When I was a boy the Milwaukee Brewers were Gorman Thomas and Ben Oglivie, Robin Yount and Jim Ganter, Sixto Lezcano and Paul Molitor. It still seems odd to me that they’re a National League team, but I suppose there are fans a generation older than I am for whom it seems odd that Milwaukee ever had an American League franchise.

On Tuesday night they looked like a minor league franchise. Zack Greinke was on the mound for the Brewers, and I was looking forward to watching him pitch. I know what you know about Mr. Greinke — he’s apparently one of the best pitchers in the game — but all day I kept wondering how it was that I had never really seen him pitch. Apparently the schedule usually worked out for the Yankees when Greinke was in Kansas City, and they missed him more often than not. Right about now, I’m guessing Greinke wishes they had missed him again.

The first sign that the night might not go Greinke’s way came with the first batter he faced, as his normally pinpoint control deserted him and he hit leadoff man Brett Gardner. (Greinke would walk a season-high three batters on the night; he had only walked nine batters in his previous 60.1 innings.) Curtis Granderson then hit a sky-high fly ball to straightaway center field. It should’ve been the first out of the game, but instead center fielder Nyjer Morgan inexplicably fell over while attempting to field the ball, which skipped away untouched and allowed Gardner to scamper home on Granderson’s standup triple. (Later in the game Rickie Weeks would inexplicably fall over in the middle of what should’ve been an inning-ending double play.) Mark Teixeira then grounded out to second, scoring Granderson and opening a 2-0 Yankee lead.

Two more Yankees reached base that inning, forcing Greinke to expend 27 pitches to get three outs, and after Yankee starter Freddy García needed just nine pitches to retire the Brewers in the top of the second, Greinke was back on the mound again after only a few minutes rest. The Yankees took advantage. After Eduardo Nuñez and Gardner opened the inning with a single and a walk, then eventually advanced to second and third on a double steal, Teixeira picked up another ground out RBI for the Yankees’ third run. There were two outs, and it looked like Greinke might be able to get out of the inning with minimal damage, but he walked Alex Rodríguez, allowed a run-scoring single to Robinson Canó, and then served up fairly large (left-handed) home run to Nick Swisher. Suddenly it was 7-0. Greinke would finish the inning, but the Yanks had finished him. The second inning was his last.

From there, García put it on cruise control as he pitched to the scoreboard. He allowed base runners in each inning and two runs in the fourth, but he never let the Brewers get a look at the game. After his six effective innings, the Yankees piled on a few more runs to make things more comfortable for the bullpen. Teixeira hit his major-league-leading 24th home run in the bottom of the sixth, scoring two; Jorge Posada singled in a run; and Russell Martin plated another with a ground out, and the score was 11-2 when Hector Noesi took over in the seventh.

Noesi made it through the seventh and eighth, and Cory Wade handled the ninth, and the game was over. Yankees 12, Brewers 2.

If I had told you back in March that Rafael Soriano and Joba Chamberlain would be lost for the season, Phil Hughes would miss almost the entire first half, Bartolo Colón would emerge as the #2 starter before following Hughes onto the DL, they would insert a former minor league outfielder into the starting rotation, Jorge Posada’s batting average wouldn’t climb above the Mendoza line until June 9, Derek Jeter would spend almost three weeks on the disabled list, and the team would go 1-8 against the Red Sox, you surely wouldn’t have believed me. And if you did believe me, you’d expect that the team would be teetering on the brink of implosion.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. These Yankees sit a game and a half in front of those pesky BoSox, they’ve scored more runs than any team in baseball, they have the largest run differential by a wide margin, and they’re sporting the best record in the American League. What might this team do when all the missing pieces return in the second half?

[Photo Credit: Nick Laham/Getty Images]

“What I don’t understand, is how it gets into your shoes…” And to illustrate his confusion, Yankee ace Ivan Nova gently pulled his left cleat off his foot and poured from it half a glass of champagne before offering it to an amused reporter.

Only an hour earlier the Yankees had put the finishing touches on their 29th world championship, sweeping the defending champion Chicago Cubs, but it was already tempting to install them as favorites in 2016, 2017, and years to come. A quick survey of the locker room revealed one of the most balanced teams ever assembled.

