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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The undercard is over, leaving the stage for the main event. If you thought Toronto vs. Texas was a match made in promoters\u2019 heaven, just wait for the Blue Jays-Royals rumble that begins tonight for the American League pennant. Toronto and Kansas City are two teams that play new-school baseball, which is to say they have swagger and aren\u2019t afraid to show it, be it chirping at umpires, flipping bats, flipping hitters, kicking up dirt on the base paths with hard slides or celebrating every run as if it\u2019s their last.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Blue Jays best showed their power and emotion in ALDS Game 5, a rock concert of a game that will be known as The Bat Flip Game in honor of the dig-me pose of Jays rightfielder Jose Bautista upon his series-clinching monster of a homer. The Royals dropped the gauntlet on the league way back in the first month of the season, when they set out to prove their 2014 pennant was no fluke by showing teams they were ready leave the bench and fight if anybody so much as looked at them the wrong way.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The worlds of the Jays and Royals collided in mid-summer, when a chippy series finally went &lt;em&gt;ka-boom&lt;/em&gt;. Kansas City righthander Edinson Volquez hit Toronto third baseman Josh Donaldson with a 94-mph sinker in the first inning on Aug. 2, in a series in which Donaldson already had seven RBIs and Lorenzo Cain and Mike Moustakas of Kansas City and Troy Tulowitzki of Toronto had been drilled.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Warnings were issued, though that didn\u2019t stop Volquez, two innings later, from throwing an 0\u20131 changeup past Donaldson\u2019s chin. (One way to claim innocence when throwing at a hitter is to throw something with less velocity.) Toronto manager John Gibbons was ejected for arguing that Volquez should have been tossed.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The postgame comments only fueled the rivalry. Volquez said Donaldson \u201Cwas crying like a baby.\" Donaldson said he was happy the umpires didn\u2019t eject Volquez, saying, \u201CHe was pretty good hittin\u2019, so I\u2019m glad they didn\u2019t.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Royals manager Ned Yost seemed to blame the Toronto hitters. \u201CThey\u2019ve got tremendous power, but they all dive in to the plate, which makes them susceptible to getting hit on inside pitches,\u201D Yost said. \u201CIf you continue to throw them away, away, away, away, you\u2019re going to get hammered, you\u2019re going to get killed. You have to utilize the inside part of the plate to open up the outside part of the plate, and it happens.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;And that led Bautista to respond the way any new-school baseball adherent would: a snipe via Twitter.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CJust heard #NedYost comments about the game. Lost a lot of respect for that man today,\u201D Bautista tweeted.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Hmmm. So what we have in the ALCS is a matchup in which the Royals\u2019 Game 1 starter drilled the Jays\u2019 third baseman with a pitch and called him a \u201Ccrybaby,\u201D to which the third baseman called him \u201Cgood hittin\u2019\u201D, to which the pitcher\u2019s manager blamed it on the Jays\u2019 hitters, to which one of Toronto's hitters announced he had lost respect for the manager.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Did we mention that these are two best teams in the league, the first such ALCS matchup since Yankees-Angels in 2009? That the team with the most home runs (Toronto) is playing the team with the best bullpen in the league (Kansas City)? That the Royals and Blue Jays have distinct home field advantages because of their crowds? As one Toronto team source said, \u201COur place is like no other right now. There\u2019s no question it affected Texas in the seventh inning [of Game 5].\u201D Get ready for the fireworks.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CEverybody noticed when Chase Utley was suspended two games,\u201D said Royals outfielder Jonny Gomes. \u201CThat told everybody that if you do something out of line, you\u2019re going to miss playoff games. You can\u2019t think, \u2018Oh, it\u2019s the playoffs. It won\u2019t cost you any games. They won\u2019t do anything.\u2019 It could cost your team the series if something happens.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt; NEW: One-week $2M fantasy league. First place wins $150K and top 90K teams win cash! Sponsored by FanDuel&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;2. Jays' Gibbons faces ex-boss who fired him&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;When the Royals named Yost as their manager midway through the 2010 season, one of the coaches he inherited on the staff was Gibbons, the bench coach and catching instructor. Both were former No. 1 picks of the Mets, Yost in 1974 and Gibbons in 1980. (They did not play together.)