Bronx, N.Y., May 18, 2010 — More than 48,000 fans seemed to be having quite an exciting time watching the Red Sox and the Yankees renew their rivalry in the Bronx Monday night. They were duped obviously. No less an authority than veteran umpire “Country Joe” West knows his baseball (you’d hope), and he offered the words in the title for the two teams’ tendency to play long games. The playing time on this one not only exceeded three hours to finish a regulation nine, it ended up just 11 minutes short of four hours. The humanity!
Phalanxes of the fooled from both side could protest that we weren’t aware that it took so long, because this was really two games, and maybe a lot more than that. Yankee fans danced in the aisles as the home team came out and battered Daisuke Matsuzaka for five hits and five runs in the bottom of the first. Even West wouldn’t have been too upset because the Yanks pulled off the uprising in a relatively concise 20 minutes.
With “phenom Phil” Hughes with the 5-0 record and his minuscule era 1.38 era on the mound, it looked to be a night for Yankee smiles only. Any enthusiasm dulled by Adrian Beltre’s rbi single in the top of the second was immediately restored when Mark Teixeira doubled in Brett Gardner from first for the second time in three games in the bottom of the second. But the game was changing, and the Yanks would only collect another four hits over the next six frames. Matsuzaka’s pitch count, 31 after the first, set him up for an early shower, and Marcus Thames made it official by driving him off the mound with an rbi triple in the fifth.
The bad news was that he was replaced by the Ancient Flutterer Tim Wakefield, and the veteran’s dancing knucklers immediately put Yankee bats to sleep. Even worse, however, all was not well with Hughes. Phil, who got the first of just three strike outs against a swinging Dustin Pedroia in the first, and coaxed two swings and misses from J.D. Drew while he was whiffing in the third, was only having occasional luck with his curve, and apparently began tiring from a mounting number of hard fastballs. Hughes would only get two more swings and misses in 104 pitches. The pitch count problem has arisen with Hughes before, and Drew got him off in the wrong direction by fouling five pitches in a 10-pitch fly out in the first.
The Red Sox would eventually catch up to and then blow past the Yankees with a succession of five home runs, but two guys who had just two singles and a double between them were responsible for pushing the Boston offense ahead in this one. Already at 76 pitches starting the fifth, Phil got two outs on just three throws; the third out would come 25 tosses later with Teixeira making yet another improbable great play, this one sprawling to catch Kevin Youkilis’s foul pop well over first base and toward the stands. With two down, Marco Scutaro had worked a seven-pitch at bat and then singled, and Pedroia doubled on the 11th throw to him. The arm-weary Yankee righty got ahead of Drew, but there were no swings and misses in his bag of tricks this time; after two fouls, J.D. lashed a three-run home run just inside the foul pole in right field.
Still the Yanks were up 6-5, and then 7-6 after the Thames rbi triple was answered by a Victor Martinez homer off Boone Logan, who made trouble for himself by starting the sixth by falling behind 3-0 to the Boston backstop. Logan pitched around an ensuing David Ortiz single by getting a dp grounder and then a roller to third; ironically his first three throws off the plate were the only balls he threw in the 11-pitch inning. Just off an extended DL stay with a hamstring problem, Chan Ho Park pitched a quick seventh with considerable help on a cunning play by Robbie Cano, who let Pedroia’s dying quail fall at his feet, snatched the first hop and flung it to Derek Jeter to start a 4-6-3 for the second and third outs.
The one inning of work would have been ideal coming off the injured list, but with the Yankee pen short three guys (David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and Mariano Rivera) from a difficult loss Sunday afternoon, Park retook the mound for the eighth. But he was spent, and a Drew single and back-to-back home runs from Youkilis and Martinez climaxed the comeback the Sox had been mounting for seven innings. With the Red Sox now up 9-7 and the Boston contingent in the stands releasing cheers they had been half-heartedly suppressing since the first, things got testy among the fans. Damaso Marte came on and retired four straight, then allowed a single and a walk in the ninth, and got two-out help when starter Javy Vazquez was brought in to face Youkilis.
