Finally! The waiting is over! After nine long years without a World Series victory, the Yankees are champs once again. Nobody suffers like a Yankees fan. Think of the toll all those championship-less years have taken on an eight-year-old Yankee fan who’s never seen his favorite team win. After overcoming the Curse of Danny Cater by winning it all in ’77 and the Curse of Hiring a Manager Named Stump with the team’s ’96 Series win, the Bombers have now wiped out the Curse of Giving Us the Image of Jason Giambi in a Thong. This year’s Yankees were a heartwarming story of pies to the face and walk-off wins, and they were, of course, built the old-fashioned way: By buying up every free agent star on the market and paying hundreds of millions of dollars to them. The World Series celebration was more subdued this year because the only people who can afford to go to a Yankee game are the players and their Hollywood girlfriends. …

The Giants’ transformation from an elite NFL team to ineffectual mediocrity is astounding. Against the Saints, the defense was the culprit; against the Cardinals, it was the offense; but yesterday against the Eagles, it was every aspect of the team that was horrible. The Giants are misfiring on all cylinders. Alarms are sounding, and people are running to the panic room. Are the Giants in a slump? Or are they a bad team? Whichever the case, they’re looking pretty ugly these days, and I mean Oakland Raiders ugly.
Right now, the defense can’t stop anybody – or anything. If a stray dog ran out onto the field, it would run right by the 11 men on defense and score a touchdown. Johnny Damon would go wild against these guys. Not only wouldn’t they be covering third base, they wouldn’t cover home plate either. The Giants certainly miss Kenny Phillips, Aaron Ross, Michael Boley and Chris Canty, but do they miss them that much? They’ve …

All anybody’s talking about in the New York area is the Islanders’ first regulation win over the Rangers (though Jimmy Rollins predicted it on Monday). You can’t walk down the street without somebody stopping you and asking all about the hockey team from Long Island. Will they get on a roll? Is John Tavares the real deal? Islanders, Islanders, Islanders! Everybody’s forgetting all about the bad start of the two local basketball teams, and does anybody even know that the Yankees are in the World Series this year? All the Islanders-all-the-time talk is really taking the pressure off the other local teams.

Here at Hot Stove, we know that the Yankees are in the World Series again, as you can’t get anything by us. The Bronx Bombers paid their $200 million entry fee into the Series, setting up a rematch of the 1950 Fall Classic. And with so many off-days, it seems like there are about 59 years between games in this postseason. In the Series we’ve already seen Cliff Lee nonchalantly put the Bombers’ bats to sleep, …

The Rangers ended their three-game losing streak by beating Phoenix last night, 5-2, winning the game for former Ranger announcer Bill “The Big Whistle” Chadwick. “We’re dedicating our season to the announcing legend. So much of my youth was spent watching the Rangers on channel 9, listening to the antics of Chadwick and his partner, Jim Gordon, that for a while there, I thought Chadwick was my father, and my real dad was just some guy from the neighborhood who sat around the living room drinking vodka all the time. We had to win this game for The Big Whistle or I’d never forgive myself,” said captain Chris Drury. (Ok, he didn’t come close to saying that; I said it to myself while I was riding on the subway this morning.)
The Blueshirts were going the wrong way the last week or so, but last night they turned things around and put in a steady performance. They fell asleep after taking a 4-0 lead, and got …

Ok, that’s two bad games in a row. Last week in New Orleans the defense was the culprit, and last night the offense lost the game for the Giants. Big Blue feasted on the weak teams the first five weeks, but now facing solid teams two weeks in a row, they looked lousy in both games.

The D wasn’t great but came up with two big stops at the end and were good enough to win the game (though the injuries to Kenny Phillips, Aaron Ross and Michael Boley seem to be catching up to them). The offense, on the other hand, was off-kilter and inconsistent all game long. Even Jeff Feagles was terrible. Here’s what we didn’t like:

Eli Manning – he threw three interceptions, only completed about half his passes and looked rattled and confused by Arizona’s defense the whole game. And what’s with all the delay of game penalties? He spent most of his time at the line of scrimmage shaking off Jorge Posada. The receivers didn’t help …

It was a brutal week for the New York football teams, as the Giants got killed and the Jets fell to lowly Buffalo and lost Kris Jenkins for the rest of the season. Even the hockey teams mixed in some debacles with a few wins. And something bad probably happened to the Mets even though their season is long over.

