Bronx, N.Y., April 30, 2008 — It seemed the perfect night for baseball in the Bronx Wednesday night. Well, not perfect really, but what are you going to do when major league baseball schedulers and Mother Nature have apparently conspired to keep your team from appearing under optimal conditions, seemingly forever?

So, you settle. It was a dry night, with not a hint of rain, and the game began with degrees in the fifties, though by game’s end the sweatshirt and jacket kiosks had given the beer vendors a run for their money in selling their wares to the buying public. The point is, people got cold. And the team is finally home, even if the offense seems to have made the wrong connection several cities ago, and hasn’t made it to the Bronx just yet. Weary from an opening burst of 20 straight game days before a day off (which they got to spend not at home, but in Baltimore or Chicago) the team is now nine days into a following 13-day string before finally crashing at home for one day this coming Monday. Despite all that, however, the Yanks actually looked ready to play Wednesday night.

Veteran southpaw Andy Pettitte started the game by coaxing three straight gounders to third on 10 pitches, and the Yanks were ready to face Jeremy Bonderman just six minutes into this contest. The Tigers righty immediately fell behind leadoff hitter Johnny Damon 3-0, something he would do three times in the first inning, and a fourth time just one out later. Bonderman got a called strike, and Damon lined a sharp foul past first to go 3-2. Then he took the next pitch the other way down the left field line and coasted into second with a standup double. Derek Jeter’s sac bunt attempt rolled foul, but he singled Damon to third two pitches later, with Johnny holding until he was sure shortstop Edgar Renteria would not corral the hard hopper.

The ensuing 3-0 count to right fielder Bobby Abreu was immediately followed by ball four, and the Yanks had ’em loaded with nobody out. The celebrating fans shrugged off their disappointment when DH Hideki Matsui flied out too short to center to score anyone, but first baseman Jason Giambi at least delivered a run when he drove left fielder Marcus Thames to the warning track in left center for a sac fly on a 3-2 pitch. Then, off almost a whole day of rest, center fielder Melky Cabrera singled up the middle and when the hard-charging Jeter barely beat the throw home, the Yanks had a 2-0 lead. Struggling Robbie Cano flied to left to end it, but the Yanks had posted two runs in an 18-minute uprising the likes of which no one had seen in the Bronx for at least 23 days. The place was rocking.

Note the tense on “was.” Little did we know it at the time, but the Yankee portion of this one was over. They pushed Bonderman to make 27 throws that frame, but he would emerge from the fray having thrown just 100 pitches almost seven complete innings later. Jeremy found something that worked for him as he struggled through that inning, and he dominated after a 15-pitch, one-two-three second. Matsui would single in the third and die on first. And Cabrera lined a one-base hit over second to start the home fourth. But Cano forced him, then was out stealing one pitch later. The Yanks went down one-two-three from there, until the bottom of the eighth, when Bonderman struck out Alberto Gonzalez for his first whiff. Damon followed with a walk and Jeter flied deep to right center.

Southpaw Clay Rapala came on to retire Abreu, as he had with two outs in the eighth inning the night before. After that joyful first-inning burst, Bonderman was never threatened, and he retired 12 of 18 on weak grounders and popups. Starting with the third, he turned in innings that cost him 11, 9, 5, 11, and then just 7 pitches. He featured a two-seam sinking fastball, and mixed in killer sliders and changes at will.

And as it turned out, Bonderman’s brilliance put quick pressure on Pettitte to be very good, and then to be perfect once the Tigers halved the Yankee lead in the top of the second. Andy was his own worst enemy initially, as he walked Magglio Ordonez leading off. He went up on Miguel Cabrera 1-2, but after a foul, the Tigers’ new first baseman pulled one down the line. Rookie Gonzalez was ready to pounce at third, but the ball caromed off the base, and Detroit had two on. Carlos Guillen sacrificed, and the Yankee lead was cut in half when Renteria bounced out to second.

The Yanks managed nothing after Bonderman fell behind Gonzalez 3-0 in the second, and also following the base knocks by Matsui and Cabrera the next two innings, and it became clear that Pettitte either had to hold the Tigers right there, or his reputation as the stopper would take a hit. He was getting the job done leaning on his fastball and cutter, and they got him through a one-two-three third and fourth. But a subtle change happened in the latter frame. Hitting bats effectively to that point, Pettitte got his first two strike outs. He followed with yet another strike out of Guillen leading off the fifth.

But the flurry of K’s, though celebrated, represented a change in tactics, and following a few mistakes, the Yanks found themselves behind. Renteria singled on a 1-2 pitch, and then ex-Yank Marcus Thames blasted a first-pitch home run to left. Damon rushed to the fence and leaped a few feet short on a game try, but any chance he might have had would have had to come from a vertical leap right from the wall’s base. As it was, Johnny banged the wall, and the ball appeared to carom off his glove.

With Bonderman in charge, the sudden 3-2 deficit loomed large, and quickly it grew. Second baseman Placido Polanco, who arrived in the Bronx in the throes of a 16-at-bat hitless steak before stroking four safeties Tuesday night, homered over yet another Damon leap leading off the sixth. Gary Sheffield and Ordonez singles followed, but Andy coaxed a 6-4-3. Guillen topped a ball, however, and beat the throw to first as Shef scored the fifth Detoit run. It was more than enough, and Polanco even added another singleton jack in the eighth, which forged the 6-2 final score.

There was more All Star Game hoopla before this game, a given with the Yanks hosting, and I posted my first vote(s) the old-fashioned analog way myself. There was a strange moment after the fifth with the “turn-back-the-game-counter” moment as entertainer and Yankee fan Billy Crystal pushed the lever from 71 to 70. The numbers signify the number of regular-season games remaining in the old ballpark, and there was nothing strange about Crystal doing the honors. But that Rich Hall introduced him as “former Yankee Billy Crystal” was.

So the exciting bottom of the first in this one notwithstanding, veteran Pettitte failed to halt the losing, and the torch is passed to young (and winless) Ian Kennedy tomorrow night. It falls to him to stop a two-game losing streak, and that he will have meager offense behind him with which to accomplish that appears to be a given. The Yanks have slipped to one game under .500, and it would be good to put an end to that on the first of May.

It was exactly 35 years ago today that embattled President Richard Nixon was forced to request and accept the resignations of top aides H. R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman in the wake of the growing Watergate controversy. Paramount among the reasons for their dismissal was the 18 minutes of blank White House tapes suspected to contain the evidence that that Administration had at the very least orchestrated a coverup.

It seemed a pretty long gap in the tape at the time. Yankee fans cheered lustily through an 18-minute, two-run rally in the bottom half of tonight’s first inning. And I assure you. We would have gladly sat through three more home innings just as long if it could have gotten us a victory.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!