Daily Archives: July 16, 2008

I know I’m late to the party on this, but man, what a drag about our ailing Godzilla. Could be that the Matsui is gone for the year. Steven Goldman takes a look in today’s New York Sun.

I was able to watch a good portion of yesterday’s parade up sixth avenue from my office building. Players sat in the back of sparkling Chevy trucks which proceeded slowly from Bryant Park to 57th street. When Hank Aaron’s truck stopped in front of my building, I saw a little old lady with a big white hat approach him. She walked right by the police, up to the truck like she came down to the parade to do just one thing. She went right up and shook Aaron’s hand. It was brief. Then she walked back to the sidewalk where a small boy was waiting for her.

As she moved away from Aaron, she clenched her fists and shook them over and over again. It was as she was saying, “Yes. I shook the man’s hand.” I don’t know if she had been waiting for years to make that contact but the moment clearly made her day, if not her whole year.

It must be a strange sensation to be a ball player, knowing that your accomplishments mean so much to so many people. I wonder how many of these kinds of encounters an athltete remembers? They must all blur together after awhile. One thing for sure though, that lady will never forget touching Hank Aaron, even it was just for a moment.

The opening ceremonies were but a distant memory by the time the All Star game merifully ended close to 2:00 a.m. but the sight of George Steinbrenner being carted around the field will be the image I remember most. There was the Boss, with his trademark navy blue blazer and aviator sunglasses, sitting next to his daughter, his son Hal right behind him, bawling like a baby, overcome with emotion. The Fox cameras tastefully kept their distance until Steinbrenner’s cart reached the pitcher’s mound. There, his daughter handed him a plain manilla envelope. The Boss took out four baseballs and gave one each to Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Goose Gossage and Reggie Jackson. Ford leaned over and kissed George on the cheek, so did Yogi. Paying their respects to The Godfather. Steinbrenner was then quickly ushered off the field, perhaps for the final time.

It’s funny how things turn out. For as long as I can remember, Steinbrenner has lorded over his team as The Boss, commanding the back and sometimes even the front pages of the local newspapers, hiring-and-firing managers and general managers at an alarming rate, throwing buckets of money at free agents, harassing his employees, berating his players, building championship teams and then tearing them down. He was boorish, obnoxious, paranoid, driven, obsessed. He was also generous, charitable, and unfailingly patriotic. Steinbrenner was a lot of things, and most of all, he was vital, a force.

In 1989, when I was a senior in high school, I honestly believed that the Yankees would never been a winning organization again until Steinbrenner was gone. I was wrong of course, and the Yankees’ run in the nineties was more spectactular and satisfying than the one in the late seventies. Steinbrenner deserves credit for that, even if the team was carefully re-built while he was serving his second suspension from the game, and even if Joe Torre gets most of the ink for the teams’ great run.

Again, it’s interesting to see how things turn out. Instead of a dramatic departure, Steinbrenner has slowly faded, like the air fizzling out of a birthday ballon that is three weeks old. It is humbling. And his many critics have laid off of him as his health has declined. Mike Lupica, one of his biggest foes, has written nothing but glowing things about Steinbrenner for the past few years. And so even an orge gets a moment of grace.

I enjoyed the pre-game introductions. Thought it was typically crass of Willie Mays to ignore Josh Hamilton when the young center fielder took his place next to the Say Hey Kid. Also, is New York the only place in the world where you can get away with following-up Hank Aaron with Reggie Jackson or what? And yo, you had to love them saving Yogi, the best, for last.

The fourth and final All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium started out as something of a dud, but it sure did get interesting before the AL came away its eleventh-straight win after 15 innings and nearly five hours of baseball.

Scoreless after four innings, the early part of the game was notable only for its lack of offense. Derek Jeter singled and stole second in his first at-bat, but was stranded there, ground into a double play in his second trip, and ground out again to kill a fifth-inning rally in his final at-bat. Alex Rodriguez fouled out and struck out in his two at-bats. The AL had five runners in the first four frames, but one was erased by Jeter’s double play, and Milton Bradley was picked off first base after reaching on a Hanley Ramirez throwing error in the fourth. The NL had just three baserunners in the first four frames. Of those three, Albert Pujols was nailed by a laser throw from Ichiro Suzuki while trying to stretch a single into the right field corner into a double. That play was the highlight of the early part of the game, though everyone had a good laugh when Carlos Zambrano’s first pitch to Manny Ramirez in the bottom of the fourth was a curveball that broke over and behind Ramirez’s head.

The NL finally broke the dam when Matt Holliday led off the fifth with an opposite-field solo homer off Ervin Santana that was also the first extra-base hit of the game. The senior circuit added another run against Justin Duchscherer the following inning when Hanely Ramirez and Chase Utley singled to put runners on the corners with no outs, and Lance Berkman plated Ramirez with a sac fly to center.

The game was still 2-0 with two outs in the bottom of the seventh when J.D. Drew tied things up with a two-run homer that plated Justin Morneau (who had doubled to lead off the inning), making Drew the first Boston player to get a genuine cheer from a Yankee Stadium crowd in my memory.

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