Associated Press
The baseball notebook …
NEW YORK ó Fox analyst Tim McCarver will miss the first two games of the AL championship series because of a medical procedure and will be replaced by former Boston Red Sox manager Terry Francona.
Francona is free after the Red Sox announced last Friday they would not pick up his contract option after eight seasons and two world championships. Boston blew a nine-game lead in the AL wild-card race, going 7-20 in September.
In the 2004 ALCS, Francona led the Red Sox to a comeback from a 3-0 series deficit against the Yankees en route to the franchiseís first title since 1918.
McCarver, who turns 70 on Oct. 16, has called the last 21 MLB postseasons. Franconaís father, Tito, was McCarverís teammate with the Cardinals from 1965-66.
YANKEES-TIGERS
NEW YORK ó All the months of preparation, all the millions of dollars, all the hopes of the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers come down to this: Ivan Nova vs. Doug Fister for a berth in the AL championship series.
Just three months ago, one had been demoted to the minor leagues and the other was languishing with a 3-12 record for last-place Seattle.
“Obviously it’s not something I foresaw going on,” Fister said Wednesday, about 15 hours after the Yankees stretched the first-round series to the limit with a 10-1 rout in Detroit.
On the first off-day of a series interrupted by rain in New York last weekend, there was a cloudless blue sky over Yankee Stadium. But both teams decided not to work out ahead of tonight’s Game 5, which determines who will play defending AL champion Texas for a berth in the World Series.
“Tomorrow, I got the most important game in my life,” Nova said, later adding: “I don’t see the reason to feel pressure. It’s another game. Of course, it’s the most important game of the season now.”
RANGERS WAIT
ARLINGTON, Texas ó The Texas Rangers are back in the AL championship series and waiting for an opponent.
This is a team that didn’t win a postseason series in the franchise’s first 49 seasons before getting to the World Series last year. Now the Rangers have advanced in the playoffs two years in a row.
“We committed ourselves to a goal (last spring) and they made it to that goal, we are getting another opportunity to play to go to the World Series,” manager Ron Washington said Wednesday, a day after the Rangers wrapped up their AL division series with a 4-3 victory at Tampa Bay.
“I don’t see where it gives us any advantage,” he said. “The only thing it does, we certainly know what we have to do. I think our guys are more aware of getting to this point is not where we want to be. We want to be playing in the World Series.”
Game 1 of the AL championship series is Saturday. For the Rangers, it will be either an ALCS rematch starting at the New York Yankees or at home against Detroit.
The Tigers and Yankees play the deciding Game 5 of their AL division series Thursday night in New York.
Before last year, the entire postseason history for the Rangers ó who began as the Washington Senators from 1961-71 ó consisted of playing the Yankees in the AL division series three times in the second half of the 1990s with nine losses in a row.
Texas won its first-ever playoff game 15 years ago at old Yankee Stadium before New York won three in a row to clinch that series. The Yankees swept the 1998 and 1999 series, outscoring Texas 23-2 in those six games. New York went to the World Series all three times.