When I went into the woods a couple of weeks ago, I predicted to a few people that based on the hairline fracture in Mark Mulder’s femur, the A’s were through. Four games behind the Mariners in the AL West, two games ahead of the Red Sox for the Wild Card, the Grim Forksman had come a-pokin'; the verdict was “done.”

The only hope for the A’s seemed to be highly touted rookie hurler Rich Harden. If Harden, who debuted in late July, could live up to his billing as a worthy addition to the Mulder-Tim Hudson-Barry Zito triumverate, the A’s might stand a chance in the fall. That prospect looked good; at the time of Mulder’s injury, Harden was 3-2 with a 3.00 ERA in six starts, five of which had been excellent.

One of the great things about baseball is that things never unfold the way we expect them to, and the A’s are now the case in point. Including that one less-than-excellent start just prior to Mulder’s injury, Harden had allowed 26 runs in his past 27.2 innings leading up to Tuesday night’s start. But the A’s have nevertheless mustered one of their patented late-season runs. Since Mulder went down, they’ve won 19 out of 26 while the Mariners have lost 14 of 24 — an 8.5 game swing in the AL West standings.

Five times through the rotation since that fateful August 19, the pitcher who’s risen to the occasion in Mulder’s absence is a suprising one: Ted Lilly, the former Yankee who left in the Jeff Weaver trade. Here’s the comparison:

       W-L   IP   ER   ERA  

Zito   2-2  33.2  17  4.54

Hudson 3-2  30.2  13  3.82

Harden 2-2  23.2  20  7.61

Lilly  5-0  29.1   4  1.23

Looking a bit more closely at Lilly’s numbers, he’s allowed 20 hits in this span, including 1 homer, walked only 7 and struck out 30. That comes out to a tidy 0.92 WHIP, a 4.3 K/W ratio, and a healthy 9.2 Ks per 9 innings. Granted, four of these five starts came against Anaheim and Tampa Bay (Toronto was the other), but talk to the Royals about the need to beat up on the dogs — whether it’s Hudson, Zito, or Lilly, somebody’s gotta get the job done.

Lilly hasn’t been pitching especially deep into ballgames, averaging just under six innings per start in this span. But neither has he been wearing himself out; his pitch counts in the five starts are 100, 98, 83, 83, and 67. On Monday night, suffering from a cold, he tossed five innings of one-hit ball before yielding to the bullpen.

Overall, Lilly’s season’s been servicable but hardly spectacular: 11-9 with a 4.33 ERA in a pitchers’ ballpark, 1.31 WHIP, 7.4 K/9, 2.6 K/W, 1.2 HR/9. Then again, those numbers would look pretty good at the back end of the Yankee rotation in place of Jeff Weaver and his 5.91 ERA, wouldn’t they? Lilly’s picked the right time to click, and it’s looking as though the pitcher the A’s once envisioned has finally arrived.

• • •

Wild afros, oversized gloves, and snakes — oh my! These two pages of Funny and Strange Trading Cards are too good not to share. From the hat-busting hairdos of Oscar Gamble and Bake McBride to the huge mitt of Mikey Hatcher to the boa constrictor draped over Glenn Hubbard’s shoulders, some hilarious and notorious cards are here, compiled by collector Bob Torba.

Here’s Billy Martin giving a photographer the finger, Billy Ripken displaying his obscene nickname, and Claude Raymond caught with his zipper down — twice! There’s Bip Roberts wearing a sombrero. Why? Who cares! At least it looks more stylish than that furry hat Doug Drabek’s wearing.

Jose Canseco with an oversize snow shovel, looking for a place to bury his career. An unidentified Pittsburgh Pirate milking a cow. Jose Rijo on three different cards holding three different squirt guns. Andy Ashby trying out a new fishing rod. Tim Flannery holding a surfboard. Brian Jordan swinging at a football. Rex Hudler glaring psychotically. Kurt Bevacqua and Ken Griffey, Jr. blowing bubbles. The world of baseball cards doesn’t get any more surreal than this.

I’m not sure if it’s just me, just anybody viewing this site on a Mac, or a system-wide problem, but the comment links at the end of each of my posts are all showing [0] even when comments have been posted.

I have no idea what the deal is on this, and I’ll have to look into it. Apologies for anybody who submitted a comment and felt that they were left hanging. In the meantime I’ll keep checking to see if you folks are leaving them.

The aftermath of Sunday’s Yankees-Devil Rays game, in which the Yankee winning streak ended at eight, was apparently quite comical. As is traditional prior to embarking on the last road trip of the season, the team’s rookies underwent a hazing ritual in which the veterans forced them to dress up in outlandish outfits, then go out and sign autographs while walking to the team bus. Newsday has a great slide show of the revelry.

