Bronx, N.Y., June 19, 2013 — Although the fact that Wednesday evening in the Bronx was about as pleasant in its own way as was the afternoon on a perfect day for baseball, to most Yankee fans the 24-hour period had a pretty stark divide: good day game, bad night game. Given that the home team won the former and lost the latter, that makes it a pretty simplistic approach.

But au contraire, I protest. Sure, I liked the win more than the loss; liked the game in which the Yanks scored six runs better than the one the Dodgers won with the same number. And Dodgers fans could also protest that their team made four errors under the sun, surely an indication that it was not the best of games. Second basemen Skip Schumaker did bobble two ground balls, though neither had a remote link to a scoring threat much less an actual score. But the two errors righty reliever Ron Belisario committed on Vernon Wells’s seventh-inning comebacker did set up three runs, critical ones, because the 4-for-4 Hanley Ramirez would homer for two runs in the eighth.

But the reason the first of two was much more entertaining had almost as much to do with Dodgers play as it did with that of the Yanks. Right field phenom Yasiel Puig arrived with lots of buzz attached and, although he would homer for the last run in the nightcap, his most exciting moments of the day — and there were quite a few — came in game one.

Tossing his bat aside on Hiroki Kuroda’s 3-0 pitch in the first, the rookie needed to be called back to the plate when home plate ump Andy Fletcher called the pitch a strike. Puig not only took a hard and annoyed swing at the next pitch, he drove it past Kuroda and up the middle, then bolted from the box and ran two bases, oblivious to the fact that the American League’s best center fielder was retrieving the ball and firing to second. Brett Gardner’s throw nailed him, but barely, and when Puig tried the same thing seven frames later he made second base safely.

The Yankees went down quietly in the first, but DH Thomas Neal started the home second by lining a single to right. Or did he? Puig charged the ball aggressively in right and fired to first for a play that had a chance of denying Neal his single, but the throw got past Adrian Gonzalez at first. I can count on two hands the times I’ve seen an outfielder try to throw a hitter out at first base once he has bounced or lined the ball into the outfield; I needed to recalculate that count after today.

An Ichiro Suzuki single and sac bunt later, Lyle Overbay doubled to the wall in dead center and the Yanks had a 2-0 lead. This score held until the sixth when Ichiro — again (he had three hits, scored twice, and knocked in three) — homered for a third run, just before Ramirez’s third hit keyed a two-run rally that brought the Dodgers within 3-2. But then Jayson Nix and Robbie Cano singles preceding the Belisario double error led to three runs for the Yanks in the home seventh. The scoring seemed unnecessary (but always welcome of course), until Puig legged out a traditional single into two bases starting the top of the eighth, even though his team was down by four. Ramirez’s fourth hit, an ensuing two-run homer that bounced off the top of the wall in left, closed the margin to 6-4. Fans of both sides cheered wildly, but the Yanks prevailed by that same score in the end, with Mariano Rivera cashing in the save by striking out Puig, of course, in the top of the ninth.

It must be admitted that the Dodgers won the night game because journeyman lefty Chris Capuano and a few relievers dominated the depleted Yankee lineup, and because the LA offense bunched five first-inning singles into a six-batter span, with Puig bunting for a one-base hit this time. Hardly a great start, but Phil Hughes gets a bit of credit for holding the damage to two runs. But more hits and more runs followed. Hughes was not terrible, but he wasn’t good. The harsh reality is that Phil could pitch for this Yankee team when they were hammering homers the last few years; he will not win when backed by this current offense.

Which brings us to Kuroda’s performance in game one. Hiroki understands the reality of 2013 Yankee baseball; he failed to win last time out despite allowing just two runs over eight. He has lost 1-0 this year. But he used an effective slider and spotted his fastball in getting the Yanks through seven up 3-2. He pitches like an adult, reacting to the reality on the ground, using what works until it doesn’t. He used the slider with an occasional split to get six of his first seven outs on ground balls, then changed it over when the visitors started looking for the heat and finding the sinkers. A hard liner to center ended the third, and he had to flag down Andre Ethier’s hotshot up the middle in the fourth himself, doubling Gonzalez off third after the quick catch to thwart the only early threat.

Still, outfield missiles accounted for three outs over the fifth and sixth, and what could have been Puig’s best moment became that instead for Robinson Cano once the Yankee second baseman somehow flagged down Yasiel’s hard one-hopper and threw the rookie out while lying on the ground in the sixth. Kuroda threw 20 first-pitch strikes to 27 batters, and hit bats this time; he walked only one and struck out two.

So you see, the first game had so many highs and lows, so much drama, so many great plays, and just a handful of bad ones. And game one had one more thing that game two could not. Beloved Yankee veteran player Don Mattingly, “Donnie Baseball,” current manager of the Dodgers, was supposed to be welcomed back to the Bronx, where he fashioned a nearly Hall-worthy playing career, Tuesday night. Donnie played in the pinstripes only, and the fact that he’s one of the few great Yankee players not to have played on a Championship team makes him even more beloved, at least to the most devoted fans, the ones that knew him best.

Donnie appeared in Yankee Stadium managing his West Coast team twice on Wednesday. He came to the Yanks’ new baseball palace for two games. But only one time did he bring out his team’s lineup card to huddle with the umpires and a Yankee coach around home plate before a game. Only once did the Bleacher Creatures add him to their roll call for the first time. Only one time did we get to stand and cheer for a long gone but not forgotten hero, returning to the scenes of his finest battles, or to a facility as near to that ground as possible.

Donnie was there, both day and night. But he was welcomed back first for the day game, the one about which we can say,

BTW,TYW
YAMKEE BASEBALL!!!