It was hardly what any Yankee fan still reeling from what took place in October 2004 wanted to see. It didn’t help that Jimmy Rollins took Javy Vazquez’s first pitch over the George M. Steinbrenner Field wall in right field in front of a crowd swarming with Phillies fans. And Vazquez was pitching for a team that hadn’t won since its Spring opener five days ago. In that time the Yankees have been swamped by teams putting crooked numbers on the scoreboard, having been reached for a six-run inning once and two five-run onslaughts.
The initial Yankee response was depressingly familiar. Nine of the first 10 pinstriped batters went down meekly around a Robbie Cano second-inning double. Robbie is hitting .778 in four games, and his teammates, well, not so much. And fifth-starter candidate in the Philly rotation, righty Kyle Kendrick, coming off a 2009 season so ineffective that he spent stretches in the minors, got those nine outs on just 32 pitches.
But Vazquez, meanwhile, hadn’t just righted his game, through the second inning he “owned the room.” Once Cano stabbed a Placido Polanco liner into the hole with a dive, Javy retired Chase Utley swinging and Ryan Howard on a meek bouncer to the box on just five throws. He struck out the side in the second inning, starters Raul Ibanez, Jayson Werth, and Ben Francisco. The Phillies threatened in the third, but when Utley’s two-out base hit to right clipped Polanco’s foot for the third out of the frame, Javy had had recorded his nine outs on 40 throws, and kept the visitors within range of the home-standing Yanks.
So even though David Robertson had the kind of stumble we haven’t seen since mid-2009, the home team was in the game despite the run-scoring hits he surrendered to Ben Francisco and John Mayberry, Jr. in the top of the fourth. Dave Eiland called on Amaury Sanit, who is opening a few eyes down here, to close the fourth; he did so by striking out Jimmy Rollins with two men on. After pitching the ninth inning and getting the win in the Spring opener, Sanit has twice extracted the Yanks from troublesome innings effectively.
But the Bombers didn’t really get back into this one until ex-Pinstriper Jose Contreras came out to pitch to the home team in the fourth. He got two quick outs, but Jorge Posada singled, Cano walked, and Nick Swisher doubled to right center for two runs. After escaping that frame by whiffing Marcus Thames, Contreras found himself back in the soup right “off the bat” in the fifth. With the wind blowing straight out, Francisco failed to catch up to Kevin Russo’s long drive to center, which hopped the fence for two bases. Ramiro Pena beat out a near-perfect bunt, Brett Gardner tied the game with a fielder’s choice roller down first, and Nick Johnson, back in the lineup after a lower back tweak two days ago, walked. Following a strike out of Mark Teixeira, Cano singled for two runs and Swisher doubled again, to left center this time; that it bounced over the fence, as Russo’s had, kept the score to 6-3, Yanks.
The Yanks had a double victory this day, with a split squad traveling to Bradenton and blanking the Pirates, 6-0. A side effect of this sudden need for extra players was roster confusion, and two players who pinch ran in that four-run uprising, the biggest Yankee inning so far in 2010, wore numbers that had us going. Damon Sublett, whom we saw playing in Staten Island last year, ran for Johnson wearing number 97, the same one third baseman Justin Laird took to Bradenton. Cano gave way to number 94 David Adams, wearing the same two digits that adorned infielder Eduardo Nunez’s back when he stole second and third base in a loss to Philly in Clearwater on Thursday. One inning later, Jimmy Paredes entered at third base, with Russo replacing Pena at short; Jon Weber had singled before Colin Curtis’s home-opening walkoff home run last Wednesday wearing number 93, but Paredes carried it on his uniform today.
Righthander Christian Garcia, who has had some injuries since signing and pitched for AA Trenton in 2009, followed Sanit in the sixth and got off to a shaky start, as Francisco backed Reid Gorecki, in for Gardner, to the center field wall, then Mayberry homered to left two pitches later. But Garcia recovered with a huge lift from Pena and Adams, who turned a remarkable 4-6-3 on Rollins, and Christian finished the seventh inning with back-to-back strike outs. Zack Segovia pitched the eighth and started the ninth, but a Paredes error and singles by Wilson Valdez and Brian Bocock brought big-bodied Domonic Brown to the plate as the potential go-ahead run. Kevin Whelan, coming off a futile outing during which he retired none of four batters three days ago, delivered the save on a swinging strike out and a drive deeper to right than any Yankee fan in attendance cared to see.
Annual Spring Training attendees can tell you that March 8 is a pretty big day in Yankee history, because we were here in Tampa rooting on a team that had cashed in its 25th Championship when the “greatest living ballplayer,” Joe DiMaggio, passed away in 1999. Thirty-three years earlier, ex-Yankee skipper Casey Stengel was inducted into the Hall of fame on March 8, 1966.
But two championships and 11 years after the Yankee Clipper died, we saw signs of the team that seemed unstoppable one season ago. On March 8, 1862, the seemingly impregnable ironclad ship the Merrimac was launched by the Confederacy. And also on this day, former President Ronald Reagan coined a new term when he called the Soviet Union the “Evil Empire” in 1983. The Yankee team has since been referred to by that name as well. With the help of a returning starting pitcher, and a revived offense, perhaps the 2010 Yankees took a step in that direction today.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!