mortal enemy?

“He was also a great man — and warrior,” Ragnar says. “He earned his renown in this life, and now in death he deserves such a funeral.”

If you’re thinking Ragnar is a hell of a guy at this point, well, he is. Even his half-evil brother Rollo understands this:

“My brother doesn’t hold grudges. He’s strange that way.”

This is what Rollo tells Haraldson’s widow while she’s lining her pockets with treasure in anticipation of being cast into exile — or worse. You can’t blame her for fearing the worst now that her husband is dead and she’s out of office, but Rollo — his face badly scarred from last week’s torture incident at the hands of Haraldson — assures her she’ll be allowed to live a normal life. Rollo seems like a swell gent to be so compassionate, but soon he reveals to her his real intentions: He thinks he’ll be earl. He doesn’t know how or by what means, but hey, predestination has a funny way of taking care of those things. Or not.

So begins the new chapter in Ragnar’s life, replete with a new set of challenges. Haraldson is dead, and so it stands to reason his sibling rivalry with Rollo will come into focus. Ragnar also has another baby on the way; Lagertha tells him that she’s with child at Haraldson’s funeral, a nice bit of symmetry, albeit an easy one.  Joffrey Baratheon Bjorn, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly obnoxious, having a couple cross exchanges with Athelstan and throwing a tantrum when Ragnar tells him he’s not yet ready to join the Viking men on their next raid. You’ll be a man some day, Bjorn. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the hapless Northumbrians are growing increasingly leery of Viking raids. As the episode ends, Ragnar and a crew of his men sail up an English river in search of plunder. King Aella, meanwhile, shows off his new toy, a snake pit. He tests it out on a soldier who failed to halt Ragnar the last time the Vikings paid a visit. Turns out, it works.

Ragnar’s innumerable virtues — bravery, grace, wisdom, pragmatism, to name a few — have gotten him to where he is. But that was when he was merely the people’s earl. Now, he really is the earl. Will the same virtues serve him as well in his new role? For example, while taking his seat as earl, he grants a purposeless old Viking his wish to join the younger men on their next raid — to do the only thing he’s ever done. But perhaps Ragnar’s sympathy for the warrior will haunt him if the old timer is a weak link in battle.

- Athelstan, meanwhile, sees a lot in this terrific episode, because a lot of new ground is covered: the personal combat; the preparation and later sacrifice of one of Haraldson’s female slaves; the boat burning; the swearing-in of Ragnar and his family; the Ragnarok. His reactions serve to show what a great and interesting character he is. Really, he doesn’t bring much to the forward movement of the show’s story one way or the other, but his constant sense of wonder (and shock, and appall, etc.) at the foreign world in which he’s immersed is a mirror for ours. He’s getting by among the Vikings just fine, but he’s no Viking, to be sure.

- The slave bit, in particular, is especially jarring for the monk, as you might imagine. First, he witnesses her entering a house full of men where she’ll have sex with all of them, then he’s forced by Bjorn to see her sacrificed (by throat-slitting) at the hands of a new female character, the creepy Angel of Death. It almost played like comic relief when he crossed himself and kissed his cross necklace as the sacrifice neared.

- The personal combat is a barbaric way to resolve a conflict, at least to us, but one the Viking community sees as acceptable and, indeed, honorable. To me, that dissonance — and how it challenges us, the viewers — is what distinguishes Vikings as a really good show in its own right, rather than just being a medieval heroic saga riding the coattails of Game of Thrones.

- There’s only a brief buildup to the combat, which transpires only about a quarter of the way through the episode. This was a wise choice after the relative lull of the second half of last week’s episode, when Ragnar retreats to Floki’s house to heal.

- Despite his injuries, Ragnar defeats Haraldson in the personal combat. The injuries might have been the only way to raise any doubt about who might win such a confrontation — seriously, who ya got between the decorated-warrior hero and the old man? — but that’s almost beside the point. If the outcome was obvious (and I think it was), then the renewed focus on all those foreign cultural customs, and how they imbue the characters’ behaviors before, during, and after the main event is what made this hugely important scene, and the rest of the episode, compelling.

This is the kid whose career has been as shrewdly orchestrated as Guy MacKendrick’s. He had an “agent” when regular kids were having their first kisses and beers. He was on the cover of SI as a high schooler. He gamed MLB’s silly draft rules by pitstopping at a junior college for a year.

And to further enhance the fabricated villain angle, he looks and occasionally acts like an utter douche. He has a mohawk and sometimes an ironic mustache. He wears too much eye black. He blew a kiss at an opposing pitcher after hitting a homer last year. He’s not handsome but has a jaw cut from stone and blue eyes like a Siberian Husky, the kind of pronounced features that make you look at them and try to figure out where the hell they came from.

