Yankee Stadium deserved a better sendoff than this.

The final game played in the greatest playground in sports history has to share the spotlight with Football Night in America. But don’t blame the NFL, or baseball’s schedule makers.

Blame the hosts.

Yankee Stadium’s finale was determined by over $200 million of excuses, inconsistency, and failed expectations.

Instead of an October homecoming–a rite of passage for a team with 26 World Championships, 39 pennants and 13 straight postseason appearances–the last contest for the House That Ruth Built will be how much money the Yankees will plunder from the city after gutting the place and selling the pieces.

No matter how the season would end, the stadium would inevitably be treated like a brothel in its final hours. But it was it’s team’s job of putting that off until AFTER October.

Sure, if there’s any team that should be able to script the way it says goodbye to one of the few remaining plots of sacred ground left in America, it’s the Yankees. And Sunday’s contest will be adorned with the same elements that enveloped this year’s All-Star Game.For example, if there’s any pitcher the Bronx Bombers want pitching this last game, it’s their ultimate gamer, Andy Pettitte. The Boss, and the remaining Yankee legends should all be there.

But, while the Yankees set the standard for baseball tradition, it’s the franchise’s postseason accomplishments that made the canvas for honoring those who best symbolize pinstriped pride.

It would be fitting that the Yankees close the stadium on a cool October night to be announced instead of an otherwise meaningless game against the hapless Baltimore Orioles.

The Orioles do have their places in Yankee history. It was Baltimore who purposely threw knuckleballer Hoyt Wilhelm out of the bullpen to face Roger Maris on a windy Maryland night in the final inning of Game 154 (September 20, 1961) to deny Maris one last blast to tie Babe Ruth’s single season home run record.

It was the Orioles whom Bobby Murcer drove-in five runs against only hours after he buried his good friend, Yankee catcher and captain Thurman Munson.

It was Orioles’ shortstop Cal Ripken, Jr. who passed the Iron Horse, and it was Baltimore right fielder Tony Tarasco who was robbed by Jeffrey Maier in Game One of the 1996 ALCS, which started the Yankees on their last dynasty.

Those footnotes don’t hold a curveball to the history between the Yanks and Red Sox. Like anything else in sports, the right to play that final game should have been earned instead of created. And the only reason Baltimore gets the honors is because its scheduled opponents didn’t play this year like they have the previous 13.

Yankee fans, quit blaming injuries. This was a total team effort–or lack thereof. For every Chien-Ming Wang injury, there’s a Curt Schilling chatting on a shelf in Boston. For every win by pitchers Phil Hughes and Ian Kennedy, there are losses by Johan Santana for the Mets since the All-Star break. (Hint: zero.)

And for every team in the American League East who’ll be playing in October, there’s a Yankee owner in his first season kicking himself for saying goodbye to Joe Torre last offseason.

And if you disagree, for every dollar the Steinbrenners spent putting the team together, there is a Yankee hater laughing at you and your pathetic rationale.

Need more reasons for a bad year? Here they are in no particular order: 742 runs scored (as of Saturday) versus 968 and 930 each of the previous two seasons. For more perspective, this season the “Bombers” outscored their opponents by only 44 runs thus far, whereas the previous three seasons they beat their rivals by 106, 163 and 191 runs in 2005, ‘06 and ‘07 respectively.

That’s just to start. Here’s a few more: Robinson Cano’s lazy letdown; Melky Cabrera’s free-swinging; the Tampa Bay Rays; Andy Pettitte’s “off” season after a tumultuous off-season; Jason Giambi hitting 31 home runs, while doing little else; Hughes and Kennedy; Mariano Rivera’s failing to maintain five different tie ballgames; jumbling Joba Chamberlain from the bullpen to the rotation, to the disabled list, back to the bullpen; Alex Rodriguez’s inflated homer total and a pitiful .268 average with runners in scoring position; Madonna; Ivan Rodriguez’s .228 and three RBIs since joining the Yankees; Hank Steinbrenner; a rotation filled with castoffs and unknowns with last names such as Giese, Ponson, Pavano, Aceves (don’t get your hopes up), Rasner and Igawa; the failure of Brian Cashman and Damon Oppenheimer to develop that young talent they’ve stumped the last two years; Joe Torre managing in Chavez Ravine instead of The Bronx; an overrated bullpen; losing records against sub-.500 teams such as Cleveland, Detroit, Texas, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh while splitting ten games with the lowly Kansas City Royals and getting owned by Toronto and Boston.

And finally: they’re just too (darn) old. Here are their core veterans from youngest-to-oldest:  A-Rod is the baby at 33; Derek Jeter, Bobby Abreu, Johnny Damon and Hideki Matsui are 34; the battery of Pettitte and I-Rod are 36; Giambi and the injured clubhouse cop Jorge Posada are 37; the most conistent Yankee, the ageless Mariano Rivera is 38, and the rotation’s biggest surprise, Mike Mussina, is 39.

