Bronx, N.Y., September 30, 2003 — Baseball is a simple game really. Hit the ball harder and more often, catch the balls thrown and hit within reach, throw it harder and more accurately, and pitch it with skill and direction and a certain flair, and you win most of your games. If your opponent ends up with all the check marks on their side of the ledger, you are likely to lose. That explains the Yanks’ 3-1 loss to the Twins in Tuesday’s Game One of the 2003 American League Division Series in the clearest of terms.
It’s that simple. The Yanks even caught what appeared to be a huge break when young Twins lefty Johan Santana had to leave after four innings with a muscle cramp in his leg. But the Twins pen did a great job, and the convoluted televsion-driven scheduling of the series removed any residual difficulty that could be derived from the Minnesota club having used five of their guys, a few of them extensively, on this one game. Both teams get a totally unbaseball-like bye the day after opening their series, a day that will allow the Twins pen to come back “as good as new” on Thursday night.
Santana was very good through two, and came back to pitch a successful fourth inning after struggling through a 27-pitch third. After having surrendered two-out singles to Jeter and then Matsui in the first and second, he escaped both on routine plays to the infield, and he got his first six outs while tossing only 25 pitches. But Mussina was even better. Yes, he had a threat on his hands almost immediately. Shannon Stewart got his series mvp collage started really well by smacking Moose’s third offering hard into the left field corner for a double to start the game. But Mussina rallied after Rivas sacrifcied Stewart to third during a great six-pitch battle with Doug Mientkiewicz, eventually coaxing a meek, 3-2 one-hopper right back to the box.
He then breezed through Matt LeCroy to close the first; Jones, Hunter, and Koskie in the second; and Pierzynski to lead off the third on 17 pitches, but suffered an unlucky break when Soriano couldn’t handle Guzman’s rolling topper past the mound with his bare hand. He worked the count full against Stewart, and I couldn’t help feeling that the Twins’ new veteran left fielder would be more trouble in this spot than Mientkiwicz had been in the first. Sure enough, although Mike was still pitching well, Stewart’s hard liner to left for 2-for-2 on the day “singled” him out as the first guy on the day who was hitting the ball well. And when Guzman, running on the play, decided to risk a run for third, the Yanks’ defense had its first chance of the day to make its case.
Matsui charged Stewart’s ball well, and got rid of it in a hurry. Perhaps the throw was a bit high but Boone had moved a bit between the third base bag and home plate, almost as if he was setting up to relay a throw home, and from that position his grab and tag was too late even though the throw had beaten Guzman clearly. When Rivas lined the next pitch in front of Bernie, fans were glad that he reacted quickly and caught it, but also resigned that the speedy Guzman would beat any toss Williams could make home, and he did. The Twins had a 1-0 lead.
But it was early and Santana’s troubles were about to begin. Juan Rivera swung and missed at his first offering in the inning’s bottom half, took a ball, then fouled one off to fall into a 1-2 hole. But Rivera, who ended the season on an offensive upswing, battled gamely, fouling off two more pitches while taking ball two and ball three, and smacked the at bat’s eighth pitch hard up the middle. Shortstop Guzman, acquired from the Yanks years ago in the Chuck Knoblauch trade, did well to get within catching distance and even better in flagging down the wierd skip that carried the ball beyond him. He wheeled and threw and beat Juan by a step. The Twins defense had passed its first test.
Santana’s troubles continued, however. He struck out Soriano on a breaking pitch, but only after the Yankee second baseman had taken two pitches and fouled off two of his own. Johnson followed by walking on four pitches, and Jeter followed with a seven-pitch walk. The Yankees had battled the young lefty hard for 24 pitches and had him on the ropes, despite Guzman’s great play. But Santana came right at Giambi and three pitches later he walked off the mound after having struck the Yankee DH out swinging. It’s generally difficult to mount much of a challenge in baseball when the middle of your order struggles, and number four and five batters Giambi and Posada did all day, going 0-for-8 with four strike outs. Posada led off the Yankee fourth by flying routinely to left on the first pitch, but Bernie Williams lined a 2-1 pitch in the left center gap that hit the wall on a bounce. He stumbled going around first, however, a costly spill that grew more dear when Matsui bounced into a 4-6-3 on a 1-0 pitch to close out the frame.
Mussina, meanwhile, struggled through a 27-pitch inning of his own in the fourth. He struck out LeCroy, but Jones singled to right and Hunter walked after just barely staying alive on a foul tip that Jorge couldn’t hold. Both runners moved up on Koskie’s bouncer to first, but the logical intentional walk to Pierzynski paid off when Guzman fouled out to Boone. Shannon Stewart battled Mike gamely leading off the fifth, but he whiffed on eight pitches and Mussina retired Rivas and Mientkiewicz to close the inning, leading to the pivotal sixth, where this game was lost.
The Yanks got a break initially when LeCroy’s hard bouncer down the left-field line struck the wall of the stands that juts out, and the Twins DH had to settle for a single. And Moose came back, striking Jones out taking on four pitches. But Torii Hunter lined Moose’s first pitch hard into right center. Bernie Williams misjudged how hard the ball was hit and took a step in rather than sprinting across toward right to cut off the gap, either thinking he could catch it or that he could hold Lecroy at second, but it skipped hard on the grass and careened past him and rolled all the way to the wall. By the time his throw reached the twin cutoff men Jeter and Soriano, who were so close they almost interfered with one another, Soriano surmised correctly that he couldn’t get LeCroy at the plate. But he rushed in shifting his body toward third, and his throw sailed high and to the right, bouncing too hard off the side wall for Boone to corral before Hunter crossed the plate.
