Meanwhile, the NY Times sees Zimmer's departure as the beginning of a possible exodus:

Don Zimmer, the Yankees' bench coach, got the jump on George Steinbrenner yesterday by vowing never to return to Yankee Stadium because of the way he said Steinbrenner, the team's principal owner, had treated him. Steinbrenner issued a statement that was essentially a call to arms for the front office.

....[Brad] Penny won Games 1 and 5 despite allowing 15 hits in 12 1/3 innings. The Yankees went 2 for 14 off him with runners in scoring position. For the series, they were 7 for 50 in that situation.

"In playoff baseball, there's always playoff pitching," said the Yankees' hitting coach, Rick Down. "You can't put the blame on anything or anyone. It isn't like we stopped working or stopped preparing or did things we hadn't done during the course of the season. It just didn't work out, simple as that."

The onus for the failure will probably fall on Down, who got his job after the Yankees' last offensive slumber in the World Series. Down replaced Gary Denbo after the Yankees scored only 14 runs in their seven-game loss to Arizona in 2001.

And, after every baseball fan on the planet and their cousin shrieked in horror when Grady Little left Pedro in when he was clearly OUT OF GAS and cost his team a World Series birth, he has been shown the door:

The Boston Red Sox said today that they would not extend the contract of Manager Grady Little, who was let go despite having guided the team to 95 regular-season victories and a berth in the American League Championship Series.

The team's president, Larry Lucchino, and General Manger Theo Epstein said the decision was not based on Little's ill-fated decision to leave Pedro Martínez on the mound during the eighth inning of Game 7 of the championship series against the Yankees. [NY Times]