Cliff Lee Screws The Yankees In Ways Red Sox Fans Can Only Dream About

Jen's dad sent an email early this morning with two words: "Merry Cliffmas."

I wasn't sure what he was talking about at first and assumed maybe that just meant that free agent pitcher Cliff Lee was staying with the Texas Rangers — which would have been funny enough for Yankees Non-Partisans (technical term: "dayenu") — but when I went to the sports section, the news was even better:

The Philadelphia Phillies agreed to terms late Monday night with Lee, the prized left-hander who pitched for them in the 2009 World Series, according to a baseball official told of the deal. The official, who said he believed the deal was for at least five years and $100 million, was granted anonymity so he could speak freely about a contract that was not finalized.

The Yankees had bid seven years and about $150 million for Lee, who also had a strong offer from the Rangers. But in the end, Lee's agent, Darek Braunecker, informed the Yankees that Lee was headed to Philadelphia, where he never wanted to leave after a dominant postseason run for the Phillies.

. . .

In returning to Philadelphia, Lee will join a staggering rotation that could rival some of the greatest in history. Lee, a former Cy Young Award winner, will join the two-time winner Roy Halladay, along with Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels.

I responded to Jen's dad with a similarly terse two-word missive: "Holy shit!"

Late last week, the ESPN people kept saying that the Red Sox signing Carl Crawford made Cliff Lee's left-hand dominance that much more important for the Yankees' rotation. And now Lee going to the Phillies makes the Yankees' rotation that much shakier. But as The Times puts it, "There are always lower-tier free agents, like Freddy Garcia and Kevin Millwood, Bruce Chen and Jeremy Bonderman, David Bush and Rodrigo Lopez."

Rodrigo Lopez? I almost think Tyler Kepner is being facetious here. I don't know how many Yankee fans got to watch Rodrigo Lopez pitch last season. I did, but that's only because I got to see Arizona Diamondbacks games on MLB Extra Innings. Just so you understand, 35-year-old Rodrigo Lopez was like the Diamondbacks' third or fourth starter, 7-16 with a 5.00 ERA last year, a sort of low-risk placeholder until someone else came up or along.

So I ask you: Rodrigo Lopez?

By accepting a smaller contract and fewer years, Cliff Lee has stuck it to the Yankees in ways that Red Sox fans could only dream about. The only thing cooler would be if the Phillies dealt the now-unnecessary Joe Blanton to the Sox. Oh wait.

Lee's "nonchalant" catch* of a Johnny Damon popup in the bottom of the sixth inning of Game 1 of the 2009 World Series was a nice "fuck you." Signing with the Phillies for a shorter contract and less money is an even bigger "fuck you." Few players, much less fans, get to screw the Yankees this way. And Lee not only did it on the field but in free agency as well. He's a Yankee Non-Partisan hero.

As for the Phillies, expectations are now into the stratosphere. That said, while they may have a "staggering" rotation, they still don't have a lot of solid relief pitching. But I'm not sure they even need it: Roy Halladay had nine complete games last year, Roy Oswalt and Cole Hamels had three between them and Cliff Lee had seven. That's 19 complete games. And something tells me that with relievers like Antonio Bastardo and Chad Durbin backing them up, this rotation will be that much more focused.

Maybe the decision was easy for Lee. Maybe his wife's gut reaction about the city had some bearing on the decision. But it's healthy for New York City to know that it is not the best place in the entire universe. Cliff Lee is now this idea. He's his own Miami. He's Woody Allen's Match Point. He's Northampton, MA. Except that he's better than all of those, because apparently New York wasn't even really in the hunt in the first place.

Which means that he really does own the city.

*It's too bad that there aren't any embeddable videos of this catch — at one time there were but it seems that MLB has cracked down on all that; this link is a never-ending MLB playlist of videos related in some way to Cliff Lee, but as it goes on (and on and on) it gets less pertinent — there are Giants-Phillies highlights from this year playing now; I wonder what will happen if I let it run all day.

You Know What The Problem Is, Brucie? We Used To Make Dreams Out Of Things In This Country — Now We Just Dangle Prepositions Like It's Totally Obvious What Anyone Is Talking About

The other great thing about the Yankees' ALCS collapse is that we're basically in the clear from having to hear "Empire State of Mind" any time soon.

