May 12, 2012, Bronx, N.Y. – I had the strange experience when recording the starting pitcher numbers in the eighth inning Saturday afternoon that I was confusing the teams. It was a gorgeous day in the Bronx, with every one of almost 44,000 present primed to celebrate both Yogi Berra’s 87th birthday, and a Yankee win. There was cake at home, where Ron Guidry drove Yogi, and Jennifer Steinbrenner and Derek Jeter joined them at the plate to offer best wishes.
In the Mariners/Yankees game that followed, both pitchers threw about 100 pitches to complete seven innings, both allowed six hits, both struck out four opponents. Current Yank Phil Hughes walked one; ex-Yank Hector Noesi issued no free passes at all. Noesi went through the Yankee order exactly three times in seven innings, finding the zone 18 times out of 27; Hughes got the 21 outs facing just 25 guys, with 17 first-pitch strikes and eight misses.
Hughes threw heat that started at 90, built to 95, then lingered near 93 much of the game, mixing in an effective low-seventies curve, with just a few changes and cutters. Noesi used the fastball even more, getting it up to a speed posted as high as 96, with a slider and a rare change of pace. The numbers of the two pitchers were eerily similar, with only two real separations: Noesi’s 13 coaxed swings and misses almost doubled Phil’s seven, yes, but Hughes avoided the big inning, and Hector did not.
In 23 pitches, Noesi allowed three doubles and a home run in the second inning. Two frames later, Raul Ibanez took him deep to dead center for a 5-0 Yankee lead. Hughes would not allow two hits in an inning until Joe Girardi sent him out for the eighth inning, and surrendered just one extra-base hit the whole game, Mike Carp’s singleton home run in the top of the seventh. He sprinkled just three singles through the first six innings, while the home team didn’t collect their first one-base hit until Derek Jeter singled with one down in the fifth.
But the game was essentially over long before then. Once again stubbornly swinging to pull into an overshift despite the pleas of the crowd, Mark Teixeira had a “told you so” moment with a double over first with one down in the second. An out later, Friday hero Raul Ibanez doubled the other way to left for a 1-0 lead, and Noesi pounded two called strikes past Russell Martin. One oft-referenced baseball salt has it that a guy who has been the primary catcher for a pitcher for a length of time will have the best shot to hit him. Martin, who caught Hector often when he was with the parent club in the Bronx last year, blasted the 0-2 pitch off the center field wall: a third double and second run. Three pitches later, fill-in shortsop Jayson Nix lofted a two-run home run to right, and the Yanks had a quick 4-0 lead.
There was little action aside from that outburst, and the game zipped along under bright skies until things slowed a little in the latter frames. When Jeter singled again in the eighth inning, he pulled into a tie with Tony Gwynn for 17th place on the all-time major league baseball hit list. Jeter would then steal second from where Robbie Cano drove him in for the sixth Yankee run. And we were treated to an oddball play in the ninth when Carp followed a Kyle Seager one-out single with a long drive to right that bounced off the top of the wall and back onto the field. First-base ump Scott Barry singled home run, which it would have been if it had struck anything or anyone on the far side of the wall, but Joe Girardi appealed as a host of fans in right field swore the ball was still in play.
The umpires went to the video room, viewed the play, and gave the Yanks a partial victory: The ball was not a homer, and was still in play, and Carp was placed on second, but they ruled that Seager was allowed to score, to make it 6-2. Logan fell behind Justin Smoak 3-0 but, as Rafael Soriano warmed in the pen, the Yankee lefty recovered to post a strike out, and then another, and the game was over.
It was cool being at a game where the umps went to replay. And with the win, the Yanks went to 4-1 on their homestand, with the much anticipated 2012 Andy Pettitte debut due Sunday. We’ve received a keyring sanitizer, a cup, and a nice poster this week; celebrated the birthday of a Yankee great; and look forward to Pettitte’s big game tomorrow. We saw an inning with three doubles and a home run, and four runs scored.
On this day in 1949, the Allies led by the Americans began the Berlin Airlift to break the Soviet blockade of Germany’s biggest city. And on May 12, 2012, the Yanks used the Bronx Airlift to secure Phil Hughes’s second straight victory, and third good start in a row.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!