The stunned Mussina allowed a liner to left by Koskie that became a double when Matsui failed at a shoestring attempt, and walked Pierzynski on eight pitches, but Mike recovered to strike out Guzman. He retired the Twins in order in the seventh, and left a game in which he was only down, 3-0, though it felt worse. He threw 70 strikes in his 112 pitches, managed 18 of 30 first-pitch strikes, struck out six and walked three, one of them intentionally. The seven hits the Twins managed off him included a triple that should have been a single, a double off a shoestring attempt, a hard double and four singles that included Guzman’s swinging bunt. The Yankee ace pitched well enough to win.
But if the Yankees lost in their outfield in the sixth, the Twins won it with their pen in the fifth through eighth innings. Rick Reed got two valuable outs before allowing Soriano’s long double to the right center gap in the fifth. Twins Manager Gardenhire gave the ball to lefty J.C. Romero, who fell behind the struggling Nick Johnson (0-for-3 with a walk) 3-0, but recovered to coax a bouncer to third. Jeter’s single up the middle opened the sixth, therefore, rather than plating Soriano with two outs in the fifth. Romero retired Giambi on a fielder’s choice but neither Posada nor Williams could come up with the key base hit with Jeter on second. Romero was replaced after he walked Matsui leading off the seventh, and the Yanks appeared to be in business when Latroy Hawkins’s first pitch became a single into center by Boone after his looping liner eluded Guzman. Joe Torre went to his bench for Ruben Sierra, but he failed, rolling back to Hawkins for a fielder’s choice at second, and then Hawkins stiffened.
Latroy was the Twins’ closer a few years back, and he pitched like it this day, making the official scorer’s selection of a winning pitcher in a game wher the starter failed to go five an easy one. With runners on first and third and one out, he struck Soriano out on on five pitches, and did battle with Nick Johnson for nine tosses before whiffing him on high heat as well.
The best that can be said about the Yankee pen and the eighth inning is that the Twins didn’t score. Jeff Nelson left the field to a cascade of boo’s after walking his only batter, and Heredia loaded the bases on a fielder’s choice, an intentional walk, and single and then hit Pierzynski with a pitch, but Ed Montague ruled, rightly in my opinion, that the Twins catcher had swung, and the Yanks escaped on a 1-2-3 double play. Felix retired the Twins in the ninth without incident. Hawkins remained strong in the home half of the eighth, retiring the Yanks’ three, four, and five batters on 10 pitches with two more strike outs.
Going into the ninth, the Yanks had five singles and a double. The Twins may have only deserved to be credited with two doubles among their seven hits off Mussina, but the fact that they bunched three of them in the sixth gives them an edge. Mussina pitched well, but so did the four who shared the hill for Minnesota through eight, particularly Santana to open and Hawkins to close. Bernie Williams’s and Alfonso Soriano’s struggles in the decisive sixth, the failure of the Matsui/Boone connection in the Twins third, and the fine Guzman grab at short in the Yankee half of that frame all indicate that the Twins caught and threw the ball more effectively than the home team.
But if all that were not enough to make the distinction clear, Shannon Stewart’s contribution in the Yankee ninth made the point all over again, just when Gardenhire tabbed a reliever who appeared poised to give it all back to the Yanks. Eddie Guardado came in to close, but Williams slashed his first pitch into right for a single. Matsui drove the next offering deep the opposite way into the left field corner, threatening double if not homer. Stewart dug hard toward the foul pole and dove toward the wall. When he came down with the ball in his glove, the Yankee threat wasn’t over, but it was severely dulled. Boone swung and missed, but then lined a double into that same corner, a shot that would have score two. Sierra failed again, flying to right, but Soriano beat out a bouncer up the middle, and the Yanks were on the board. It all just added to the agony eventually though, when Nick Johnson bounced to third to end it, but the Yanks can and should take some heart from the fact that the magical Matsui’s drive almost did the job, and at least revealed a crack in the Twins pen.
Song stylist Johnny Mathis, who celebrated his 68th birthday this day, had a big hit years ago with his song, Chances Are. In this simple game of baseball, if the opposition outhits and outfields you, while both teams pitch effectively, chances are the best team in the field will win. If the nightly sports reports intersperse shots of the players of one team running after balls that have eluded them and players heaving balls into the stands, while film clips of the opposition make the highlight reels, chances are the latter team wins.
But tomorrow is another day, as was yesterday. The Bombers posted the best record in the American League this year, and their roster is filled with great ballplayers capable of playing the game very well. They have been in the playoffs for eight years running, and won the Championship in four of those years. There isn’t a player in the Minnesota dugout, or in professional baseball, who thinks that they are done, last year’s early exit notwithstanding. The Yanks of yesteryear have come back from any number of opening-game series losses, great days for the history books. But Joe Torre’s Yanks, with its core of Andy, Derek, Mariano, Bernie and Jorge, have made some comebacks too. Joe’s gang came back from two games down to the Braves in the 1996 World Series, winning the next four straight. They lost the first two in the 2001 ALDS at home to the Oakland A’s, only to win two on the far coast and a final one in New York. In fact, they even lost their very first playoff game, to the Texas Rangers, on October 1, 1996, 6-2. And speaking of October 1, that also was the birthday of War of 1812 naval hero, James Lawrence, born on that day back in 1781. Mr. Lawrence had a few words of advice for the Yankee fan faithful out there, words he famously uttered during a naval battle in 1813:
“Don’t Give Up the Ship!”
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!