George Steinbrenner, to name one septuagenarian multimillionaire old
softy.
The Boss lost it after watching his Columbus Clippers beat the Red Sox
yesterday. And that's what they were. The team wearing pinstripes had a
lineup for the final eight innings in which we can safely state that six
of the position players will not be on the field if there is any October
confrontation between these teams, and you can make that seven since the
Yankees would dump Robin Ventura (four more hapless Ks in four at-bats) in
a heartbeat if the opportunity arose.
The Red Sox, meanwhile, were playing their ''A'' team, with a fully
prepared Pedro Martinez on the mound.
So of course the Yankees found a way to win by a 2-1 score, and when it
was over Niagara Falls took up residence on Steinbrenner's face. The Boss
bawled some serious tears of joy. Seriously. He was really crying. When it
comes to this rivalry, there is never any need to make things up.
Fact has been kicking Fiction's butt now for nigh onto nine decades.
''Yes, I was emotional,'' said Steinbrenner, who might still be hanging
around his locker room spilling his guts to the journalistic set if team
public relations man Rick Cerrone hadn't wisely run off the media hordes
when his boss began to repeat himself for about the 10th time. ''We lose
the first two, and then come back like we did. Winning is emotional to me.
If it isn't, I'm losing the whole thing of what winning is all about.''
The Boss was absolutely ebullient. He kiddingly demanded that starting
pitcher Mike Mussina pay up some bet involving Stanford (his alma mater).
He waved an Ohio State national championship ring in Derek Jeter's face,
prompting his shortstop to say, ''So they're giving those things away
now?'' And he kept going on and on and on about how big this game was and
how proud he was of his team for coming back from losing those two Home
Run Derbies Friday and Saturday and twice beating the Red Sox behind sound
starting pitching. Most of all, he was rhapsodizing about having beaten
the hated Red Sox on a day when both Alfonso Soriano and Jeter were
hors de combat by the second inning, each having been victimized
(Soriano his left hand on a ricochet and Jeter his right on a direct hit)
by a Martinez inside pitch.
Because of a combination of injury and need for a day off, Joe Torre
already had written out a very dubious Yankee lineup that had Ruben Sierra
DHing and batting cleanup, Karim Garcia in left, John Flaherty catching,
and Curtis Pride in right. When Enrique Wilson and Todd ''Flirting With
The Mendoza Line'' Zeile entered the game when Soriano and Jeter left it,
it left Jason Giambi, Hideki Matsui, and Ventura as the only remaining
regulars in the lineup.
Against Pedro.
So what happened? How did the Red Sox lose on a day when Pedro went a
strong seven, fanning 11, and walking none?
The easy answer is that Martinez was the second-best pitcher in the
game. Mike Mussina was better.
Martinez gave up a legit run in the sixth when the switch-hitting
Wilson, who had entered the game batting .182 as a lefty (8 for 44), hit
his second double of the day off Martinez and came home on Giambi's solid
single (emanating from an 0-2 extrication). Mussina gave up an asterisked
run in the first when Todd Walker hit a cheesy single and Pride misplayed
Manny Ramirez's liner into an RBI double. Mussina's response was to retire
the next 21 men.
A brilliant Mussina performance should never come as a surprise,
especially when his mound foe is Martinez. They now have matched up five
times. The record is 2-2 and yesterday's no-decision (the eventual winner
was Mariano Rivera and the eventual loser was Byung Hyun Kim). In those
five games Mussina's 41-inning ERA is 1.07.
''We got what we needed,'' said Torre. ''Today, obviously, there was no
room for error. Moose kept it together for us. The blueprint when you play
the Red Sox and Pedro is on the mound is to keep it close and maybe get a
break. That's exactly what Moose did.''
OK, a large part of this story was the pitching. Like, duh.
''The key is pitching,'' said Jeter after returning from his session
with the X-ray tech (negative, and he's now day-to-day, as is Soriano).
''That's the bottom line. You can score 20 runs, but if the other team
scores 21 runs, you lose. It seems like any time we need a big game from
our pitching staff, our guys step it up.''
You can't ask for much more ''stepping up'' than the Yankees got from
Andy Pettitte and Mussina Sunday and yesterday. They went 16 innings,
giving up six hits, two earned runs, one walk, and 19 strikeouts.
Those are dazzling numbers at any time, but their strategic and
psychological value could not possibly be overstated after the bludgeoning
the Yankees had received in Games 1 and 2 of this series. ''You get beat
like that?'' Torre inquired. ''Of course, your confidence is going to take
a hit.''
The journalistic temptation is to get melodramatic when discussing the
ceaseless Red Sox fan frustration against the Yankees, but how can you not
when you see games like this? Losing this game, and falling back to the
same situation the team was in when it arrived here in the wee smalls
Friday (i.e. four games behind), on a day when they were playing the
junior varsity and your team was suiting up the full varsity is, what?
Galling? Humiliating? Exasperating? Oh, God forbid, and worst of all,
predictable? Was there a seasoned Red Sox fan out there who didn't
know with 1 trillion percent certainty in his or her heart of hearts that
as soon as Giambi's single tied the game off Martinez that this game was a
lost cause and more than likely would end in some messy fashion?
What did we have in the ninth? We had two singles on two-strike
pitches, a hit batsman to load the bases with none out, and a botched
grounder that had inning-ending 4-2-3 written all over it.
And then we had George opening up the facial faucet.
When the subject matter is the Red Sox and their ongoing battle to slay
the big, bad dragon from the Bronx, no mere sportswriter is equal to the
task. But Homer is dead, and we are all you've got.
Weep on, George. History remains on your side.
This story ran on page E1 of the Boston Globe on 7/8/2003.
Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.