Bronx, N.Y., September 9, 2005 — Just when the Tampa Bay Devil Rays had us shaking our heads wondering if this Yankee team can bring this season to a successful conclusion, the Bombers go out and hammer a top opponent in a big game. They did it behind the pitching of a journeyman starter who did not get a chance until such luminaries as Darrel May and Tim Redding had taken bows, and thanks to the offense of a catcher who has struggled mightily most of this year.
Ex-Yank David Wells has been the ace of the Red Sox staff of late, having won his last three games with an era hovering around 1.00. He had proven to be a master at pitching at the Big Ballpark in the South Bronx, posting 34-14 records twice in two Yankee two-year stints since 1997. He pitched brilliantly in a losing cause in Yankee Stadium for San Diego in 2004. And after allowing two first-inning home runs here during the 2005 Memorial Day holiday, he pitched into the ninth allowing no more runs and just four more hits.
The vaunted Red Sox offense came out swinging Friday night against Aaron Small, a righthander with a poor track record who has been the Yankees’ most effective starter as the summer winds down. They notched two hits and pushed him to 20 pitches in the top of the first, and jumped on his less than eye-popping fastball and slider for four more safeties and three runs in the second. And when Kevin Millar doubled down the left field line after a walk to Jason Varitek the next frame, the Sox had seven hits and sent their burly catcher around third to try to score their fourth run.
The Yankees had jumped to a 1-0 lead in the first when MVP candidate Alex Rodriguez, the newest Pinstriped player Boston loves to hate, doubled with two down. Jason Giambi’s ensuing humpback liner handcuffed Red Sox second baseman Tony Graffanino, a neophyte in these Yankee/Sox tilts. Teams overshift on Jason all the time, and more are utilizing a severe shift against pull hitters to the point that fans sometimes wonder why clubs don’t use these defenses more often.
But baseball is a game of routine, and although ESPN dazzles the eyes with defensive “Web Gems” night after night, it is more often than not the team that makes all of the routine plays that comes out on top in the end. The usual throw from a second baseman to first is made from a distance of 50 to 90 feet, with the crowd and the first base dugout as a familiar backdrop. A second baseman positioned 30 or 40 feet into short right field, as Graffanino was, is making an unfamiliar throw at an uncomfortable in-between distance. Tony’s throw bounced past first base, allowing the initial Yankee tally, and setting the tone for an embarrassing defensive effort by Boston.
But the four-hit, three-run second wiped out the Yankee lead, and Wells pounded Yankee catcher Jorge Posada for two quick strikes to start the bottom half. But his 0-2 fast ball found too much of the plate, and Posada blasted it high and deep to left, halving the Boston lead, and stoking the Yankee crowd whose enthusiasm had been dampened a bit by the Sox rally. Renewed by the support, Small got two quick outs in the third, helped by a Derek Jeter catch-spin-throw maneuver on Manny Ramirez’s grounder up the middle, but Varitek walked after fouling off two potential strike three’s, and Millar lined an 0-2 pitch down the left field line. In contrast to the glove- and throw-work Boston would display all night, left fielder Hideki Matsui made a professional carom grab, and fired to perfectly positioned cutoff man Jeter, whose strong throw to the Yankee catcher had him clutching the ball and waiting for the barreling Boston backstop. Varitek slammed into Posada, but Jorge held on for the out, and Aaron Small promptly put the visitors’ offense to sleep.
Wells, meanwhile, recovered from the Posada blast to retire four straight, and he seemed in control when home plate ump Bill Miller called a strike on a low outside curve to A-Rod with one down in the third. With the next pitch a few inches further off the plate, the confused Yank third baseman flicked it with his bat, but he took three straight for balls, and Wells stomped around the mound in between pitches, clearly furious that Miller had not continued to give him every borderline call. Alex fouled another curve, but was ready for the outside heat that followed, and planted it in the short right field seats for the 3-3 tie.
Off to a great night on both sides of the ball, Posada singled Wells’s first fourth-inning pitch up the middle, moved up on a Robinson Cano sacrifice, and scored the go-ahead run on Jeter’s single to center. After the close call on Varitek at the plate to close the top of the third, Small came up big, finding his rhythm and retiring the next eight Sox hitters on 16 pitches. He survived a momentary glitch with two down in the sixth, hitting Millar with an 0-1 pitch before a Bill Mueller single, but Graffanino lined to Matsui to bring the Yanks up.
DH Ruben Sierra, struggling to find his line-drive swing after a long injury hiatus, lined to left, but there was that man again, and Posada singled to deep short. David Wells pitched to strange patterns Friday night. He relied primarily on his breaking ball it seemed in the early innings, but the patient Yankee bats drove his pitch-count high fouling off one pitch after another, so in the sixth he pounded the zone with heat, and when he tried an inside fastball on Cano, he inside-outed it to left center, with Posada running for third. The 0-2 groove pitch was a mistake, yes, but Wells didn’t really deserve what followed. The Boston defense collapsed entirely, as Johnny Damon let the single get by him in center.
The Yankees scored a series-turning run in the 1996 playoffs when Baltimore third baseman Todd Zeile fired a relay throw into the ground on a crisp October night, once he failed to effectively grasp the ball before tossing in the cool air. Cutoff man Edgar Renteria had no such excuse this time on yet another gorgeous late-summer night in New York, but his throw traveled but a few feet and bounded hopelessly across the infield as Jorge scored and Cano coasted into third. Wells got Matt Lawton to bounce to first while holding Cano, and turned the ball over to righty submariner Chad Bradford. But Jeter worked a 10-pitch walk, and Bernie Williams scored Cano on a single, which was the 2,200th hit of the veteran Yankee center fielder’s wonderful career. A-Rod singled to plate Jeter, and Giambi singled off lefty Mike Myers’s glove for run no. eight. Matsui’s long drive to right almost ended the night right there, but Trot Nixon hauled it in a stride before the fence.
It was really over then, though the Sox mounted the obligatory scare in the seventh when they ended Small’s night after a Damon flair single and an Ortiz walk. The Stadium crowd of 55,000 rightfully made Small “feel the love” as he exited, and it was clear the response moved him. Tanyon Sturtze loaded ’em up by hitting Manny Ramirez with a pitch, and ex-Sox lefty Alan Embree coaxed a dp grounder, but Cano booted it while the Sox plated run no. four. But Tom Gordon got yet another bouncer from Jason Varitek to second and the Yanks turned the 4-6-3 this time. Boston did manage a tainted run on the Cano miscue, but it is easily balanced out by the fabulous snatch, wheel, and throw Jeter had used to notch the first Sox out of that frame earlier.
Journeyman Small outpitched Wells, and the struggling Posada had a great game while Varitek did not. He is a lightning rod to fans on both sides of the divide, but it bewilders this Yankee fan why Boston devotees considered his attack on Alex Rodriguez last year courageous and gutsy despite the deplorable fact that he did so while totally protected behind cathers’ pads and mask. Boston fans are passionate and love their team, qualities I admire, but on this one we’ll just have to agree to disagree. Be that as it may, once the Yanks manage to win one of these classic battles, the night is just that much better if “Tek” struggled in the loss.
Of course, this was just one skirmish, with two to follow this weekend, and three in Fenway to end the long campaign. But the Yanks won a game they needed to win, Aaron Small came up “big,” and Jorge Posada had a great game in a down year. I can hardly wait for Saturday’s tilt, even if I’ll be stuck watching that one on Fox-TV.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!