Roger Maris blasted his 59th home run of the 1961 season off Milt Pappas on September 20 in a 4-2 win over Baltimore. Because this was the Yanks’ 154th game of the year, AL Commissioner Ford Frick had determined that Roger neither tied nor broke Babe Ruth‘s single-season home run record of 60, because Roger would hit numbers 60 and 61 in the eight games that were to come, while Ruth had hit his during a season composed of just 154 tilts. It is worth adding, I think, that Rajah came close to no. 60 in this tilt, and that he lost a tater earlier that season in a Baltimore four-inning-plus rainout. The Yankees, meanwhile, clinched their 26th AL pennant with the win. Continue reading →
Yankee pitching was battered for 11 runs by Cleveland for the second day in a row in an 11-1 loss in the Stadium on September 19, 2021. No single outburst led to the carnage, as the visitors tallied in seven of nine innings, while an early Gio Urshela home run saved the Yankees from being shut out. Continue reading →
With the superb Gerrit Cole going in a September 16, 2020, game against visiting Toronto, it was more than OK that outfielder Aaron Judge, on his first day off the Injured List, had an oh-fer, as the rest of the team pounded the Jays 13-2. Clint Frazier and Luke Voit homered; DJ LeMahieu went yard twice; but the star of the game was catcher Kyle Higashioka, who cleared the fences three times. Continue reading →
Down just 1-0 to Cleveland through four innings on September 18, 2021, Luis Gil combined with reliever Albert Abreu to allow seven fifth-inning runs in an 11-3 loss. Late home runs from Giancarlo Stanton and Luke Voit allowed the home team to avoid a shutout. Continue reading →
While Corey Kluber held visiting Cleveland to four hits and no runs through six in the Yanks’ 8-0 win on September 17, 2021, the Bombers plated seven of those tallies on home runs from Aaron Judge, Brett Gardner, and Giancarlo Stanton, and two by Joey Gallo. Continue reading →
Fans concerned that Luis Severino surrendered a two-run, second-inning Wellington Castillo home run in the Stadium on September 15, 2017, needn’t have been, as it was the second of just three hits he would allow the visiting Orioles through eight dominant innings. The position player star on both sides of the ball was shortstop Didi Gregorius, who not only knocked in four runs on a home run and two sac flies, but who also contributed eight assists and two putouts in the field. The 8-2 victory, achieved in a nifty 2:37, was Joe Girardi‘s 900th win as Yankee manager. Continue reading →
You don’t win as many pennants as the Yankees have without having some memorable mid-September moments. First, the Yankees resurrected their season in what was a very bad September when they won a come-from-behind contest in Toronto on the 14th in 1999. Hitting two grand slams in the same game for only the third time in their history, Bernie Williams tied the game at six with his in the eighth inning, and the Bombers won behind Paul O’Neill‘s salami in the ninth, 10-6. Continue reading →
The visiting Twins had the better of things for much of the September 13, 2021, battle in the Bronx once Minnesota bats reached Luis Gil for four first-inning runs (Jorge Polanco and Miguel Sano two-run homers). But late home runs from Joey Gallo and Aaron Judge equalled matters at 5-5 in the eighth. Once the Twins failed to plate their ghost runner in the 10th, Gary Sanchez sent the home crowd away happy when he singled in Gleyber Torres in the bottom half, 6-5 Yankees. Continue reading →
The Yanks followed up a 10-3 victory over visiting Tampa the day before with a 10-4 win on September 12, 2022. Second-inning home runs from Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, who had doubled in two in the first, and Oswaldo Cabrera staked the home team to a 10-1 lead, and they cruised from then on. Domingo German pitched the first, and seven Yankee hurlers followed. Continue reading →
September 11 is a tough day to write about, in any sense. I’ll just share one meaningless and one poignant Yankee memory. I was looking forward to going to the Stadium THAT day because I had sat through a two-hour-plus rain delay on the evening of 9/10/01. After a long wait above a very wet field on which no new rain fell during most of the delay, they called the Yankee game vs. the Red Sox. Needless to say, I never got to the 9/11 Yankees/White Sox tilt. And one of the most touching “Portraits of Grief” from the Times that I read was of the gentleman who was from Chicago, but had married and started his family in New York. He imbued a love of the game into his four daughters and was scheduled to take all four to that night’s game against his beloved White Sox before he perished in the World Trade Center. Continue reading →
