Bronx, N.Y., Apr. 8, 2003 — “Tell it like it is!” “If you want a job done right, do it yourself.” Time is money.” And the one particularly germaine to this column, “Keep your eye on the ball.” These are just a few of the cliches and platitudes that resonate here and you know that those who coined them were attempting to describe our American way of life. Hideki Matsui would be wise to study them if he wants to succeed here in this foreign country in which he has decided to ply his trade.
Just as trite — and true — a baseball expression, at least in my crowd, are the words that Sue’s father first uttered to us years ago at a ballgame. And Sue spoke them again today when A.J. Pierzynski waved four fingers at Joe Mays in the bottom of the fifth, with Bernie Williams coming up. The free-running Nick Johnson had just raced to third on Jason Giambi’s one-out sharp single to left center, and left fielder Jacque Jones’s misthrow (in both that it sailed beyond third, and also that it was the wrong play to start with) allowed Jason to coast into second. The Twins knew right away that they wanted no part of Bernie Williams in that situation.
Initially, the crowd was exasperated with the Twins’ decision to issue Bernie the free pass, but Sue’s only reaction was, “Well, Mr. Matsui had better make them pay!” Gradually the 33,000 hearty souls (and why, exactly, on this Opener in the Bronx did they decide to broadcast the turnstile count rather than the tickets sold number when announcing the crowd?) warmed to the implications of the Twins’ decision, and the tension and excitement level in the Bronx rose exponentially with each pitch.
Joe Mays started Hideki out with an outside fastball. “Strike one,” called Gary Cederstrom. (Gary seems to like these early April Bronx fests too, as he was behind the plate four years ago for the ’99 opener, and officiated at second base in the 2001 tilt.) Hideki took a ball and fouled off the third pitch defensively. He had grounded out weakly in the second and walked in the fourth to that point, and when he took the next two for balls, the few in the crowd who were still not standing sprung to their feet and turned towards home plate like they were green plants and Matsui — no, make that Godzilla — was the life-giving sun.
Surely you’ve heard about the sixth pitch of the at bat by now. The stadium crowd held their collective breath once Hideki swung and struck the ball, and the liner rose majestically toward right center. Neither a Giambi-like moonshot, nor a Soriano line drive bullet, the ball’s trajectory quickly dispelled any doubt among the throng, many of whom felt that what they were seeing was too good to be true. A roar went up, people jumped and hugged, and the Scoreboard displayed the characters that spelled the words “Home Run” in two very different languages. Grand Slam! And in his first Yankee Stadium game. The ghosts of legends turned their heads toward “Godzilla” and smiled!
One year ago I stood in the upper deck exhorting the newly Pinstriped Jason Giambi to similar feats, but the two times he came up with men on the corners, he grounded into a run-scoring 1-6-3 in the first and took a third strike in the fourth. He would homer later in the month, but it wasn’t until his 19th home game, on a rainy Friday (actually early Saturday morning) in May that he struck the grand slam that won Jason his way into Yankee fans’ hearts and minds. Hideki, go to the head of the class!
Approaching the Stadium from behind home plate by the big bat, the look of the front gate is quite different. A ground floor has been added in front of the gate to the structure that hangs above and houses the escalators that carry fans to the Main, the Club, the Loge and the Tier. By extending this down to the sidewalk they have supplanted and replaced all the blue ticket booths in front that since 9/11 have served more as places around which fans could form lines and be inspected by security. The lines now all have to wind around the left or right side of the new structure, and I have to think it could add a bit of time to the wait for fans arriving near game time. Once inside, not much has changed, but the walkway and tunnel floors and ceilings have been largely painted white, and the effect is bright, if a little startling.
You’ve heard it was cold, and you have heard right. But it really was a relatively fan-friendly day in the stands today. Bob Sheppard got the festivities rolling at 3:50 by congratulating the grounds crew on the miracle job they did getting the ballpark ready, and the old beauty did look gorgeous. The pregame was dominated by West Point personnel as they provided the Color Guard, the 43 in uniform who unfurled the huge American flag in the outfield, and the Glee Club that rendered the National Anthem at 4:01. The eagle Challenger soared, and then found his perch on the mound, though he stumbled off it briefly, and he actually took a few steps before floating back up to his keeper’s arm, the first time I’ve seen that.
Neither Robert Merrill, the four-jet flyover, nor the Scooter that I had read about showed, but Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra were there and performed the ceremonial first-pitch duites, to starter Posada and backup Flaherty, respectively. The Yankees warming up before the dugout seemed to miss their leader Jeter, but the mayhem slowly evolved into fairly short tosses between Alfonso and Eric Almonte next to the first base line, and Matsui and Mondesi closer to the dugout. At the moment, the following Bernie Williams stat was flashed on the Scoreboard: Today he moved into second place with 10 center field starts in Yankee Stadium Opening Days (Mickey Mantle leads him by three for first).
From the first, pitchers Joe Mays and Andy Pettitte dominated the bats in the cold air, though Johnson, Giambi, Posada, Ventura, and Mondesi hit the ball hard their first time through the lineup. We managed to scratch just one run out of it, largely because of the first of three remarkable plays by Twins second baseman Luis Rivas in the second. Andy, meanwhile, retired the first nine on a mere 30 pitches, as Cristian Guzman’s one-out single in the first was erased on the first of two double plays the Yanks turned.
Robin Ventura gave us a lead on a first pitch homer in the fourth (with Matsui aboard via a walk) once the Twins had tied it, and that would set the stage for Hideki’s next time up. Andy had been tested in the top of the frame while throwing 23 pitches during the game-tying Twins uprising, and he had run out of gas by the time Godzilla had stretched our lead to 7-1. Andy walked the first two batters in the sixth, and it cost him two runs when he surrendered two two-out singles. He handed the ball to Joe, who handed it to Osuna, and although I wasn’t breathing totally freely, Antonio did finally come through with a masterly middle-inning relief stint. He handed Jason Anderson an intact four-run lead to pitch the ninth, and the hard-throwing kid was finally able to erase his first-night two-batters/two-hits memory, and take a 1-2-3 with a strike out to the home team dugout as Frank sang, “New York. New York.”
As I contemplate the best way to put this column to bed, the legend in my after-Chinese dinner fortune cookie reads, “You have the self-control to save the best for last.” And you know, maybe I do. Who knows what would have happened if during the fourth-inning rally the Twins staged they had not only tied the score at one, but had taken the lead? And Torii Hunter and I are here to tell you that they did. Well, they should have anyway.
Left fielders at Yankee Stadium quickly learn that the job does not end with hitting home runs. There is a premium here on, first, not playing so deep that balls routinely dunk in in front of you, but second, not letting them go by to roll to the wall. And Torii’s hard liner into the gap was past the flailing Matsui on its first bounce. It caromed high and hard off the left field tundra but the desperate Godzilla lunged up and back with his glove and grabbed the furious ricochet. Cory Koskie lumbering around second was forced to pull up and stop at third and the tie was preserved. Ventura, two for four on the day and making another early claim to the right field Yankee Stadium porch, handled the ensuing one-out bouncer professionally, as he looped a throw to Jorge to nail his third base counterpart at the plate. I hope Matsui hits many long balls into the Yankee Stadium right field seats. And I believe that he will. But I know he won’t make many better plays in left field.
Waiting for Sue in the tunnel afterward I saw a man walk by who had apparently made a wager on the game’s outcome, as he exclaimed, “All that money! Thank God for that grand slam.”
“No no,” I replied, “Thank Godzilla.”
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!