In all fairness, nobody knows if Joe Torre could have done a better job than Joe Girardi this season. But all reports from Los Angeles say the clubhouse is in the best mood its been in years–with an aloof Manny Ramirez who was shipped out of Boston.

There were too many problems for the pinstripers to blame on a perfect storm. Every team has injuries, but not every team can Band-Aid them the way the Yankees are accustomed to doing. This year, not even the Yankees could buy enough boxes. The fact is, this writer told you back in April if there was a year to bet against the Yankees (paging Mr. Rose?) this would be it.

It would be apropos for baseball if Alex Rodriguez hits the final home run in the same place Babe Ruth hit the first, if the future Hall-of-Famer does eventually set the game’s all-time home run record. But his Yankee Stadium legacy will leave behind demons instead of those famous ghosts Derek Jeter assures us will travel next door.

It’s curtains for the ‘ole ballpark. The living legends will take their bows and wave their goodbyes, before they head next door next year to christen the House That YOU Built (credit: the New York Daily News).

Yes, the remaining heroes of Yankee yesteryear planned on meeting at the corner of 161st Street and River Avenue tonight as soon as the 2008 schedule was printed. But those same favorite all-time Yankees must have expected curtain calls for an October return. Heck, they made October baseball a Yankee pastime.

Instead, this is it. From those of us who sat in those sky blue seats, toured Monument Park, lost track of the ball from the upper deck as it neared either foul pole, watched countless Yankee games and championships on TV, and on behalf of those ghosts who may make one last inconspicuous appearance tomorrow, but aren’t physically here to say goodbye, thank you for all those Octobers.

And thank you to all those who brought us to our first Yankee game.
Thank you to all those great Yankee teams and legends, whom without, tonight would just be a formality.
And sure, there are Yankee haters out there who want to thank those teams who beat the Yankees on the game’s greatest stage. Well, here you all go.

Yankee Stadium has given its fans everything any group of one team’s loyalists could ask for, except for the one thing its team of millionaires couldn’t give it back:

One more October.

Another Sunday. Another steal. Another late win thanks to another cardiac kick from Rian Lindell.

The Buffalo Bills 24-23 victory seemed like an impossibility after JaMarcus Russell capped-off a DeAngelo Hall interception with a third quarter touchdown plunge, giving the Oakland Raiders a 16-7 lead.

Hope was rekindled in the fourth after quarterback Trent Edwards  led the Bills offense on a touchdown drive that ate nearly five minutes, only to be doused by an 84-yard touchdown from Russell to Johnny Lee Higgins only three plays later.

Maybe Bills fans got their hopes up too soon. Again.

But for another week, Buffalo eschewed its here-we-go-again expectations of the 21st century with another comeback reminiscent of the Jim Kelly Era.

And with each completion from their second-year signal caller to Josh Reed, and Lee Evans,  and Roscoe Parrish, the bubble of hope for Bills fans grew bigger and bigger, while their stomach bubbles grew larger, and their collective blood pressure went higher.

If you’re a Bills fan, you’ve waited an awful long time to develop fourth quarter agita.

No, not from guzzling countless Coors Lights between breakfast and dinner, washed down with footlongs, wings and beef on wick. Agita from the Bills.

Agita from believing in a football team’s chances to play meaningful January football.

Unless you wrongly compare those teaser games from the Drew Bledsoe error or the Tennessee blackout of 2006 to those Bills-Dolphins shootouts of the 1990’s, for a consecutive Sunday, Bills fans reminisced what it’s like to get sick to their stomachs for good reasons.

After the Bills lost their third and fourth Super Bowls, idiots actually said they’d rather go back to the 2-14 seasons of the mid-’80s than deal with the embarrassment of coming up short so often.

That theory has been well-tested since the infamous Home Run Throwback (or, Music City Miracle) game in January of 2000, the last time the Bills played a postseason contest. And the consensus in western New York is that they’d rather lose four more Super Bowls than go through one more long winter.

The Bills racked-up 17 fourth-quarter points and eventually the lead that eluded them the first 59:59 of their Week Three surprise. Edwards and his receivers connected on six of the quarterback’s last seven pass attempts and 14 of his final 19, making the waning 16:54 look nothing like the previous 43:06.

Those forty-three minutes and change were loaded with plenty of gaffes.

There was the 69-yard opening kickoff return from Higgins which set-up an Oakland field goal.

There was Edwards’ fumble in the second quarter after Jason Peters allowed his second turnover-causing sack in as many games–both leading to field goals.

