Fans looking forward from the 2018 season might be surprised to see who the offensive star of the Yanks’s Game 1 2019 ALDS 10-4 victory on October 4 over visiting Minnesota was, but not anyone looking back from 2020. Playing first base, DJ LeMahieu went 3-for-4, scored two times, and drove in four runs. Starter James Paxton was lifted once the Twins tied the game 3-3 in the fifth, but rallies of two, two, then three runs in the next three frames put this one away. Oddly, perhaps, usual starter JA Happ pitched a clean ninth inning around a walk to close it. Continue reading →
Righty Luis Severino was powerful through four innings in a 7-2 Wild Card victory over visiting Oakland on October 3, 2018, but he was wild, issuing five walks in that time. Liam Hendriks, serving as an Opener, allowed two runs on an Aaron Judge home run in the first. The Yankees put the game out of reach on a four-run sixth, built primarily on doubles from Judge, Aaron Hicks, and Luke Voit. Continue reading →
Bucky Dent in Fenway Park says it all. The Yanks prevailed in the one-game playoff for the 1978 AL Pennant, 5-4 on October 2. Ron Guidry went to 25-3 with the win, besting Mike Torrez. Reggie Jackson homered as well, and Goose Gossage got the save when Graig Nettles caught Carl Yastrzemski‘s popup. Continue reading →
It sounds memorable enough to simply call it the 240th home run of the Yankees’ record-breaking 1961 season. But it was “61 in 61,” and the greatest significance of Roger Maris‘s 61st home run of that season off Boston’s Tracy Stallard on October 1 was that it finally put an end to the Yankee right fielder’s tortured race to surpass Babe Ruth‘s 1927 record. And it was “big” in another way too, the only score in a 1-0 Yankee win. All these many years later, with contested numbers, the number is bigger than ever. Continue reading →
Babe Ruth gets top billing in a September 30 Yankee history column. He stroked legendary home run no. 60 off Tom Zachary this day in 1927, breaking a 2-2 tie with the Senators and carrying the Yankees to a 4-2 victory. Amazingly, the game also featured the last appearance of early-century pitching phenom Walter Johnson, winner of 417 career games. Johnson pinch-hit for Zachary and flied out to Ruth. Continue reading →
The Yankees jumped all over 2020 AL Cy Young Award winner Shane Bieber in the opener of the teams’ three-game postseason Series, 12-3 on September 29, 2020. Although the most impressive thing about the Yankee offense was the tack-on runs (they scored in six of nine frames), Aaron Judge set the tone with a two-run bomb with no outs in the top of the first. Gleyber Torres, Brett Gardner, and Giancarlo Stanton also went yard, and Gerrit Cole cashed in the win while giving up just an rbi double, and a solo homer to Josh Naylor. Continue reading →
Brian Mitchell and Boston’s Clay Buccholz put up zeroes through seven innings in a September 28, 2016, battle in Yankee Stadium, but things looked bleak when the Red Sox plated three in the eighth on an error and Dustin Pedroia and Mookie Betts doubles. Closer Craig Kimbrell came on in the ninth to not only finish the win, but also give the visitors the opportunity to celebrate clinching the AL East title on the Stadium field. But Brett Gardner reached on a single, and Kimbrell walked the next three to force in a run. Once he was replaced by Joe Kelly, things looked bad again when the hard thrower got two quick outs on six pitches. But then in the defining moment of his final year, the retiring Mark Teixeira sent what was left of 35,000 fans dancing and cheering like we had just won the World Series with a grand slam home run to right field, 5-3 Yankees! Continue reading →
Surprisingly, journeyman righty Paul Byrd of the Red Sox delayed the almost relentless Yankee march to the 2009 AL East title for almost six innings in a rain-soaked Yankee Stadium on September 27, 2009, against a game Andy Pettitte who, because he completed six innings, got the win. After Byrd allowed two 2-out singles in the sixth, Hideki Matsui singled in two runs three pitches after a Takashi Saito wild pitch, to give the Bombers a 3-2 lead. Mark Teixeira homered for the final run in the 4-2 win in the eighth, Melky Cabrera went yard earlier, and the Yanks earned the division crown at exactly 5:00 pm New York time. Continue reading →
Although the visiting Marlins got to young Deivi Garcia for three runs in the third on September 26, 2020, the rookie got his third win once the Yankees used Aaron Hicks and Luke Voit home runs in a seven-run sixth inning that carried the home team to an 11-4 victory. Righthander Miguel Yajure, who would be traded to Pittsburgh for Jameson Taillon in the coming offseason, struck out four in the final two innings. Continue reading →
September 25, 2014, put an exclamation point on the career of Hall of Famer-to-be Derek Jeter, Yankee captain and shortstop, who manned that infield position for the last time on that day, his final home game in pinstripes. Derek was honored by ex-teammates Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Gerald “Ice” Williams, Tino Martinez, and Bernie Williams, and manager Joe Torre, in pregame ceremonies. Baltimore threatened to run away with the game on this prized occasion, rocking starter Hiroki Kuroda with back-to-back leadoff home runs from Nick Markakis and Alejandro de Aza to begin the game, but Jeter would not hear of it; his rbi double deep to left off young Kevin Gausman keyed the tying rally in the inning’s bottom half. The game remained tied until the bottom of the seventh when the Yanks scored three, two on a Jeter grounder mishandled at short and one on a sac fly. Though key to the tying rally, and in the middle of the go-ahead one, it was a bit of a letdown that it was on an error and not a hit that Derek knocked in the lead run. Then amazingly, closer David Robertson gave up a two-run and then a singleton home run, to Adam Jones and Steve Pearce, respectively, to tie the game in the ninth. The stuff of legend followed, as Jose Pirela singled to start the bottom half, pinch runner Antoan Richardson was sacrificed to second, and “Derek Jeter, Derek Jeter” singled in Richardson on the next pitch, 6-5 Yankees! Continue reading →