But even after last night’s loss, the Yankees are sitting pretty, with a 3-2 lead in the series and heading back home. With a budget as high as our country’s deficit, the Yanks had two options this offseason: Use their money to cure the U.S. economy or buy a whole bunch of free agents. They chose the latter, and it’s working out just fine (well, for them). Unfortunately, the one aspect of the playoffs that has stood out the most is the atrocious umpiring. The horrible umpiring in this year’s postseason is unprecedented, but there are things out there that are actually worse, if you can believe it. …

In the midst of the Rangers’ seven-game winning streak, coach John Tortorella stated, “We’re teetering on going the wrong way here.” And man was he right. The Rangers did more than teeter against San Jose – they plummeted, crashed and burned. Their poor play finally caught up with them. They can come out on the winning side against a team like Toronto while being outplayed, but not against an upper-echelon team like the Sharks. As the third period went on, I thought I was reliving the Giants-Saints game. How did Drew Brees end up with a hat trick?
The Rangers are taking way too many penalties. In the first nine games of the year, they’ve been shorthanded a whopping 49 times, which is third worst in the league. The good news is that their penalty killing is again one of the best in the league. But it’s hard to control the game and score goals when player after player is marching off to the penalty box. …

Sometimes great teams and great people have bad days. Not everything goes as intended. Evel Knievel didn’t make it to the other side of the Snake River Canyon. The Summer of George didn’t go off as planned. You launch your balloon-like contraption in your backyard, forcing your six-year-old son to hide in the crawl space of your garage while alerting the authorities that he’s trapped inside your homemade UFO as it soars across Colorado and the next thing you know you’re being arrested. Even the division-winning 2008 Giants lost to the Cleveland Browns, and the Super Bowl-winning 2007 Giants gave up 80 points in their first two games of the season. The 2009 Giants probably aren’t as good as they looked beating Oakland, 44-7, and they’re most likely not as bad as they looked yesterday, losing to New Orleans, 48-27. Should we just chalk it all up to a bad day and move on?

In honor of his homecoming and as a tribute to his father’s …

Now that the Great Balloon Hoax of Aught-Nine is over, we can concentrate on sports again (CC Sabathia’s uniform is so big and baggy, it could probably be filled with helium and flown across the country, too). This past week in New York sports, the Yankees swept the Twins and now have to take on those pesky, team-of-destiny Angels, the Giants killed the Raiders to stay undefeated, the Jets suffered their second consecutive loss, the Rangers kept on winning, the Devils heated up, but the poor Islanders still couldn’t manage to notch their first victory of the year. The most bizarre moment of the week, though, was the Mickey Rourke sighting on the Giants sideline. And Kevin Bacon showed up at the Garden for the Knicks preseason home opener. Is the cast of Diner making the rounds of the local sports teams to commemorate the 27th anniversary of the movie?

Besides being at the Knicks game, Bacon could also be seen hiding in the Yankees dugout on Friday because, unbeknownst to A. J. Burnett, that was Shrevie’s wife, donned in curly …

The season is still very early, but it looks like the Rangers have found themselves a legitimate first line. Marian Gaborik, Brandon Dubinsky and Vinny Prospal fit together like other great trios of the past – the Marx Brothers, the Three Stooges, the Mod Squad, Richie, Ralph and Potsie, Cream and, of course, Charlie’s Angels (well, maybe not them – or any of the others come to think of it).

Gaborik is the first top-talent game-changer the Rangers have had since the days of Jaromir Jagr (seems like a long time ago now, doesn’t it?). But Jagr was finicky and quirky, and had trouble fitting with other linemates (except Michael Nylander). Gaborik, Dubinsky and Prospal have clicked since game one. And they’re producing on a nightly basis. Gaborik is all he was cracked up to be (I’m crossing my fingers that he doesn’t get injured as I write this), netting five goals to go along with four assists in six games. He has a point in every game, …

Yesterday’s Giants game can easily be summed up in four words: Giants good, Raiders bad. Things went exactly as the Giants hoped for. They ran out to a 28-0 lead, with Eli Manning showing no signs of an injured foot. With garbage time starting in the second quarter, the Giants were able to give Manning the rest of the day off, and have David Carr take over from there. Big Blue dominated every aspect of the game, putting up 483 total yards to Oakland’s 124, six sacks to zero and 36:04 to 23:56 in time of possession.

Let’s not waste our time analyzing a blowout, though. Instead, let’s concentrate on the most interesting event of yesterday afternoon: The fact that Mickey Rourke was watching the game from the Giants sideline. What the heck was he doing there? How did he slip by security? I’m just spitballing here, but here are a few reasons I came up with for his appearance mingling with Big Blue:

He came by to personally …

The Giants kept on rolling this week, the Jets lost to a good Saints team (but traded for troublemaker Braylon Edwards), hockey season has started, with mixed results for the three local teams, the Mets held a day-long press conference on Monday to announce the firing of two coaches, and the $200-million juggernaut that is the Yankees steamrolled over the Twins in the opening game of their playoff series. Here are some fun facts about the Yanks and Twins:

CC Sabathia eats more food in one year than the farmers of Minnesota produce combined.

Brett Favre was warming up in the Twins bullpen in the seventh inning of Wednesday’s game.

George Steinbrenner gave an inspired speech to the team down in Tampa after the Yankees’ final regular season game. It was short, yet fiery: “Where the hell is my damn calzone!”

After defeating the Tigers in their dramatic one-game showdown on Tuesday, the Twins immediately called Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra and Keith Hernandez to find out the most effective way to destroy a plane on a flight to New …