Bronx, N.Y., September 5, 2005 — It was a 7:08 first pitch Wednesday night, and a 7:10 first “Boo!”, as Jaret Wright started a nightmare of an inning by walking Julio Lugo on five pitches. Three pitches later, Carl Crawford had bunted for a hit, Wright had thrown the ball down the right field line, and both Lugo and Crawford had scored on Jorge Cantu’s first-pitch single to right. Tack on four more throws, and you get a popup, a Jonny Gomes triple off the right field wall with Gary Sheffield injured, and a sac fly for a 4-0 deficit. But hey, the weather was great.
Wright’s debacle actually continued when Damon Hollins doubled off the wall in the right-field corner, but the recovering righty closed the frame on a grounder to second, and he battled gamely from that point on. But in a game that was almost a mirror (but opposite) image of the travesty that inched the Yanks close to the non-playoffs edge Tuesday, it seemed that any outs Jaret got would be too little too late. Hometown Tampa Bay righthander Doug Waechter took the crowd right out of the game by mesmerising the early-game Yankee batters, and the three-pitch punchout that put Captain Derek Jeter down leading off the fourth brought Doug’s pitch count to an almost laughably low 33 tosses, only 10 of them balls, one for each Yankee batter he had retired.
Wright, meanwhile, managed his first of just two one-two-three innings in the second, but the back-to-back one-out walks to Aubrey Huff and Gomes in the third demonstrated to the crowd that even after the early ugliness, this would at best be a workmanlike Wright outing, not a work of art. Jaret would allow one single in the fourth after Travis Lee’s 4-6-3 got him out of the third, and back-to-back one-out singles in the fifth kept things interesting. A nine-pitch, one-two-three sixth was just what the doctor ordered, but Crawford’s one-out single and two-out stolen base in the seventh finally ended, if not a quality start for Wright, at least one in which he should receive a passing grade.
All of which would have been moot had Yankee bats continued to flail in desperation. But Hideki Matsui followed the fourth-inning Jeter strike out by blasting Waechter’s 34th pitch of the night for his 400th professional home run, counting those he has stroked in the States with those he had blasted in Japan before he arrived. The line drive to right center lifted Wright, it lifted Hideki’s teammates and coaches, and it jarred 45,000 or so fans to rise from their seats to make some noise. A slightly bigger crowd the night before had spent the greater part of the fifth through seventh innings waving themselves silly while a precarious one-run lead teetered on the edge and then evaporated, and a late single and error sent us all home unhappy. Perhaps the Yanks should eschew early leads in the future to try to keep the home crowd in the game. Right.
Missing from the initial lineup, Bernie Williams was pressed into service when Sheffield left with “tightness in [his] hamstring” in the first, and he followed “Godzilla’s” drive with a double to left center. It scored no runs, but Mr. Waechter’s opus was unraveling, although he did put down the next five Yanks.
Wiser analysts could perhaps tell you if the pressure that drives so many rookie starters to the bench in pennant chases is what has taken some of the starch out of the great season young Robinson Cano was having of late, but he has hit himself down to the ninth spot (largely because he rarely walks), and he made a game-losing misplay Tuesday. But he has continued to turn the double play as well as (if not better than) any second base partner Jeter has had, and he is a line-drive threat with a bat in his hands. His single to right to start the Yankee sixth got the offense back in gear, and when Jeter lined a 3-2 double into the left field corner, the Stadium roared. Matsui’s 2-1 double into the opposite corner closed the gap to 4-3, giving the most dangerous rbi bat the Yankees have all three rbi’s to that point.
Waechter, following Manager Lou Piniella’s orders, walked Alex Rodriguez intentionally, though the Yankee third sacker and MVP candidate had to this point in the series whiffed four times and gone 0-for-6. Lefthander Trever Miller came on to face Jason Giambi, and although the Yankee first baseman lined an 0-1 pitch toward the right-field corner, first baseman Lee, holding A-Rod at first, was in the “at ’em” position and doubled Alex up to close the frame with the Yanks still down 4-3.
The Yanks threatened yet again in the seventh. Although fans seated along the Stadium field will not hesitate to lean over and snatch a Yankee liner that might otherwise have scored a Pinstriper from first, they have become incredibly polite this season when an opposing player tries to penetrate the stands with a Yankee foul ball in their sights, and the inning got off to a bad start when two fans down first just past the camera box gave Tampa first baseman Lee a wide berth to snatch Ruben Sierra’s 3-2 foul pop for the first out. But an ensuing hit by pitch to Matt Lawton got it started. Jorge Posada’s hot shot down third glanced off Huff for a single, and Cano walked to load ’em up. But Jeter bounced into a 4-6-3 and the Yanks were headed yet again.
Tanyon Sturtze was brought on once Wright gave an intentional walk to Huff in the top of the seventh with Crawford having stolen second, and he pitched out of it. But the lately struggling Sturtze built some of his own trouble by walking Hollins with one down in the eighth with the Rays still up by a run. Giambi had just made a fine scoop of A-Rod’s tailing throw to nail Lee for the first out, and Cano would follow the free pass with a dandy 4-4-3 when he nabbed Hollins on the way to second on Toby Hall’s hard bouncer. Cano, who had already started a rally with a single, and fed one with a walk, also made a good play on rookie Joey Gathright’s bouncer in the second.
So Matsui had brought the Yanks back from the brink with a homer and a two-run double, and young Cano was rewarding Torre’s faith with a good game. But the home team was still down in the eighth, and the reliable Matsui flied out off ex-Yankee (somewhat briefly, and some time ago) Joe Borowski leading off. A Williams bouncer gave the ex-Yank and Cub a second out, and he got Rodriguez to swing and miss twice. But Alex kept the hopes alive with a single over short, and Jason Giambi, who has had at least two different seasons in 2005, came to the plate.
Castigated and urged to leave the team in May and June, the lefty slugger has taken the brunt of many people’s frustrations this year, and he is still accused of cheating by at least one New York media stud in search of an audience even now, all the attention he has endured and the testing notwithstanding. As has become painfully obvious in 2005, bodily fluids can be extracted and analyzed for all sorts of problems now. But how do you test if a player has “heart”?
September 7 is the 97th birthday of heart specialist and pioneer Dr. Michael DeBakey, and on the eighth we acknowledge the 848th anniversary of the birth of Richard the First, King Richard the Lion Hearted of England. But when Jason Giambi turned on Joe Borowski’s 0-1, two-out, eighth-inning fastball and drilled it 10 rows back and 10 feet fair in the right field corner, he took a back seat to no one in the heart department. Ten was also the number of pitches it took Mariano Rivera to close out the 5-4 Yankee win. On a night when Jaret Wright and the team survived, it was the “lionhearted” efforts of Cano, Matsui, and Giambi who pulled it out.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!