Bronx, N.Y., April 25, 2013 — Something was amiss at game time in the Bronx Thursday night, as the Yanks prepared to start a homestand vs. the Blue Jays. Returning home from a 3-3 road trip playing on concrete, the Bombers were greeted by a relatively meager crowd, on what in 2013 served as a pretty nice evening for baseball.

But although the crowd did little to dispel the malaise, it was the players who brought it to the field. When the Scoreboard blasted intro music at 7:05 before twin national anthems, no Yankee was ready to answer the call; no players were perched at the openings to the dugout screen to storm the field. Eventually they filed out, led — in Derek Jeter’s absence — by Robbie Cano, but half an inning later the first two Yank batters went down on strikes, despite the fact that Toronto southpaw Mark Buehrle’s tosses, both fast balls and cutters, were fluttering across at 82 mph.

No player showed the early lethargy more than righty starter Hiroki Kuroda, who stopped a few hearts when he tried to flag down Rajai Davis’s leadoff single up the middle with his bare hand yet again. As shortstop Munenori Kawaski bounced into a 4-4-3, the scoreboard shared the info that in his recent shutout Kuroda had tossed the first Yankee complete game with no walks since David Wells had done the same 10 years and 15 days ago. Five pitches later, Jose Bautista walked, and one errant throw further along Edgar Encarnacion homered deep to left for a 2-0 Toronto lead.

Hiroki escaped following back-to-back singles, but the Yanks went down quickly, with Cano taking a several-minute pain break after fouling a 1-2 pitch off his leg. Kuroda then quickly fell behind 3-0 to Brett Lawrie, who smacked his first homer of the year to right for a 3-0 Jays lead two pitches later. Three outs, three runs, on two homers, a walk, and five hits, which became six when Kawasaki doubled with two down. It was good for them that the smattering of Jays fans in the crowd were having a ball, because their time to celebrate had now come to an end.

It’s not hard to point to what turned it around. Leading off the bottom of the second, left fielder Vernon Wells, an early candidate for 2013 Yankee mvp, sent Buehrle’s third pitch into orbit, until it landed in Monument Park in dead center, 420 feet or so from home plate. Francisco Cervelli followed with a long drive to the gap in right center that Colby Rasmus ran down, but the mood had shifted, as surely as the brilliant full moon that was rising outside the right field wall illuminated the doings.

Jayson Nix and Lyle Overbay collaborated on a fine play retiring Encarnacion to start the top of the third, and Kuroda would retire 13 of 14 through seven. Suddenly the 91-mph heat had bite, and the slider had them flailing to the tune of four pop-outs and six ground-ball outs. The “hit bats” school of pitching, of which Hiroki is a charter member, can require hard work, and the Jays pushed him to throw 24 pitches to get through the fourth around an Overbay miscue, but fine plays by Gardner, Nix, and Overbay got it to two outs into the sixth, and Kuroda struck Rasmus out swinging to crown his night.

Meanwhile, the awakening Yankee “O” followed Wells’s and Cervelli’s second-inning drives by threatening to, then actually managing to, take the lead in the third. Nix and Gardner reached on soft singles, and struggling DH Ben Francisco’s drive to left matched Wells’s in length, only it curved outside the pole. Ben’s next fly was an out, but Cano lashed a 3-1 bp fastball into the porch in right, and the Yanks had a 4-3 lead. Cervelli won an eight-pitch battle to homer off Buehrle in the fourth, and the 5-3 final score was forged.

From that point, the Yanks reached Buehrle and then the Toronto pen for a hit an inning, while the Jays offense amounted to an infield single off Joba Chamberlain’s hand leading off the seventh. Concern was expressed for yet another Yankee pitching hand stopping a comebacker, but he recovered to retire three straight, as did David Robertson and Mariano Rivera to close it out.

In addition to Rasmus’s running catch of Cisco’s drive, Kawasaki made a nice play in the eighth, and Lawrie at third made a couple of stunners, even if it was ruled that Encarnacion bobbled his peg after he had charged Francisco’s bunt in the seventh, awarding the Yankee DH with a much-needed hit. Ben’s batting average is anemic, but with the Yanks struggling mightily against lefties, it is good news that he has hit two foul homers, and just missed on another, in recent days.

Kuroda gave up six hits and a walk, but none after two were down in the second. The 65/38 strikes/balls ratio is evidence he was not sharp early, as is his just 13 first-pitch strikes to 25 batters. He only struck out three, but Mariano Rivera took care of that in the ninth, whiffing two and getting four swings and misses in just nine strikes. But Mo’s prettiest out was classic Rivera: a bat-exploding popup to second by Rasmus.

So a 10-game homestand that got off to a shaky start became a big win, once Vernon Wells’s long blast “snapped ’em out of it.” It’s up to Ivan Nova to continue the fine starts Friday.

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!