You know the song — it's the one where Jay-Z talks about all the cool stuff he remembers or patronizes in New York: Tribeca, Yankee Stadium, some McDonalds near Broadway, a "stash spot" at 560 State Street. And then of course there's that "feat. Alicia Keys" part. You know which part that is:

In New York!
Concrete jungle where dreams are made of!
There's nothing you can't do!
Now you're in New York!
These streets will make you feel brand new!
The lights will inspire you!
Let's hear it for New York! New York! New York!

It didn't take long for me to start parading around the apartment belting out this song, and it took even less time for Jen to demand that I stop, not only because it sounds terrible when I try to sing like Alicia Keys but also because she was disturbed that I would never actually tell her of what dreams were made.

"What do you mean?" I stop and ask her.

"Dreams are made of what?"

"It's just 'where dreams are made of' . . ."

"Of what though?"

It goes on like this for a while until I finally Google the lyrics — because lyric sites on the Internet are 100 percent accurate — and confirm it: "Concrete jungle where dreams are made of." (We've had this trouble with Googled lyrics before — one time, in the course of arguing the world's most important questions, I for some reason got stuck on the idea that "this sex is on fire" was way worse than "your sex is on fire" — something about the inherent arrogance of calling "this" sex flammable like you're some kind of coital arsonist; can't really remember the details beyond which to say that we eventually discovered that it happened to be a hotly debated topic; of course in the end everyone agrees the lyric is bad, regardless of whether a possessive or a demonstrative adjective is being used.)

"But made of what?" she demands. "Dreams need to be made of something . . ."

Now I suppose it's possible that Alicia Keys sings "Where dreams are made oh," but even if it is, it's a flawed line — the phrasing demands another vowel-ish syllable to play off the "do" in the following line (to make it sound like "aah" and "ooh"), and it's too lazy to use "oh" to fill it in. Besides, even if it is "oh," our ears want to hear "of" because that's linked to "made." That's how stuff like spoken language works.

I always loved these "feat. [blank]" parts of songs because they're always the most inspired parts of songs. You can see someone off on their own — maybe in the shower, maybe on a run somewhere, maybe waiting on a cold subway platform — sort of humming some line. Maybe it's accidentally stolen from somewhere, in part or in full, but it's always really inspired. And then they get into the studio and the magic happens.

I always picture that scene in Hustle & Flow where Terrence Howard is hassling Taraji P. Henson about singing with more feeling when she is laying down the "feat." line for "It's Hard Out There For A Pimp." I want to think that Jay-Z had to do the same thing with Alicia Keys, and when Alicia Keys let that "of" slip, maybe Jay-Z kind of shrugged and reasoned that the track still sounded good — even if it would make Philip B. Corbett cry.

But that part of the song still sticks out for me. It used to be that dreams were made of something. Actually, dreams were made on something, as in: "We are such stuff/As dreams are made on; and our little life/Is rounded with a sleep." (Apparently Humphrey Bogart made dreams of something in The Maltese Falcon — ever since then, dreams seem to be made of stuff.)

The Human League made dreams of stuff — love and adventure, cash to spend, love and affection, two or three friends. Carly Simon made dreams of stuff — slow and steady fires, your heart and soul's desire. Hillary Duff made dreams of stuff — somewhere she belongs and somebody to love. Even Eurythmics at least made dreams of "this," but at least "this" was something. And then we get to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys, who are content to just let dreams hang there waiting for someone to ask "of what?"

The "feat. Alicia Keys" portion actually reminds me of a middle-school acrostic:

New York!
Everybody's favorite concrete jungle!
Where dreams are made of! There's nothing
You can't do!
Oh, now you're in New York!
Running these streets will make you feel brand new!
Krazy lights will inspire you — let's hear it for New York!

So as you settle into the sofa on Wednesday night to watch that big Cliff Lee-Tim Lincecum matchup (no sarcasm, either — that's a great matchup) you can rest easy knowing that Fox won't have to hit Jay-Z's tip jar one more time for one of those panoramic blimp shots of Yankee Stadium.

In New York — tiny things you can be happy of! The Yankees won't be there! No baseball in New York! New York! New York!