Yankee haters, I can understand how you might be getting tired of stories like this. Four hours into a thrilling rollercoaster of a ballgame, the Minnesota Twins had the New York Yankees two outs away from heading to the heartland down 2-0. They had touched Mariano Rivera for a blown save, that rarest of postseason occurrences, and then Torii Hunter had produced some extra-inning heroics with a towering home run off of Tanyon Sturtze. The Twins had their own first-rate closer, Joe Nathan, in place to nail things down. Though Nathan had thrown 32 pitches in his first two innings, manager Ron Gardenhire was going for the kill.
But before you could say, “Break out the Homer Hankies at the Hefty Bag,” the Bronx Bombers were at home plate, dancing and high-fiving around Derek Jeter. The Yankee captain had taken a bold risk in tagging up from third base on a short fly ball, caught the defense napping, and capped another dramatic rally, the 62nd time the Yanks have come from behind this season. Now it’s Splitsville, and this game will stand as more evidence of the Yankee mystique and aura. Stop me if you think you’ve heard this one.
The Yanks had every reason to be on eggshells. They had squandered numerous opportunities in the series opener against the Twins ace, Johan Santana, getting nine hits but failing to score against a pitcher who came in on a 13-0, 1.18 ERA run since the All-Star Break. Five double plays, including one where Hunter threw out Jorge Posada at the plate, and a pair of homer-robbing catches by the Twins outfielders had kept the Yanks off the board on Tuesday night. And they quickly fell behind in this one; six pitches into starter Jon Lieber’s evening, he’d allowed two hits and a run on a Justin Morneau RBI double, though Morneau produced an inning-ending out trying to stretch his hit into a triple.
But the Yanks got even quickly. Leadoff hitter Jeter drilled Brad Radke’s third pitch, a high fastball, not just over the wall but into the black centerfield batter’s eye of Yankee Stadium. Hallowed ground: only 20 hitters have driven balls into that area since the remodeled Stadium opened in 1976, and among Yankees, only Reggie Jackson, with his climactic third homer in Game Six of the 1977 World Series, had done so in the postseason. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Flavor Country.
The Twins came right back against Lieber, who couldn’t seem to get his slider down. A leadoff walk, a pair of singles, and a sac fly put them up 3-1 in the second. But Radke couldn’t hold the lead for long. In the third he gave up a single to Alex Rodriguez, and then Gary Sheffield whipped one of his trademark homers down the leftfield line to knot the score. A-Rod added a homer in the fifth to put the Yanks ahead, and when Lieber struck out Corey Koskie with Hunter on second to end the sixth, things looked as good for the pinstripes as they had all series. Any time was bullpen time from that juncture, with Tom Gordon and Mo Rivera more than capable of getting the last nine outs.
Gordon game on with two out and a man on in seventh. Lieber had settled down admirably, stalling the Twins at three runs since there were two outs in the second — five full innings. An additional Yankee run in the seventh on a Miguel Cairo leadoff walk, a Jeter sacrifice (ugh), and a timely A-Rod single, his third hit of the game, had given the Yanks some leeway.
Gordon escaped the seventh on a Jose Offerman (!) liner and then got the first two batters in the eighth, inducing a fly out to Shannon Stewart after an eight-pitch at-bat and striking out Jacque Jones. But strike three got away from Posada and rolled to the backstop, while Jones rolled to first base uncontested. Hunter singled to put runners on first and second, and Joe Torre went to his bullpen for Mo.
Rivera has been the closest thing to automatic that October has ever seen, converting 30 out of 32 save opportunities in his postseason career. But his only two miscues are well etched in memory: the deciding game of the 1997 Divisional Series against Cleveland, when he gave up a decisive homer to Sandy Alomar, Jr., and Game Seven of the 2001 World Series against the Arizona Diamondbacks, when all hell broke loose with the Yanks on the precipice of their fourth straight championship. He hasn’t messed up often under these circumstances, but when he has, it’s meant curtains for the Yankees.
Visions of such curtains ran through my mind as Morneau blooped Rivera’s first pitch into rightfield. A charging Sheffield was nowhere close to catching the ball, but in a rather awkward way he kept it in front of him. Still, Jones crossed the plate to narrow the lead. Koskie then battled out of an 0-2 hole to bound a double down the leftfield line; it couldn’t have landed fair by more than a foot before bouncing into the stands. As bad as it was, a game-tying double and a blown save for Mo, it could have been worse; Luis Rivas, Morneau’s pinch-runner, was forced to hold up at third. Mo then recovered to strike out rookie Jason Kubel on three pitches and then get a comebacker from Cristian Guzman.
Still, the blown lead felt demoralizing. The Yanks worked some long at-bats off of reliever Juan Rincon over the next two innings, but they couldn’t put up a single baserunner. Rivera departed, to be replaced by Sturtze, the newly-annointed #3 reliever out of the Yankee pen thanks to a hot couple of weeks and a brand new cut fastball he learned from Rivera that helped to bring his ERA down from the stratosphere. Sturtze and Nathan valiantly matched zeroes for two innings before the former blinked, feeding Hunter a meatball that brought the Yankees face to face with being skunked in their own stadium.