What’s not to hate about that? It smacks of Brycie having been manufactured into some kind of contrived caricature by his parents in an epic fit of creepy stagemomery.

So, the-guy-you’ll-love-to-hate narrative was in place. But after being treated by Harper to an astonishing athletic display, I can’t help but to call bullshit on that.

Harper plays his ass off, and he is a physical marvel. To watch him run is captivating; his speed is impressive but his stride severe, like an all-out-effort guy’s.  He possesses what is undoubtedly the next great arm, and he is aggressive with it (there’s a mentality that must accompany having such an arm so it may be wielded correctly, and Harper owns it). His swing is tremendously powerful, the action of it like a tightly wound spring uncoiling to create a violent bat whip.

Harper is 19, and he is a talent that typically finds its way to the NFL or NBA. But he is aware of this. He’s a showman but only because he understands that people want to see the extraordinary things he can do on a baseball field. He self-consciously busted to first base on a no-chance comebacker in his first at-bat. It was a sure sign that he wouldn’t cheat his many curious onlookers when he broke into a sprint despite his obvious fate of being beaten to the bag by a good two strides.

The home-team Dodgers fans in attendance were not easy on Harper as he was introduced for that first at-bat, but I sensed his later feats softened them if not because they realized they were seeing something special, then certainly because they were simply awed dumb.

The game itself was terrific, with only the equally impressive athlete Matt Kemp ending it all on a walkoff home run to slightly right of center field. I don’t think the baseballpornmongers had entirely forgotten about Kemp during Harper’s show, but the former certainly insinuated himself into what was otherwise his first game this season in which he was not the only player belonging to a better talent planet.

I love Harper right now, and I really hope he doesn’t change that by trademarking the helmet takeoff between first and second base.

Needless to say, even with the help of my French-to-English dictionary app I spent about a half-hour slogging through the first few paragraphs. However, luckily for me, one sentence that came relatively easily was this beauty:

From 1979 to 1982, the Expos compiled the best record in the National League with 331 wins against 261 defeats, and Carter was at the summit of his art.

That third clause is a charming turn of phrase, one you simply wouldn’t see in English, at least not in the context of baseball. If the author, Denis Casavant, were American or had written this in English, he’d have written something like, “and Carter was at the height of his game.”

Close, but not close at all, right?

I say that in sheer reverence, of course. Mariano Rivera was already the greatest closer — certainly since the closer’s role has taken on its current shape, and probably ever — and everyone knew that. He would have been the greatest closer with or without this distinction, the way Ted Williams is the best hitter despite not hitting the most homers or owning the highest batting average. Just to be clear, there are plenty of stats to support Mo as the greatest closer, if we wanted to take it there. We could fall back on his 38.6 career WAR, for example, which is roughly nine more wins above replacement (in 287 fewer innings) than the next closest reliever, Goose Gossage.

But the point is, we don’t need to refer to those numbers.

When I think about Rivera’s greatness, about boiling it down to something simple and human, I’m reminded of a tweet I read a year or so ago. I can’t remember whose tweet it was, so if you read this piece and want to lay claim to it, by all means. The person tweeted something like: “There is no greater comfort in fandom than having Rivera take the mound in the ninth inning.” I’m pretty sure time and my mutable memory have conspired to tweak that a bit, but nevertheless that line summarizes Mariano Rivera’s greatness more than 603 career regular-season saves, 42 postseason saves, ~40 WAR, 2.76 FIP, that hellacious cutter or whatever other measure you want to use.

When Mariano Rivera enters a game to close it out, he instills in everyone — his team, manager(s), fans and, yes, his fantasy owners — a sort of confidence that the subsequent three outs are all but a formality. Of course, Mo has had his down moments. Game 7 of the 2001 World Series is the most obvious. Game 4 of the 2004 ALCS isn’t far behind. The Matt Franco Game is a personal favorite of this Mets fan. But what he has done is survive the inevitable losing battle against the law of averages and forge ahead with his own confidence, and everyone else’s trust in him, intact. It didn’t matter that he wasn’t always perfect; no one is, after all. It only mattered that we expected him to be perfect, and thought him fully capable of achieving that, every time out.

And that, for practical purposes, is really the thing that separates Mo from the other great relievers, of which there have been so many. No matter the pitcher, year, team and situation, all stoppers, however brilliant their respective stretches, gave their fans that momentary pause when they entered the game, that maybe this would be the day that they just didn’t quite have it. Maybe Hoffman’s changeup wouldn’t be quite as deceptive. Maybe Nen’s slider wouldn’t fall off the table. Maybe Wagner’s speeding bullet would be a little bit easier to square up.

