Daily Archives: September 29, 2008

My boy Joey La P was at Shea last year when Tom Glavine got waxed and the Mets missed the playoffs.  He was back at Shea this weekend–on Friday night and, of course, yesterday.  He called to tell me about it from his stoop in Brooklyn.  He had just locked himself out of his apartment and his super wasn’t home.

Gotta feel for the Mets fans today. 

From Grantland Rice:

When the one Great Scorer comes/To mark against your name/ He writes not whether you won or lost/But how you played the game.

The status of Yankee General Manager Brian Cashman will reportedly be determined shortly.  So?  You think he stays or goes?  And, do you think he should stay or go?  I think he’ll stay and I’d be happy if he does.

By Will Weiss

Lasting Yankee Stadium Memories (Part One of Two): The Games

It is safe to say that most, if not all, of us who enter professions in sports media do so because at the very core, we’re fans. For those of us who grew up Yankee fans, covering the team and seeing games from the Yankee Stadium Press Area was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.

In Part I of my portion of the Lasting Yankee Stadium Memory series here at Bronx Banter, I’d like to focus on the games that I was a part of during my five years at YES, both as an on-site reporter and an editor.

There are some honorable mention games, like July 7, 2003, when Pedro and Moose dueled and Curtis Pride won the game in the ninth. There was a September day-night doubleheader in which Mike Mussina pitched the first game in front of what seemed like 17 people. But after being asked to make a list of my favorite Yankee Stadium games in my tenure at YES, the games described below were the most memorable.

April 5, 2002: Yankees 4, Devil Rays 0

It was the Yankees’ 2002 home opener, complete with all the usual pageantry, pomp and circumstance. There was an air of anticipation and a sense of purpose among the fans, given the way the team had lost the World Series to the Diamondbacks a few short months before. But this was a different Yankee team. Jason Giambi had been signed in the offseason, as had Robin Ventura and David Wells. Gone was Paul O’Neill; Shane Spencer and John Vander Wal were platooning in right field, while Rondell White was patrolling left.

I was having my own issues. I didn’t have a seat or a phone line in the press box, but somehow finagled my way into the YES booth and sat right behind Michael Kay and Jim Kaat. Suzyn Waldman sat to my immediate left, fidgeting with everything from the phone to her makeup bag. Ten minutes of observing her nerves on display went a long way towards calming my own.

I’ll never forget the view, the relief of having a seat, and the feeling of being able to walk on the field at Yankee Stadium before the game. From that point on, YESNetwork.com writers sat in the booth.

As for the game, it was about 50 degrees and windy. The Yankees made two errors and left 11 men on base. The star was Andy Pettitte, who threw six shutout innings to pave the way for the first of 52 home wins that season.

May 17: 2002: Yankees 13, Twins 12 (14 innings)

After six weeks of struggling in front of the Stadium crowd, this was the game in which Jason Giambi "earned his pinstripes."

The Yankees and Twins combined for 25 runs, 40 hits, 3 errors, 10 walks, 27 strikeouts, and the Yankees hit 6 home runs. Bernie Williams’ shot into the upper deck in left off Eddie Guardado tied the game at 9-9 and sent the game into extras. Both teams had chances but no one converted until the 14th, when the Twins posted three against Sterling Hitchcock.

In the middle of the 14th, as the Twins summoned Mike Trombley to the mound, Jim Kaat looked at the Yankees’ upcoming lineup – Shane Spencer, Alfonso Soriano, and Derek Jeter — and said to broadcast partner Ken Singleton, "Trombley’s on the mound. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the first three guys get on base and Bernie end it with a grand slam." Spencer singled, Soriano flied out, Jeter singled and Bernie walked. The grand slam came one spot in the order behind Bernie. It was a classic finish, with his towering fly ball landing in the right-center field bleachers, and the rain pouring down as Giambi’s teammates mauled him at home plate.

This game would not have made my list had Kaat not predicted the ending. Before I headed down to the clubhouse, I asked him if he was clairvoyant. He just smiled at me and said, "I knew they’d get to Trombley – I was just one batter off."

(more…)

The Yankees ended the season on a good note, at least — I’m going to pretend the second game of the double header, started by the inimitable Sidney Ponson, isn’t happening; humor me — beating the Red Sox 6-2 and earning Mike Mussina his long-deferred 20-win season. It’s a statistical acheivement that I think we can all agree is an arbitrary and ineffective way of measuring a pitcher’s worth… but still pretty damn sweet. A few weeks ago I didn’t think he was going to pull it off, and I’m very glad I was wrong.

The Red Sox never mounted a sustained threat against Mussina, who allowed two walks — he didn’t allow even three in a single game this year –and three hits in six innings, using just 73 pitches. He left the game then, surprisingly, with a three-run lead, courtesy of a Xavier Nady fly ball that had bounced off the top of the wall by the Pesky Pole and into the stands for a home run. Mussina explained afterwards that his elbow was still sore from the comebacker it took in his last start; I figured that was probably the case, because otherwise you’d have expected him to lunge at Joe Girardi with a bat sometime during the eighth inning, when Joba Chamberlain, Brian Bruney, and Damaso Marte allowed two runs and looked like they might be about to collectively blow it. No jury would’ve convicted him.

But Mariano Rivera came to the rescue (of course), entering the game with the tying run on base and, calcified shoulder and all, nailing down a win for Mussina for the 49th time. And Mussina wasn’t sweating it, at that point: "I knew with Mo in the game, it was going to be all right." Me, I still half expected Carl Everett to pop out of the Fenway shadows and ruin everything. Instead, the Yankees tacked on three insurance runs off Jonathan Papelbon in the top of the ninth, and whatever else fell apart this season, at least this one thing went right.

After eight years with the Yankees, Mussina says he’ll take some time now to decide if he wants to keep pitching. Personally I’d be happy to see him back, but at the same time, it’s very rare for an athlete to walk away at the absolute top of their game; if Moose pulled it off, I’d have a ton of respect for that decision.

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UPDATE: So the Yanks went ahead and played the second game of the doubleheader, despite my protestations, and it was actually somewhat dramatic — as dramatic as a meaningless late-September Spring Training game can be, anyway. All the scrubs were in, and Sidney Ponson pitched very well, I suspect just to spite me.

The Yankees were down 3-2 with two outs in the ninth when Robinson Cano drove in the tying run. But Jose Veras couldn’t stave off the Sox in the tenth; he loaded the bases, someone named Jonathan Van Every singled home Alex Cora, and the Sox won 4-3. I say we all just agree to consider Mussina’s win the end of the 2008 season and leave it at that.