Hideki Matsui looked smooooov in a matching leopard skin hat and blazer, with an open-collared shirt embellished by two large gold medallions draped over his chest. With a white full-length fake-fur coat and matching hat, Jose Conteras looked as though he’d won an all-expense paid trip to raid Sly Stone‘s closet. Pitcher Jorge DePaula‘s ensemble featured lime green, purple, and a zebra print, while catcher Michael Hernandez was decked out in red velour and another zebra print.

The opposition got in on the act as well. The Devil Ray rookies, including pitcher Doug Waechter, dressed in drag, wearing a variety of garish skirts. Drag seems to be the order of the day for this affair. The New York Daily News noted that last year, Drew Henson wore a wedding dress for the occasion and that two years ago, Nick Johnson “sported the tiny orange shorts of a Hooters waitress.”

Elsewhere around the league on Sunday, it was a similar story, but with fewer pictures. Across town, Mike Glavine, handed a gift promotion to the bigs as a thank-you to his brother, was dressed like an Arabian princess. In Cincinnati, all the rookies dressed either as Hooters waitresses or Budweiser girls. In Cleveland, outfielder Jody Gerut dressed as Marilyn Monroe. In San Francisco, the rookies donned rock star wigs to go with their Hooters getups.

Hey, it’s a long season. You gotta have some fun…

Pat Jordan has become one of my favorite baseball writers over the past few years. A minor-league pitcher in the late ’50s, Jordan’s career was finished by an extended bout of Rick Ankiel-esque wildness, a topic he’s come to grips with via his writing career. Jordan eloquently told his own story in A False Spring, and went on to write several other books including another memoir, A Nice Tuesday, that’s in my reading pile (more on that soon). He also writes meaty, insighful articles for the New York Times Magazine; his best one tells the Ankiel story, then pulls back to discuss his own failure. It reads like a story told by a ghost on a highway. “What’s happening to you happened to me in 1961. I forgot how to pitch,” Jordan tells Ankiel, “I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”

Jordan writes about pitchers often, and he’s got a new article called “The Hardest Stuff” this week about triple-digit fastballs and the men who throw them. I haven’t read it yet, but I’ll happily refund your money should you check it out on this blind recommendation and not dig it.

• • •

Just as I suspected, the Jordan article good stuff, though perhaps a bit more slight than the author’s usual fare. The pitcher takes brief looks at hard throwers such as the Cubs’ Kerry Wood, the Astros’ Billy Wagner, and Angels’ minor-leaguer Bobby Jenks, examining both the physical and psychological sides to what they do. I gleaned two interesting facts from all of this:

• According to physicist Robert Adair, a 100 MPH fastball reaches the catcher four-tenths of a second after it’s thown, and the batter has about .15 seconds to react.

• Early pitchers whose fastballs were recorded as crossing the triple-digit barrier were Bob Feller, whose heater was timed against a speeding motorcycle, and early ’60s minor-league legend Steve Dalkowski. Given that Dalkowski was measured with a Juggs gun, which tracks the speed of the ball as it leaves the pitchers hand, and the fact that the ball loses up to 5 MPH on its way to the plate, it’s estimated that the hard-throwing Orioles farmhand could throw 103 MPH.

103 miles an hour. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

As I’ve written before, Dalkowski’s statistics are absolutely eye-popping. During his first year of pro ball, in 62 innings, he allowed only 22 hits and struck out 121 — but walked 129, and went 1-8 with an 8.13 ERA. One year he struck out and walked 262 men in 170 innings. Former O’s minor-leaguer-turned-screenwriter Ron Shelton used Dalkowski as the basis for the character Nuke LaLoosh in his movie Bull Durham.

Dalkowski never appeared in a major-league game, undone by alcoholism and an arm injury on the day he was issued a big league uniform. But last week the Orioles honored the pitcher, now 64, by having him throw out the first pitch of their September 8 game at Camden Yards. It’s nice to see the man finally get some recognition.

• What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday morning the Yanks awoke with a collective hangover from two consecutive poundings by the Boston Red Sox and a lead in the AL East that had dwindled to 2.5 games. In the past seven days, they’ve taken a huge game from the Sox, won a makeup game from the Blue Jays, and cut through a pair of the league’s worst teams like a hot knife through butter. With eight straight wins under their belt, they woke up this Sunday having opened a 5.5 game lead on the Sox, and their magic number for winning the AL East is down to 10.

But there’s still plenty of suspense to be had around both leagues. The three-team race in the AL Central finds the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins tied at the top, meaning that the outcome of the Great Sushi Bet of 2003 (I have the Twins vs. the rest of the Central) is still in doubt. The Kansas City Royals, who topped last season’s win total over a month ago, have dropped an axle over the past two weeks or so, going 5-10 against some mediocre competition and falling to 3.5 out. The Oakland A’s are perched atop the AL West with a 2.5 game lead over Seattle, and the Mariners are a mere half-game behind the Red Sox for the Wild Card. All told, that’s 7 out of 14 teams in the AL who remain alive.

