Bronx, N.Y., September 15, 2002 — It was almost another one of those lost weekends in the Bronx, just when it was the thing you would have least expected. After establishing our claim to the East title against Boston, beating Detroit and wiping out Baltimore in a four-gamer, it seemed our march to the postseason — and to the American League’s best record — was almost assured. The starters went a week’s worth of innings without walking anyone, the pen successfully closed 10 of 10 without Mo, and the offense was doing a pendulum swing back and forth from overwhelming to just enough.
OK, I can be taken to task for overlooking the White Sox who have been playing very well ever since it became clear that there would be no postseason for them — again. And perhaps I was grading us a bit high without taking the level of competition into account, always an unforgivable sin.
The Red Sox have been a .500 team the whole second half, losing too many of the games started by guys not named Pedro or Derek. Pedro only made the trip to the Bronx as a spectator, and Andy Pettitte outpitched Derek Lowe. And Detroit beat a Yankee split squad badly in Lakeland, Florida on a frigid Spring Training evening March 5, but they’ve been in a six-month slump ever since. And Baltimore followed up a home-and-home against us in June, winning each series two games to one, with an impressive and gradual climb to and above .500, only to hit a brick wall in mid-August and lose something like 20 out of 21 until they split with the Red Sox this weekend. But after some pretty mediocre end-of-season baseball the last several seasons, I’ll give myself a pass on feeling good about playing and winning in September.
But then Friday night came in, and never mind that it was Friday the 13th (something I’m burying in the too-creepy-to-deal-with file, along with the 9/11 lottery number in New York being 911). But September 13 was also the 681st anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri, famous as author of the three-part Divine Comedy. All three volumes are held in high regard by world literature buffs, but like so many “B” movies today, the outlandish and fantastic images that have most stayed with readers over the centuries and still command center stage are the grotesqueries of Volume I, The Inferno, the story of Dante’s vision of being led through Hell by the Roman poet Virgil. Arriving in the Bronx and in my tier box seat just in time to see Magglio Ordonez’s broken-bat single over first score former Yank d’Angelo Jimenez with the Sox’s first run, I would have been wise to heed the inscription Dante witnessed on the Gates of Hell: “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here!”
The Hell in Dante’s Inferno is described as a series of nine circles, and it bears some unfortunate similarities to my weekend — or most of it. We would (briefly) take a third-inning lead Friday on a bizarre and ugly series of plays by the Sox. (Unfortunately, they foreshadowed Yankee play over the next 18 innings, not that of the Sox.) Alfonso reached on an infield error, Derek doubled him home on the next pitch, taking third on young center fielder Aaron Rowand’s split-the-cutoff-men, high-hopping throw, and then scored on Bernie’s infield out on the very next pitch. I was about to descend into my first circle, with the second to follow right behind.
Frank Thomas, who had taken a third strike in the first, banged Moose’s first pitch of the third into the left field corner for a double, and Ordonez received Mike’s third walk in three innings, then moved into scoring position when Konerko was hit by the first pitch delivered to him. Mike came back to pop up Carlos Lee for the first out and seemed to be clearing all danger when Rowand hit a slow bouncer to Alfonso at second.
Most around me howled that he should have thrown to first for a sure out, but I actually liked that he chose the aggressive play, as he charged and threw off-balance toward home. Soriano fairly raced out to eight errors early this year as he continued to receive on-the-job education at second base, and some of those miscues were on off-balance throws. The throws haven’t stoppped, but now they’re finding their mark. Unfortunately, he needs more reps on his tosses to home and his throw pulled Jorge way away from the plate to the third base side (circle one) where our catcher gamely swatted the ball back toward the plate. Mussina actually made a nice attempt at a fine play when he charged the plate and tossed a hook shot over his head for a play on Ordonez with the second run of the play, but it missed, allowing Rowand and Konerko to end up at second and third respectively (circle two)
Foolishly relieved that Moose stopped the bleeding there, I waited for an answering offense that never came. But this one was far from over. Despite the uncharacteristic four walks from Mussina, he actually pitched quite well, blanking them over the following 3.7 innings. But the zeroes on the scoreboard ended when Ramiro Mendoza took over. And although there were certainly some clean hits, his outing is tough to judge. With one out in the eighth, he surrendered a clean single to Valentin, but Frank Thomas hit a tailor-made double play ball to Ventura at third. Inexplicably, Alfonso couldn’t handle the relay (circle three). Given the extra chance, Ordonez singled and Konerko knocked in two with a double.
The eighth got uglier. Jeter booted Rowand’s lead-off grounder and, after a Crede single, Nick Johnson turned what should have been either an out at the plate or a double play with a run scoring into a 3 unassisted with all runners advancing exactly where they had intended. (Place circle four anywhere in this paragraph — or inning — that you choose.) The rout was on as Jimenez singled off Mendoza, and three singles, a walk, a pop up and double greeted Brandon Knight. And place circle five all over the Yankee offense, which following the two-unearned-runs third, consisted of two walks and a single, with the last six outs coming via the strike out.
Saturday’s loss, though ugly, didn’t approach that mess, but it was by far the nadir of my weekend. I slept in late, and barely noticed a pain in my abdomen as I picked up the Saturday papers and settled in to watch the boys on Fox. And Roger actually looked very good, at least what I saw of him. But the pain began to throb, I couldn’t sit, or stand still either. I was in the emergency room undergoing a preliminary checkup as Nick’s error helped turn a one-run third into three, and having a ct scan as two young White Sox youngsters took Roger out back to back to build the score to 7-0. The nurses couldn’t get over this man who for all the world was in too much discomfort to converse rationally about the pain, and who paced the room like a caged animal rather than lying in the profferred bed, but who slipped his headphones on to listen to the game every chance he got. Yes, the whole emergency room experience was circle six even if in all that time the only run I actually heard score was Alfonso’s 37th homer in the sixth.
