Bronx, N.Y., September 3, 2002 — We live in a different world, here in 2002. As the first anniversary of the most extreme act of terrorism we can all hope to ever withstand approaches, we are all struggling for a whole new way of communicating, an entirely different set of effective metaphors. And the world of spectator sports, a bigger part of our lives than any of us want to acknowledge, is not immune to the problem.

Having wasted many a rainy day in my youth listening to the military music that highlights so much of NFL films, for instance, I have no idea what that league plans to do with those tapes and how they feel about showing them.

We’ve all seen (and heard) them, with football literally portrayed as warfare, and warfare featuring hand-to-hand and mechanized combat in particular. I don’t know how football confronts that problem, but baseball has its own difficulties in this area, of course. Not only was a full schedule of games slated for last September 11, the season was approaching its climax, and the playoffs were exactly three weeks away (by schedule). I had tickets in my pocket for the game scheduled vs. the White Sox later that evening when I went to work that Tuesday, as did at least two of the victims of the Twin Towers that I have read about since. I was actually frustrated after having sat through a long rain delay against the Red Sox in the Bronx the night before, only to have the game called when the weather finally broke. (The field was deemed “unplayable.”)

So when a crafty, brave and strong veteran like Roger Clemens comes out and throws a game like the one he threw tonight in the Bronx, the temptation is to describe his pitches as arrows, or “fiery darts,” and the bats in the opponents’ hands as cudgels or swords or rifles poised to do violence on the Yankee Stadium stage. Torre and Little would become field generals deploying their forces for the battle at hand, sending in reinforcements in the role of pinch hitters or relief pitchers, and removing their starters to engage in another skirmish a few days hence. But the “Thrill Is Gone” on that type of sports journalism, and it just doesn’t feel appropriate anymore. Beloved Yankee star Paul O’Neill was never very much enamored when he was repeatedly decribed and feted as “The Warrior,” and I’m sure he’s less comfortable about it now.

Roger was exquisite tonight. He took the mound throwing hard from the moment he started his masterful three-strike-out, first-inning at 7:07, and he was throwing it just as hard almost three hours later when Jeter erred and threw away Johhny Damon’s one-out soft hopper in the eighth. Tomorrow I hope to see Andy Pettitte mix in quite a few one- and two-pitch groundouts and soft flies with a few more dramatic and longer-drawn-out at bats, perhaps ending in strike outs (after each of which I will rise to my feet and bellow, “Take a Seat!”). But Roger has no such “easy” way out. Virtually every batter he faces must be confronted with power pitches (and a few curves and splitters). It is through attrition that Roger wears these guys down, removing valuable pitches from that powerful right shoulder as he does, and two of his two-strike-out innings ranked as second and third in number of pitches required to subdue the Sox on a humid evening in the Bronx. Ironically, had Derek not erred on Damon’s ball, it would have marked the only time all night (easily) that Roger got the first two outs in an inning on only four pitches.

And although I’ve often heard the wonderful analyst and ex-hurler Jim Kaat relate how you get batters out by throwing strikes, particularly strike one, that wasn’t in Roger’s game plan tonight. He went through the Red Sox order three times, and finished up on his fourth shot at Damon. The first strikes-to-balls ratio? 13-15. And unlike most games where pitchers struggle through a few guys, find something and put together a nice string, only to run into a problem again eventually, he was consistently inconsistent in this aspect all night. He started both Damon and Hillenbrand with balls in the first and then threw strikes first to Nomar and Manny (that one in the second inning). Indicating that pattern by typing B2, S2, the rest of his night read like very boring and inconclusive Morse code: B2, S1, B2, S1, B1, S3, B2, S1, B1, S1, B3, S1, B1, S1, B1, S2.

Frank Castillo proved wily too, and I didn’t immediately realize how well he would settle down after the ugly first. He survived a three-inning pitch total of 70, silencing us the next three on 40 more. He went 17-10 on first-pitch strikes, and he did put together a string of seven first-pitch strikes in a row before ending it on the intentional walk to Nick Johnson in the sixth after Mondesi’s double. His defense let him down in a first inning where he bent badly but didn’t break. But, sloppy defense aside, we win 2-1 on our 200th and 201st homers of the season. Our second batter of the game homered. Our penultimate (next-to-last) batter homered. Some symmetry in that. Though I’ll gleefully admit (now) that Rickey Henderson’s leadoff walk pinch-hitting in the ninth would have caused me no end of stress if we had only led by one.

Kudos to Mendoza. Jeter bobbled the first ground ball he produced, so he calmly solicited another. And even though I was shocked he did not start the ninth, good job to Mike Stanton too. Frank didn’t deserve the loss. But Roger definitely earned the win.

And thus my title. It was 812 years ago on September 2 (some say September 3) that Richard I of England, better known as Richard the Lion-Hearted (Coeur de Lion), was crowned. And I admit that he was as much a warrior and about warfare as any man in history. But the Third Crusade he led was supposed to be about religion, and even though it was only a scant 20 years ago that much of the world was puzzling about how it came to be that the Christian and Islamic communities experiencing hostilities in Lebanon came to live in such proximity in the first place, I would make the following case: The name Lion-Hearted is not specifically about war, and it is certainly desciptive of Roger’s performance on the mound tonight.

And while we’re drifting way back in English history, may I suggest a stop during our return at September 3, 1752? This was the day the British Parliament decided to align their traditional calendar with the Gregorian Calendar, as the one they were using was drifting badly away from accurately reflecting the motions of the sun, the planets and the stars. It was decreed therefore that September 3 was followed by September 14, and everything was worked out relatively to everyone’s satisfaction (except for the people who rioted in the belief that their lives had just been shortened by decree). We lead the Red Sox after tonight’s win by 7.5 games, and on September 14, tomorrow by that reckoning, we would too. I would gladly miss the anniversary we are all about to confront in our own private — and public — ways, and a 7.5 game lead with 15 days left in the season? Where do I sign up for that?

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!