No one ever thought that about No. 42 and whether his patented cutter would bite. And on the days when it was catching too much plate, and some team managed to escape certain defeat, no one questioned whether he’d be back to normal next time out. And that’s the indefinable thing that renders the saves crown redundant, if not irrelevant. The number — 603 and counting — tells us what we already knew.

On June 10, 2010, I hopped on the 12:53 a.m. train westbound to New York as I did on many other nights. I was camped out with my bag, coffee, peanut butter and jelly, soy yogurt, banana, Pepsi Throwback, iPhone (listening to The Roots’ How I Got Over) and computer for the hour-plus ride. The car in which I rode was empty save for a deadbeat who couldn’t pay his fare, and it was littered with reminders of its barrenness. A few half-empty beer cans were tipped on their sides, rolling to the front and back of the car each time the train started and stopped. A breakman had emptied his hole-punch so that ticket parings were strewn like confetti on the seat across the aisle from mine. And, of course, yesterday’s Newsday was gutted like fresh catch on a deck, its sections ruffled and discarded like unwanted entrails.

Despite the lifelessness of the setting, I was electrified and jittery. Maybe it was the coffee, but I like to think it was Strasburg. He had arrived and surpassed the immense expectations, striking out 14 batters. And I had a chance to write something about him, however insignificant. I knew then that no one would read it, and I’m sure no one did, but I didn’t care and still don’t. I had a chance to archive my marginalized existence in relation to this unlikely spectacle — a midseason game between the Pirates and Nationals — in a very small way.

Of course, Strasburg remained a story throughout the summer, but I slept through a lot of it, literally. I checked box scores, sure, but as I said, I was nocturnal then. I was only waking up when games began on the East Coast, so I was showering and eating and spending time with my obscenely patient girlfriend during those hours. There was always this disconnect, this feeling that I had just barely missed all the excitement.

And then, Strasburg had elbow pain, and anyone remotely interested in baseball experienced that crippling momentary dysphoria. The worst was confirmed, and Strasburg underwent Tommy John surgery, and his narrative shifted. For a short while he was the talking point for a tired debate, and then he receded into nothingness, into invisibility. That kid — that awkward kid — was gone. The tree-trunk legs and blood-red socks and steel-blue eyes all gone for at least a year and probably more, and no one could be sure what he’d be once he returned.

Now, Strasburg is just a grainy ghost in the baseball consciousness. And I want him to come back and be as good as he was on June 9, 2010, if only to confirm that I hadn’t dreamed all of it.

Carlos Beltran's gracefull stride will soon exist only in our memories and on SNY's Mets Classics (AP).

On several occasions during Carlos Beltran’s seven-year tenure with the Mets, I have heard colorful (and sometimes off-color) analyst Keith Hernandez admire Beltran’s gait.

It is an odd thing to admire of a ballplayer. Typically, it’s his raw power or hose-like throwing arm or sharp eye or blazing speed. But, Hernandez, God love him, is a noted admirer of Beltran’s gait, his running stride. It’s one of the qualities I like about Hernandez as an analyst: For all his sometimes off-putting antics, he’s also honest, secure in his unorthodoxy, and he appreciates many of the game’s nuances.

But it spoke to something greater about Beltran and the way he is perceived among Mets fans and pundits, because if you liked Beltran — if you chose to focus on his 20 WAR from 2006-08, chiefly — you were probably admiring his gait right along with Hernandez.

If you didn’t like Beltran, you probably weren’t interested in admiring his gait. You probably thought Beltran was overpaid, passionless, soft, injury-prone, un-clutch, timid when the team needed leaders, unwilling to play a shallower center field, and, in contrast to Hernandez’s point, maybe even a loafer.

Indeed, for a man who was at times an immensely productive player and a non-entity off the field, Beltran has been a tellingly polarizing figure. It is entirely a matter of perception, really, as to which side of the argument you fall on.

And the objective information is becoming such that it is difficult to make an overwhelmingly compelling argument either way.

As recently as mid-2009, there wasn’t much of an argument, really. Sure, there was Beltran’s disappointing first season in New York, and he had to be forced to take a curtain call early in 2006, and he struck out (looking) to end the ’06 NLCS. But these were all fluffy criticisms, grist for the sabermetric mill. The guy was a flat-out stud. Over the first four years of his deal, he was paid $52.5MM. According to Fangraphs, he was worth roughly $87MM in that period.

Absolving Beltran of blame for the Mets’ travails rightfully became something of a cause celebre among progressive types, and it still is.

