Bronx, N.Y., August 19, 2003 — The number three plays a huge part in the game of baseball, what with nine innings, three outs in an inning, three strikes in an out. So it seems a good thing that the Yanks victory over the Royals was so dominated with threes and multiples of three. To begin with, the game went nine, the Yankees scored six and the Royals three.

It was a beautiful night for baseball in the Baseball Cathedral in the Bronx, and the place was filled with Yankee fans out to have a good time. Last week’s power failure seemed already to have faded out of memory, as did the poor-weather, rain-dominated days and nights of the 2003 season in Yankee Stadium. A pleasant breeze wafted over the proceedings as the crowd buzzed with excitement.

And the players and fans didn’t disappoint. Before becoming Andy Pettitte’s first strike out victim of the night in the second, Raul Ibanez lined a foul hard and up and back to his left, which a fan in seat three, Row E, Box 620, reached with his bare left hand, making an impressive one-hand grab. Not to be oudone, a fan in Row A on the right field side (section 7), reached both hands out, down and over the rail to snatch a Derek Jeter foul in the third. Pettitte and Appier were allowing a few hard drives from the outset, with Karim Garcia, Carlos Beltran and Bernie Williams making some fine catches, and the fans were joining in.

But there were two significant differences in the way the starting pitchers were going about things. Where Appier was allowing walks intermittently, Pettitte was keeping the Royals from mounting anything by mixing in strike outs fairly regularly, once he notched his first five batters in. It perhaps should have been the other way around, because the other difference was that Kevin Appier couldn’t keep the Yankees in the ball park.

He escaped harm from a one-out single in the first by Nick Johnson and a one-out walk to Bernie Williams by coaxing Derek Jeter and then Hideki Matsui to bounce into twin killings. But his luck (or skill) ran out in the third. Aaron Boone was the third straight one-out Yankee base runner when he walked in the third, and he moved up to second when Karim Garcia’s long fly to center died on the warning track. Little matter. The question of whether Alfonso Soriano’s long drive to just left of center would carry beyond Carlos Beltran’s game effort to track it down was answered when it cleared the fence near the 399 mark, and the Yankees had a 2-0 lead.

Then Jeter lined a double to right leading off the fourth, and after Beltran made a fine grab of Giambi’s soft liner to short center in front of him, Bernie Williams, facing the same 1-1 count Soriano had the inning earlier, drove a tracer into the short porch in right, doubling the Yankees’ score, and their lead. Appier got into one-out trouble again in the fifth. After retiring Boone on a 5-3 on his sixth pitch, Karim Garcia jumped on the first delivery he saw and hit it off the upper deck in right for his third home run in three games, and a 5-0 Yankee lead.

Andy Pettitte, meanwhile, was having no such trouble. He retired the first five Royals before surrendering a harmless two-out single to Randa in the second. Harvey lined softly to Johnson, and Pettitte dominated in the third, sandwiching a bouncer right back to the box between his second and third strike outs. After outlasting the gifted Angel Berroa on a grounder to short in 10 pitches to start the fourth, he surrendered an infield single to Sweeney (that really should have been an E6), but responded wth another strike out and a grounder to first unassisted. Utilizing the same pattern in the fifth, he followed up a one-out single to Harvey with a strike out and a two-hopper for a 5-3.

If the Yanks had used the hammer to establish the 5-0 lead over Appier going into the sixth, they tacked on their sixth run with cleverness and subterfuge. Giambi seemed destined to die on first after he drew a one-out walk and then Bernie popped to third. But Jason fooled the whole Stadium when he guessed correctly that Appier’s 0-1 pitch to Matsui would be a slow bender and broke for second. The Yanks’ slow-footed DH snuck in so effectively that he didn’t even have to slide. I dare say no one in the stands was fooled, however, when rbi machine Matsui, sensing the sudden opportunity, delivered run no. six on a soft liner to short center on the very next pitch.