The NL is, if anything, even more contentious. While both the Atlanta Braves and the San Francisco Giants have wide leads in the NL East and West, respectively, the NL Central and the Wild Card remain up for grabs. In the Central, the Houston Astros hold a slim half-game lead over the Chicago Cubs, with the St. Louis Cardinals, like their I-70 rivals, fading at 3.5 games out. The Cards, who’ve dropped 9 of 13, are becoming unhinged, with manager Tony LaRussa accusing ump Jerry Crawford of being out to get them. The Florida Marlins, led by their 72-year-old manager Jack McKeon, have overcome the medieval torture methods of predecessor Jeff Torborg to take the Wild Card lead over the streaky Philadelphia Phillies by 2.5 games. At 3.5 games back, the Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves hanging on in the Wild Card race by their fingernails — despite getting exactly eleven base hits over the past month, or something like that. The Cubs are four back in the Wild Card While a week ago one could have counted the Arizona Diamondbacks and Montreal Expos at long odds in the WC race, both can be safely counted out at 7.5 and 8.5 games back, respectively. All told, that’s 8 out of 16 teams still alive in the NL, meaning that with two weeks to go, half of the majors’ teams still have postseason hopes. I’m not a huge fan of the Wild Card, but I’ll concede that’s pretty incredible, and it should be a very interesting couple of weeks for game and scoreboard watching.

• Speaking of less favored innovations, after seven seasons of interleague play, MLB has finally gotten around to scheduling what may be The Unsurpassable Marquee Matchup. I’ll give you a hint: it’s the one featuring my two favorite teams.

The initial goal of interleague play was to rotate the matchups between divisions from year to year, but for the first five years, MLB stuck itself in a rut by matching each division in the AL with its geographic counterpart in the NL. In 2002, the divisions rotated for the first time, and they spun again this year.

But despite the fact that the Barry Bonds-led San Francisco Giants and the then-champion Arizona Diamondbacks visited Yankee Stadium last season, and that the Yanks visited such distant western outposts as Colorado and San Diego, one NL West opponent was conspicuously absent from the Yankees’ schedule: the L.A. Dodgers.

You’d think that above all else, MLB — not to mention the two teams — would have wanted to cash in on an historic rivalry that has produced no fewer than eleven World Series matchups (1941, ’47, ’49, ’52, ’53, ’55, ’56, ’63, ’77, ’78, and ’81), the most of any two teams and the subject of untold numbers of books. But far be it for Bud Selig to show that much imagination in the face of all of those Pittsburgh-Minnesota matchups. But now, according to the Los Angeles Times, the soon-to-be-released 2004 schedule has the Yanks paying a visit to Dodger Stadium for a three-day series during the weekend of June 18-20.

Is it too early to buy tickets? My little head might just explode.

• Belated congratulations to Mike Carminati of Mike’s Baseball Rants and his wife on the birth of a baby boy. Alas, there’s absolutely no truth to the rumor that the little one is named Joe Morgan Chat Day Carminati.

• The world of baseball blogging is largely a male one, so it’s a breath of fresh air to see a woman join the ranks. Irina Paley, a Washington Heights native, Columbia University student and computer programmer with whom I’ve been corresponding lately, has started West 116th Street, which she describes as “a mostly baseball blog, by way of the Upper West Side.” Following up on my King Kaufman-related post, Irina has a good piece relating to a Thomas Boswell quote: “Baseball is religion without the mischief.” Check it out.

Johnny Cash (1932-2003)

This has absolutely nothing to do with baseball. But I was saddened to awake this morning to the news that Johnny Cash had died. As a musician and an icon, Cash bridged gaps between generations, classes, and cultures in a way that was second to none. In a career that began alongside Elvis Presley in the mid-fifties, Cash not only outlived Elvis by twenty-five years, he was still producing relevant work nearly a half-century later. Meditate on that one for a moment.

Patriot or rebel, liberal or conservative, rich or poor, the body of Cash’s work — from his first Sun singles to his live-in-prison albums to his autumnal American Recordings series — speaks to just about everyone. “Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “I Still Miss Someone,” “Dark as a Dungeon,” “Ring of Fire,” “A Boy Named Sue,” “Man in Black,” the list of his great songs rolls on like the “Big River” of which he sang.

To put it another way, if you can’t find something that resonates in Johnny Cash’s music, you just ain’t listening.

It’s safe to say I think of Johnny Cash every day — I have a large painting of him (above), done by musician Jon Langford of the Mekons and the Waco Brothers, which hangs above our living-room couch. Cash’s music has been with me since I was a little boy, when my father would play tapes of his greatest hits on road trips to California or Oregon. Rediscovering his work as an adult not only helped to bridge a generation gap within my family, it opened me up to a whole new world of music which I continue to explore today.

