The question remains what and who the Yankees can rely on in the post-season. Anything past CC Sabathia is a guess; it would seem it would be wise to try to give Hughes a rest until the playoffs begin, and pin second-starter hopes on him, and then see what Andy Pettitte and A.J. Burnett and even Ivan Nova might give you.

Lost in the Yankees’ walk-off (literally) victory; this was the Stadium farewell for Mike Lowell, drafted originally by New York so long ago that Buck Showalter was still the Yankee Manager (Round 20, 1995, they sent him to Oneonta of the NY-Penn League where he hit exactly one homer in 313 plate appearances). Lowell would get fifteen Yankee at bats in 1998 before going in a foolish trade to Florida for pitcher Ed Yarnall and two others. 

One of my favorite memories of the game is an afternoon in Fort Myers in 2009 when I spent the first four innings of a Boston exhibition game on the bench between Lowell and Wakefield (at that point they had 29 years of big league experience between them). Of course we talked everything but baseball. Lowell remains one of the game’s classiest acts, and when I told him the game just wouldn’t be the same without him, he reassured us “I’ll be around.” He could succeed in anything from coaching, to ownership, to announcing. 

Two other photos are offered. On the right, that’s a tv viewer of mine, the rookie Red Sox first baseman Lars Anderson. In the shot at the left is SNL’s Jason Sudeikis, further down the front row in seats belonging to Lorne Michaels. Having dropped enough names I’ll leave you with this most bizarre of stats: I got to see 16 Yankee games from the seats this season and the home team won fifteen of them.

See you Tuesday and Wednesday as Ken Burns premieres his PBS Baseball documentary follow-up, “The Tenth Inning.”