But, of course, the combined forces of age and injury quickly eroded Beltran’s stock from that of a stalwart to that of a liability. Although he was on pace for another 6-WAR season in 2009, he became injured, which carried into 2010. He was worth only 4 WAR in 144 games in those two seasons, and with his contract back-heavy, as most are, he was suddenly in an unseemly phase of his long-term deal, the one in which the player’s compensation exceeds his production.

And now, as he embarks on what will almost assuredly be his last season with the Mets, Beltran is perhaps staring at another injury-marred campaign, which would be his fourth in seven with the Amazin’s. He has already deemed himself unfit to play center field, which can’t bode especially well for the condition of his surgically repaired knees, not to mention that the value derived from his defensive contributions will likely be negligible if not negative.

We can’t assume anything, of course, about how Beltran will fare in 2011, but expectations are tempered. Another disappointing season — one in which Beltran’s hefty salary continues to loom over the cash-strapped Mets — will do little in the way of establishing a common interpretive ground between the divided factions.

Looking at compensation relative to value, Beltran is pretty close to having earned every dollar the Mets have paid him. He has been paid approximately $100MM of his $119MM deal so far, with the Mets owing him $18.5MM this season, according to Cot’s Baseball Contracts. He has been worth approximately $105MM to date, meaning he’ll need a “value” of about $14MM in 2011 for the contract to be an even wash. Glancing back at prior years, I noticed that he was worth exactly that amount in 2009, when he posted a 3.1 WAR. So, assuming WAR can be approximated in such a way, Beltran will need to be worth about 3 WAR in 2011 to have met the dollar value of his contract. He was worth 3.1 WAR in 2009 when he played in only 81 games, mind you, so it is reasonable to believe he can achieve that in 2011 if he plays in more games.

Even still, it’s pretty close. So, it’s hard to argue that Beltran hasn’t earned the big contract the Mets committed to him prior to the 2005 campaign. He is already among the top five or six position players in Mets history, which speaks to the brilliance of his performance from 2006-08 (when he was the best center fielder in baseball) as well as the Mets’ spotty history with developing and retaining position players. To boot, he’s the best center fielder in club history by a healthy margin.

Beltran’s production was incredibly top-heavy throughout his first six years in New York, his all-or-nothing wares unsurprisingly mirroring those of the Mets. That he was the best all-around player on three teams that were good but ultimately disappointing undoubtedly says less about Beltran, in any context, and more about how the Mets were flimsily constructed.

Typically, the nature of long-term contracts is such that the team over-commits in both years and dollars for the prospect of riding the elite player, in his prime, to something great. Beltran was, in fact, elite in three of his first four years in New York, but the Mets did not achieve something great. And just the way Mets fans rue that the great teams of the mid-1980s did not establish themselves as a dynasty with more than one World Series, I sense they feel similarly about the mid-aughts Amazin’s, to whom Beltran is inextricably bound.

It’s fitting, then, that Beltran will have been worth little more or less than the big money the Mets committed to him. The rest is a matter of perception, like whether you admire his gait.

Note: I published this several months back at a now-defunct blog, so I’ve imported it here for the sake of preserving a decent piece.

Throughout my early adolescence, I spent countless summer days whipping my cousin Pete in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball for Super Nintendo.

With bathing suits wet, fingers pruned and eyes red from the swimming pool’s chlorine, we’d shuffle into a corner of my bedroom and fix our attention to the tiny 13-inch tube television on which our epic battles would unfold.

Fittingly, Griffey’s was the only real name used in the game. Its developers didn’t acquire the licensing rights from the MLB Players Association to use other players’ names, so everyone but Griffey had a fictitious, often silly title. Intentions notwithstanding, the effect was all the same: Griffey was baseball’s — and the video game’s — biggest star.

He was baseball’s final pre-Internet icon, a player who was as cool as he was gifted. With Griffey’s ridiculous hype and marvelous performance, Mariners fans — showing their solidarity with teal-green caps worn backward — were suddenly cropping up across the country.

Buried beneath the rubble of Armando Galarraga’s imperfect game on June 2 was the news of Griffey’s retirement, not a where-were-you moment but perhaps a take-a-step-back moment for a generation of fans.

For all Griffey’s greatness and popularity, the anticlimactic ending seemed fitting for a career marred in its second half by injuries and overshadowed by the homer happiness of the steroids era (the strike of 1994-95 did him no favors, either). The final 10 or so seasons were nearly as unremarkable as the first 10 were celebrated.

Baseball tragedies are often mistakenly compared to their real-life counterparts, and Griffey’s fate is hardly that. He made millions, foolishly forced his way out of a city in which he was nothing short of a god, and frequently was his own worst enemy due to his aloofness and hypersensitivity. All this considered, Junior’s still a surefire Hall of Famer, headed for Cooperstown on on the first ballot barring a PED revelation.

