ALDS Game 4

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The final out registered as Jorge Posada swung over a pitch that maybe he wouldn't offer at in the regular season, and that was that. Yankees were bundled out 6-4.

For 12 seasons, there was sunshine on his shoulders. But now there is darkness, and the condemned old ballpark is shuttered again for the winter. The Yankees are a first-round playoff casualty for the third October in a row, and Torre will almost certainly lose his job as manager.

The Cleveland Indians eliminated the Yankees, 6-4, in Game 4 of their American League division series, advancing to the championship series against the Boston Red Sox. George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' principal owner, who had tied Torre's future to the outcome of this series, was said to be fuming in his office and left without taking questions, ushered away by his daughter.

In his postgame news conference, Torre choked up when talking about how badly his players wanted to win. He does not have a contract for next season, and he spoke with a sense of finality.

"This ball club, they have a great future," Torre said, adding later: "This has been a great 12 years. Whatever the hell happens from here on out, I'll look back on these 12 years with great, great pleasure."

Torre became an icon — and a very wealthy man — while guiding Steinbrenner's players to four World Series titles. But the last was seven years ago, a drought too long for a famously impatient owner.

Four of the unfulfilled seasons have been with the game's best player, Alex Rodriguez, anchoring the lineup. Rodriguez was 2 for 12 in the series until adding a single and a homer after the Yankees had fallen far behind. He can now opt out of his $25.2-million-a-year contract and is expected to seek untold riches in a new contract.

Two mainstays from the championship years, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada, can also become free agents. Keeping both, and Rodriguez, will be expensive but affordable for the Yankees, whose business model thrives despite repeated playoff failures.

"Joe Torre is the best manager in baseball," Posada said. "It's not his fault. He used the same lineup from April till now, the same guys. He doesn't throw or hit or do anything on the field. He does everything possible to keep us positive and get us to win."

Rivera said he did not know why Steinbrenner would even think of firing Torre, and he said he would have to think about whether he would want to play for another manager.

Of his contract status, Rivera said: "They had an opportunity and they did nothing with me, so we'll see what happens. This is a business, and I'm going to treat it like a business."

I've not figured out this team for 3 years, maybe 4. Each year has brought a weird kind of drama in the regular season that essentially saps the will of the Yankees as they arrive in October. It's been more perplexing and distressing than the Bronx Zoo Yankees of my childhood. There hasn't been that mongrel thing - more like a flash of panic running through a heerd of thoroughbreds. And I'm not comfortable with that when it comes to the Yankees.

In 2005 and 2007 it was bad starts. In 2006 it was the possibility Torre might get fired. 2004 was just incomprehensible how they folded to the Red Sox. The Sox fans keep telling me it was choking, but it was worse than that - it looked like they just closed up shop and quit.

So this year's end is not all that surprising, if at all. This club just wasn't a World Series winning club. More like the AL All-Stars circa 2001. They scored a lot of runs, and that's always something but if there's one lesson that's been hammered home to me, it really is a lot more about having that killer Ace do his thing on the mound.

There was a time the Yankees could boast 4 guys like that in their rotation and thy went to Game 7 against Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling (when he was excellent). They just haven't had that in the last 4 years. But you know, things are looking good over the horizon. Phil Hughes and Joba Chamberlain showed enough to get excited about the future of Yankee pitching. but that's about the extent of the silver-lining to this black cloud that's been hanging since 2004.

Joe Torre is most probably not coming back. It's the end of an era. There will be a major re-construction of the roster, there will be new players to get excited about, hope springs eternal.