There was Lee Evans’ first turnover–a fumble–after the Bills called timeout only two plays after plans for fake field goal went awry.

There was Rian Lindell’s missed 46-yard kick on the opening drive of the second half. The would-be go-ahead drive is the very reason head coach Dick Jauron chose to defer after winning the coin toss.

There was Roscoe Parrish’s cardinal sin of catching a punt near the goal line, leading to a holding penalty that pushed the Bills back to their own end zone just before an Edwards interception ripped from the hands of Lee Evans led to a Raider touchdown.

There was Leodis McKelvin misplaying a kickoff after Russell’s third quarter touchdown–a prequel to another Bills three-and-out.

And, of course, Johnny Lee Higgins reinforcing Bills fans thoughts of bad luck with his long TD reception.

Yet, the Bills channeled the resilience made famous in the days of Bruce Smith. Perhaps the most prolific sack master in NFL history brought a little magic back from the good ‘ole days when his name was unveiled on the Wall-of-Fame at halftime.

Edwards. Marshawn Lynch. Robert Royal. Freddie Jackson. Josh Reed. Evans. Parrish. The offensive line that could have been mistaken for names like Wolford, Ritcher, Hull, Davis and Ballard. And finally, Lindell.

Their final three possessions resulted in all of the 17 points needed while their defense forced the three-and-out necessary to beat the Raiders and go 3-0 for the first time since 1992.

Suddenly, that heartburn of the glory years returned like an old friend–perhaps Bruce Smith?–reminding Bills fans it’s still OK after all these years to be nervous when its for good reasons. As the adage goes, that anxiety means there’s something to lose.

Welcome back, old friend. Eight years without you was long enough.

Simply amazin’.

The Mets hung in last night, after the Nats bats whittled New York’s 7-1 lead down to a 9-7 squeaker in Washington. Only a day after dropping two to the worst team in baseball, Jose Reyes’ “who me?” look in the New York papers told the story of the Mets’ entire season. Unfortunately, Willie Randolph isn’t around to absorb the abuse of ungrateful fans who root for the blue-n-carrot-topped stepchildren of New York baseball. They were all wrong for blaming the former manager for last season’s implosion. They were wrong when he was fired. And they’re all wrong now when crediting interim manager, Jerry Manuel, for their would-be comeback.

Carlos Delgado’s turnaround season and his MVP-type second-half would have happened under Willie, Manuel, or Dallas Greene for that matter. In fact, Delgado IS the Mets turnaround.

Sure, they can blame this late-season collapse entirely on Billy Wagner’s bum elbow giving-out. In doing so, Mets fans forfeit all rights to rip the Yankees for their MASH unit’s failure to reach the postseason. The Yankees have no excuses. And their fans are bright enough to tell you so.

Sure, the wild card parachute may be there to bail out the interim Mets manager–the guy whom many-a-Mets fan wanted to hire as the skipper to christen Citi Field next April, breaking the bottle of Cristal on Jackie Robinson’s statue that will welcome Mets fans in the rotunda.

Hold the champagne. This year, and next year.

No, Manuel is not entirely to blame for his team’s potential sequel of 2007. Just like Willie Randolph was never entirely to blame for last year’s horror flick.

Perhaps could it be–ahem!–the players?

For every pundit pounding Alex Rodriguez for his ho-hum eight homers and .271 average with runners in scoring position, there’s the City’s bizarro third baseman across the river, David Wright, hitting 32 points lower, with half as many round-trippers.

For every Johnny from Queens who says he’d rathuh’ have Reyes over Derek Jet-uh’ at short–now is the time for the Mets’ young catalyst to be more of a captain than a clown.

The fact is, however, the guy to blame is the guy everyone credits for the Mets turnaround: Omar.

Minaya reloaded the Mets instead of rebuilding to bring the franchise back to prominence and catch the Yankees as soon as the World Series was no longer their divine right. In today’s era, teams can no longer just plug-in veterans and give longterm deals to has-beens with torn labrums, or players whose contracts expire after their pensions kick-in. You also can’t ask the youth of the left side of the infield to make-up for the AARP collection from the other seven positions. Players like Pedro Martinez, Orlando Hernandez, Tom Glavine, Moises Alou, Damon Easley, Paul LoDuca, Delgado, and Brian Schneider may have been good stop-gaps, but a collective curse that may haunt them for Septembers to come.

Sure, the Mets landed Johan Santana at a lower cost than the Yankees or Red Sox would have paid to garner his services last season. And while the two-time AL Cy Young winner has been good, he’s hardly been the dominant ace expected to mimic former AL pitchers like Roger Clemens, who’ve crossed into the National League. And its hard to praise the GM, when a stalemate between arch rivals and a big bank account made Queens the only destination left for the lefty.While it was a major Met coups, it’s hardly brilliant.