And it gave me something I could finally sing in the shower without scaring the hell out of anybody within earshot; I can hit those low notes. If I could be anyone, anywhere with a microphone in front of me, it would be Cash in front of the Tennessee Two. “I hear that train a-comin’, it’s rollin’ ’round the bend, and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when…”

Plenty of obituaries of and tributes to the man are out there today, and plenty more will be rolled out in the days to come. But the words which resonate most for me were written by Langford, as eloquent a musician as you’ll ever come across, in the liner notes to a tribute album he did in 1994:

He is the polar opposite of the cozy, safe, sexless and bland that white America usually clutches to its all purchasing, suffocating breast. Decency, truth, honesty… around him these gutted terms retain some of their original meaning and in a country that fears self-criticism above all else he holds a mirror up to its rotten hide… ironically it is patriotism and terrible guilty grief that fuels this righteous rage at totalitariansm, racism, genocide… going into the prisons & reservations, putting his own weakness under the same microscope.

Johnny Cash is gone, and he will be dearly missed. The world has lost a great voice.

As the man himself once sang, “I don’t like it, but I guess things happen that way.”

Salon.com writer King Kaufman, whose work I’ve dug for a long time, has an excellent article today about the dearth of football blogs compared to baseball ones. Pointing out that while there are no fewer than 155 blogs linked via Baseball News Blog, he notes that the pigskin sport is quite neglected online. As he writes, “[S]earching for football blogs is like looking for Metallica fans at a Clay Aiken concert. There might be a few around, but you’re not tripping over them. After quite a bit of searching, I know of more blogs devoted to the Detroit Tigers than to the NFL.”

That’s a scary vision, but anybody who saw the Tigers lose 15-5 to the Yankees last night knows that in terms of the dark oddities of the Web, Tiger blogging has to be right there with fantasy fishing, midget porn, and trepanning cults.

Based on interviews with bloggers from both sports (including some recognizable names, such as Bronx Banter‘s Alex Belth and Bambino’s Curse‘s Edward Cossette), Kaufman cites four reasons baseball outpaces football on the web: the game’s literary tradition, its season length, its daily nature, and the popularity of sabermetric analysis. He pulls a couple of great quotes comparing the two sports, including this one from the Washington Post‘s Bob Thompson: “Baseball is a fat Victorian novel, replete with colorful minor characters and discursive subplots, into which a fan can disappear for months; football is a series of quick- cutting TV cop shows.”

Answering Kaufman’s premise, Belth is even more succinct, drawing upon one of my all-time favorite quotes from Oriole managing legend Earl Weaver, as told to the Post‘s Thomas Boswell years ago: “This ain’t football. We do this every day.” I think that hits the nail on the head. For those of us in the world of baseball blogs, this stuff — whether it’s spring training, the dog days of August, the World Series, or the Hot Stove League — is as essential as the morning cup of coffee. You don’t stop drinking it just because it’s December.

And there’s the stat thing. Baseball history is a river of statistics, and its vast body is accessible online via Baseball-Reference, Retrosheet, ESPN and the like. You can track down the box score of your first major-league game, sponsor a favorite role player‘s stat page, analyze the numbers until your eyes cross, or discuss and debate recent news articles with intelligent fans. On the other hand, Baseball-Reference’s historical pigskin counterpart, Pro-Football-Reference, is a thin gruel by comparison, listing only ballhandlers who meet certain qualifications and ignoring the guys in the trenches who give the game its character. Punters aren’t even included! Where have you gone, Ray Guy?

One thing that’s worth noting is that Kaufman’s own style is very blog-influenced; his column went daily back in June, and unlike many mainstream columnists, his work is full of hyperlinks; most established media entities (the publications, not the writers) sweat in fear that if you click on a link — gasp! — you’ll vanish into the ether of the Net, never to return to their site. Kaufman’s even made minor sabermetric splash with his own contribution, the Neifi Index. Named after stathead whipping boy Neifi Perez, he of the career 686 OPS, the Index measures a team’s winning percentage with and without a player in the lineup. The better the record without, the higher the Index. In other words, a stat that’s very compatible with the world of the futility infielder.

One of Kaufman’s interviewees notes that football has traditionally lagged behind baseball in other interactive areas like fantasy leagues and trading cards. Again, a very telling remark. When was the last time you heard somebody fretting about that long-lost Roger Staubach card from their childhood? For all of the ways in which the sport lags behind in its current marketing, baseball’s connection to its fans is so much more intimate, individual, and multifaceted, it’s no wonder that it’s so easily intellectualized. While that may be a lot to digest (in every sense of the word), it’s worth knowing that the game and its devotees are always there for you, ready to provide sustenance at the push of a button, 24-7-365.