Young Daniel Bard may throw hard, and he looked overpowering when he came on for Boston in the eighth, but I had to believe that the Yankee players were as glad as I was to see Wakefield depart. Bard disposed of Thames and Randy Winn on a strike out and an outfield fly, then walked Juan Miranda, pinch hitting for Ramiro Pena. But Jeter went down swinging on the second 3-2 pitch he saw. When Vazquez struck Youkilis out to close the top of the ninth, it came down to the home-standing Yanks vs. a guy whom Yankee fans have never liked, and may perhaps hold in even more disdain after tonight despite the inspiring finish.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. With the Yanks in need of a baserunner down two, Papelbon almost obliged by falling behind Brett Gardner 3-1. He came back with two strikes, only Brett drilled the second, a sinking liner in front of Darnell McDonald in left; when the shoestring catch attempt failed, Gardner pulled into second with a double. One out later Alex Rodriguez swatted Papelbon’s first fastball over the wall just left of center, eerily close to where he had blasted a 15th-inning walkoff to beat the Red Sox last year. It was 11-11, but the Yanks were working down toward the bottom of their order. There the pitcher Vazquez would be due up to bat for himself in four batters, an occasion brought on when Rodriguez left the DH spot to play third base in the top half.
It never became an issue, however. Following a Cano fly to deep center, Franciso Cervelli turned on the Boston closer’s next pitch, blistering a hot shot just foul down the third base line. Francisco was hit with the next pitch, and upset by it too, But he didn’t have long to stew about it on first base. Thames promptly became the first 2010 Yankee to be “pied,” as he blasted the next offering deep to left and a few feet fair to win the game for the home team, 11-9. Everyone in attendance, even the saddened and stunned Red Sox fans, knew that they had witnessed yet another contest for the ages between these two teams. Everyone, that is, except the West-minded fans in attendance, the ones who have no patience with a baseball game that takes those present from the heights of joy to the depths of despair to the heights again, but takes almost four hours to do it.
Three Yankee games that took place on May 17 stand out, but only two resembled this battle. Foremost in the minds of fans who have been following the team for 12-plus years will be the David Wells Perfect Game on this day in 1998, a 4-0 Yankee win over the Twins that had virtually nothing in common with this back-and-forth bludgeoning. More in this night’s vein was another game against the Twins four years later, where Jason Giambi became the second Yankee after Babe Ruth to win a game with a walkoff grand slam when the Yanks subdued the Twins 13-12 in 13 innings. And then there’s the 11-9 win the Yanks battled to over the A’s on May 17, 1964. I bring that one up both because it mirrors the score of tonight’s game exactly and because baseball immortal Mickey Mantle got the scoring going with a two-run home run in the first.
Other May 17 events include Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Look Back” Tour of the UK that originated on this day in 1964, and Stevie Wonder’s release of You Are the Sunshine of My Life in 1973. Six years later the Phillies beat the Cubs 23-22 in a game with 11 home runs where the wind was blowing out in Wrigney. New Yankee Stadium, by the way, is giving up less home runs its second year in the league, even if seven were hit this night, though only two by the home team, both not until the ninth. May 17 is also the 45th birthday of musician and rock front man Trent Reznor.
That Jonathan Papelbon took exception to the way the neophyte Franciso Cervelli stood in against his vaunted heat in the ninth was obvious this night, so obvious that there can be little doubt that the following pitch that caught the Yankee catcher in the midsection had to be thrown to strike his body on purpose. It is well known around the league that although just a young player, Cervelli has a history of being hit by pitched balls, not a good one. And for anyone oblivious to what is going on around him, this becomes obvious in the Yankee backup catcher’s case, because he wears an extra-large protective batting helmet for just that reason. Most humans would acknowledge and respect a situation like that, and proceed accordingly. Papelbon, however, is certainly not “most,” and “human”? Well, not very, apparently.
Wherever in New York City the Boston closer gets to lay his weary and inflamed (I would guess) head this evening, I hope he gets the comfort one could expect from a bed of nails. Come to think of it,
Nine Inch Nails would be perfect.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!