But there is a palpable somberness — morbidity, even — among those who followed baseball closely or worshiped Griffey or played his quaint 16-bit video game, because despite 630 career homers and 10 Gold Gloves at a premium defensive position, we are left with the dull nag of what could have been for a transcendent talent.

It speaks to something larger about us as devourers of baseball, that despite the increased emphasis on stats over the past decade, we still relish stories and memories, and Griffey left us short on both when he promised so many.

Perhaps the feeling is simply indicative of an affection unique to a particular generation of fans, one that some may not understand if they didn’t grow up watching the early SportsCenter before hopping on the school bus (because that was the only way to watch Griffey highlights). More likely, though, it’s rooted in the realization that Griffey’s retirement was the long-overdue death knell for a zeitgeist that met its end in 1998, when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and later Barry Bonds, rendered Griffey all but an afterthought.

Griffey’s career spanned parts of 22 seasons, peaking three Nintendo consoles ago, to be exact, and it’s sadly and humorously fitting that for a guy who couldn’t keep up with the game — a bit by his own doing, a bit not — the last story of intrigue he provided was an in-game nap.

Jets fever swept the land, but this jilted bride was left at the altar by the conclusion of Sunday night's game.

So, the Jets predictably lost in miserable fashion Sunday.

That’s their second loss in the AFC title game in as many years, for those of you keeping score at home.

Frankly, I wasn’t terribly surprised. That’s the crummy thing about trying to be an objective sportswriter; you’re honest with yourself when your team is playing a bit over its head. Call me crazy, but it was going to be a tall order for the Jets to beat the Colts, Patriots and Steelers on the road in successive weeks.

Anyway, I and my girlfriend, Lindsay, met up with some friends at a local bar for the game. Usually, I hate watching my teams in social settings, bars especially. I rarely drink, and I enjoy the opportunity to analyze games more closely in the placid setting of my own home. But cabin fever has been especially gripping this winter, and seeing as I’ve been accused of antisocial behavior on more than one occasion, I figured it was time to get out and stretch the legs a bit.

The first half was sheer misery. The Steelers dominated in a way that crushes one’s soul. They ran the ball down the Jets’ throats. Their defense was smothering. We at the bar lamented the Jets’ horrific play-calling (Brian Schottenheimer’s wildcat fetish just won’t die). We were astonished at the disparity in time of possession. Soul-crushing, I tell you.

A couple minutes before the end of the first half, I stepped outside to get my phone out of my car. For branding purposes, I thought it’d be prudent to put up some self-loathing Jets tweets. I’m supposed to own the rights to that dubious distinction, after all. On the way back in, I spotted a dude watching the game outside on an old flat-screen TV. I have no idea why the TV was outside or why the dude was out there, watching it on a 10-degree night, but he was.

We were shaking our heads in an act of communal disgust. As much as I normally hate to watch games in public, there’s something to be said for being with people who feel the same way you do.

My new friend and I watched as the Jets attempted to drive before the end of the half, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he was a more knowledgeable fan than I would have thought. He gave thoughtful analysis about the woeful first-half showing. He looked the part of your average bar slob — he was morbidly obese and was decked in Jets gear from head to toe — but he didn’t act it.

Then, as the Jets closed in for a Nick Folk field goal, the guy dropped an N-bomb, pertaining to a Jet he didn’t especially like. I chuckled awkwardly, as if to say, “I hear ya, bro,” but I cringed and looked over my shoulder. No one was around, thankfully. Folk nailed the field-goal try, and I went back inside the bar.

For whatever reason, while I was chatting it up with folks in the crowded but crestfallen bar, I thought about pre-2K4 Bill Simmons. This sort of misery would have been his birthright before the Red Sox became sports royalty. He would have been the annoying, know-it-all naysayer at the bar, telling everyone to forget hopes of a comeback.

“I’ve seen this too many times,” my imaginary Simmons would have said, “they’ll come back enough to get your hopes up, but ultimately, they’ll shit the bed.”

This is the sort of cynicism an -ets (Mets and Jets) fan must battle these days. As far as I’m concerned, neither team has come any closer than arm’s length to a title during my fandom. That, of course, doesn’t include 1986; excuse me if I wasn’t waving a blue-and-orange pennant when I was 4.

But, to the point: We are fully aware of our status as the bastard children of New York sports, but we have to battle the eternal cheese that are the mantras “Ya gotta believe!” and “J-E-T-S …”

So, once the second half began, it was pretty clear that the game had taken on a decidedly different tone. It was going to be a ballgame, and, however steep the odds, the Jets were going to incite optimism. They were going to force us to cheer, to hope.

