Dunedin, FL., March 10 — With the double loss Wednesday, the Yankees’ 2004 Spring Training losing streak reached four games, and the record slipped to 3-5. Their pitching has allowed victorious opponents 13, eight, and 10 runs in the losses, and even seven tallies in one of the three victories.
One outfielder is out with an appendectomy, another with ligament damage in his hand. A starting pitcher has yet to throw to live hitting due to a tender groin, another has been slowed by a bad back, and a third’s debut was delayed by a death in his family. And for good measure a reliever that missed last season entirely is progressing slowly, the starting catcher has a tender shoulder, and the backup has been out a week with a minor twinge (and more on that later).
With that depressing litany of potential fan complaints, I could be lamenting the sorry state of the team, the agonizing moments I have been subjected to as Yankee pitching has been battered over the last seven days, and Yankee bats have gone largely quiet. But although I was saddened by the fact that we would have to rush to Tampa Airport for the flight back north after catching a split squad in Dunedin today, I bring you glad tidings from the headquarters of Yankees South. As one who has been joining the Yankees for the first week of Spring Training specifically for years I urge members of the Yankee family to take the sentiment contained in this column’s title to heart. March baseball is a different animal. The glorious weather is a no-brainer, but the activity on the field is an acquired taste.
Dunedin is a small community devoted to their Blue Jays, an understandable feeling when you realize that the municipality is dominated by relocated, retired, and vacationing citizens from Canada (all very proud of their Canadian big-league team). The several thousand seats were filled by an overflow crowd today, just as they were last Sunday when we attended their opener against the Phillies. With a game time temperature of 66 degrees under a cloudless blue sky, the teams played a brisk contest that clocked in at 2:36.
Yankee starter Kevin Brown had his sinker ball going, as only two guys in his three innings elevated the ball, but he did give up hits in each inning, allowing runs on a Gabe Gross triple in the second and a Greg Myers safety in the third. But although the Jays stroked some balls cleanly, he obviously had the sinker going, and at this stage of the spring, an outing that results in two runs allowed and 55 pitches thrown puts the righty pretty much right on target.
The best thing that can be said for the Yankee offense on the day from my perspective was that it was the aspect of the game that allowed the quick playing time and my timely escape to the airport. Despite a perplexing inability by Toronto starter Pat Hentgen and the prospect David Bush to throw first-pitch strikes, they quieted the Yankee bats through four innings, by which time the score had ballooned to 6-0, Jays. Throwing two innings apiece, Hentgen’s only first-pitch success came when he faced catcher Joe Girardi as his last of seven batters, and Bush found the zone on first tosses only twice in his seven tries.
But the Yanks did make some noise. Cairo and Travis Lee (starting in right field again) lined out hard in the first, Andy Phillips singled in the second, Bubba Crosby hit the first of three deep balls when he lined to Gross at the right field wall in the third, and Lee (again) pinned young outfielder Alexis Rios to the centerfield wall in the fourth.
But the best news of the day (aside from the fact that along with Donnie Baseball, Mel Stottlemyre, and Roy White, we had Luis Sojo making his third base coaching debut) was young lefty Sean Henn, who took over in the sixth. Sean, who has only been in 27 games since signing for the 2001 season due to a serious 2002 injury, and who will turn 23 in a month, raised the attention level around Knology Field with the pop of his fastball and the hard break of his slider. He counted Eric Hinske among his two strike out victims (both swinging), and popped two Jays up in a couple of innings as well. The only blemish followed an eight-pitch walk to shortstop Chris Woodward in the seventh, because Tony Clark, who had relinquished first base to Travis Lee and trotted out to left field in the fifth, dropped a fly ball to the warning track.
Count, too, among the ugly moments the resulting double when third sacker Phillips attempted a short hop on Greg Myers’s bouncer at the third-base bag in the third, a Travis Lee throw to second on one of three missed double plays (Cairo and Bush both bobbled balls that cost us two) in the eighth that set up the last Jays’ run, and the second consecutive disappointing performance from young lefty prospect Alex Graman. The Yanks survived the three runs he allowed these same Jays in two frames on Saturday in Legends Field, but the four runs on a walk, double, single, walk, and two singles took a 2-0 contest and turned it into a 6-0 spanking after four. He did recover to throw a one-two-three fifth on 10 pitches, but the damage to the game was done.
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tennessee Williams’s classic Sweet Bird of Youth opened in New York 45 years ago this day. And that title holds one of the keys to a successful spring experience for a baseball fan. It does no good (and makes no sense) to grumble when your team falls by an ugly number because a young player (or an old one) has a bad outing. Sean Henn’s two sparkling frames showed unlimited promise, and Bubba Crosby, still on the cusp of being a prospect at 26, had a big day. After being robbed in the third, he tripled into the right field corner in the fifth, scoring the Yanks’ first run on Homer Bush’s double. And in the seventh he drove Joe Giradi in with run number two on a ball that to this writer, unfamiliar as he is with the Knology Field ground rules, was clearly a home run, but was ruled only a double.
On Tuesday, I sat amid a flabbergasted Legends Field crowd when Joe Torre still had not gotten anyone up in the bullpen after Gabe White had allowed the first seven batters of the third inning not only to reach safely, but to score. The sentiment is understandable (I want them to win when I plunk my money down too), but that doesn’t make it sensible. If White can’t be allowed to work through a problem, even if he is failing to do so, in March, when can he? And if we don’t trot out both Alex Graman and Sean Henn (along with Sam Marsonek, whom we got with Brandon Knight from Texas for Chad Curtis four years ago, and who finished today), how do we learn that Henn (perhaps) can get big-league hitters out?
And it’s not just about the young guys either. Kenny Lofton, the new Yankee centerfielder pressed into almost full-time duty during Bernie Williams’ medical emergency, hasn’t been hitting the ball very hard. But he took the first pitch in all four at bats this day, and has done so in 12 of the 15 plate appearances I witnessed the last seven days. Travis Lee singled in four at bats, but drove the ball to the wall two other times. And although I was delighted with the play of backup catcher John Flaherty last year, he had better be on the mend quickly, because what Yankee fan in the fold at least since 1996 won’t be delighted to hear that Joe Girardi is looking ready to play? We all know Joe will likely only be a broadcaster this season. By the looks of his play, I’m not sure anyone has told Joe.
Yes, the Yanks are 3-5. And what’s worse, in six days, I was only 2-4. But actor Ray Milland, who costarred with the wonderful Paul Douglas in a baseball classic years ago, passed away on March 10 18 years ago. Ray and Paul could have told you how to sum up a loss like today’s:
It Happens Every Spring
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!