The story hasn’t changed. Willie wasn’t the problem. When win totals rise, players credit the “new” clubhouse atmosphere, the same way they blame losing on bad locker room vibes.

Jerry Manuel shouldn’t stand around any bus stops for a while. Because the same guys who got Willie fired will either write their manager’s ticket, or throw him under like Billy Wagner’s last rehab pitch.

Doing their eternal GM’s bidding, win and lose.

First, we thank You for the opportunity to do what we do, and that we’ve now been blessed with the ability to trust each other after all most of us have been through. Your hands guide this show, even though no one will admit it, and even though you blush every time you hear it.

And Robinson: Why not?

And Sales. Because we need to eat.

Now for the room itself:

Amen.

If Tom Brady is out for the season, it was good news.  

Yes, that is a sick statement. And it’s a sad commentary of countless Bills fans who celebrated as word spread of the quarterback’s misfortune during the first quarter of Buffalo’s Week One 34-10 victory over the Seattle Seahawks.

With grown-men relieving themselves in the sinks of Ralph Wilson Stadium–this is only news to those who have never used the Men’s Room at the Ralph–news spread like the digested Coors Light that missed the urinals, collecting on the floor. And if you need any more evidence Bills fans were excited over Brady’s pain–remember the sinks served as temporary toilets–few bathroom patrons cared about germs as they high-fived just after zipping-up.

Only the thrills of Roscoe Parrish’s 63-yard punt return for a touchdown rivaled their joy.

It’s sad enough when a team’s fans hang their hopes on hope alone after a millennium without (meaningful) January football. But what’s pathetic is the shadenfruede Bills’ bretheren rejoiced in while sharing the news that the greatest quarterback in this generation could be finished for 2008.

This may have happened in the Meadowlands, Indianapolis and even Miami. It may have happened in your living room. But this writer can only speak on what he witnessed, and it’s disappointing.

And now, those who revelled in New England’s misery have allowed Bills haters point at their new shiners. Sure, this happens everywhere, but nobody wants to hear your when-I-was-in-Cleveland story when there are enough Bills tailgates on YouTube to make WWE fans look civilized.

These are same Bills fans who bought Browns fans lunches the Monday after Dan Marino tore his achilles in Cleveland–five games into the 1993 season.

In a decade, true sports fans will appreciate the Joe Montana of this generation and annoint some can’t-miss kid the next Tom Brady, if they don’t appreciate what he’s done for the league already. Meanwhile, the rest of them will be hoping the next Brady will tear his ACL to better the Bills’ (or the Toronto franchise’s) hopes of winning a Super Bowl.

Folks, before you return to thinking like a delusional Bills fan maybe you should pop that Sunday Night Bills-Pats tape into the VHS player to keep yourself humble. Some Bills fans will think and talk playoffs after a big win like yesterday.  They think they’ll win the Mega Millions because last week they guessed right on two numbers. Sure, yesterday’s season opener evoked memories of a time when the playoffs were a certainty and not just a wish. A Week One blowout is the perfect fuel for perpetual hope–that of the longsuffering faithful whose wounds are re-opened every Super Bowl week, and in films such as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and Buffalo 66. For once, Bills fans didn’t mind being soaked thanks to bad weekend forecasts from Buffalo meteorologists.

However, it could be a fluke and these may be the same ‘ole Bills and Patriots, so hang-on.

But after a fluke injury, Tom Brady’s season is over and his career may never be the same and some fans seem to be enjoying every second of it. While you’re at it, go dance on Babe Ruth’s grave, rip Michael Jordan’s 23 from the United Center rafters, and take a club to Tiger Woods’ good knee.

The most famous number 12 since Terry Bradshaw (sorry, folks) was 2:39 away from grabbing his fourth Super Bowl ring in eight seasons and quarterbacking the only 19-0 team in NFL history during the league’s parity-enduced, “Any Given Sunday” era.

If the NFL has a Jordan, it’s Brady, and he’s done. And like those two Houston Rockets championships won during MJ’s retirement/hiatus, we may forever wonder what might have been about 2008, just like those would-be Bulls-Rockets NBA Finals dream match-ups, or what Tiger what have made of this year’s US and British Opens, as well as the Ryder Cup.

There are two different types of Bills fans. There are sports fans who love the Bills as their chosen team, and there are Bills fans who only know about the Bills, show-up for a party, and don’t care about history. That outspoken minority basked in their own selfish glory, spitting in the face of history yet again. We’ll never know what would have become of this season had Tom Brady walked off the field after the fourth quarter instead of halfway through the first. But before Sunday, more pundits predicted the Pats would return to the Super Bowl than the world champion Giants.

So, where did we put those famous asterisks again?