Bronx, N.Y., July 22, 2004 — When Mel Stottlemyre, John Flahery and Orlando Hernandez were all satisfied with the starting pitcher and catcher pregame warmups in deep left field before Thursday afternoon’s 1:00 pm tilt with the Blue Jays, Flaherty sprinted across the outfield to the dugout, with Mel and el duque opting to take the slow stroll back in the hot, steamy air. But after 10 or so steps, The Duke wheeled and gestured to someone in the pen, trotting back to the wall as he did. Mr. Hernandez, it appeared, had decided he would feel more comfortable taking this walk with a baseball in his hands.

After Thursday’s astounding double performance by returned Yankee righty el duque and ex-Bomber lefty Ted Lilly, Yankee fans can only wish that whatever psychological tic has The Duke so attached to the cowhide isn’t cured anytime soon. He and Lilly battled each other tooth and nail, and their numbers through seven attest to the similarity of their grit, their pitching arsenals, and the masterful way each wielded them to try to win for his team.

But while Lilly has been the last-place Jays’ best pitcher most of the year, The Duke hadn’t pitched in the bigs for 20 months until going 2-0 in the last two weeks, and his day could hardly have gotten off to a worse start. Building arm strength while recovering from arm surgery, Hernandez had made it through five innings twice, and maintaining a low pitch count in the hot sun was key to trying to extend his outing a bit further.

But after taking a 1:11 first-pitch strike, Toronto left fielder Reed Johnson fouled four of the The Duke’s next five pitches before singling past short. When DH Frank Catalanotto popped a weak fly into short center at 0-1, the Jays were in business with runners on the corners and no one out. Hernandez then rallied gamely, whiffing both Vernon Wells and Carlos Delgado in succession, but the effort cost him 13 pitches, and when el duque pegged Eric Hinske out at first after a 40-foot dribbler, he strode to the dugout having thrown 29 pitches.

The Yanks looked to pressure Lilly in the same manner once center fielder Bernie Williams started the bottom half with a six-pitch walk, a feat he duplicated with two down in the third. So even though the New Yorkers failed to hit a ball both fair and hard, Lilly had been extended to 54 tosses through three, just six less than The Duke. But by then the pattern had been set. These guys were dealing. Both guys mix their pitches well, but Lilly can get it up there faster, and more often. But el duque creates pitches on the fly, and the Jays were flailing and missing often. Both hurlers can also fool batters by slipping in a very slow toss now and then, but while The Duke can’t match Ted for heat, Lilly’s floater, though very good, pales next to Hernandez’s “eephus” pitch.

The Yanks finally scratched a single when Sierra blooped one over the infield in the fourth after fighting off one of Lilly’s slow deliveries, seemingly hanging suspended with his bat cocked as he waited for the ball to float in. But Lilly retired 11 of 12 until Matsui singled with two down in the seventh. He walked only two, struck out six, and exited having allowed three singles on 104 pitches once Clark followed with a single of his own. The Jays brought in veteran righty Terry Adams to face Flaherty with two on and two down. Torre countered with Posada, who hit the ball hard four times Wednesday night, but the scoreless tie continued when Jorge rolled out to first on a 3-1 pitch.

The Duke was cooking as well. After 60 pitches through three, he pitched four more frames on 47 tosses even though he was striking out Jays every inning, finishing with 10, nine of them swinging. After the first inning war, he gave up a walk to Zaun in the second, and singles to Hinske and Gomez in the fourth and fifth, respectively. The shame of this day is that neither starter won, though either one of them taking the loss would have been unthinkable as well. They used different tools to accomplish the same goal, but their pitching numbers are uncannily alike.

Both pitched to 25 guys, with Lilly throwing 14 first-pitch strikes and The Duke 13. Once el duque ended his day and the seventh inning with a strike out of Rios, he had thrown three more pitches than Ted (107), with his 70-37 strikes-balls ratio nearly duplicating Lilly’s 68-36. Both allowed five base runners; both received 17 called strikes from home plate umpire Tim Welke. The Blue Jays’ lefty surrendered three hard-hit balls (Sheffield’s liner to short in the fourth; Williams to deep left in the sixth, and A-rod’s shot toward the left field line that was corraled on a good play by Johnson to start the seventh) before the back-to-back singles that ended his day. After Johnson’s single to start the game, Jays drove two duque pitches in the fourth, the single to right by Hinske, and a Zaun liner to left. The biggest numbers discrepancy between the two — Orlando’s 10 strike outs to Ted’s six — reveals one other discrepancy. Bombers swung at and missed Lilly pitches 13 times; the flailing Jays came up empty on 21 by Hernandez.

The games went to the pens in the eighth (advantage Yankees) but young righty Vinnie Chulk picked up where Lilly had left off. On the Yankee side, Tom Gordon retired three in a row in the eighth, and Chulk did the same, ending with a strike out of Miguel Cairo. Rivera, in for the ninth, got Catalanotto and Wells on weak grounders, then whiffed Hinske after a Carlos Delgado single. The crowd buzzed as the Yanks brought Sheffield, Rodriguez, and Sierra up in the ninth, all capable of finishing the game on one swing. But Shef and A-Rod struck out swinging on 12 pitches. Sierra took two balls around a called strike, then reverse-tomahawked a high drive just to the right of dead center. Two hours, 39 minutes and 265 pitches after this gripping contest began, it was over in a flash.

Though hot and steamy all afternoon, the Stadium was fun this day, as adults escorted huge bands of kids from camps, Little Leagues, and local organizations who filled the air with their enthusiastic cheers and dazzled the eyes with their rainbow-colored shirts. Each youth under 14 received a Modell’s pennant pillow, and not a few of the older fans wished from time to time that they too had a head rest as the heat beat down on the crowd, sometimes accompanied by a welcome breeze, but sometimes not. Out-of-town scores posted all over the increasingly fan-friendly ballpark showed the Red Sox losing the first of two to the Orioles virtually all day. The young crowd and their guardians tried to mount a sixth inning wave, but gave it up in the heat, much to my relief.

The day belonged to Lilly and Hernandez, however, and although all in the crowd gave the superb Lilly his due (with many imagining him in a return to Pinstriped attire), the ageless Duke brought the biggest smiles. Noted author Ernest Hemingway, who was a huge baseball fan, would have been 105 Wednesday. His Pulitzer Prize-winning short novel The Old Man and the Sea tells the tale of an old fisherman (a Joe DiMaggio admirer, by the way) who is dragged around the sea in his small craft by a huge fish (let’s not say marlin, OK?) he has caught. El duque is not nearly as old as the novel’s hero, but he too is being dragged around by something that drives him to succeed. How lucky for Yankee fans that Orlando’s passion is for throwing a baseball rather than catching a fish.

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!