Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy

I know that a lot of you will be commenting with heavy hearts today, in the wake of the Yankees stunning loss to the Detroit Tigers last night. It took the Tigers just four games to oust the Yankees from the playoffs, send George Steinbrenner into a murderous rage, make Brian Cashman hide under his desk for two weeks, probably got Joe Torre fired, and to make the next few months of Alex Rodriguez's life extremely, extremely unpleasant.

The highlight of the evening for me, though, was immediately after the win when Jim Leyland had to share the moment with his wife and his daughter. Leyland was on the field, they were in the stands, and if they were going to kiss, it'd have to be through the foul ball netting. Leyland kissed his wife through the netting, then his daughter ... and then saw a young male Tigers fan run up to the net, and ask for a kiss of his own. Leyland gave it to him. God bless that man. I hope they're still making out.

(By the way, if you do a Google Image Search for "jim leyland kiss," you get this.)

With much less fanfare, the Mets finished off their annihilation of the Dodgers last night, too. The Mets got less than 14 innings from their starting pitchers through three games, and still won handily. That is some very masculine bullpen work.

And all of this leaves the Cardinals/Padres series as the only one still going on. They'll play tonight at 8 on Fox, with Woody Williams going up against Chris Carpenter.

MLB Scoreboard [MLB.com]