The ebb and flow of that half was weird. The Jets struck quickly with Mark Sanchez’s long connection to Santonio Holmes. You might put an asterisk next to it since Pittsburgh’s defensive back apparently slipped, freeing Holmes, but let’s call it even for William Gay’s sack/strip/fumble/recovery/TD prior to the end of the first half.

Upon Holmes’ touchdown reception, my buddy Mike got on the bar (on his knees, so as to preserve some semblance of integrity) and led a rousing J-E-T-S chant.

Ben Roethlisberger and Pittsburgh’s offense struggled, but they made a couple crucial plays to extend drives and kill clock. Midway through the fourth, when the Jets were threatening to make it a one-touchdown game with plenty of time left, I knew the season was in the balance.

As far as drives go, it was a labor of love. It took forever, but the Jets kept moving the ball. They were making big plays. I was bargaining with myself — or perhaps the vaunted Football Gods — after every down: “OK, if we can just pick up a first down here … If we can just keep the chains moving …”

The season just about ended, though, when the Jets were inside the Steelers’ 5 and they could barely get a damn play off. Whether it was Sanchez’s headset acting up or sheer ineptitude, the drive ground to a halt right there. Plus, you know, I’ve heard it gets tougher to score once in the “red zone.” Who knew?

But it could not end painlessly; that would be too easy.

When Roethlisberger recovered a botched snap in his own end zone for a safety, there was that glimmer of hope. Was it a deus ex machina, of sorts? Of course, as I tweeted, it changed little; the Jets, down 24-12, were still in need of two scores at that point. Far be it for me to be the wet blanket; no one wants to be that guy on the proverbial Long Island Expressway when that little roller is hit up along first.

Again the Jets pieced together a tidy but clock-draining drive. They apparently rectified the communication issues, and when they finally punched in a touchdown on a short Sanchez-to-Jericho Cotchery pass, the remaining minutes were a precious few. But they were within a touchdown of taking the lead, and I — and my fellow bar goers — were fully on board for a miracle.

One dude even suffered an RBI (random beer injury) at my expense.

To know and feel the rest of this tale is to know what it is to be an -ets fan (sorry, that doesn’t include the Nets). The Jets never got the ball back. Roethlisberger, his shady past, and ESPN’s rapidly approaching image-reclamation initiative became the target of my one-beer-addled vitriol (if you’ve pegged me as a lightweight, I’m guilty as charged; again, I don’t drink often). The house lights went up at the bar, and 80 percent of the 223 or so TVs were turned off.

Many chose to stay and drown their sorrows at the bar. As for me and Lindsay, we hadn’t eaten dinner, so the diner beckoned. There, my wounds were so deep that even the usually all-healing Belgian waffle couldn’t ease my troubles.

When the bill came, I realized I’d left my tab open back at the bar. I explained the situation to the diner managers, who were understanding.

Back at the bar, a few stragglers — a couple of my buddies among them — remained. I closed out the tab, and as I shook hands with my friends, bidding adieu and consolation on tough defeat, we settled on that familiar refrain:

“There’s always next year.”

A.J. Burnett's angst is iconic -- for a Yankees hater like yours truly (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images).

He had never been jealous of me for a second. Now I knew that there never was and never could have been any rivalry between us. I was not of the same quality as he. I couldn’t stand this. … Holding firmly to the trunk, I took a step toward him, and then my knees bent and I jounced the limb. Finny, his balance gone, swung his head around to look at me for an instant with extreme interest, and then he tumbled sideways, broke through the little branches below and hit the bank with a sickening, unnatural thud. It was the first clumsy physical action I had ever seen him make. With unthinking sureness I moved out on the limb and jumped into the river, every trace of my fear of this forgotten.
– Excerpt from A Separate Peace, by John Knowles.

These occasions are a precious few, my fellow Yankees haters.

The Bombers are, well, being bombed by the Texas Rangers and now face elimination from the postseason by virtue of a 3-1 ALCS deficit. And what makes this especially sweet is the manner in which the Yanks have crashed and burned — or shall we say crashed and Burnetted after Tuesday night’s deflating defeat?

But as a fully indoctrinated self-loathing Mets fan and devout Yankees hater, I must offer this mea culpa: The Yankees’ impending defeat (famous last words) is bittersweet in a way you can’t fully understand unless you’ve consigned yourself to a lifetime of jealousy and bitterness (i.e. Mets fandom). Because, although I’m not shedding any tears for the suddenly bumbling Bombers, their sloppy play may well hasten their exit, and with it any especially strong rooting interest for me in these playoffs.

