Bronx, N.Y., April 27, 20113 — Despite being confronted with their third straight lefty-throwing starter — against whom the much-injured 2013 Yankee squad have struggled mightily — Saturday afternoon, the Bombers came away with a closely battled come-from-behind victory, for a 3-0 mark on their homestand. Staff ace CC Sabathia surrendered two booming home runs after allowing three in a 5-1 loss his last time out, but he prevailed through eight gutsy, gritty innings to earn the 5-4 win. Continue reading →

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. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., April 18, 2013 —The Yankees dropped the final game of their homestand, 6-2, to the Arizona Diamondbacks, seemingly because the visitors were more determined to not leave town without a victory than the Bombers were to deny them one. In a game with weird twists and turns on a few rallies that came up short, the teams were tied 2-2 after 11 on the results of just four pitches, resulting in two singleton homers apiece. Continue reading →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

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 →

Bronx, N.Y., October 2, 2012 – The only Yankee September 2012 call-up to have not yet seen action that month finally got into a game Tuesday night on October’s second day, as Francisco Cervelli crouched behind the plate to take Derek Lowe’s first pitch in the top of the 11th. In for defense once Russell Martin was pinch-run for in the eighth, and Eric Chavez had hit for Chris Stewart in the 10th, Cisco failed to corral a Lowe wild pitch in a tense 11th, but teamed with the veteran righty through two scoreless frames. Continue reading →