Bronx, N.Y., September 27, 2006 — There is no truth to the rumor that Bernie Williams gestured to right center field with a 2-1 count in Sunday’s ninth inning. And further, the double he subsequently stroked there did not start the game-winning rally 50,000-plus hoped to see.
Williams may seem an unlikely hero in the Big Apple, on the best team in baseball history, with the greatest tradition, in the entertainment capital of the world. The legendary Babe Ruth set the standard for Yankee heroes 74 years ago. That was the day he turned around a Cubs/Yankees 4-4 tie in Game Three of the World Series on October 1, 1932, by gesturing where he would homer on the next pitch, and then doing so. That Cubs starter Charlie Root swore to his dying day that Ruth was just signaling that there were two strikes has become irrelevant. The legend was born.
Of course, the Yanks did fall 7-5 to the Blue Jays Sunday. The Bombers came from behind to tie the Jays twice but the ninth-inning rally was not to be. It must be said that the Yanks were playing out the string, while Toronto had pride on the line. They had snatched second place from the Red Sox Saturday, and they wouldn’t let it slip through their fingers without a fight. Boston and New York have been treating the AL East like their own private tussle for eight years, and Toronto has had enough.
Joe Torre had appointed Bernie Williams Manager for the season’s last game, while Gary Sheffield and Alex Rodriguez were given the day off. Regulars were replaced as the day went by, starting with DH Jason Giambi, who took a seat after doubling the opposite way in the third, with Miguel Cairo summoned to run for him. Melky Cabrera repaced Johnny Damon in center in the fifth, and Bobby Abreu, Jorge Posada, and Hideki Matsui exited the game in the sixth.
Projected to be the Yanks’ Game Four starter in the coming playoffs, Jaret Wright got the start this day, and he looked ready to go. He retired seven of the first eight Jays around a walk on just 27 pitches, two on strike outs. Although Wright’s season ended well, for much of the year he was an enigma, pitching effectively more often than not, but to such a high pitch count that he rarely made it to the sixth inning. He would nibble around the strike zone after allowing a couple of hits, and before you knew it, he was throwing close to 20 tosses an inning.
That he left after five today was by design; the pitch count wasn’t a problem. If anything Wright didn’t throw enough off the plate. The 49 strikes in 68 pitches put him in rarefied territory at 72 percent. And the 20-of-23 first-pitch strikes was probably the highest Yankee mark of the year. But the Jays appeared to warm to the new Wright after the pitching pattern became apparent. Thus, when John McDonald reached Jaret for the first hit with one down in the third, three quick safeties followed on the next five pitches. Wright recovered for a strike out, but Aaron Hilll’s two-out double put Toronto up 3-0.
Playing third base this day, Andy Phillips closed the gap when his single scored the pinch-running Cairo in the bottom half, but Toronto added a run on two singles and a sac fly in the fourth. Robbie Cano doubled leading off the bottom half and scored on Derek Jeter’s one-out grounder. Then Abreu singled, and when Posada drilled a 2-1 Dustin MacGowan pitch to right for a two-run home run, the score was tied, 4-4.
Jeter had closed the second by grabbing Justin Phillips’s soft fly over his head in short center while running with his back to home plate. He topped that performance by perfectly timing a kangaroo leap to nab Lyle Overbay’s liner over short starting the fifth. Wright escaped that frame after a single up the middle when Jeter nabbed Hill’s bouncer and coverted it into a 6-6-3 double play.
Yankee fifth starter Cory Lidle pitched an effective sixth after Barker’s line double to dead center on the first pitch. When Craig Wilson at first allowed Russ Adams’s grounder to roll right through the wickets, Barker took third. Jeter appeared to have started a 6-4-3 as Barker scored, but Bruce Froehmming ruled Adams was safe at first. But the damage was over when young Wil Nieves nailed Hill trying to steal and Lidle struck out McDonald. Kevin Thompson promptly drove in Cabrera after a leadoff double to re-tie matters at 5-5 after six.
Surprise hit of the pen in the late season Brian Bruney pitched the seventh, and he too was in immediate trouble on an Alex Rios double to center. After a walk to Adam Lind, Overbay drove Thompson to the wall to haul in his fly, but Bruney then took charge, leaping to nab a John Hettig hopper and firing to Jeter to close the frame scoreless with a 1-6-3 double dip.
The eventual 7-5 loss was not the only disappointment of the day. Derek Jeter began just one point behind Minnesota’s Joe Mauer in the batting race, and he quickly knotted that battle with a first-inning single up the middle. But that would be Jeter’s last hit. As is his wont, the Captain rather put on a defensive show that demonstrated what he is about. The Yankee shortstop plays a team game. Jeter was removed after warming in the infield before the ninth, so his adoring fans could express their appreciation. Make no mistake, he’s the heart and soul of this team, and the fans let him know it with chants of “MVP! MVP!” Robbie Cano also took a shot at the batting title, with two hits his first two times up, but his challenge faded late as well.
Scott Proctor pitched a dominant eighth, and Kyle Farnsworth looked sharp in the ninth, retiring the first two before Rios reached him for a first-pitch, opposite-field single. Kyle pounded heat at Adam Lind, and almost struck him out at 1-2. But Lind blasted his next pitch over the wall in dead center, and the Jays had their third lead, 7-5. This one would hold.
Yankee bats fell silent at game’s end, and by the time Williams inserted himself as a pinch hitter with two down in the ninth, Jays pitching had struck out six of the last eight Yankee hitters. Alas, after Bernie’s two-base hit, Andy Phillips whiffed as well, the 11th Yankee strike out of the day.
When Bernie stroked his double, the loudspeakers blared the usual “Bern Bernie Bern,” lifted from the Trampps’ 1977 hit Disco Inferno. It was fitting, yes, but then again, no. The soft-speaking Williams is the most unlikely of New York heroes, and a disco hit is the most unlikely of songs to fete not only a great ballplayer, but a serious musician who plays jazz and exhibits traces of classical, pop, Brazilian, and Latin sounds in his playing as well.
But then again, maybe Disco Inferno isn’t so far off the mark. His performances have certainly lit up the House That Ruth Built for the last 15 years. He has lit a fire under more than a few moribund Yankee crowds in that time. So what was the number one song on the charts when young incendiary talent Bernabe Wiliams was born on September 13, 1968? Fire, by the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!