You'd be bitter, too, if Oliver Perez were on your team (Nick Laham/Getty Images).

Which is to say, I need the Yankees to win so I can keep rooting against them, and frankly, that’s a sad indictment of what it means to be a Mets fan in 2010.

But here I am, and if I may appropriate a tried-and-true Sports Guy analogy, my rooting against these vile Yankees has become creepily similar to a dysfunctional relationship: I know it’s utterly unhealthy and unproductive, but I can’t walk away from it. I want nothing more than to see these Yanks flail — for their fans to be embarrassed the way I have been so frequently during the course of an average 162-game Mets season — and yet, when I imagine the emptiness and dissatisfaction I’ll feel should the Rangers put them out of their misery, I retreat. I bargain. I make up so that I can wallow in another day of poisonous vitriol.

I know. It’s twisted.

The missteps in this ALCS have been so bountiful that I’ve actually felt twinges of sympathy for the Yankees at times, a sure sign of the apocalypse. If you’re a Yankees fan, I know the last thing you want right now from the perverse logic of a Mets fan is sympathy, but here I am.

It's one thing to be beaten by a bad player. It's an entirely different matter to be beaten by a fat, bad player (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images).

When the Bombers held a 3-2 lead briefly on Tuesday in Game 4, I had that creeping suspicion that it wasn’t going to last. I don’t know, maybe that’s on account of having endured one blown lead after another over the years with the Mets. Sure enough, A.J. Burnett again reminded us of why he’s quickly become the Yanks’ Oliver Perez, coughing up a gopher ball to the pesky Bengie Molina. I swear, Molina is not a good player by any stretch of the imagination, but he somehow manages to convince people otherwise with well-timed hits. I assure you, good reader, those are the only hits Molina ever gets.

Joe Girardi, bless his heart, is looking quite the hapless hangdog these days. Recall, if you will, that Willie Randolph had that disposition frequently during his tenure with the Mets. Anyway, Girardi compounded the mistake of allowing Burnett to pitch the sixth inning by intentionally walking David Murphy in front of Molina. With Burnett’s penchant for implosion, it was a matter of playing with fire, and unfortunately for the Yanks and Girardi, they got burned.

Girardi, by the way, just looks tired. I know that he’s dealing with the pressures of working on the final year of his contract, not to mention his dad’s ever-looming illness, but the golden touch he had a year ago seems to have evaporated. The pie-chart guy for whom everything went so swimmingly en route to the 2009 World Series title seemingly outwitted himself on Tuesday night.

This was a familiar sight for Mets fans in recent years (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images).

And then, the kicker: Mark Teixeira’s hamstring injury. Now, mind you, for all my Yankees hatred, I don’t root for anyone to get injured. There’s a fine line between passionate, healthy hatred and sadism, one that I’m proud to tell you that I respect. That said, sometimes it’s your time, and sometimes it’s just not. So when Teixeira went down and the already bleak prospect of a Yankees series comeback became even unlikelier, I certainly didn’t mind. I mean, it’s just a hamstring strain, right? He’ll be back in prime shape for spring training!

The Yankees face elimination in Game 5 this afternoon. Shall I root for them to clean out their lockers today? Perhaps it would be more painful for their fans if the series were extended to a sixth game? Then again, there’s always Cliff Lee looming in a potential Game 7.

Cliff Lee allowed two earned runs in 16 innings against the Rays in the ALDS, fanning 21 and walking none (Chris O'Meara/AP).

Four teams are left standing in 2010, each boasting an unseemly complement of pitching studs.

Somehow, stacked against the likes of CC and The Freak and Doc and Hamels and Oswalt and Cain and Sanchez, Cliff Lee manages to stand alone, and it’s really not even close.

On account of Lee’s sheer brilliance, his impending free agency and his Rangers’ unprecedented now-deep run into the postseason, the easy-throwing southpaw is the toast of the baseball world, eclipsing even Roy Halladay and Tim Lincecum. All they’ve done is toss the second no-hitter in postseason history and a 14-strikeout shutout, respectively.

Incredibly, Lee’s ascent has been as circuitous as it has been protracted.

For a while, it looked like he’d be the least celebrated of the relevant players whom the Indians acquired from the Expos in 2002 in exchange for Bartolo Colon. Grady Sizemore was a star almost instantly upon arrival in the bigs, and Brandon Phillips came into his own once he was given a clean slate in Cincinnati.

Lee, though, was something else. His upside was always sort of there, but the results were uneven. After cups of coffee in 2002-03, the southpaw was rather mediocre in his first three full seasons in Cleveland in 2004-06 (4.50 ERA, 97 ERA+ in 98 starts).

