Bronx, N.Y., June 6, 2006 — Yankee fans were licking their chops as the Tuesday 7:00 pm game time approached. No matter how many times we learn to never assume anything about this crazy game, we keep falling into that trap, building hopes and expectations based on the numbers, on what ballplayers have done in the past.
Having slapped around one of Boston’s twin aces the night before, forcing Manager Terry Francona to fashion six-plus innings out of his pen, the table was set, so to speak, for murder and mayhem, baseball style, in the Bronx. Young righty David Pauley’s only above-AA-level appearance had come last week, and it had not been good. Pinstriped enthusiasts let their guard down, ignoring the fact that Yankee starter Chien-Ming Wang had struggled of late on the one hand, and the longtime tendency of the Bombers to struggle against any new pitcher with which they are unfamiliar on the other.
Whether or not the latter is objectively true or just a wounded fan’s lingering impression, it doesn’t detract one bit from the superb performance Mr. Pauley turned in in front of 55,000 fanatics who spent most of the game’s two hours and 43 minutes on the edge of their seats. Pauley “outgroundered” the Yanks’ best ground-ball pitcher, recording 13 of 20 outs by coaxing the home team to pound balls into the ground while Wang retired just nine of 21 in that manner.
Pauley blew no one away with his 89-mph fastball, but he kept the Yanks off-stride with a run-of-the-mill slider and a change of pace that averaged 83 until he really needed it. Then it floated across at a creeping 76-78. The nine hits the Pinstripers managed Tuesday night fell just short of the record 10 they’ve been posting game after game, but Pauley kept them largely off the board because he allowed one in every inning. It was the one long hit, and the one inning in which he allowed two, that did him in.
The Yanks survived to cash in a scintillating 2-1 victory because Mr. Wang brought his “A” game as well. Chien-Ming battled early, not only allowing five of Boston’s eight hits in the first three frames, but taking 65 pitches to survive the early onslaught. But he was up to every Boston challenge except the 1-0 fastball David Ortiz rocketed into the upper deck in right to give the Sox a 1-0 lead in the third. Wang was helped by two nifty snatches of line drives by Andy Phillips at first base, the first of which he turned into a double play.
Playing right field (and struggling afield this night), Bernie Williams equaled the score with a tracer into the right field bleachers on the first pitch of the home fifth. The Yanks had baserunners every inning, and Boston did the same until the eighth with the exception of a one-two-three fourth when Wang settled down and took control of both the game and his soaring pitch count. Pauley’s strikes/balls ratio (60/37) echoed Wang’s (71/39), and both walked two and struck out two; they each got opposing batters to swing and miss exactly seven times as well. Pauley got a first strike 18 of 29 times, Wang 17 of 28.
After coasting from the fourth through the sixth, Wang survived a hit, a walk, and an error to close the visiting seventh with the score still knotted. Pauley looked to be achieving the same when he got two quick outs in the bottom half. But he allowed a soft Cairo hopper to get under his glove for an infield hit, and ex-Red Sox outfielder Johnny Damon lined a single to left. When Pauley loaded the bases by walking the free-swinging Melky Cabrera on four straight, Francona had little choice. He had to bring in a reliever with the bases jammed and the patient and strike-zone-wired Jason Giambi coming to the plate. Veteran Rudy Seanez missed twice, then survived a 3-1 count on a borderline high offering. But pitch six was off the plate, and the Yankees had their first lead.
Joe Torre responded with his pen’s best, Kyle Farnsworth for the eighth, and Mr. Sandman Mariano Rivera to close. Kyle retired Mark Loretta and struck Ortiz out swinging, and the red-hot Manny Ramirez came to the plate. He blasted a 1-0 pitch toward the bullpens in left center. Damon ran from center, and Cabrera from left, though things looked bleak. Both outfielders came through, Cabrera by making a leaping backhand catch of a drive that would have tied the game, and Damon by proving that he and I are not so very different. His fists-extended celebration of the Cabrera catch eased 50,000 minds, and revealed that Johnny is a bigtime baseball fan as well.
Mariano Rivera retired the Sox on five tosses in an anticlamactic ninth. The crowd cheered as always when his signature tune greeted the grand entrance. Mr. Farnsworth, on the other hand, entered to the strains of the distinctly nonurban “Cotton Eye Joe.” A stadium staple during the years when the Yanks won four rings in five years, the Scoreboard gleefully announced that the dancer flashed on the Diamond Vision screen was the “real” Cotton Eye Joe, the guy who originated the dance in the Baseball Cathedral, the genuine article.
This team has rattled off a series of wins behind a corps of young hitters, including Robinson Cano, Cabrera, and Phillips. They got yet another big outing from second-year starter Wang. And they got a game-saving catch from an outfielder deemed not ready for prime time just last year. Melky proved he’s like the “real” Cotton Eye Joe. He belongs.
He’s the real deal.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!