It was pretty early in the game when the nature of the at bats against Andy Pettitte shifted. Whereas he had been retiring the Royals on few pitches on hard liners to the outfield and sharp bouncers to the guys manning the bases, his pitch count began to mount as his strike out total did. He was around 80 pitches, therefore, after the Royals mounted their first scare on leadoff singles by Relaford and Berroa to start the sixth. And DH Mike Sweeney gave us all a bad moment when his ensuing deep fly to right sent Garcia to the warning track to haul it in as Relaford advanced to third. But Pettitte escaped on a sharp hopper to Boone for a 5-4-3, so when he took the mound in the seventh, he still had a 6-0 lead.

And although there were no earned runs in the frame to follow, and Andy fully deserved to escape the inning unscathed, he had lost some command and the Royals were hitting the ball harder. Soriano made a good catch on Ibanez’s hard bouncer up the middle, but when his one-hop throw evaded Johnson and made the seats (frankly, I thought it was a ball Nick should have knocked down at least), Raul was in scoring position. To this point, Andy had thrown 18 of 23 first-pitch strikes, but after he started both Randa and Harvey off with ball one, they singled in succession, with Randa’s plating a run. But Andy stiffened, and deserved to escape once again right there, as he whiffed Lopez and retired DeFilece on a fly to left. Both Relaford and Berroa did hit balls hard, but the first skitted through Nick Johnson’s legs for a two-base error when the ball stopped after striking the rolled-up tarp (for covering the field) down the right field line, and Soriano bobbled Berroa’s, scoring the third run and ending Andy’s night.

Joe Torre summoned Jeff Nelson, who was superb, even if he did subject us all to that fake-to-third-then-to-first move twice. Sweeney bounced back to Jeff, and the Royals went in order with two strike outs in the eighth. And although Mariano Rivera did surrender a lead-off infield single in the ninth, he finished strong with a strike out and a double play, closing the game out on a total of seven pitches.

And you shouldn’t be fooled into thinking that Royals relievers Levine and MacDougal did well because they pitched scoreless frames in the seventh and eighth, respectively. They both escaped on inning-ending double plays (the Yanks bounced into four on the night), and none of the 42 pitches, two hits, two walks, and one hit-by-pitch amassed between them was their most negative and telling stat. It was this: Between them they faced nine Yankees, and threw exactly no first pitches for strikes.

If you score games, and take the extra step of counting pitches, it’s not much of a leap to start seeing things in numerical patterns. Checking the out of town scoreboard, for instance, I could see that in the game between the Rangers and the Tigers, no. 46 (Dickey) was facing no. 46 (Maroth), while in the contest that fell right below that one on the board, two 45’s were having at it in Skydome where the Blue Jays and Escobar were taking on the Mariners, led by Ryan Franklin. Also, when the Scoreboard played Match Game NY before the bottom of the fourth, the guy whose picture a fan was supposed to find twice in the nine-box grid was that of Jorge Posada (successfully found behind nos. 4 and 8). But Jason Giambi was back there twice too, to make the game a bit harder, I guess. And what numbers was Yankee no. 25 behind, you ask? Well, 2 and 5, of course.

But more than anything, this game had 3‘s, and multiples thereof. As mentioned, the Yankees won, 6-3. Kevin Appier’s line featured 6 innings, 6 hits, 6 runs, 6 earned runs, 3 home runs, 3 walks. Andy Pettitte allowed no earned runs but 3 runs on 3 errors, and struck out 6, earning his 15th win. Jeff Nelson pitched in two innings, the seventh and eight, throwing 3 and 15 pitches respectively. He threw one ball, and then five, a one-in-three ratio in both innings.

And then there was that This Day in Yankee History highlight the Scoreboard flashed. When the Yankees beat the Angels on August 19, 2000, 3 years ago, the most memorable thing that occurred in it was that they tied a major league record by hitting 3 sac flies in one inning (obviously with an error along the way). Care to guess what inning?

The 3rd, of course.

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!