Then, 2007 happened. Lee was any combination of injured, ineffective and controversial. His season false started on an injured groin in Spring Training. He was bad upon returning. Worse still, he took on fans who booed him and engaged in a clubhouse tiff with catcher Victor Martinez. Lee was demoted to the Minors for a stretch and was utterly invisible during the Indians’ run to the ALCS. That’s right — Lee was in the Minor Leagues as recently three seasons ago, at age 29. He should have been what he is now. He should have been in the prime of his career.

In 2008, a new Lee was born, as it were. Suddenly, everything seemed to click for him. The guy knifed through lineups effortlessly. He began striking out more batters, walking fewer, and was notably stingy with respect to allowing homers. His ERA+ jumped to 168, which was light years ahead of his next-closest single-season ERA+ of 111 (2005). A guy whose career may have been on the ropes just a season earlier — a guy who was demoted to the Minors — was named the American League Cy Young Award winner.

Even then, in 2008, folks began to wonder: When does this Lee hit the open market? And these thoughts crept in for good reason. That was Lee’s age-30 season, his fifth full campaign in the bigs, which doesn’t even take into account his brief stints in 2002 and ’03. For crying out loud: The guy was drafted by the Expos. How many of those were still kicking around in 2008, let alone now?

Now, Lee’s protracted march toward free agency is nearing its conclusion. After two additional seasons in which Lee proved 2008 was hardly a fluke, he’s on the cusp of a monstrous payday. The wait has been whittled down to perhaps as few as a precious start or two, depending upon how his Rangers fare against the Yankees in the ALCS. That his last stand prior to his date with the open market may be made against the Bronx Bombers is no small irony. It’s long been assumed that the Yanks will commence a dogged pursuit of the left-hander in the offseason.

Lee is so highly regarded by the Yankees, in fact, that they essentially had a deal in place with the Mariners to acquire him this season. Seattle pulled out at the last minute and instead chose to send Lee to Texas, but it wasn’t for lack of trying by the Bombers. They offered prized catching prospect Jesus Montero to the M’s, and Yanks general manager Brian Cashman is not one to flippantly shop around his blue-chip farmhands.

If Lee should be wooed to the Yankees (or anyone other than the Indians, Phillies, Mariners or Rangers) this offseason, it would become his fifth team in the past three seasons. That’s a lot for a pitcher of Lee’s ilk. Guys like this aren’t supposed to bounce around the league. Their teams are supposed to lock them in to long-term deals, post haste.

This transience, I suspect, plays no small role in Lee’s recently discovered perch atop the pitching pantheon. Each time we watch him pitch — each time we watch him dominate even the best teams, as he did the Rays twice in the ALDS — we are enticed by the lure of wondering where he’ll pitch next, with the (albeit dim) optimism that he could be on our respective team’s in 2011.

I’ve wondered: The Mets could make a run at this guy in the offseason, right? Of course, I know this to be highly unlikely. But the intrigue is there.

For the Bronx Bombers, that lure is very real, as they’ll almost certainly factor heavily into the Lee sweepstakes this offseason. But for now, they must contend with him, try to beat him, and that has not proven easy for them (or anyone else, for that matter). Rare and celebrated is the pitcher who has stared down the mighty Yankees on the game’s biggest stage and given them fits, but Lee is among them.

Joining the ranks of noted postseason Yankee killers Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson (2001) and Josh Beckett (2003), Lee manacled the Bombers in last season’s World Series for the Phillies, earning wins in each of his two starts and posting a 2.81 ERA. It wasn’t just that Lee beat the Yankees twice, it was also how he did it. He exuded nonchalance in a spot where so many others before him have wilted, going so far as to have the audacity to cavalierly field a comebacker behind his back. On a play of a similar tone, he could barely be bothered to cleanly field a dying quail back to the mound, nearly allowing it to pop out of his glove.

And that’s part of the draw here with Lee, too: Aside from his tangible brilliance, he owns a certain Je ne sais quoi. For all of the effortless coolness, he jogs off the mound hurriedly at the end of each inning, as if to say he can’t wait for his team to bat then get back out there for his next half-inning. It’s a boyish affectation, certainly, equal parts charming and curious. A guy this good shouldn’t move quickly for anyone, like Paulie in Goodfellas. But he does.

And now, having already taken baseball by storm and with a fat paycheck awaiting him at season’s end, he’ll again try to take down the Yankees, the team for which he may very well pitch in 2011. The contract, regardless of which team gives it to him, will bring closure to a winding journey to supremacy among the ranks of the game’s best pitchers.