1. As I write this several hours before first pitch, my expectation is that Joe Torre is totally going to attack Game 2. Under the best scenario, he gets seven innings from Andy Pettitte and one each from Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera. But I think Torre will even have a quick hook for one of his all-time favorites, Pettitte, and he will not use a long reliever even before the fifth inning. My suspicion is he will use Luis Vizcaino to settle the game down and perhaps Kyle Farnsworth for an inning. And if the Yankees lead and Pettitte is shaky, my gut says you could see Torre act as early as the sixth inning and use Chamberlain for two innings and Rivera for two innings, especially because there is an off-day tomorrow and this feels like a must win.

2. Baseball had a great season, but MLB runs the risk of having flagging interest this October because it has so made itself a slave to TV. There is a potential right now of all four series ending in sweeps over the weekend, and the NL playoffs going on hiatus until Thursday and the ALCS not starting until Friday.

No one at MLB would admit it, but the dream scenario at the Commissioners Office would have the major markets involved with the LCS matchups being Cubs vs. Phillies and Yankees vs. Red Sox. But the Cubs, Phillies and Yankees began the postseason 0-5, placing that in doubt. If the NLCS is Arizona vs. Colorado there are those who love baseball who will appreciate it, but to much of the nation that will be similar to the Spurs vs. the Cavaliers and not get gigantic attention. Especially on the East Coast.

3. Here is an encouraging element for the Yankee future: The word was that Joba Chamberlain took his conditioning seriously, and if you have been to the ballpark extra early the past few days, you could certainly believe that. Well, before most players ever arrived and in a stadium hours away from having fans enter, Chamberlain was alone in the outfield doing his running and agility drills.

4. There has been a lot of criticism of Joe Torre’s decision to start Hideki Matsui in Game 1 against C.C. Sabathia. Matsui was 0-for-9 lifetime against Sabathia. But you could have made just as strong a case not to start Bobby Abreu in the opener because he has had such difficulty with good lefty pitching all year and Torre had taken to not starting him against most southpaws in the second half of the season because he noticed that a bad game against a lefty tended to hurt Abreu’s swing for a few days. But as it turned out nobody on the Yankees had better at-bats against Sabathia than Abreu. He drew a first-inning walk after being down 1-2 in the count, drew a third-inning walk after being down 0-2 in the count and doubled in a run in the fifth.

5. OK, who saw a 2007 postseason in which Kaz Matsui was better than Hideki Matsui?

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