Bronx, N.Y., April 16, 2013 — — Hopefully you can wrap your mind around uttering that title in the cadence intended in Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” a Boston tradition in the seventh inning stretch that the Yankee Stadium loudspeakers played following Tuesday night’s third inning in honor of the tragedy at Monday’s Boston Marathon. Ivan Nova survived a conflicted start; Robbie Cano bailed out a Yankee offense primed to put runners on and not score them; and the Yanks beat the visiting D’backs, 4-2. Continue reading
Category Archives: Grandstand View
Grounded, in Japanese
Bronx, N.Y., April 14, 2013 — The Yankees blanked the Orioles 3-0 Sunday night in the Stadium to take the rubber game of their three-game set, a really entertaining series, even if it did show the grand old game’s ugly side a few times. The history-making triple play and a three-run error on Friday were easily offset by Phil Hughes’s worst start in the majors Saturday, but the stunning job turned in by Yankee righty Hiroki Kuroda Sunday both salvaged the weekend for Yankee fans, and treated a national audience to a display of pitching 101. Continue reading
Phelps, Not Phail-ure
Bronx, N.Y., April 13, 2013 — It was midafternoon in the Bronx exactly 15 years ago that a catastrophic failure ensured a dramatic change in Yankee fortunes. The failure of a beam in the old Stadium’s Loge level made what was planned and feared (by some) inevitable: The Stadium would have to be replaced. Continue reading
4-6-5-6-5-3-4
Bronx, N.Y., April 12, 2013 — It hardly seemed momentous when Nick Markakis bounced back to the box on an 0-2 count and CC Sabathia threw to first for the initial out of a 5-2 Yankees victory over visiting Baltimore Friday night. Forefront in most minds was that it was freezing, but by the time the game ended almost three hours later we had witnessed a nine-ground-out defense where just two grounders would be hit to a non-pitching infielder, and one of those was an e-5 charged to Kevin Youkilis that would lead to the visitors scoring a late tying run. Continue reading
A Yale Yahoo
April 4, 2013, Bronx, N.Y. — With all of major league baseball, a large part of the country’s sporting community, and even the part of America not be terribly interested in our great game peeking in, the Yankees arose from the frozen tundra in the Bronx and showed they would not be losing all of their 2013 games Thursday night. With catcher Francisco Cervelli dashing to prevent the first Boston run and uncharacteristically hitting the back wall of the visiting bullpen with a seventh-inning drive to tally the home team’s last, the pinstripers salvaged the last of three with the Red Sox by a 4-2 score. Continue reading
Not Much to Say
Bronx, N.Y., April 1, 2013 — It will come as no shock that an opening day that started near 60 degrees and got colder and wetter, and that ended in an 8-2 loss, is not one I’m eager to share. It was a mixed day throughout. Yankee Stadium was beautiful, but crossing to the stadium from the train, we saw that brown grass remnants dominated the ballfields that populate the location of the sacred field that once was home to the Cathedral. Shivering for months through relentless temps in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, I somehow showed up in the Bronx expecting the grass there to be late-spring, early-summer verdant. Continue reading
Night Baseball Into Day
Hermosillo, Mexico, February 7-8, 2013 — In September 1988, the Detroit Tigers and New York Yankees “treated” me to the longest live ballgame I ever witnessed in person, a 5-4 Yankee walkoff that took a little more than six hours. Twenty-five years later, I got to see a similar contest, 18 innings again, and a full hour longer. Only this one was broadcast to me, attentively watching in my recliner, over my TV, and in Spanish.
It took a real marathon to settle the 2013 Caribbean Series. The heavily favored Dominican Republic team, fielding the most current or one-time major leaguers – Hanley Ramirez, Miguel Tejada, Fernando Tatis, Jordany Valdespin, Julio Lugo, Fernando Rodney, Tony Pena, Jr., Jhonny Nunez – would have already won the Championship in former years with its 5-1 record in the round robin games. But in 2013, a Championship game pitting the top two finishers was added. Continue reading
Four Years, Four Months
November 12, 2012, Port Chester, N.Y. – It was an inscrutable moment, this past Saturday, traveling by train, then subway, to New York’s Central Park for an event. The first 50-degree-plus day in a week that represented the second straight seven-day period the city and its environs remained recovering from the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, and the first time many New Yorkers were emerging for any purpose that was more than survival-based. Why was everyone smiling at me? Continue reading
Mind Set on Wou
Bronx, N.Y., October 12, 2012 – What can you say after watching your team score in four of 25 innings over two days, and on the third day a guy whom you refuse to believe is the second coming of, well, name your all-time righty ace, has retired 12 of 12 through four? If you’re not feeling the panic that is gripping my fingers even now as I type this afterward, given the scene as set, you may not be a baseball fan, or, well, never mind. Continue reading
Raul Takes Us There
An ecstatic Yankee team does pretty much what the 50,000 delirious fans were doing in the 12th inning, only they had the night's hero to swarm.