The same archaeological dig into my old bedroom desk which netted me autographs from the 1986 Cactus League, brought me remembrances of another spring past. I found a long-lost envelope of photos from the 1989 Grapefruit League, when I saw four straight Dodger games at Vero Beach with my family. The world was a sunny place that spring — I was a freshman at Brown University, and the Dodgers were fresh off their improbable World Championship. Aside from the fact that I was nearly failing Engineering 4, anything seemed possible. I even managed to live down oversleeping my flight to Florida (caught out of position, thanks to my girlfriend at the time), though I got endless shit for that.

Too cool for school, I didn’t buy a scorecard or keep any notes about the games I saw, in which the Dodgers played the Expos, the Mets, the Yankees and one other team I can’t recall. But seeing these photos brings back some memories, so I thought I’d put together a little exhibit. Click on each link for a photo in a new window:

• Kirk Gibson was the reigning NL MVP who brought his dirt-eating style over to the Dodgers from the Detroit Tigers. Felled by a hamstring injury during the playoffs, he came off the bench to pinch-hit that famous homer in Game One of the Series. Alas, Gibson was headed for an injury-marred campaign, .213 with 9 homers in 71 games.

• Eddie Murray was the new man on the scene, signed as a free agent after twelve years in Baltimore. He had a disappointing year as well, .247 with 20 homers — the first time in his major league career that he fell below .277.

• Fernando Valenzuela was on the comeback trail. Suffering through a shoulder injury in 1988, Valenzuela had gone 5-8 with a 4.24 ERA. He pitched only two games after July, none in the postseason. He made it through the entire season in 1989, tossing nearly 200 innings, but he went 10-13 with a 3.43 ERA.

• Rick Dempsey was a gritty catcher who I always liked as an Oriole, and even moreso when he joined the Dodgers as Mike Scioscia’s backup. After a fine 1988 (.251/.338/.455 with 7 homers in 167 AB), Dempsey slumped in 1989 to a .179 average. I always expected he’d become a big-league manager, and I’m surprised he hasn’t done so yet.

• Dodger coach Manny Mota, the team’s former pinch-hitting specialist, was popular with the Vero Beach fans for grand enterance every day — on a bicycle. Fourteen years later, he’s still at it.

• Manager Tommy Lasorda, with a second World Championship under his belt, was even more full of himself that spring. Even managers need to practice their craft in spring training.

• The Mets’ Darryl Strawberry was still quite the superstar, and coming off of a 39-homer, 101-RBI season. His 1989 would be a disappointment (was something in the Vero Beach water?) hitting only .225 with 29 homers and 77 RBI. But Strawberry enjoyed two more highly productive years after that, one with the Mets and one with the Dodgers, before his career went into a tailspin.

The 1989 Dodgers turned out to be a lackluster team, finishing fourth in the NL West at 77-83. It was the age-old story for the Dodgers: good pitching (a 2.95 ERA, tops in the league), lousy hitting (only 554 runs, 3.46 per game, last in the league). Orel Hershiser, who keyed the Dodger championship run with 59 consecutive scoreless innings and postseason heroics, had another fine season with a 2.31 ERA, but poor run support held his record to 15-15. Gibson was terrible, Murray was atypically lackluster, and the rest of the lineup that had been so ridiculed the October before played down to its potential. Can somebody please find Mike Marshall and beat the snot out of him for being so lousy?

Photos aside, I have two vivid memories from that spring training that, alas, have no mementos attached. Before one of the ballgames, I happened to cross paths with Vin Scully, the great Dodger announcer. Thinking quickly, I borrowed a pen from a bystander and got his autograph — but I’ve never been able to turn up that piece of paper. And at the final game against the Yankees, a non-roster outfielder named Mike Griffin got four hits and received a warm ovation from the crowd. Griffin never made the majors, and I always wondered what happened to him.

I unearthed a few more items in my big dig, the best of them being a baseball autographed by Tom Seaver, an 1983 All-Star Game program and a scorebook — a C.S. Peterson Scoremaster, bought for $0.50 at the same time my current one was purchased — in which I’d scored games from 1982-1983, including an ’82 Series game and the ’82 All-Star Game. Back in those days I kept score only for the team I was rooting for, leaving behind a rather imperfect account. The scorebook still has plenty of room for new games, so I dragged it back to New York City.

The other great item I found was a scrap of paper containing my Little League stats for 1982, the one year I played (I wasted most of my Little League career playing goalie on a soccer field). I was a member of the Phillies of the Wasatch Heights League in Salt Lake City, coached by the father of one of my classmates, and populated by two of his seven siblings (they were Mormons, and they all had the initials J.J.; no wonder I made the team).

