Bronx, N.Y., September 8, 2009 — There was a pretty weary bunch of concession people and ushers manning their stations in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night. Coming off a lengthy day/night Labor Day doubleheader, to a man (and woman) they were hoping for a brisk contest. You got the feeling, then, that they were just as disappointed as the Yankee players and fans when Jason Bartlett tied the game 2-2 on a home run off Phil Hughes on the first pitch of the eighth inning. And, one assumes, they were just as happy as the team and the paying crowd when Nick Swisher sent us all home with his second home run of the night in the bottom of the ninth.

Several years back when YES TV broadcaster Michael Kay was still covering the games on radio, a standard was set that any game that concluded in less than three hours was “manageable.” This one had the earmarks of one that would qualify from the very beginning thanks to Tampa’s David Price and Chad Gaudin of the Yanks. The two of them allowed just four hits and one run in the game’s first five innings. Price was down 1-0 on the only hit he allowed to that point, a booming Swisher home run to the second deck in left field in the second inning. After issuing his second walk and being victimized by Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez singles in the home sixth, Price left the game on the losing side of a 2-0 score. Price struck out six, with Derek Jeter falling victim all three times he faced him, and Jorge Posada twice. Pounding 94- to 97-mph heat he dominated Yankee lumber.

But surprisingly, he was no match for Yankee midseason pickup Gaudin. The righty survived a first-inning scare when with one down Carl Crawford tripled off Johnny Damon’s glove at the left field wall. Alex Rodriguez started a 5-2-6 relay that nailed Crawford on an Evan Longoria hot shot on the very next pitch. Gaudin was good, he was economical, and he was just a bit lucky too, a hard combo to beat. Mixing a middling fastball with a darting slider, he not only kept the Rays off the board through six, he did so while throwing just 65 pitches. He struck out six, all in the first five frames, walked two and allowed two singles before Longoria cut the lead to 2-1 with a leadoff seventh-inning home run. The 51 strikes he threw among 76 tosses overall was textbook, he had a 16-7 first-pitch strike ratio, and the 10 swings and misses he coaxed were surprising for a guy who doesn’t throw that hard. In addition, he deflected a ground ball to shortstop Jerry Hairston in the second for an out, and when Greg Gross lined hard up the middle with Chris Richard on first via a single in the fifth, Gaudin snagged the missile and easily doubled Richard off first.

Still, when Joe Girardi left him in through a single and walk following the Longoria home run in the seventh, he left with the potential losing run perched on first base. Girardi used three relievers to get one out apiece to escape that threat, lengthening the game in the process. But when Hughes took the mound with a 2-1 lead and his flawless setup work over the last two months, it seemed the Yanks would prevail in a relative quickie nonetheless. Then came the Bartlett game-tying blast, however, and Crawford singled. Tense moments followed as the Yanks watched to see if the speedy left fielder would try to steal, but one out later, Robbie Cano snagged a Ben Zobrist hard two-hopper in the hole and started as sparkling a 4-6-3 as you’re likely to see in a month.

Ex-Yankee Randy Choate set the Bombers down in order in the eighth, though Jeter battled gamely through 10 pitches before lining out to right leading off. Earlier, Melky Cabrera had fouled to first in a similar at bat to end the home fifth; that 10-pitch battle and a leadoff Swisher walk cost Price 23 pitches in the fifth, and probably precipitated the key rally the Yanks posted in the sixth to widen their lead at the time to 2-0. Now with the score knotted after eight, Mariano Rivera came on for the top of the ninth, and retired the side in order on 12 pitches, finishing with a strike out. And with the game already over 2:50 long, the Yanks came to bat against righty Dan Wheeler in the bottom of the ninth. The scoreboard trumpeted the stat that A-Rod had eight career walkoff home runs during his leadoff at bat, but Rodriguez bounced out to short for the third time nonetheless. But two pitches later, Swisher reached the first row in right, and the Yanks had another walkoff win, 3-2.

There are several September 8 events one could point to as fortuitous foreshadowings of this happy day in the Bronx. Three hundred and forty-five years ago, for instance, the Dutch surrendered New Amsterdam to the British on September 8, 1664, in effect renaming the place “New York.” Seventy years ago, the Yanks won a 4-1 battle with Boston in a battle that was called early because of lightning. On September 8, 1979, Louisiana “Lightning” Ron Guidry won his 10th straight in a 5-4 win over Detroit, one year after the Bombers had thrashed the Red Sox 13-2 in Fenway in the second game of the four-game “Boston Massacre.” Now, when Swisher homered off Wheeler for the 3-2 win, he ended this game within the “manageable” time of 2:56, 40 years to the day after game show host Bud Collyer, who hosted “Beat the Clock” on TV, passed away in 1969.

The Yankee right fielder had homered 21 times on the road to just three times in new Yankee Stadium going in; now he has improved that ratio to 21-5. Swish got the whipped cream pie in the face treatment, as have several Yanks before him, but Nick embraced the moment, and the pie, like none before have, not wiping off even a trace of what he obviously considered a badge of courage, a prize to be celebrated. The scoreboard showed a Swisher stat as he batted in the ninth, revealing that he had homered from each side of the plate in the same game nine times before. Now that number is 10, and the Yankee record is 90-50. Nick sent all those weary workers home after a game that ended in less than three hours. But that is not the only “timely” thing that Mr. Swisher did.

The home run from both sides trick was one that the late Mickey Mantle made his own when he was alive and playing in the Bronx. In recent Yankee years both the now sort-of-retired Bernie Williams and veteran catcher Posada have pulled it off. New first baseman Mark Teixeira has done it this year as well. Four years before he would become the starting Yankee catcher, and another three years before he would catch the first game played in the House That Ruth Built (what I guess will be come to be called Old Yankee Stadium), Wally Schang hit seven home runs for the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics. But he manged to group two of them into one game. On September 8, 1916, Schang became the first player in major league history to hit home runs from opposite sides of the plate in the same game, an 8-2 win over the Yankees.

He may not have time to realize it now, but Mr. Swisher has a real sense of history.

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!