Relaxed and in relative comfort on IV drugs from the ER, I picked up some prescriptions, sent Sue off to see the play we were to attend that evening and settled in to do battle with as insidious an enemy as I’ve ever faced: a kidney stone. I’m told by the doctors that I was very fortunate that this visitor hadn’t caused me any pain until he had moved quite close to the area from which he would be expelled from my body, and from what friends tell me that is true. That didn’t make the next 10 hours any less excruciating. Were it another Friday night eighth inning disaster, I wouldn’t shy away from giving a blow-by-blow account no matter how ugly it got. But suffice it to say that circle seven (when the popgun-shooting pills came in to bat for the power-hitting IV and failed miserably) and circle eight (when my nemesis and I finally achieved a parting of the ways around 4 am) were thankfully the deepest I would descend into this “hell” of a weekend.
Weary from the lack of sleep and my overnight struggle, but delighted to rejoin the race of creatures that could find some comfort in a lying and a sitting position along with the pacing that had become my habit for several hours, I decided, perhaps rashly, to brave the elements Mother Nature threatened to throw our way and join Sue, my brother and my sister-in-law on a return foray into the Bronx, hoping to extract a little joy from a weekend that certainly began its decline there. The air was stifling as Andy hurled his first pitch at 1:08. It felt good to be in the tier, and to let loose with a few full-throated cheers and feel no ill effects of the earlier problem when I did so. Konerko got the game’s first hit in the second, but we all cheered happily as he was removed on a textbook 6-4-3. The Yankees hadn’t hit for two days, and it was a concern that we could muster no more than Johnson’s one-out walk in the third during the first three innings. But Andy has been as good as gold of late, and I was not concerned.
And then the rains came. We sat and got soaked in varying degrees (a poncho, a rain hat and an umbrella just didn’t cover all extemities of four adult bodies). And we really didn’t mind. But circle nine arrived as it became clear that Andy was having trouble with the weather. Crede doubled leading off the third, and Andy walked Rowand and threw ball one to rookie catcher Miguel Olivo. I knew that I had never seen Miguel before, but I didn’t know that it was his first at bat in the bigs. Comfort level numereo uno with Andy this year has been his ability not to give up the long ball, something he surpassed Derek Lowe in a week and a half ago. But obviously having difficulty getting a good grip on a wet ball, Andy appeared determined to not fall behind the number nine hitter, and boom!, Miguel hit a three-run shot to right. d’Angelo Jimenez kept the pressure on with a double to left center and Harris followed with an infield single, as Soriano appeared to be about to beat him to the first base bag but seemed to pull up at the last minute. Thomas’s hard hopper to third, I’m sure, would not have scored the fourth run, but Robin couldn’t handle it, for an error.
Wondering if I had made the right choice on the day, we were already headed for drier ground (the loge) when they covered the field the first time. We hung out, watched the rain get harder and harder, and then gradually tail off to nothing as the scoreboard cameras spent all of the delay finding pockets of wet people in the stands and displaying them on the Diamond Vision screen. Now that is a form of reality programming I always find enjoyable! But underneath I was seething with doubt about a weekend that had gone so dramatically south, and wondering when our inevitable comeback would happen, and if it would be enough.
And if Dante’s vision of the Underworld aptly described how things had fallen apart, perhaps Thor deserves mention at our resurgence, as it truly seemed that Yankee retribution was delivered in thunderbolt style, reminiscent of the Eddie Floyd classic from the ’70s, with whose lyrics I have taken some liberties:.
- ’twas like thunder. Lightning
The way we scored then was frightening!
Derek singled hard on the first pitch of the fourth, and Jason gave me a rare gift, homering hard and long right after I had delivered a “C’mon, Jason, Take him d-o-o-w-w-n-t-o-o-w-w-n!” that came from the very depths of my being, again on the first pitch. And Bernie’s shot to almost the same spot in right was even harder, one of the rare shots hit hard enough to smack up against the recessed loge facade in that corner. Although we would end the fourth still one run down, and start the fifth with consecutive outs, no one was surprised when Alfonso drilled the equalizer to left on an 0-1 pitch.
Andy had obviously made his peace with the rain gods by then, and he would retire the last nine White Sox he would face. Although Jason singled hard on the first pitch to start the game-winning rally in the sixth (which would be the last inning), the similarity to our explosive earlier ways ended there. Left hander Porzio would start the inning, and he got Ventura, Posada and Mondesi on two strike outs wrapped around a pop up Friday night. But Bernie followed Jason with a swinging bunt for an infield hit, and Jorge singled over short to load the bases with no one out. Porzio went 3-2 on grand slam machine Ventura, but then balked in the go ahead run before finishing Robin’s walk. But if the infield single, single over short, balk and walk that got all the trouble started differed from the seven-pitch, three-run outburst in the fourth, Nick Johnson put the capper on things by extending Porzio to 10 pitches (with five fouls) before singling for two more (and another scoring on Ordonez’s throwing error).
The rains returned, the scoreboard showed bloopers and old highlights during the next delay, and then the game was called after barely 40 minutes. A tough weekend, and perhaps nine circles of hell, or just not a lot if fun. But Virgil, Dante and Thor got me home, and while the circles numbered nine, the magic number has shrunk to five!
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!