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The partnership did not last long. After the 2011 season, Yost fired Gibbons and pitching coach Bob McClure from his staff. He said at the time that he wanted a coach to work with the organization\u2019s Latin American catchers, including starter Salvador Perez. He hired Chino Cadahia, who was replaced by Don Wakamatsu last year.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI got along great with Ned,\u201D Gibbons said.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now Yost and Gibbons are in opposing dugouts as the American League Championship Series begins in Kansas City between Yost\u2019s Royals and Gibbons\u2019 Blue Jays. Reminded of his time with Gibbons, Yost admitted he is a different manager today than he was then.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI didn\u2019t really listen to my coaches then,\u201D Yost said. \u201CI was groomed under Bobby [Cox], who really didn\u2019t use a bench coach. I guess you are a product of what you know. It wasn\u2019t until I started listening to my coaches that we really had success.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;I asked if he meant late last season.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CYes. Now I listen to my coaches all the time. Just like with Johnny [Cueto in the ALDS Game 5 clincher]. I was ready to send him back out there for the ninth. We had a two-run lead that became a five-run lead. We had Wade [Davis] hot in the bullpen. And all my coaches told me, \u2018You have the best reliever in baseball. He\u2019s hot. Don\u2019t mess around. It\u2019s a playoff game.\u2019 And I listened to them, and they were right.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After Gibbons was fired, he went home to San Antonio and took a job managing a Double A team, the Missions of the Padres' organization. \"It was the first time I was home in the summer in 30 years,\u201D Gibbons told me before the postseason. \u201CI loved it. I was happy to go back. There\u2019s something to be said for waking up, cutting your own grass, going to the ballpark, and coming back home to your own bed. If I never got another [major league] call, I was satisfied.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Blue Jays did call again, offering Gibbons a second chance at being their manager, a post he'd held from 2004 to '08. Now, Gibbons has them in the ALCS, where a place in the World Series will go to either Yost or Gibbons.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE MLB: Full postseason schedule, start times, TV listings&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;h3&gt;&lt;strong&gt;3. Don't blame Don Mattingly&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/h3&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The better team won. The Mets moved past the Dodgers and into the NLCS because they won two games when they faced Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke. But they also did so because New York's front office put together a better roster than did Los Angeles' front office. Today begins the watch on the job security of Dodgers manager Don Mattingly, who brought the team to the playoffs three straight years, only to go 8\u201311, including 6\u20139 when Kershaw or Greinke started. But when you saw the team around Kershaw and Greinke in this NLDS, you realized the most expensive team ever assembled\u2014$310 million worth of players to play for them and &lt;em&gt;not&lt;/em&gt; play for them\u2014was also the least efficient use of money.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s going to take time. The new all-star front office, headed by Andrew Friedman, clearly needs more than just one season to fix this Los Angeles team.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Dodgers did nothing this year to improve the bullpen problems of last season (the 3.80 mark of last season, good for 12th&amp;nbsp;in the league, actually worsened to 3.91 this year, good for 11th). When the team needed help in the rotation, it should have been obvious that the additions of Mat Latos and Alex Wood were underwhelming, which they were (5\u20139, 4.94 ERA combined). It should have been obvious that Brett Anderson, who hadn\u2019t pitched more than 120 innings in any of the past six seasons, wasn\u2019t going to hold up, and he didn\u2019t (a 6.45 ERA in his final four starts, including the pivotal collapse in Game 3, when he turned a 3\u20130 lead into a 6\u20133 deficit before you could blink). And it should have been obvious that the lineup was severely shallow, what with Kik\u00E9 Hernandez and Justin Ruggiano thrust into key starts, Yasiel Puig getting bulkier and more injury-prone with each day, and the aging, slowing bodies of Carl Crawford, Howie Kendrick, Jimmy Rollins and Utley declining further.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So maybe Freidman and the team's ownership would rather have a manager of their own choosing rather than an inherited one. That\u2019s understandable. But also understand the Dodgers got what was coming because of their roster, not their manager.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/mlb/2015/10/16/three-strikes-blue-jays-royals-alcs-don-mattingly>