Bronx, N.Y., April 22, 2009 — The Yanks and A’s played two games, really, in cold, wet Yankee Stadium Wednesday afternoon. In the first one, the Yanks followed the seventh-inning stretch by getting their 14th and 15th hits of the game, but failed to add to their seven runs with bases loaded and no one out. Melky Cabrera came up short in the key at bat. Fortunately, there was a 14th-inning stretch seven frames later. Over the ensuing innings the home team’s impressive hit total went up by just one. But after the second stretch, Melky responded much more positively.
C.C. Sabathia had a challenging start, though he buzzed through the middle innings, and he could have gotten a nine-inning win if Joe Girardi had pulled him in the seventh inning when the time seemed right. The big lefty allowed just six hits, but four walks, displaying a disturbing lack of command that is haunting him in the early season. Three of the walks scored, and the very first one, leading off the top of the second inning, got him into instant trouble. Jack Cust followed with a single, and catcher Kurt Suzuki first failed to sacrifice, then pulled a 2-2 fastball high and deep to left. Johnny Damon drifted to the wall and leaped, but a fan in the first row caught the ball, prompting the umpires to go to video review on a home run call for the second time in the six-game-old park. From a perch high above the left field wall, it looked to be fan interference, but the umps let the call stand and the Yanks were down 3-0.
It didn’t last long. Hideki Matsui and Melky Cabrera homered off southpaw Brett Anderson on consecutive pitches in the bottom half and Mark Teixeira and Nick Swisher singles around a Jorge Posada double in the third plated two more. The latter tallies just tied the game at 4-4 because the A’s had scored an unearned run against the Yanks in the top half on sloppy, almost comical defense. The Yankee version of an overshift toward right field has third baseman Cody Ransom move 90 feet to his left past Derek Jeter to the other side of second. They employed the shift on ex-Yank Jason Giambi, and when he floated a one-out popup to short left both Damon and Jeter had a lot of ground to cover. Derek appeared to be settling in when Johnny called him off and reached for the ball, which popped out of his glove for a two-base error. Ransom saved a run by deflecting Matt Holiday’s liner for an infield single, and the Yanks appeared to escape on a Jack Cust comebacker to the mound. With his body twisted to make the catch at second, Jeter chose to pass up a close play at first and whipped the ball home where Giambi was about to score. And it would have worked too, but there was nobody at home. Jorge Posada had run toward first to back up the anticipated throw there, a risky choice with a runner on third. Giambi scored the fourth A’s run as Jeter’s throw thumped against the wall behind the plate.
But this was one day when the Yankee offense seemed ready to cover any lapse. Jeter homered to deep right center for a 5-4 lead in the fourth. And that lead looked like it might hold up, as Sabathia was dealing now, having retired nine straight after Giambi’s tainted run. But he walked Cust in the sixth, and Mark Ellis singled him in with two down for another tie. No problem. When Melky walked with one out in the home sixth, righty Michael Wuertz came on for Anderson. The Yankee center fielder was promptly caught stealing, but Ransom and Jeter doubled, and Damon and Teixeira singles put the Yanks up 7-5.
Sabathia had thrown 101 pitches before he took the mound for the top of the seventh, but he allowed yet another walk following a Bobby Crosby infield single. After a sacrifice, a Giambi fieder’s choice scored one. Allowing C.C. to face the lefty made sense perhaps, but when Giradi came out to the mound with Holliday due up and the tying run 90 feet away, Sabathia’s day seemed over. Joe had shown admirable faith in his ace, letting him start the frame. He could have pulled him with two on and no one out, or once they were sacrificed over, or after one scored, with the tying run on third. But Joe talked to C.C. briefly, left him in, and Holliday slapped a first-pitch fastball down the middle into center. Tie game, 7-7. Phil Coke came on and finished the frame one batter too late.
It seemed the offensive gravy train would keep rolling, however, when the Yanks loaded the bases with no one out against veteran Russ Springer in the bottom half. This righty actually got his start in Pinstripes, but it was so long ago that he was traded away for Jim Abbott in 1992. Melky came up and almost fell over swinging for the fences on the next pitch. A foul and a ball later, he went down flailing at a ball over his head. Brett Gardner hit for Ransom but popped out to third, and Jeter, who had given the Yanks the lead with a homer and a double his last two times, failed this time, on a popup to second. The offensive juggernaut had run aground, where it would stay for some time.
Jonathan Albaladejo survived a leadoff Suzuki infield single and sacrifice in the eighth, and Mariano Rivera pitched around a one-out single in the ninth, while the Yanks failed to advance leadoff walks both frames. Edwar Ramirez helped bail Damaso Marte out after a (you guessed it) leadoff walk in the 10th, then needed help from Jose Veras the next inning. The struggling Veras walked his first man to scattered boo’s (which would have been more prevalent, but by now the crowd was quite scattered too). But amazingly, he then found himself and retired the last 10 A’s batters in the game, four of them on strike outs.
Andrew Bailey, Brad Ziegler, Josh Outman, and ex-Yank Dan Geise quieted the Yanks through 13. Where the Bombers had fashioned three two-hit innings, a three-hit frame and one with four safeties through the seventh, their eighth through 13th-inning output amounted to five walks and a Damon single. But once the scoreboard roused the faithful with a second rendition of “Take Me Out …,” Swisher walked leading off the bottom half of the fourteenth, and Cabrera sent the crowd home happy with a one-out blast to right for a 9-7 win.
In so doing, Melky copied the oft-achieved Mickey Mantle specialty of homering from each side of the plate in the same game, something other Pinstripers like Roy White, Bernie Williams, and today’s catcher Jorge Posada have done as well. And Melky duplicated this feat on a pretty big day in Yankee history. The New York Highlanders (now Yankees) played (and lost) their first ever game, in Washington 106 years ago. April 22 also was the day the Yankees first apopted their hat-in-a-ring logo back in 1915. And they had even won a 14-inning game previously on this day as well, beating Washington exactly 50 years ago, on April 22, 1959.
Yes, it was a win, and it went 14, just like today, only there the similarity ends. The starter for the Yanks that day was Hall of Fame lefty Whitey Ford. Whitey not only started that 1-0 win, but he finished it as well and he fanned 15 Senators batters while he did it. There is debate going on in the Bronx now about whether we build better ballparks now than they did before. It certainly seems that they built better lefthanders years ago.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!