Nathan extended the Twins’ bullpen’s dominance over the Yanks to four innings in that span — thirteen hitters, no hits, one walk, six strikeouts. But with a one-run lead, Gardenhire sent his closer back out for the bottom of the twelfth.
It was an understandable move from one angle. Unlike the previous night, when Rincon had done the heavy lifitng instead of either Santana or Nathan, Gardy had his best pitcher (at that point) to face Jeter and perhaps Rodriguez and Sheffield, the scheduled third, fourth, and fifth hitters of the inning.
But Jeter and company had already seen Nathan the first time around, and though Nathan led off the inning by striking out John Olerud, his four-pitch walk of Cairo had me and every other Yankees partisan licking their chops. Nathan was cooked, and the Yanks smelled it.
The Twins closer missed on every pitch to Jeter, some high, others inside, and gave up the walk. Rodriguez loomed, having already figured in three other scoring events. After Nathan missed inside for his ninth straight ball, A-Rod laid off an inside strike that might have made for a game-ending double play. Instead he waited and drove an obviously gassed Nathan’s next pitch to deepest left-center, where it bounced over the wall for a game-tying — but not game-winning — ground rule double. Jeter was forced to stop at third, but the Bronx Bombers were still in business.
The Twins walked Sheffield to keep the DP in order, then Nathan departed for J.C. Romero. The newest Twins reliever threw only one pitch to Hideki Matsui, who lined a short fly ball to Jones in right. Jones has been riding a rollercoaster of his own this past week. Sadly, his father died of cancer at the age of 52 early on Friday. He left the team to be with his family, but returned in time to hit a solo homer and catch the final out of the first game of the Series.
His mind might have been elsewhere when Matsui’s ball reached his glove. It seemed too short to score a run, but Jeter must have been aware of Jones’ limitations — only two assists this year and a weak arm, not to mention whatever extracurricular thoughts might understandably be floating around his head. The Yankee captain bolted from third while Jones, not quite nonchalantly but with a lack of urgency, relayed the ball to first baseman Matt LeCroy. LeCroy’s throw pulled catcher Henry Blanco away from the plate towards the first base side as Jeter popped up from his slide and pumped his fist as if to say, “Yeah, I can do this every day,” as if it were his birthright, while his teammates spilled out of the dugout to join him in celebration.
These heartless October automatons show no mercy even for the bereaved. When they do business at this time of year, it’s in the vicinity of the jugular, and the splattered blood from their feral attack ends up looking like some Jackson Pollack masterpiece worthy of a museum presentation. No wonder you hate them.
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So the Yanks head to Minny knotted at one. The latest situation with their makeshift rotation has Kevin Brown, 39 years old going on four, taking the ball instead of ageless El Duque, Orlando Hernandez, whose shoulder is balky at best. After being lit up by Boston in his first game back from a self-inflicted broken hand, Brown tossed five innings of one-hit ball at the Toronto Blue Jays on the second-to-last day of the season, thus earning his postseason pinstripes.
At least to the Yankee brass’ satisfaction, that is. From where I sit, Brown still makes me uneasy. His hypercharged emotions, rage against his own lack of perfection, and ability to embarrass his team with his outbursts echo a bit too much of the man he replaced, Roger Clemens. Though the Rocket finally washed away the stench from the Mike Piazza affair by keeping his cool under postseason duress numerous times, he nevertheless maintained a disturbing ability to implode. Still, after catching a glimpse of his October handiwork yesterday — seven gritty innings while still recovering from a stomach virus — I’d take my chances with the big galoot any day over Brown. A quick comparison of the two this year:
W-L ERA IP K/9 K/W WHIP VORP
Clemens 18-4 2.98 214.1 9.2 2.8 1.16 61.3
Brown 10-6 4.09 132.0 5.7 2.4 1.27 26.4
Not that there’s much they could have done besides buying the entire state of Texas and having it moved to New Jersey for Clemens’ benefit — hey, George Steinbrenner has his limits — the Yankees got smoked on that tradeoff. They also got smoked on the actual Brown trade, in which he arrived from Los Angeles for Jeff Weaver, Yhency Brazoban, and Brandon Weeden. As preopsterous as it sounds to Yankee fans, Weaver was the Dodgers’ most reliable starter and Brazoban, a converted outfielder who couldn’t master A ball last year, their late-season version of K-Rod. The two combined to be 49.7 Runs Above Replacement according to Baseball Prospectus’ VORP statistics (Weaver 37.9 runs, Brazoban 11.7), about twice Brown’s total.
Weaver will have his hands full as he faces the Cardinals tonight. St. Louis’ version of Murderer’s Row bashed five homers off of Dodger pitchers, three off of starter Odalis Perez, who lasted less than three innings on Tuesday afternoon. It’s not quite a must-win game, given that the Dodgers will be headed back to L.A. this weekend. But it would be a whole lot cooler if Weaver could muster some moxie and avoid the big innings that make the Cards so dangerous.