Bronx, N.Y., September 30, 2002 — What better cliche to evoke when you’re talking baseball, a sport dominated by threes anyway. There are three outs, three strikes, three bases on which one travels around to home plate. Ninety feet between bases, 60 feet, six inches from the mound to the plate. Those uttering the phrase aim to give either themselves or someone close whom they mean to support a lift by stating, in effect, that failing at something twice is no big deal, that the third time is surely the time that efforts will be rewarded with success. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 27, 2002 — The “business” that needs to be taken care of? Well, there’s closing out the regular season. We need to keep all the position players sharp, but need to rest them too. Valuable bench performers must participate too. The starting pitching needs to be set in the rotation through which it will proceed in the playoffs. And the starting pitchers need to try all their pitches, befuddle the opposition, but hopefully face a test or two as well. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 25, 2002 — The Monday, Tuesday and Thursday games were part of the B Plan that we purchased in 1999 (and have held ever since) to ensure that we could get playoff tickets, and I told myself all day that I was tired, that I could use the break, that it just didn’t make sense to go to this game. I wanted to be there should Alfonso come up with no. 40, it’s true, but if he was going to hit it in the only one of four games I didn’t attend, so be it, I told myself. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 24, 2002 — I was going to title this column Tender Is the Night in honor of F. Scott Fitzgerald (of The Great Gatsby fame) because he would have been 106 Tuesday, and it was a truly pleasant evening, but that tale of mental illness, collapse, alcoholism, drug abuse, along with recovery but failure too, didn’t seem appropriate. The game time temp was 73 degrees, with 55 percent humidity and a gentle westerly breeze of five mph (if I understand how that is recorded correctly; the breeze was coming from the west). Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 23, 2002 — I always like to get to the game early, particularly when it’s going to be a big crowd, which was certainly not the case tonight. I was making my way up the escalators in the left field corner at around 6:25, just in time to catch the very tail end of Tampa Bay batting practice, though the paraphernalia, and the Devil Rays team, had left the field by the time I grabbed a dog and soda and went to my seat. El duque was running in the outfield, preparing to warm up, although strangely, Jorge had not joined him yet. I checked the out-of-town scoreboard — I like to see if there are any intriguing pitching matchups — but the meager three-game, out-of-town schedule couldn’t hold my interest. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 22, 2002 — It’s a distressing concept baseball fans talk about all the time. Games drag on, they become marathons, battles of attrition, where more often than not the first entity to cry “uncle” is not either team, but the people in the stands. Yankees/Orioles battles in 1996 and 1997 became legendary, as it seemed it was never a question of whether or not their games would blow past 3.5 hours, but how far. As a radio announcer, Michael Kay was obsessed with whether or not a game was “manageable,” shorthand for less than three hours long, a feature I’m sure he still tracks on TV (but I have Cablevision, so I don’t know). Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 21, 2002 — Not a bad game in Detroit, as clinchers go. It’s been a strange string of events since this team became a serious contender in ’94, the last game of which, though not a clincher really, was probably the strangest game of all. On August 11, 1994, all we managed to do was clinch that we would play baseball’s longest game on that last day of the season. We went to extra innings, fell behind, came back to tie, then fell, as Toronto Blue Jay third baseman Ed Sprague took Yank reliever Joe Ausanio out in the top of the 12th at the Stadium. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 20, 2002 — Baseball is a team game, but it is played by a bunch of individual players. Twenty-five-man teams compete all year, and although individual awards are much celebrated and can earn players huge salaries, in the end it is the team that wins, or doesn’t. But that ultimate team goal — winning a championship — can’t be achieved unless individual team members perform to the utmost of their abilities. Continue reading →

Bronx, N.Y., September 15, 2002 — It was almost another one of those lost weekends in the Bronx, just when it was the thing you would have least expected. After establishing our claim to the East title against Boston, beating Detroit and wiping out Baltimore in a four-gamer, it seemed our march to the postseason — and to the American League’s best record — was almost assured. The starters went a week’s worth of innings without walking anyone, the pen successfully closed 10 of 10 without Mo, and the offense was doing a pendulum swing back and forth from overwhelming to just enough. Continue reading →