Bronx, N.Y., July 28, 2005 — Although the word “hot” could be used for part of Thursday afternoon’s baseball battle in the Bronx, the weather and atmosphere could hardly have been more different from the series opener vs. the Minnesota Twins Tuesday night. The Yanks came away with a dominating Randy Johnson performance and a 4-0 victory two days ago. They cashed in their second win of the series 6-3 behind the surprisingly effective Aaron Small Thursday afternoon.
Reopening the ballpark Tuesday after 16 days of relative inactivity two days ago, Stadium personnel had to deal with a huge, late-arriving crowd with infrastructure that was challenged by the gritty weather and the hot and steamy conditions. But the Big Unit took matters into his own (sizeable) hands, taming the visiting Twins on two hits and 11 strike outs, and the crowd left sweaty but happy after a 4-0 win.
The Thursday experience was something else again. At 6’5″, emergency spot starter Aaron Small is not “small” of stature. But unlike 6’10” Randy Johnson, he pitched a small, and surprisingly effective, game. The Unit pounded hitters into submission, and had them flailing when he went off-speed. Small threw soft darts, and he found bats with more than two of every three of his pitches. Johnson had hitters swinging and missing 20 and 16 times, respectively, in his two 11-strike-out 2005 starts. Spot starter Small got the “swish” of bat swinging three times in the first six frames.
But if consistency is the hallmark of a well-planned and carried-out performance, Aaron was Randy’s match. He was the same pitcher every inning, or at least until he tired and his pitch count rose a little in the seventh, his last inning. He set the bar in the first: two grounders and a liner to left on nine pitches. He averaged three pitches per batter then, and maintained the number so well that after six frames, he had faced 23 Twins batters, and had thrown but 66 pitches (three under the total of 69 the 3-per-batter ratio would have rendered). The lowball number was made possible by the inning that proves the point.
Small allowed four hits in a five-hitter span in the top of the second, giving back two runs of the 3-0 lead Gary Sheffield had forged with a 1-2, no-out, three-run tracer inside the left field foul pole in the home first. Right fielder Jacque Jones got the Twins’ rally started with a one-out bunt toward third that was a hit the second the ball settled softly in the short grass 15 feet from the plate. First baseman Morneau flied to left for the second out, but Michael Cuddyer, Mike Redmond, and Luis Rodriguez singled in succession, with two scoring on the latter hit, even though the Yanks closed the frame by nailing Redmond at third on a 9-3-2-5. Redmond’s hit was a swinging bunt, but none of the four were well struck, and when the dust cleared, Small had survived the outburst by using just 16 tosses (and a little help from his teammates) in facing six hitters.
It has become a cliche that fielders are more prone to be on their games when their pitchers waste no time and throw strikes, and today’s game could have been used as a training film in that respect. Although the Twins had not hit Small hard in the second, they did in a six-batter stretch spanning the fourth and fifth that saw them plate the tying run, and threaten for more. Torii Hunter singled up the middle leading off the fourth, and stole second base on a 1-1 pitch to Jones, who then drove him in with a hustling double to left center. After a fly to right and a bouncer to the box, Captain Marvel, Derek Jeter pulled off his “galaxy” play, soaring toward third after a scoop of Redmond’s grounder in the hole, wheeling mid-air, and firing a dart to Jason Giambi’s glove at first to preserve the 3-3 tie.
Minnesota infielder Luis Rodriguez led off the fifth with a high drive to right that pinned rightfielder Bubba Crosby to the wall with his glove stretched high above his head. Then Shannon Stewart put in a bid for a base hit with a short looping liner to left center, but Bernie Williams seemed to use kid legs in negotiating all the grass in between before making a diving catch. I’m told that TV replays showed he trapped the ball. It’s a small matter to me. Bernie has shown he can still range back to the deepest parts of ballparks and run under majestic drives. If anything (aside from an arm) has been missing from his defensive game, it’s been the ability to come in and dive like that.
The Yanks retook the lead in the fifth’s second half, when Jones turned the wrong way on the amazing Robinson Cano’s (3-for-5, two runs scored, two rbi’s) liner to right and the rookie had a double. Gary Sheffield took Joe Mays’s 2-1 pitch up the middle for a single and his fourth rbi. It was 4-3, Yanks. Many in the crowd relaxed after Cano drove in Posada and Williams (on via back-to-back, one-out singles) in the home sixth for the 6-3 lead that reflected the game’s final score. But we needn’t have worried. Small walked none; in fact, he had just one three-ball count. He allowed six hits and three runs this day, all of the hits and the runs coming in the second and the fourth. Read between those lines: He threw five 1-2-3 innings! His stuff featured a smattering of not very fast fastballs intermixed with soft curves, sliders and change ups, but the Twins rarely struck the ball hard.
And the day? It was hard to believe that we were huddled on the same planet a mere 40 hours after the Tuesday steambath. There was enough cloud cover that the often-present sun rarely roasted oiled skin for more than a few minutes. There was a gentle breeze, the game was crisp and quick, and the crowd was alive with excitement that had been stoked by Sheffield’s early thunder. Spring is all about color, but in Yankee Stadium, midweek summer daygames attract the best mix, what with little league teams, school groups, and kids’ clubs, often similarly attired in bright hues that make of the Stadium crowd a dazzling patchwork. There was a group at least 300 strong attired in bright yellow in the right field tier, just on the fair side of the foul pole, with smaller groups behind them in orange, burgundy, grey, goldenrod, and chrome yellow. The left field bleachers diplayed lots of yellow around the edges with a group attired in blue in the middle. Oranges and reds dominated in the left field corner, with different shades of green patches closer to the bases. A teal group sat in section 23, with reds to their right and lime green on their left. There were bluer teals, and tealer blues, dotting the high-voiced, dancing young throngs filling the Cathedral to its highest stretches.
Tom Gordon replaced Small after seven and pitched around a single in the eighth despite falling to 3-0 counts on two batters. Then Mariano “Game Over” Rivera closed it one-two-three on nine pitches, very Small-like in his economy. But before the rock-solid back of the Yankee pen closed it, Mr. Small had one more big moment. Hitting bats all afternoon, the lanky righty had only gone to a two-strike count eight times by the time Michael Cuddyer batted with one down in the seventh. The count was 2-2 after four tosses, and Small broke off a soft curve diving low and outside; the Twins’ third sacker swung and missed. I would have sworn the “K” counter could have taken this day off, but Small actually managed a swinging strike out.
It was six months ago to the day that Small was signed by the Yanks to a free agent contract. Who thought he’d start — and win — a big game in the Bronx in late July back then? As we’ve said, Aaron Small is actually quite tall. But he pitched “small” this day, and the Yankees got a “big” win against a viable playoff rival. It was this day back in 1588 that the Spanish launched their Armada of huge ocean-going warships to do battle with the British, only to learn that bigger is not always better. And on July 28, 1951, Walt Disney released the animated film classic, Alice in Wonderland. Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane summed up one dilemma Alice faced during her “Adventures” in the song White Rabbit this way:
- One pill makes you larger,
And one pill makes you small.
Aaron Small took the small pill this day.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!