Bronx, N.Y., September 11, 2005 — The Yankees and Red Sox spent the first two games of this crucial September series in the Bronx apparently trying to make the point that neither team is set up to coast in October. David Wells made mistakes in the zone Friday night and his fieldmates made four errors behind him in an 8-4 Yankee win. Then the Yankees followed three ineffective frames by August pickup Shawn Chacon by throwing away the game in a six-run fourth inning Saturday afternoon.
No such nonsense was allowed in Sunday’s classic, as dueling starters Tim Wakefield and Randy Johnson took charge after a bumpy first inning, and the offenses never were able to wrest it away. The Red Sox pushed Johnson to 18 first-inning pitches around a Johnny Damon strike out and a Kevin Youkilis walk, although Alex Rodriguez could have saved Randy a few throws had he not stumbled and missed Damon’s foul pop near the camera box before the lefty DH’s whiff. Starting with a dominating, two-strike-out, 11-pitch second, Johnson coasted through the next six innings while allowing just two more baserunners. When Joe Torre surprised the whole ballpark by turning the game over to Tom Gordon to start the eighth, Johnson had faced just two more Sox than the seven-inning minimum of 21 batters. In that first inning, he retired two Boston players on outfield flies, but just one more Boston-struck ball would pass the infield until Youkilis lined out to center in the seventh.
Tim Wakefield’s day was even more extreme. He was every bit the Yankee puzzle he always is early and late, but starting with his one-out strike out of DH Jorge Posada in the second, he dominated Yankee hitters like few I have ever seen. The Yankee first started well, as Derek Jeter worked the count full before lining to Kevin Millar in right center just short of the warning track. Wakefield may have gotten a piece of Robinson Cano’s hard hopper up the middle. It had base hit written all over it until Edgar Renteria flagged it down behind second and pegged the rookie second sacker out. And then in what would prove to be the pivotal at bat of the day, Wakefield got strike calls from home plate ump Derryl Cousins to put Jason Giambi in a 1-2 hole. Giambi then fouled one at the plate, and lifted a fly down the first-base line that fell about four rows foul 20 or 30 feet short of the pole. Undeterred, Wakefield floated another knuckler, and the Yankee first sacker straightened it out, sending it 10 or so feet over the fence and the same distance fair for a 1-0 Yankee lead.
Wakefield couldn’t have thrown more than a few non-knucklers on the day, and when homeplate ump Cousins called a strike on a 1-1 pitch to A-Rod that was so high that it ticked off the top of Doug Mirabelli’s outstretched catcher’s mitt, the message was clear: This was not a day to take pitches. Alex bounced back to the box, Hideki Matsui started the second with a bouncer to second, and then Posada’s whiff was the first of 12 the Boston righty got against the next 17 batters. Two of those guys got hits, one walked, and two grounded out. Every other one struck out, eight swinging and four taking. Wakefield’s 77 strikes among his 113 pitches was very high for the knuckleball, and he got the Bombers to swing and miss 17 times, all during that multi-K stretch. After a one-out triple by right fielder Bubba Crosby in the third, Cousins called a high, late-breaking inside flutterball strike three to Derek Jeter to defuse the Yanks’ only good scoring chance after the early Giambi thunder. True, Robinson Cano doubled with one down in the seventh, but it was the only blip in what would have been seven strike outs in a row, so you can imagine that Robby never budged from second base.
The six whiffs against New York around the double pushed Wakefield’s pitch count to 97, and he would not get another called or swinging strike in his last two innings. All 11 strikes he threw were hit, six of them fair for routine outs, although Posada, Williams, Crosby, and Jeter all stroked fairly hard liners. The cracks were unlike anything the crowd had heard since the first inning. Wakefield struck out every Yankee but Hideki Matsui (not counting defensive replacement at first Andy Phillips) once, and got Jeter, Giambi, Williams, and Flaherty twice apiece.
Meawhile, pounding the intermittent 96-mph fastball to keep the Sox honest, Johnson was the more consistent pitcher, mesmerizing the Sox with his slider all day. The lanky Yankee southpaw spread his eight strike outs throughout his game, notching at least one in every inning but the fourth. He allowed just the two walks and one single over seven, and the one-base hit first baseman Youkilis flared into short center leading off the fourth was removed on a double play on Manny Ramirez’s bouncer to short. The Unit had no chance to strike anyone out that frame because catcher John Flaherty made the finest Yankee defensive play of the day in a running, twisting snatch of Kevin Millar’s foul pop just off the first-base dugout rail.
But although Johnson managed an eight-pitch inning and two with just 11 tosses, and the fact that he retired the Sox through seven with just the one soft hit in 100 pitches, the Yankee braintrust went to the pen. Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera got the job done, but while Johnson faced just two over the minimum over seven, the Sox put two runners on in the eighth and two in the ninth, with Ramirez down at third just 90 feet away after Kevin Millar singled to right once Mo walked Manny with two down in the ninth. Out of baseball for half the year after his 2004 stint with New York, John Olerud has been hitting at a .350 clip in platoon work in Boston since he was signed there, and he pinch-hit for Alex Cora (who took over at second after Tony Graffanino was hit for in the eighth) to close the game. Rivera missed with two, got a swinging strike, then a foul, then retired Olerud swinging on 94-mph heat. A mere two hours and 29 minutes after this classic began, it was over, won 1-0 by the Yanks on the run they posted in the very first inning.
Although my favorite Yankee September 11 highlight comes from the 1988 season when Claudell Washington sent a smattering of fans home happy with a two-run, 18th-inning home run in a successful six-hour war of attrition 5-4 over the Tigers, that team finished fifth out of seven in the AL East, and few fans noticed; fewer still remember. More in keeping with the type of game played today perhaps, was the 1923 battle with Boston, where Howard Emke of the Red Sox retired 27 Yanks in a row after a questionable leadoff hit by a New Yorker. On the one hand, the Sox took that game 3-0, but on the other that was the first year the Yanks copped the Ring.
That is perhaps a better highlight on a day when Randy Johnson turned in the kind of late-season start he was brought to New York to pitch, and in which Mr. Wakefield dazzled the Bombers with his strike out pitch. But on the other side of the ball, how about the historical milestone that Jason Giambi equalled this day? When Paul O’Neill stroked a first-inning home run in a win over the Orioles in 2001, he became just the second Yankee (after Phil Rizzuto in 1941) to go yard in the first frame of a 1-0 Yankee win. After this crucial victory in the Bronx, one that keeps the Yankee postseason hopes alive, Giambi joins Phil and Paul in a rare home-run record on a team that has hit more of them than anyone.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!