Bronx, N.Y., July 27 — It may have been 20 years ago today that Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play, but it was 36 years ago this week that the Beatles album that shares this column’s title attained its five-week-long Number One status on the charts. And I know a little about the first word of the title. Much of what passes from these fingers that purports to be baseball knowledge and theory, you see, simply derives from the fact that I have been watching the sport (and rooting for the Yankees) for more than several years.
It’s simple really. I’ve seen a lot of things befall this team, problems that recur over the years on all teams. But I can examine the balky starting pitching situation of this team without rushing to the medicine chest for a dose of gingko baloba: We’ve been here before, and recently.
You watch baseball for long enough and you see virtually everything, including things you would have sworn would never happen. On the one hand, though few initially thought he had the tools, a quick but awkward-looking guy named Yogi started a 148-game errorless streak 55 years ago this weekend; on the other, one of the defensive wizards of the last 40 years or so, Orioles third baseman Brooks Robinson, made three errors in one inning 31 years ago.
The grumbles that peppered Yankee Stadium on Sunday afternoon as Jeff Weaver twice gave back leads (one of them big) to the rival Boston Red Sox were not inaudible, unexpected, or most of all, new. Back in 1999, shortly after the Yanks had traded away three very popular players to get Roger Clemens, for example, he enjoyed a big April afternoon in the Bronx, as his 4-2 victory over the Texas Rangers allowed him to tie the AL record with his 17th consecutive victorious decision. Rather than being greeted by raucous and excited applause, there was an angry buzz permeating the Stadium that day. Twice already that season the Yanks had managed to tie games when Roger had allowed the opposition big leads (we actually even won one of them), and fans felt that the Yankees had garnered the record for him, rather than the other way around.
During the rest of the 1999 season Roger’s support in the Stadium would continue to waver, and he wasn’t really accepted as a Yankee until he beat the Braves in the last game of the 1999 World Series (some would say not until two dominating postseason starts a full year further into the future). The murmurs from the Stadium crowd were like those uttered and heard last Sunday. “He hasn’t done anything to deserve it,” “He keeps pitching poorly, and the offense keeps having to bail him out,” “Rocket? He’s been more like a windup model airplane with a frayed rubber band!”
Of course, Jeff is coming from an entirely different place than the record-filled, Hall-of-Famer-to-be career Roger already had before arriving in the Bronx. Painted with the capital “P” for Potential since his major league debut in 1999, Weaver has been pitching for a franchise where winning in the regular season is rare; postseason play simply hasn’t been an option. Much heralded for his blazing fastball and big cuve, he arrived with no real body of work on which to build theories of success and glory. Talent and buzz hovered over him, but little else. But if Jeff and Roger’s pre-Yankee backgrounds are so different, the circumstances of their arrival in the Bronx aren’t. A more educated Yankee fan base knows their prospects today, and Jeff cost us three guys too, even if two of them were of the down-on-the-farm, prospect variety. The principal chip was a fan favorite lefty starter in both trades, and the two transactions also share the rancor that will always be caused when lefty throwers are spent for righties in the House That Ruth Built. And be assured that Roger and Jeff share something else too (aside from the already established fan anger stirred by their early efforts in Pinstripes). They will both make a huge start in the city of Tampa later today.
If anything can be pointed to as having brought about a huge turnaround in Roger’s Yankee fortunes in 2000, it was a stint on the DL that he finished with a start in Tampa, this one on July 2. He won that day, and rattled off seven straight wins (vs. the Mets, the Marlins and the Tigers after the Devil Rays, and eventually finishing the streak against the Mariners), not losing until September 18 (and if you remember September 2000 in Yankeeland, everyone lost that month). Then on October 14, a ball that ticked off first baseman Tino Martinez’s glove was all that stood between him and the second no-hitter in major league baseball postseason history. Eight days later he was dominant in Game 2 of the Subway Series in an eventual 6-5 win over the Mets. And 2001 was even more impressive, with a 20-1 record to start, a victory in the Series in Yankee Stadium, and that commanding one-run performance through eight innings in Game Seven.
While Roger takes the mound in Legends Field this evening in a tuneup that hopefully finds him as sound as July 2, 2000’s start did, and ready to return to and lead the Yanks on a march to October, Jeff will be toeing the hill in Tropicana Field 10-20 miles away. Will he find something? Will he show some of the potential the brilliant Yankee braintrust saw in him? Perhaps the distance from the Bronx, the continued support of his teammmates and all that God-given talent will blossom, and he will relax and throw with grace, confidence and style. Hearts may be found in San Francisco, but Roger rediscovered his Pitching Jones in Tampa Bay, and perhaps Jeff will too. No one knows what role he will fill once Roger returns, but if he wants to throw important pitches in 2002, whether in the rotation or in the pen, the need for a quality outing can’t be overemphasized.
But when push comes to shove, the guy with the deja vu will be the older one. And with a balky Andy, a spotty (though mostly good) Moose, an-iffy-backed Boomer and an el duque who has missed a lot of time the last two years, we need a horse. The offense is awesome. The pen is a question, maybe one that Jeff will help answer. But this team began the season with the best starting five in major league baseball in years, perhaps ever. It can be that way again. I’m penciling Roger into an August 1 start in Arlington. Billy Martin replaced Bill Virdon on August 1 in 1975, Thurman Munson and Carlton Fisk brawled in Fenway two years earlier that day, and Pete Rose’s 44-game hit streak ended on August 1 in 1978 (though Yankee fans could be forgiven for missing that, as fully half their 14-game deficit to the Red Sox had fallen in the two weeks previous). What better time for Roger to show us that “all our troubles are so far way”?
Ernest Hemingway’s birthday was a little more than a week ago. And just a few days ago one of long-time Red Sox broadcaster Ned Martin’s former coworkers eulogized him by comparing his style to that of that outstanding American novelist and short story writer. Negotiating some of the labyrinthine sentences and overstuffed paragraphs in these reports you might not believe it, but I too feel most writers can learn from Hemingway’s spare sentence construction and tight story lines. I even came up with a second title for this column, honoring both Ernest and Roger:
The Old Man and the Cy
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!