I have to imagine that, like most sports figures who experienced success early in life, Joba Chamberlain must have a nice collection of memorabilia. For his sake, I hope it’s not calendar-based, because if it is, March 5 has to be shaping up as one of his least favorite days. A year ago, for instance, he started a game against an undermanned Team Canada from the World Baseball Classic. Five batters, four walks and 28 pitches in, Joe Girardi removed him with no one out in a six-run inning in a game where Canada held on to win 6-0.
The temperature broke 60, the sun shone, and the sky was blue in Tampa today. And we were eager to see chapter one in the monumental Phil Hughes/Chamberlain battle to claim the fifth spot in the Yankees’ 2010 rotation. Score one for Phil because he did OK against a Rays team that had their hitting shoes on. He was helped by some leather flashed by his infield, with Derek Jeter and Robbie Cano making plays, and he gave up just a walk and a hit in two innings. The hit was Sean Rodriguez’s third home run in three games, unfortunate not just because it gave the Rays the early lead, but also because new center fielder Curtis Granderson’s stumbling, back-pedaling route to the ball left him in no position to try for what would have been a great leap and catch had he gotten to the wall in time. Bad play? No. But not a great one either. Then again, no ne should be expected to make that kind of play this early.
The Yankee offense responded pretty much as it has through the first few days this March, with few hits, though Jeter and Cano stroked singles to go with the fine plays they had made. With many looking to him to have a great year, Cano’s fine day would continue, as he doubled and scored later, but Jeter would come up short with the stick twice, striking out following Francisco Cervelli’s hustle leadoff triple in the third and defusing what ended as a one-run rally in the fifth with a first-pitch double-play grounder to short.
By that time, however, the Yankee offense was hardly the question. The clearest way I can find to express how helpless the Yankee mound staff was during back-to-back Rays three-run rallies in the third and fourth is that the team was saved from falling even further behind by a standout appearance from perennial failed southpaw Kei Igawa. Taking over for Hughes starting the third, Chamberlain made it through an inning and a third this time around, but the March 5 opposition jumped him for five runs yet again. Rodriguez was the big bully picking on the Yankee kids here too, reaching Joba for a triple in the third and then Kevin Whelan a double in the fourth. In the game’s oddest sidenote, Joe Maddon would remove Rodriguez for a hitter in the sixth just a single short of hitting for the cycle in just three at bats.
In for Chamberlain with one down and two on, righthander Whelan provided no relief, retiring none of four batters. Kevin has had some success in the Yankee minors, and he even saved a few games in Tampa two years ago. But as the lone hope that the Yanks will get any value in the three-for-one 2007 Gary Sheffield trade (Humberto Sanchez has been unhealthy and unsuccessful ever since, and Anthony Claggett sealed his fate after providing ineffective relief in a 22-4 embarrassment against Cleveland last April), he threw four balls into the dirt in front of Jorge Posada before finally bouncing a wild pitch. Amazingly, Igawa relieved with the bases loaded and one down and retired five straight with no one scoring, minimizing the damage, if that word can be used down 7-0 in the fifth.
To the joy of the Yankee fans who hung around the home team would make it interesting, and through the efforts of up-and-coming bats too. Cervelli, who failed to score after the leadoff triple in the third, singled in Cano in the fifth, but Tampa got the run back on an Eduardo Nunez error in the seventh. But down 8-1, the Yanks rallied for six in the bottom half, climaxed by two-strike doubles from Juan Miranda, Kevin Russo, and Jorge Vazquez. A good play by third baseman Angel Chavez prevented Reegie Corona from tying the game.
One of the reasons baseball people often don’t go by numbers alone in judging a player’s effectiveness is that not all plays and at bats are equal. It’s a given, for instance, that it’s more important that a pitcher keep the opposition off the board in an inning following an offensive explosion by his own team than at other times, particularly when that rally brought the club back from way down. This is what gives the back-to-back walks righty Grant Duff surrendered starting the top of the eighth more problematic than most of the free passes he has issued. They led to Tampa’s third three-run rally of the day, and ended the Yankees’ chances in the 12-7 loss.
So the Yanks took their second loss of Spring 2010, and second defeat in a row, on March 5. Chamberlain’s bad appearances in back-to-back years this day has not been the only bad thing that has happened. England’s King Henry VI was deposed this day in 1461, and five American Colonists died in the Boston Massacre on March 5, 1770. Germany’s Nazi Party took a majority in that country’s parliament the same day in 1933.
On the Yankee side of things, American icon Joe DiMaggio was taken to task for his baggy uniform in the weekly entertainment newspaper Variety on March 5, 1942. And worst of all from a pinstriped perspective, this is the day in 1973 that Fritz Peterson and Mike Kekich put the lie to the cliche that there’s no such thing as bad press when they put a down Yankees team in the headlines across the country when they swapped wives [and families].
See Joba? You didn’t have such a bad day after all.
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!