We won the league championship, and I played a key part, stroking a bases-loaded, game-tying RBI single in the fourth inning of the championship game. Alas, I was removed shortly afterwards to make sure everbody got to play — we had about 15 players, including one girl, and the coach made sure everybody got PT. This explains this overall stat line:

G  AB  R  H  2B  3B  HR  RBI BB  SO  SB   AVG   OBP   SLG  

9  10  2  3   1   0   0   2   2   4   2  .300  .417  .400  



PO  A   E   PCT

 0  4   0  1.000  LF-4, 2B-2, SS-1, 3B-1, CF-1, P-1

Twelve plate appearances in nine games? Thanks for showing up. Alas, I was a true futilityman, seeing time at six different positions. The appearance at pitcher was for fielding purposes only — during the first half of the season we hit against machines or an adult pitcher who threw against both sides, with a player for the fielding team responsible for covering the consequences. No joke: one of the adults who pitched was a coach named John Candelaria, just like the Pirates star at the time. Strange, some of the stuff your mind digs up to go along with the mementos.

Anyway, I suppose I owe my mom a bit of thanks for not throwing all of this stuff out, and for egging me on until I finally got around to cleaning out that desk.

Sometimes it just looks simple. The Yanks spent the weekend struggling for runs against the Boston Red Sox, scoring just six over the course of three games and at one point putting up 17 straight zeroes. But by the time the fourth inning of Monday’s ballgame against the Toronto Blue Jays had ended — by the first out of that inning, actually — they’d topped their weekend’s meager output.

Not that very many people saw it. A Monday afternoon makeup game is a tough draw regardless of the circumstances, but on the first day of school it’s a recipe for a hollow ballpark, Hideki Matsui bobblehead doll or not. The official attendance at Yankee Stadium was reported at 8,848, but if there were 2,000 people there by first pitch then I’m the Yankees’ fifth starter. My pal Nick was anxious to get to Yankee Stadium early enough to get a doll, sweating it after he’d missed a noontime 4 train. By the time we took our seats, we joked that everybody in attendance could have gone back for seconds.

The Yankees rolled from the get-go against Toronto starter Kelvim Escobar, taking their approach back to basics. Alfonso Soriano, never the most patient hitter, led off with a seven-pitch at-bat, spraying foul balls down both sides before lining a single to left. He took second on a wild pitch, Nick Johnson walked, and then Derek Jeter beat out a perfect bunt to load the bases.

Though he was falling behind just about every hitter, it looked as though Escobar might dodge a bullet when he induced a comebacker from the struggling (1-for-40) Jason Giambi. But the pitcher bobbled the ball, and his throw home was too late to catch Sori. After Bernie Williams struck out, Matsui celebrated the day in his honor with a two-run single. When Aaron Boone and Karim Garcia ended the inning with K’s, it meant that Escobar had struck out the side — on 35 pitches.

For awhile, the Jays looked like they might make a game of it. After Mike Mussina mowed them down in the first, they scratched out two runs in the second. A one-out Josh Phelps single put Moose into his stretch move, the one I not-so-affectionately call the Goddamn Drinking Bird. Mussina looked hapless as he walked Eric Hinske and then gave up a two-run double to Orlando “O-Dog” Hudson, the number nine hitter.

Escobar took care of the Yanks in the second, but he was wobbly again in the third. Giambi led off with a single, a good sign that he may yet emerge from his slump. Williams forced Giambi at second, and then Matsui hit another double, with Bernie stopping at third. Boone slapped an RBI single to left, 4-2 Yanks. But with first and third and only one out, the Yanks failed to capitalize further. Garcia struck out again, and John Flaherty popped one to short rightfield, where Hudson made a diving catch that drew a respectful ovation from the Stadium crowd.

Escobar’s number was up in the fourth. Three straight singles by Soriano, Johnson and Jeter added a run. Giambi walked to load the bases, still with nobody out. Bernie Williams hit into a fielder’s choice, forcing Giambi at second but beating the throw to first to avoid “The RBI of Shame” (which actually isn’t an RBI at all), and making the score 6-2. That was Bernie’s day in a nutshell; a day after providing the Yanks with a much-needed power boost, he slid back into his funk.

Matsui singled again for his third hit of the young afternoon, scoring Jeter, upon which Jays manager Carlos Tosca mercifully pulled the plug on Escobar. But the comedy of errors continued, literally. On new pitcher Brian Bowles’ first batter (Aaron Boone), Eric Hinkse mangled a grounder beyond recognition, then threw it into rightfield, as Williams scored. Bowles settled down and did the one thing Escobar was able to do consistently: strike out Karim Garcia. By the fourth inning, the Yankee rightfielder was wearing a silver sombrero. The 8-2 margin wasn’t enough for my pal, who took Garcia to task for once again failing to plate a runner at third with less than two outs.

