Bronx, N.Y., June 12, 2002 — We’ve all lived through steamy days like this one. I built up a good sweat walking to the car. No matter how much ice I had the helpful local concession person cram in with my $4.00 diet coke, it was all gone by the third inning. Sue and I were smearing on spf300 sunscreen during the first inning, but covering valuables from the ever-growing drops in the eighth.
Just as many commercial airliners were flying north beyond the outfield fence as we usually see during a day game, but they appeared phantom-like and unreal as they seemed to struggle through the thick clouds and haze that filled the Bronx sky. The moment we began to feel a little less clammy and sweaty was the moment that the intermittent drops got together and declared themselves an official “rain.” But hey, we weren’t at work.
There was nothing particularly different about the pregame preparations, except that Bernie has a new “long-toss friend,” as Marcus worked out with him, replacing Alberto Castillo (who has been doing it lately). Freddy the Fan went by, the side of his sign facing me saying, “It’s Our Task to Show the Yankees That We Care,” a sentiment I wholeheartedly support, even if it was a little wordier than Freddy usually gets.
It was an impressively left-handed lineup that Arizona stacked against Moose today, but I wasn’t concerned as he struck out McCracken on four pitches in the first. We really showed nothing against Batista in the Cathedral last November 1, so I was counting on Moose being sharp. Perhaps Mike was looking past the lone righty swinger in backup catcher Rod Barajas in the second, and maybe the high fly did carry more than it would have on a clear day, but the speed with which Shane retreated to the fence belied the “Can of Corn” yell I got from the guy behind me, and there we were, down 2-0.
And that was the number I was thinking about, not just the score but the fact that Rod had hit the ball on a 2-0 pitch. Mike survived falling behind 3-0 to Finley earlier in the inning, but he wouldn’t when he did the same to Steve again in the fifth with two men on. No, Mike made it through another game with walking no one, but if you ask me what his problem was today, I’d say it was his control. I’ve seen him give up dingers before, but when he’s throwing fat 2-0 pitches to batters with runners on base, his control has left him.
But I do have to admit it wasn’t a totally bad day. A D’back fan told me last night that we wouldn’t have won Monday if Morgan had been brought in to face Spencer rather than Prinz. I guess Shane buried that idea in the seventh today. Bernie and Alfonso swung good bats, though Alfonso’s error was really ugly, and I thought Lilly pitched OK; Karsay’s performance was alarming.
A dollar bill fluttered down to the field from the Tier in the second. And Giambi’s leadoff foul in the second almost hit a tattooed man (think Rod Steiger in “The Illustrated Man”) standing in Row A of Box 610. He was too busy talking to the people to his side and behind him to watch the game, I suppose. (Though I was startled that no one in Rows B and C were complaining, until I gave it a closer look and noticed that three of them were engrossed in their own cell-phone conversations. Spectator sports in the new millennium, it’s a whole new ballgame!)
Although he would later single (and score) and walk, Ventura had a great at bat in the fourth, a great at bat in the sense that he fouled a liner into the tier on the fourth pitch. It skimmed off the fingertips of three or four people in Rows A and B, took a right turn after striking an indeterminant body part in Row C, and then presented itself in front of my scoreboard- and pencil-occupied hands and eyes where I snatched it out of the air, to the applause of most of Box 622. Thank you. Thank you. It was nothing.
It got me thinking back to May 11, 2000, a makeup of a rain date (May 10). Seated in a Box 622 that (like most Boxes and reserved sections in the Stadium that evening) was sparsely populated, I settled in for a pitchers’ duel between the Devil Rays and the Yanks. Current Met Steve Trachsel had just shut Pedro and the Red Sox out 1-0 five days earlier in Boston, and he was facing el duque in the Stadium. The Duke would surrender only seven hits, Trachsel three. And Fred McGriff lined one right at me in the second inning. Dropping the scorecard and pencil in the fortunately empty row, I braced myself and caught the liner. I carried the swollen and discolored ring finger on my left hand around (not literally “carried,” mind you; it was still firmly attached to my hand) like a badge of courage for a week; I would need makeup to convince anyone that any injury befell any of my fingers this day.
Ironically it was McGriff who would line a shot into the right-field bleachers in the seventh inning for the only run of a heartbreaking loss for Mr. Hernandez on that May 2000 evening. We appear to have a disturbing precedent here. Dan gets a foul ball; the Yankees lose. With that in mind, I would like to send the following message to all 30 major-league baseball teams: I’ve got enough, thank you.
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!