Bronx, N.Y., August 13, 2006 — It seemed a perfect day for baseball on Sunday in the Bronx when Yankee starter Chien-Ming Wang unleashed his first pitch at 1:09. But when Angels centerfielder Chone Figgins lashed the second toss over the wall in right center, the day took a negative turn.
It wasn’t that the gorgeous weather worsened, and no, the largely cloudless sky didn’t suddenly turn dark. But Alex Rodriguez had a Howie Kendrick soft hopper glance off his glove, and an ugly inning was on. What would have been a routine grounder to second by Angels shortstop Orlando Cabrera was a hit as Robinson Cano was covering the bag on a hit and run, with Kendrick speeding into third. Wang recovered to nail Kendrick at the plate on a roller in front of the mound, but three ground singles in succession gave the Angels a 3-0 lead.
A three-run first inning shouldn’t have been cause for panic, and neither Yankee players nor their fans did, but the 55,000 basking in the sun were not a happy group. Although heralded rookie Jerred Weaver struck out the side around a Derek Jeter walk, it cost him 24 pitches, a promising sign. But the hometown fans were not in a counting mood. They had booing on their mind, and A-Rod was once again the target.
Weaver added five K’s while dominating Yankee bats through six innings, allowing just a singleton home run by first baseman Craig Wilson in the fifth. The delivery from his tall, rangy frame had the Yankees guessing badly all day. They couldn’t catch up with the 93-mph fastball, flailed helplessly at the mid-seventies curve, and rarely judged the 85-mph outside change of pace to be a strike. Unfortunately home plate ump Marvin Hudson disagreed 25 times (to just 12 for Wang), and the Yanks took a called strike three five times on the day. (The Angels did just once.)
The Yanks reached Weaver for just two singles aside from the Wilson jack, and both were erased on double plays. The 0-2 Robinson Cano 4-6-3 in the second evoked disappointed shrugs, while the 0-1, 5-4-3 off A-Rod’s bat in the sixth brought a cascade of scorn. The Yanks did pose one genuine threat, as Johnny Damon and Jeter coaxed back-to-back two-out walks in the third. Bobby Abreu lined hard into the right center field gap, but when the ball hung up long enough for ex-Yank Juan Rivera to make the catch, the best Yankee chance had passed.
Rivera stretched the Anaheim lead to 4-1 with a two-out single in the fifth after much of the crowd and Wang thought Juan had taken a third strike to close the frame. And another run scored in the sixth after first base ump Jerry Layne judged that a hometeam attempt at a 1-6-3 dp was a tad late, much to the crowd’s chagrin.
But that upset was nothing compared with the disdain with which the fans treated their own third baseman and cleanup hitter for most of the day. Three Yankees struck out swinging in the first, but only A-Rod’s inning closer brought on the hoots (though truth be told, there was a smattering of vocal displeasure heaped upon young hurler Wang in the frame too, ignoring the fact that he was getting one ground ball after another). The only other punch out (of the 11) that coaxed crowd derision was when Alex took one of those changes of pace to start the fourth. Johnny Damon went down swinging two times, and taking once, to no boo’s. Jorge Posada whiffed twice, once swinging: no boo’s.
But it’s not like Alex did nothing to earn any of this derision. His failure to handle the Kendrick hopper in the first may have turned the whole inning. He failed on two hot shots later in the game, though just the one in the first was a true error, one the Scoreboard displayed immediately, then changed to a hit a minute or two later. Alex missed a hard hopper in Friday night’s loss too, that went for a double, but all of this is exactly my point. When the “boo Alex” thing first reared its ugly head, it was all about hitting, though the numbers hardly justified it. Then a few weeks ago, his throws began to misfire. Now, although he’s had a ball glance off his glove from time to time, catching the ball is becoming a problem. It’s clear that the booing is having an effect. Do the Yankee “faithful” find that satisfying? My question is, what kind of fan tries to make their own players perform more poorly?
Even though the hope was that the Bombers would get to the Anaheim pen once Weaver’s count broke into three digits and he was pulled, Brendan Donnelly came on to pitch a 1-2-3 seventh Sunday afternoon. Scot Shields followed by getting five straight outs, the last three on strike outs. But with two down and no one on in the ninth, Alex ripped his first pitch over the fence in left for a home run. The boo’s came once again! And if the point is supposed to be that he didn’t hit it until the game was out of reach, why wasn’t Giambi trashed three pitches later when he cleared the wall in center? That made the score 5-3, but it finished up that way when Francisco Rodriguez popped Jorge Posada out to left to close his day at 0-for-4, with two K’s (and no boo’s).
The loss, coupled with Boston’s win over hapless Baltimore, leaves the Yanks up one game in the East, and two in the loss column. And watching three-plus hours of baseball on another gorgeous afternoon wasn’t exactly torture. But if I’m right and A-Rod’s rude receptions are starting to take their toll, what’s a fan to do? Root that we play most of the games on the road away from the hostile, hometown crowd? It’s a rhetorical question and a frustrated one.
This was not the only August 13 that has been a bad day in the Bronx. Thirty-four years ago, ex-Yankee Hall of Fame GM George Weiss, whose teams from 1947 through 1960 won 10 pennants and seven World Series, including five in a row, passed away in Greenwich, Connecticut. And 11 years ago, beloved power hitter Mickey Mantle died in Oklahoma.
Mickey suffered through some boo’s in his days in the Bronx, only to go out a hero. Let’s hope A-Rod finds some of the same peace.
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!