Yankees Had to Beat More Than the Braves

Yankees 1, sportswriters 0.

Steinbrenner 1, sportswriters 0.

Strawberry 1, sportswriters 0.

Aren’t you guys a little embarrassed yet?

JIM BABBITT

Manhattan Beach

*

A guy pitches only 3 1/3 innings, two of them ineffectively, and he’s the MVP of a six-game World Series? Get serious. In Game 5, the only two outs John Wetteland got were great defensive plays by the shortstop and right fielder on hard-hit balls. In Game 6, the Braves got more than a third of their hits and half of their runs off Wetteland and he barely survived. Jim Leyritz was the MVP with pitchers, Cone, Pettitte and Key close behind.

H. ANTHONY MEDLEY

Marina del Rey

*

Fluke is not a harsh enough word. Not only will an overrated, overachieving, aging Yankee team be a longshot to repeat as World Series champions, it will be a stretch for them to make the playoffs in the next several years.

Lest baseball purists forget, an inferior Dodger team in 1988 beat the A’s with one key home run by Kirk Gibson. The same could be said about these Yankees and Jim Leyritz’s Game 4, three-run homer. And we all know what has happened to the Dodgers since 1988.

SCOTT ESSMAN

Glendora

*

The World Series is the showcase of baseball, the culmination of a full season of games that are on too late for most of the youngsters in this country. This leaves the kids with choices:

1) Tape the game and watch it after school the next day (stale, no good).

2) Go to bed at a normal time and read about the exciting finish in the next day’s paper.

3) Lose interest in the sport because baseball is not interested enough in the youth market to televise games earlier.

FRANK KNIEST

Santa Monica

*

Watching Fox’s World Series coverage, I now understand why Tim McCarver was Steve Carlton’s personal catcher. They averaged out to a normal conversationalist.

RAY BUTLER

Long Beach