Bronx, N.Y., April 17, 2007 — A key moment in rookie lefthander Chase Wright’s debut in Yankee Stadium Tuesday night came in the top of the second inning. Due to his own wildness, Wright had dug himself a 1-0 hole in the first, but his Yankee mates pounced on Indians starter Jake Westbrook for a quick two-spot. But Chase surrendered a full-count single to Casey Blake and walked Jhonny Peralta on four straight to start the second frame.

With both a major league baseball and Yankee pedigree on his resume, Cleveland second baseman Josh Barfield came to bat with Wright’s night on the line. It wasn’t the first time the two young players had shared a public moment. Back in the 2001 draft, the Yanks grabbed the young southpaw at the end of the third round, and San Diego replied by claiming ex-Yank and Blue Jays outfielder Jesse’s son with the first pick in the fourth. And now the two battled to a 2-2 count. Barfield fouled one, and then another. But when Yankee first baseman Doug Mientkiewicz squeezed the second in foul territory in front of the Yankee dugout, it was as if a weight had been lifted from Wright’s shoulders.

Mixing a low 90s fastball and an 80-mph curve, he finally found the strike zone with a change that obviously caused Indians batters trouble when it found the zone. Andy Marte followed Barfield with a fly to left, and when Yankee left fielder Melky Cabrera made a nice running grab on Grady Sizemore’s sinking liner to left, young Chase walked off the mound for the last time with his lead in jeopardy.

The Yanks replied with a three-home-run, six-run second that blew the game open, with the only seeming doubt remaining being whether or not Mr. Wright would be around long enough to cash in a win. The home second started innocently enough, with Cabrera bouncing out to first with light-hitting (and slumping) Mientkiewicz due up next. But Doug lifted a 2-2 pitch over the wall down the right field line for a 3-1 lead. Johnny Damon followed with a double, and moved to third on a groundout that got Westbrook within one out of surviving the inning. The distance from escape became inches as Bobby Abreu’s hopper into the first base hole barely glanced off Cleveland first baseman Ryan Garko’s glove to score Damon.

Alex Rodriguez had pounced on Westbrook’s first pitch an inning earlier for an rbi single to left that briefly tied the game at one. The driving, cold winds blasting across toward right notwithstanding, Alex now slashed a 2-2 pitch into the netting in front of the visiting bullpen in left for a 6-1 lead. Jorge Posada, who had attacked and fouled a 3-0 pitch in the first before delivering the second run with a sac fly, got ahead in the count 3-0 again. This time he took a strike before blasting his 200th career fence-clearing blast toward the bleachers in right, following a Jason Giambi single. The Yanks celebrated an 8-1 lead as Westbrook surrendered the ball to a succession of Cleveland relievers.

Jorge’s milestone blast was hardly the first notable April 17 event to take place in Yankee Stadium, as would be pointed out to the crowd a few innings later when public address announcer Bob Sheppard was feted on the 56th anniversary of his first game behind the mike in the venerable ballpark. Beloved Yankee Hall of Famer Mickey Mantle made his Bronx debut that day as well, in a game in which he singled and scored a run. Then two years later Mantle added to his growing legend when he sent a 565-foot blast into near orbit in Washington’s Griffith Park.

But on this April night, despite the sudden 8-1 shortfall, the Indians did not hoist the flag of surrender. Travis Hafner lined a homer to right in the third, and Blake doubled and scored on Marte’s single in the fourth to close the gap to 8-3. Wright had initially made an impression on the Yankee dugout staff in a March 4 Spring Training game against the Phillies. Even though he went to a 3-0 count against his first three batters, and walked two of them, the brass saw something they liked as he clawed his way through two frames with just one run crossing the plate. But Sean Henn was warming in the pen in the fourth as the Tribe plated that third run and Wright’s pitch count climbed to 87 before the inning ended.

Hafner reached Wright for a one-out single in the fifth, but he retired Victor Martinez on a first-pitch liner to center and when Garko popped to second Chase had survived his five innings. Hardly a work of art, Wright took 103 tosses to go five (the scoreboard had 104). His 60/43 strikes/balls ratio was hardly textbook, nor was the fact that he threw just 12 first-pitch strikes to 23 batters or that he faced eight three-ball counts. But he improved as he went along, and certainly gained confidence and command of his change-up following the six-run barrage. He coaxed just two swings and misses from Cleveland in the first two innings, but got them missing another 10 times before he left, which is what enabled him to leave after five with his walks and strike outs levelled at three despite the two free passes to start the game.

The game was typical in some ways, as the Yankee offense came to play, but even more emblematic of the early 2007 season was the work of the Yankee pen: 12 up and 12 down to add a professional look to Wright’s first big-league win. A tip of my Yankee cap to Chris Britton for closing the Indians out in the ninth, for a Yankee win bookended by two hurlers making their first appearances with the team. There were three errors on the night, but not by the Yanks this time. Struggling (in the field) Captain Jeter made a patented lunge into the hole, leap, turn and throw on a Martinez base hit bid in the third, and Johnny Damon ran under a Peralta drive to the wall in dead center that the winds drove to ground in the sixth. Alex Rodriguez made a nice grab when Martinez tried again down the line in the eighth, but Mientkiewicz saved him an error by not only scooping the short, offline throw but planting a nifty tag on the Cleveland catcher before he could cross first. It was Doug on the spot again an inning earlier when he swiped a Posada throw in the dirt on a roller in front of the plate by Jason Michaels.

One can certainly not speak of a “must win” in mid-April. But the Yanks returned to the chilly damp Bronx from their road trip dispirited both by their shocking last-minute loss in Oakland Sunday and by the growing list of injured starting pitchers, with four of the top six on the Disabled List.

Perhaps as famous for their long collaboration as Bob Dylan’s backup band as they were for their string of hit albums aind singles, the much-revered rock group The Band made their first appearance under that name on this day back in 1969. It’s easy I think to look at their refrain from their classic hit The Weight in two ways this night:

Take a load off Fanny,
take a load for free
Take a load off Fanny,
and you put the load right on me

Did Chase Wright lighten the load on the battered Bombers with his five-inning effort? Or did they ease his way into the halls of big-league baseball with their booming second-inning barrage? I would argue that it plays both ways.

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!