Karim made up for his transgressions in his next trip to the plate. After a Boone double, he singled up the middle on the first pitch, capping the Yankee scoring for the day at nine runs. Meanwhile Mussina had settled down admirably, with only Hudson and Vernon Wells gave the Yankee pitcher any bother at all. In the fifth Hudson doubled for the second time, later scoring on Wells’ single, his third hit of the ballgame. Besides that, Moose pitched well, especially to Carlos Delgado, who he K’ed three times. He’s owned the fearsome slugger, having limited him to 2-for-18 with 11 strikeouts this year, and 10-for-61 with 22 K’s overall. On the day, Mussina pitched seven innings, allowing three runs and striking out eight (including all three outs in the seventh) while walking only one, winning his 15th game. A nice outing for the Moose.

A couple of interesting relievers made the scene in the late innings. A Toronto rookie named Vinnie Chulk made his major-league debut and threw two shaky but scoreless innings. We immediately dubbed him “The Incredible Chulk,” noted that as a rookie he was quite green, and marvelled when he bested Matsui by striking him out in the seventh. Hey, how often do you see Godzilla battle the Incredible Chulk?

On a more serious note, the Yanks brought in recently-acquired lefty Felix Heredia to clean up the mess Antonio Osuna made in the eighth. With men on first and second and two outs, Heredia calmly disposed of Hinkse on three pitches. He set the Jays down 1-2-3 in the ninth, something Yankee relievers seem to have a hard time doing these days. Given Gabe White’s struggles since returning from his groin injury — hell, given every single goddamn Yankee reliever’s struggles since March 31 — Heredia may end up being a very useful acquisition. He’s no angel (he’s got a year-old assault with weapon charge whose outcome is still pending), but the Yanks aren’t really in a position to be picky.

• • •

I’ve revamped the Stadium Sojourns page, where I link my game reports, pulling several from within my blog and making them into separate pages for posterity. It may not mean much to you, but it helps me sleep at night.

The AL East race had tightened — like a noose. Only this time, the Yankees looked like the condemned. Over the past seventeen days, they’d squandered six games in the stadings. Adding insult to injury, the Red Sox had administered back-to-back bombings in the Bronx by a combined score of 20-3, pulling within a game and a half of their heated rivals. One more victory by the Sox would mean not only a series sweep, but a 10-9 tilt in the season slate, and a temper tantrum from George Steinbrenner guaranteed to peel paint off the Yankee clubhouse walls and fill the tabloid back pages for days to come. Joe Torre and Brian Cashman’s job security would be questioned again while the Boss coiled rope, telling his minions, “Hang ‘em high.”

In a game that could legitimately lay claim as “The Most Important Regular Season Game of the Torre Era,” the Yanks had something to prove, and no one moreso than the man on the mound this day. David Wells had been winless in his past seven starts since July 19 (the longest drought of his Yankee career), had his work ethic publicly questioned by pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, and had been branded a crybaby on the front page of the New York Daily News the day before — for filing a civil suit against the man who sucker-punched him in a diner last year (pint-sized assailant Rocco Grazoisa was convicted of third-degree assault in the criminal case and faces 45 days in jail pending appeal). Sucker-punched again.

But even if his suit didn’t fit so perfectly, no Yankee pitcher was more perfectly suited to pitch this ballgame. Wells came in with a 41-18 lifetime record and 3.80 ERA in Yankee Stadium, and a proven capacity to shut out the bad vibes and simply T.C.B. Back in the spring, when the controversy caused by his newly-published autobiography swirled around the team, Boomer found refuge on the mound, pitching lights-out baseball — 10-2, 3.40 ERA and only 4 walks — in the season’s first three months. It took no genius to envision him rising to the occasion again.

Rise he did.

On gorgeous sunny Sunday tailor-made for a pennant race, Wells squared off in a tense pitching duel against Jeff Suppan. Though neither dominated, both pitchers made short work of opposing hitters. Scoreless, the first six frames flew by in under 90 minutes. A fistful of popups (including two by Manny Ramirez) enabled Wells to limit the Sox to three hits in that span. He wriggled out of trouble in the fifth following a leadoff double by Kevin Millar by inducing groundouts to Jason Varitek and Gabe Kapler which failed to advance the runner, then striking out Damian Jackson on three pitches. The Fat Man wasn’t messing around today.

Neither was Suppan. Before being acquired on July 31, the Sox starter had spent nearly all of his nine big league seasons safely distant from any semblance of a pennant race, eating innings in places like Kansas City and Pittsburgh because, well, somebody had to. He’d caught a hot streak in Pittsburgh, at 10-7 with a 3.57 ERA making himself into a more desirable commodity. But since coming over from the Pirates he’d been less than stellar, yielding a 6.34 ERA. But on this day, he baffled the Yankee batters, limiting them to one hit in the first six innings, a single by Derek Jeter. Jeter, who’d missed the previous five games with a pulled rib-cage muscle, showed no ill effects from his night on the town the previous evening.

