Bronx, N.Y., July 4, 2005 — I knew (or should have known) that the Yanks were in for a good day when Melvin Mora’s 0-2 tracer to right center with one out in the first caromed so high off the top of the fence that it could just have easily trickled or bounced over for a home run as take the bounce back it did. As it was, it was a double and spot starter Tanyon Sturtze did well in pitching around it. His Orioles counterpart Bruce Chen, on the other hand, did nothing well; two strike outs and a pickoff during the four outs he lasted hardly squared things on his line.

Gary Sheffield followed a Derek Jeter single and Robinson Cano walk with a three-run bomb to left and the Yanks were on their way in the first. Mora made a nifty pick on A-Rod’s bid for a double down left, and Bernie Williams took a third strike before Hideki Matsui lofted a homer off the right field Tier facade and it was 4-0. Jason Giambi lifted it to 5-0 with a leadoff second-inning jack to right. When Cano delivered Jeter with a liner into the right field corner, Chen hit the showers.

But Mora’s near miss wasn’t the only out-of-the-ordinary play, and I should have realized something was off when the first three fouls hit into the first-base side Tier boxes caromed helplessly to the boxes below. Fans can be a clumsy lot, but the abandon with which hurl they themselves toward these prizes rarely would allow for an unholy trio of such unwelcome breaches of upper deck etiqutte.

And the game turned, just as the foul balls fell out of reach. The unthinkable happened: Spot starter Sturtze, who has relieved all year, ran out of gas after 10 outs. The crowd mumured when Joe Torre sat as he walked the bases loaded in the fourth; Sturtze allowed runs number two and three on the only hit of the three-run inning and his second and third walk. The Yankee skipper knew that he had a short pen, that it was populated more by inexperience than by skill. How many outs could they manage?

Not enough to hold what had become a two-run lead at 6-4, it turned out. The first half hour of this game was a fan fest; the next two and a half hours were excruciating baseball. Scott Proctor walked in run number four before getting us out of the horrible 45-pitch fourth. A John Gibbons homer he allowed in the sixth closed the gap in the game’s score to one.

Next came new lefty Wayne Franklin, making his major league debut. He whiffed Brian Roberts with the tying run on second to close the sixth, but he couldn’t close the deal in the seventh, giving way to Jason Anderson with two on and two out. Anderson would get the win because he was actually OK, after surrendering a Matos double on an 0-2 pitch that gave the O’s a two-run lead. Anderson walked two after the double and another in the eighth, but he got the game to Mo, good enough as it turned out.

But while the back end of the Yankee pen was adequate, that of Lee Mazzilli’s Orioles was superb. Ex-Yankee Todd Williams, lefty Tim Byrdak, and righty Jim Ray shut the Yanks down through the seventh, the key ingredient in the Baltimore comeback. More perhaps was expected of lefties Steve Kline and B.J. Ryan, but it wasn’t delivered.

Jason Giambi’s second-inning home run was his 100th as a Yankee; he did it the same day his idol Mickey Mantle hit his 300th in 1960. Jason led off the pivotal home eighth missing the right field foul pole (I swear it ticked it) by an inch on a 1-2 pitch, but he turned on another and lined it over the short porch, and the Yanks were behind just 8-7. Ruben Sierra, hitting for Womack, followed with a single, and Ryan replaced Kline. Jeter singled to right, and Robinson Cano added “superb sacrifice bunt” to the achievements column on his resume. Walks to Sheffield (intentional) and A-Rod (decidely not) tied matters, and the 0-for-4 (with two strike outs) Bernie Williams came to the plate.

Williams fouled a pitch, took a ball, took a strike. Ryan’s fourth pitch fooled him, but Bernie got under it and hit a flair behind first. Set up for the dp in the middle but in at the corners, the Baltimore defense was breached. Bernie’s single delivered two. Miguel Tejada rushed in on Matsui’s ensuing roller and flubbed it, Ryan walked Posada and hit Giambi, and a single sent him to the showers and the final score to 13-8.

Mariano Rivera come on to close the O’s on two strike outs and a fly. Even with Rivera’s quick work the game lasted 4:12. On this day in baseball history, the Red Sox went 20 innings against the A’s in the second of two in 1905; Herb Pennock outlasted Lefty Grove and the A’s 1-0 in 15 frames on July 4, 1925. Even money says neither game took longer. The fans got better at catching fouls and the day was perfect. One thing you won’t see every day, two Yankees sliding into second on the same play, both coming from first. (The overeager Bubba Crosby, after he delivered the last hit and run, met Jason Giambi, Bubba was out.)

We have already quoted a few big happenings in baseball history on July 4, Independence Day. This was, of course, Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s 75th birthday, the day Lou Gehrig was “the luckiest man” in 1939, that Dave Righetti no-hit the Red Sox in ’83. Six years before that, the rock group Blondie replaced Gary Valentine with bassist Nigel Harrison on this day in 1977. A Blondie/Yankee fan take on this game in the seventh might have gone something like this:

Once we had a game and it was a gas
Soon turned out to be a pain in the a__

It was tough hanging on after a blown six-run lead earned with lightning Yankee action. They let Baltimore back in with a slew of walks. But the Orioles returned the favor. After the eight inning, we were singing a different tune.

One Way or Another

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!