August 9, 2013, Bronx, N.Y. — There were several threads running leading up to Friday night’s Tigers/Yankees game in the Bronx. The Tigers had taken a stranglehold on the AL Central thanks to to a 12-game winning streak, while the Yanks had fallen to just one game over .500 coming off a depressing 2-6 road trip that crashed and burned in a heap thanks to a three-game sweep in Comiskey Park against the last-place White Sox. Nasty weather threatened to cancel or at least mess up matters, a shame for the home side, who had Ivan Nova scheduled, coming off some great outings.

And, of course, the big news was that this would be Alex Rodriguez’s first game in the Bronx, coming off hip surgery and the basically year-and-a-half suspension for breaking the leagues substance abuse policy again, handed down this week, and currently being appealed. It was anyone’s guess if the Yankee Faithful would treat him as rudely as the Comiskey Park did, booing him for three full games except for the one at bat in which he was hit by a pitch.

I’d like to say that both the Bombers and Alex won their contests handily, but I can’t, though that outcome was possible for much of the evening. There were many lusty boos each time Rodriguez made an appearance, but there were cheers and expressions of support as well, punctuated by the Bleacher Creatures including him in their first inning roll call. He was accepted back in the Bronx.

Nova did not disappoint and, although the Tigers reached him for four early hits and left five men on base the first two frames, he had the game pretty much in hand heading into the seventh inning, when he would finally allow a run. Meanwhile, the home team scratched out a run in the first and took a 3-0 lead on Robinson Cano’s two-run double in the third. Perhaps the Tigers would have continued their assault on the Yankee right-hander, as Miguel Cabrera launched a liner toward the right field foul pole leading off the third inning, but Ichiro Suzuki made up a lot of ground in a seeming instant, and his leaping catch before tumbling into the wall and onto the dirt warning track seemed to take all the starch out of the Detroit attack.

Cano would make a pretty fabulous play of his own to limit the damage in the seventh, helping to retain two runs of the Yankee lead. But therein lies a tale that affected both battles: The home team failed repeatedly to tack on a fourth run, and Rodriguez was one of the middle of the order guys, the fourth, fifth, and sixth batters, responsible. His ugly line on the night — 0-for-4 with three strike outs, the first two swinging with runners out there to be driven in — certainly gained the anti-A-Rods in the crowd some support as the game went on. I still think the cheers outdid the boos, but it was more like a margin of 51 to 49 than it could have been.

The failure to score more took a game the Yanks seemed to be ready to win with ease and left it in the hands of fate. Well, not fate so much, but a guy who has much better hands with which to a wield a bat than fate, or most anyone else. Mariano Rivera suffered his second consecutive blown save when Cabrera homered to dead center for the tying runs in the ninth. What had seemed to be two easy wins had evaporated.

Ironically, Jayson Nix, subbing for Alex for defense in the ninth, would finally score the Yankee winning run in the 10th. Rodriguez took a close pitch at 3-2 in the eighth inning, and was called out. When Nix did the same leading off the bottom of the 10th, he drew a walk and started the winning rally. A single and wild pitch moved him two bases, and when Brett Gardner managed to poke a single past Cabrera at third, the Yanks had pulled out a one-run victory, 4-3, with a fourth run they should have scored at least three times earlier.

Looking back, this could have been a playground game. When I learned to play this game in suburban New Jersey, it was truly rare that we had 18 players. Three on three and, sadly, two on two games were quite the norm, and that is how this one looked when all was said and done. The first three in their order, Gardner, Ichiro, and Cano, amassed seven of the 10 Yankee hits, three of the eight walks the team received; this trio scored three of the four runs, and drove in three as well. On the other side, led by ex-Yank prospect Austin Jackson’s three doubles, Jackson, Torii Hunter, and Cabrera also had seven hits. This trio scored all three visitor runs, and Cabrera drove in all three himself.

Wouldn’t it have been nice if — in lieu of all the boos/cheers hype, and the cresting and the collapsing team records — that that was what this was? A neighborhood game, played for the love of the sport, three on three,

with a 4-3 winner in extras?

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!