The same could not be said for my companion for the game, my brother Bryan, for whom a combination of vodka gimlets and Jeter-induced giddiness had produced a bit of a hangover. Long story short: out with friends the night before, Bryan had come across Thee Yankee Shortstop at the World Bar in the mezzanine of Trump World Tower, where Jeter resides. A phone call and 15 minutes later, and we were all sitting 15 feet from Derek, gawking like the pathetic fan-boys (and -girls) we otherwise never allow ourselves to be… Anyway, as I headed for the concessions stand between innings, Bryan slowly croaked out his order. “The largest Coke you can procure. One hot dog. Four Advil. Two Alka-Seltzer. And a stomach pump.”

The seventh brought another threat for Wells in the form of a leadoff double to rightfield by Ramirez. Karim Garcia’s strong peg off the carom nearly nailed Manny as he nonchalanted his way to second base. Boomer settled down to strike out the dangerous David Ortiz on three pitches, then battled Millar to a full count before giving up ball four. On the next pitch, Varitek ripped a scorcher into the hole between short and third. Jeter dove and gloved the ball, not only saving the potential run but recovering in time to force Millar at second, and barely missing a double play. Kapler then worked Wells to another full count, with Varitek stealing second. With two men now in scoring position, Wells got Kapler to ground to third again, ending the threat.

By this time the caffeine and grilled meat has brought some color back to Bryan, and he’d even pumped his fists after Kapler’s groundout. The night before had ended with a rare partisan display from him, a rallying cry of “Lets Go, Yan-kees!” on the way to hailing a cab. For somebody who gave me shit about my own evolution into a Yanks fan, this was a breakthrough, albeit a well-oiled one. Now in the bottom of the seventh, with Jeter leading off, my brother turned resourceful. He folded up his Teton Gravity Research hat into a Rally Cap, and urged me to do the same to my Yanks cap. I followed suit, but after Jeter grounded out, I turned to him and asked, “Is this thing even plugged in?” I restored my cap to the upright position as Jason Giambi popped out to third baseman Bill Mueller in shallow leftfield. The Yankee offense was looking down the barrel at its 18th consecutive scoreless inning.

But when Jorge Posada drew a two-out, four-pitch walk, I reconsidered my options and returned to the Rally Cap. The slumping Bernie Williams needed all the help he could get; Bernie had gone 13-for-64 since his last homer on August 19 and had recently been dropped to sixth in the batting order.

On Suppan’s 2-2 pitch, Williams connected, lofting a towering fly ball to rightfield. The ball hung in the air so long I swear they started playing the theme from The Natural while it was still midflight. Kapler chased it back to the wall, but he ran out of real estate eventually — a two-run homer! The Stadium erupted as “Disco Inferno” blared, a surprisingly bipartisan crowd of 55,212 at last coming down squarely on the side of the home team. Hideki Matsui followed with a double, just the third hit on the afternoon for the Yanks, but Aaron Boone flew out, ending the inning.

Wells began the eighth in strong form, striking out pinch-hitter Lou Merloni looking. Johnny Damon then hit a grounder to short, but Jeter had to rush his throw and missed his target. E-6. Mueller blooped a single to shallow left, with Damon stopping at second. At last, this spelled the end of Boomer’s afternoon, and he got a richly deserved standing ovation from the crowd, doffing his cap on his way to the dugout.

In a surprising move, Torre called upon Mariano Rivera. His closer had been struggling with some of his longer save opportunities, but with Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz the next three batters, Joe was — to put it bluntly — in no mood to fuck around with the fickleness of his setup men today. Fair enough.

Rivera retired Nomar on a flyout, but Manny then pooched another base hit into short right, scoring Damon. But Ortiz hiit into a force, keeping the Yanks ahead by a run.

They widened the margin in the bottom of the eighth with Suppan gone. Facing Alan Embree with one out, Alfonso Soriano, who’d had lousy at-bats all day (so what else is new?) swung at the first pitch and replicated Ramirez’s bloop to right. With Kapler, Merloni and Millar converging on the ball, Sori turned on the afterburners and stretched his hit into a double. He stole third two pitches later, then scored as Nick Johnson slapped a single to right. Boston manager Grady Little continued his bullpen shuffle, bringing in Scott Williamson to walk Jeter, then Scott Sauerbeck to induce Jason Giambi to ground into a double play.

The ninth started ominously, as Millar lashed Rivera’s second pitch up the middle for a single. But Varitek hit into a fielder’s choice and pinch-hitter Trot Nixon popped out. Pinch-hitter Todd Walker then slapped Rivera’s first pitch right back to the mound, and Rivera, mindful of his own fielding woes, jogged the ball halfway over to first before underhanding it to Nick Johnson. Ballgame and season series to the Yanks, and at last, a bit of breathing room.