Bronx, N.Y., April 16, 2008 — It didn’t take long for the 55,000 Red Sox and Yankees fans who crowded into Yankee Stadium Wednesday night to learn that they were in for a different kind of game. Clay Buchholz’s Sox had fallen to Chien-Ming Wang and the Yankees 3-1 in Fenway Park just five days earlier, in a well-pitched, tight contest, and the same starters toed the rubber this night. It oversimplifies things to say this was an”other” game entirely; it was almost “other”worldly.
A few minutes in, Wang exceeded his walk total from Friday with a one-out free pass to Dustin Pedroia, and five pitches later Manny Ramirez doubled to the base of the wall in left, giving the visitors an early lead. But just a few minutes after that, back-to-back, no-doubt-about-them blasts from Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez boosted the Yanks to a 3-1 lead. It was hard not to notice that three hours later, just before the Yanks were to add an eighth-inning, four-run “insurance” rally, the two teams were much in the same place despite a ton of offense. The Yanks led 11-9, the same two-run bulge they had held in the first, the same margin of their win Friday night.
Buchholz yielded one run while retiring 18 Yanks on Friday; Wang was equally stingy with runs, and he set down 27. On Wednesday, Clay was around for but 11 outs, with seven runs allowed. Wang made it through 12 outs having allowed just three, but one hit and one run scored each by the first five Sox to face him in the fifth sent him to the showers down 9-7, with eight of those runs charged to him. The five straight hits included tracers and bloops, something the two teams continued to sprinkle through their offenses all night. Yankee righty Ross Ohlendorf struck out the side after coming on for Wang after three of those first five had scored, but one more drive and one more bloop were mixed in, and with the six-run fifth, the Sox took that 9-7 lead despite the four-spot the Yanks had driven Buchholz from the mound with three outs before.
No matter. The Yanks immediately jumped on Julian Tavares for yet another four-run outburst, featuring one-out singles from Hideki Matsui and Robbie Cano around a Jorge Posada double, with two walks, a fielder’s choice, and a Julio Lugo error.
The players looked fresh and ready for more, but the crowd was spent. Back-to-back-to-back four-, then six-, then four-run rallies had taken their toll. More often than not, close and tense Red Sox/Yankees battles in the Bronx keep the crowd on their best behavior. Fans on both sides are too nervous to spend much energy in name-calling and fisticuffs with the game on the line. But although this was just a two-run contest five innings (and almost three hours) in, it was more like three separate blowouts than it was a close game. Things got ugly in the cheap seats (to the extent that that cliche can be used in 2008) on the one hand, and effective two-inning relief by Boston’s David Aardsma and New York’s Latroy Hawkins moved the game forward with no more scores just when some fans were realizing just how late this one might go.
A chronological enumeration of the scoring plays would flatten and distort what was agonizing pitch-by-pitch body blows between these two well-matched rivals. The visitors were led by three hits, an rbi, and a run scored from Ramirez; three hits and two rbi’s from J.D. Drew; and two more rbi’s apiece from Sean Casey and Pedroia. The home-town run total was higher, and the list is longer too. Light-hitting catcher Chad Moeller followed a great hit-and-run single in Tampa Tuesday with a double, two singles, a walk, a run scored and an rbi in this one. Jeter, Rodriguez, Matsui, Posada, and Jason Giambi had two hits each. Ten Yankees scored, including Johnny Damon who pinch-ran for Matsui in the eighth. Posada knocked in three, and Jeter, Abreu and Giambi garnered two rbi’s each.
On the mound, Buchholz continued to show an impressive curve with an occasional change, but the Yanks were all over his heat. The superb command Wang had shown Friday deserted him. He had a hard time throwing his two-seam sinking fastball for strikes, and when he tried to aim his four-seamer, the Sox pounced. Tavares and Mike Timlin failed to provide effective relief around Aardsma. The Yankee pen was better, with Ohlendorf thwarting the Boston advance, and Hawkins, Billy Traber, and Brian Bruney blunting any attempts thereafter.
These two teams played a couple of tight extra-inning affairs on April 16 back in the 1960’s, with Boston’s Bob Tillman spoiling an 11-inning Whitey Ford beaut with a leadoff triple and score for a 4-3 Sox win in 1964. Three years later, a Joe Pepitone 16th-inning single carried Al Downing and the Yanks to a 7-6 win over Boston’s Lee Stange. The Yankees have been poignantly counting down the number of regular-season games remaining in the old, soon-to-be replaced Stadium this year, showing a carefully chosen celebrity push a lever moving the count down on the Scorebaord following the fifth inning, when the game has become official. This day, they cannily chose none other than 1978 Pinstriped hero Bucky Dent, who moved the number down to 73 games left.
One hundred forty-one years ago, on April 16, 1867, cofounder of American aviation Wilbur Wright was born. And 49 years ago, the Yanks proudly unveiled the first ever message scoreboard in Yankee Stadium, the precursor of the board on which we saw ex-shortstop and historic home run hitter Dent. Those two historical April 16 curiosities combined and morphed into an entirely new kind of highlight this night.
A native of Parsippany, New Jersey, and a huge Yankee fan to boot, scientist and NASA astronaut Dr. Garrett Reisman was displayed on Diamond-Vision before the game throwing out the game’s ceremonial first pitch from the International Space Station miles up in space, a place that aeronautical pioneer Wright could only have dreamed about. Wearing a Yankee cap and Tee with a huge interlocking NY logo on his chest, and the number 17 on his back, the happy spaceman entertained himself and the big crowd the rest of the night. We have seen the “YMCA” almost 1,000 times since 1996, and “Cotton-Eye Joe” on a few less occasions since it was later introduced. But we have never before seen either danced under weightless conditions: Way cool! The only reason Reisman didn’t win the Fan of the Game contest, I’m told, is that he was unable to pick up his prize within the required half hour following the last pitch of the game.
During the 15-9 Yankee win, Reisman clearly enunciated his stand: Whatever team any city, county, state, world, even “nation,” may call its champion, he proclaimed,
“This is a Yankee Universe!”
BTW,TWY
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!