Bronx, N.Y., October 4, 2003 — The more I learn about the game of baseball, the more I need to forget everything I’ve learned before. The latest lesson: The way to beat the 2003 Minnesota Twins in the playoffs is to walk Shannon Stewart leading off.

I groaned in agony when Roger Clemens’s sixth pitch to Stewart in the Minnesota first on Saturday afternoon soared up and away and the Minnesota left fielder trotted down to first, just as he had against Andy Pettitte two nights before. Clemens had managed to get a strike call out of home-plate ump Wally Bell on the 2-0 pitch, but he was less than thrilled when his fourth offering was judged a ball. Trying to establish the outside heater a bit up near the numbers as a strike, he took no chances with the three Twins that followed, retiring Rivas, Mientkiewicz, and LeCroy on 10 pitches, despite a Stewart steal of second on the only ball in the bunch.

It would be enough to establish a zone he and Bell battled over all day, and it handed the Yankee offense a scoreless game as things moved to the top of the second. The Yankee team, and in particular its outfield, has been the subject of some pretty harsh scrutiny in the Press as this postseason progresses. They don’t run as fast as the Twins; they do not catch and hold the ball as well (OK, guilty on that one, again, Saturday); they lack the arms to harness and deny the Twins’ team speed (again, a criticism with which I cannot disagree).

But the Yankee outfield is populated by people with quite an offensive resume, and they carried the action today. Bernie Williams has been much maligned for some shoddy outfield play in the post, but Yankee fans have been more worried about the only occasional offense he has managed in this injury-dominated year, too. And Hideki Matsui, although he has a proven knack for knocking in runs, as his 106 rbi prove, has killed many a rally with bouncers to second. But Bernie has been breaking October games open for eight years now, and he broke out today.

Young Kyle Lohse started the top of the second by throwing one out of the zone to Bernie, and Williams wasted two fastballs and a curve by fouling them off. Not about to be intimidated by a young hurler trying to dictate the pace, he stepped out and peered toward third base, refusing to be rushed even after Wally Bell told him to get back in the batter’s box. He gave one last look around before stepping back in, and then drove the fifth pitch of the at bat hard off the “baggie” in the right field corner for a double. Posada followed by moving him up 90 feet with an infield grounder on six pitches. With the Yanks needing a fly ball to go ahead, Matsui accepted the opportunity Lohse’s first-pitch high heater presented, blasting it high and far to right for a quick Yankee 2-0 score. The struggling Boone and Johnson went down meekly, but Clemens had the lead he craved.

Issuing no more free passes, the tall Texan went right after the Minnesota hitters, retiring them in order in the second. Then Juan Rivera, the silent partner, so to speak, of the Yankee outfield, led off the visitors’ half of the third with the first of his three singles, and the truth about the relative strengths of the two outfields came into sharper focus. Juan took second on Derek Jeter’s one-out single past shortstop (managed after the Yankee Captain fouled off two potential strike three’s), and scampered across the plate with the Yanks’ third run on Bernie Williams’ two-out base hit up the middle.

That run was huge, as Clemens, refusing to allow the Twins any more free passes, then pumped a 3-2 fastball high and hard to Twins catcher A. J. Pierzynski leading off the ensuing bottom half of the third. The resulting blast to right put the Twins on the board and brought some life back to the hankie-waving throng. But Clemens was undaunted by the long ball he had allowed or the hometown crowd, and he retired the next three on four pitches. From that point on, Roger operated as if by rote. He has been in big games for years, and has been a regular participant in the postseason ever since he joined the Yanks. He knew what the job entailed and was ready to meet the challenge.

He gave up a harmless two-out single up the middle to Jacque Jones in the fourth, and then one to Christian Guzman in the fifth. The Twins then had their first of two serious challenges going when Shannon Stewart beat out a high chop down third, with Guzman turning on the afterburners and coasting into third. Twins manager Gardenhire sent Mike Ryan up to hit for the 0-for-9 Luis Rivas, but the lefty youngster took two pitches for strikes, barely flicked one foul, and succumbed to Clemens high heat, as he flailed the bat hopelessly at Roger’s fourth offering.

Clemens grimaced when, during Doug Mientkiwicz’s at bat leading off the sixth, his 1-2 cutter hit Posada’s outside-corner target dead center, but Bell waved it off as ball two. The call could have been pivotal too, as the Twins first baseman grounded a single up the middle just out of Sorano’s reach on the next toss. The crowd came to life as Mientkiewicz continued on to second when Bernie Williams bobbled and lost the ball in center. But then Clemens went to serious work, mixing high heat with low splitters and the occasional slider. He forced righty LeCroy to bounce to third with a steady diet of inside heat, struck Jacque Jones out on a 2-2 pitch, and ran his numbers against Torii Hunter to 0-for-24 on a first-pitch groundout to Boone.

Although I didn’t suspect it at the time, he finished his day’s work with perhaps his most dominating frame, retiring the side on a game-low 10 pitches on three infield grounders in the seventh. Despite the leadoff walk to Stewart to start the game, he threw first-pitch strikes to 20 of 27 batters, and fired only 28 of 99 off the plate. Six of the 13 times he got Twins batters to swing and miss, the swing became the final pitch of one of his six punch-outs, and he dominated the outside corner well enough to get Bell to agree with him on 18 called strikes. Counting Roger’s snaring Mientkiewicz’s soft liner right back at him in the fourth, 11 of the putouts were confined to the infield and few of those were struck well.

The offense, meanwhile, although it would not dent the plate again, kept the Twins busy and the crowd quiet with a string of mini-threats. Rivera’s second infield single following a fourth-inning walk to Johnson, combined with the walk Bernie worked out in the fifth, drove young Lohse from the mound with more than 100 pitches thrown in five short innings. It was eery and disturbing watching ex-Yankee Kenny Rogers strike out the side in the sixth, but Juan Rivera’s third hit and Soriano’s deep drive to center drove the veteran lefty from the mound in the seventh, a frame where the Yanks loaded the bases on intentional walks to Jeter and Williams. Matsui got his second hit in the eighth and Giambi’s walk in the ninth made for a day where the hometown crowd just never got a chance to relax.

And they didn’t relax when Mariano Rivera came in for the six-out save either. The career postseason save leader came out of the pen throwing five of six first-pitch strikes. Proving up to the two-inning save task with plenty to spare, the Yankee closer struck out three and disposed of the first six batters in the Twins order on a mere 19 pitches, 17 of them strikes, to close out the 3-1 win.

But all the respect for Mr. Automatic in the Yankee pen nothwithstanding, this Bombers win belonged to the outfield and their bats, and to the seemingly ageless Roger Clemens. It is perhaps pertinent to point out that the 41-year-old righty fashioned his dominating performance on October 4, one day before the birth date of American Rocket Pioneer Robert H. Goddard in 1882. The Red Glare emanating from Yankee number 22 manifested itself both in the high heat he used to subdue the overmatched Twins’ bats for seven innings, and from the long hard stares he bestowed upon Wally Bell when he felt he missed a strike on a close one, particularly before the Pierzynski homer in the third and Mientkiewicz’s single leading off the sixth.

Goddard, credited with proving interplanetary flight feasible by demonstrating rocket propulsion would work in a vacuum and that it was therefore applicable to space flight, was also pressed into perfecting some rocket-based weapons for the Armed Forces. Once fired, these devices would result in a loud “BOOM.” Which brings us to tomorrow’s game, and…

Let’s Go BOOMer!

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!