In one corner of the room sat third baseman Alex Rodríguez and his 761 career home runs. For much of September they had hung around his neck like the links in Marley’s chain, weighing him down and making him look old and slow as he suffered through the first homerless month of his career, but he had hit two home runs in this fall classic and was talking openly now about playing “at least two or three more years.”

Next to A-Rod stood the game’s most feared batsman, designated hitter Jesus Montero. Just entering his prime, Montero had hit .327/.411/.601 with 41 home runs in a season expected to earn him his first league MVP award.

But unlike Yankee teams in the past, this group won — and will continue to win — because of its absolutely dominant starting pitching. “We’ve got a guy in CC Sabathia who has upwards of 230 career wins, and he’s basically our fifth starter,” explained manager Jorge Posada. (Sabathia didn’t pitch in this series, but did deliver a key pinch hit to extend an eleventh-inning rally in Game 2.) “We’ve got Nova at the top, followed by Phil Hughes, Manuel Bañuelos, and Dellin Betances. It’s no wonder we won 109 games this season.”

“It’s funny when you look back at it now,” said a typically quiet Brian Cashman. “All you read about four or five years ago was that the Yankees couldn’t develop young arms, but take a look at our rotation. Take a look at the bullpen. Sure, Mo’s still there on the back end, but what about Joba? His ERA was under one for the second year in a row, and we think this might be the year that Rivera actually retires, so Joba will be closing next year.”

Nova, though, was the biggest story. He had been named the Series MVP after shutout wins in Game 1 and Game 4, and it was hard to remember that he had once been a rather lightly-regarded prospect. “It all changed for me that night in Cincinnati…” His eyes seemed to focus somewhere in the distance, and he told the story of his formative game with such vivid detail it was as if it had happened just yesterday.

As the game started out it looked as if it would be another Yankee rout, as Cincinnati starter Travis Wood kept floating pitches into the middle of the strike zone and Yankee hitters kept roping them into the outfield. Nick Swisher led off with a single, and after Curtis Granderson struck out swinging, Mark Teixeira singled, A-Rod followed with a single to score Swisher, Robinson Canó doubled to score Teixeira, Russell Martin drove in A-Rod with a ground out, and Andruw Jones singled in Canó. And just like that, the Yankees had a 4-0 lead.

Nova squeezed a bit of bubbly out of his sock and said, “That first inning, it just might’ve been the most important inning I’ve ever pitched. I only threw ten pitches, but I’ll never forget them.”

“Stubbs was the leadoff hitter, and I started him with an easy fastball for strike one. After he took a curve for a ball, I went back to the fastball and he hit a line drive into center field for a base hit. Brandon Phillips was next, and I went all fastballs with him, but he was able to fight one off and line it to right, pushing Stubbs around to third. This was a moment when things would’ve exploded on me in the past. I’d have overthrown a curve ball or opened up on a fastball looking for the strikeout, and suddenly they’d put four or five runs on the board, but suddenly there was a voice in my head — it sounded an awful lot like David Cone — telling me to ignore the runner on third. So instead of muscling up, I took something off of a fastball to Joey Votto and got him to ground into a double play. The run scored, but I had avoided the big inning. Jay Bruce came up next, and I fooled him with a changeup. He bounced the ball back to me, and the inning was over. To be honest, the game was over.”

Over the next seven innings Nova only allowed two singles. His line on the night was dominant: 8 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 0 BB, 7 K. Of his 24 recorded outs, all but three came via strikeout or ground out. “Sure, the manager kind of bungled things in the end, pulling me after eight innings even though I had only thrown 105 pitches, but Mariano finally came in and did what he always does, and we won, 5-3.”

Nova paused, then quickly shook his head as one does when waking from a dream. “Was that really four years ago?” He smiled. “Impossible.”

With that he jumped up and chased after bench coach Paul O’Neill, triggering a second wave of celebration throughout the room. But just as suddenly, everything went quiet. At the far end of the clubhouse, having walked in unannounced, stood Derek Jeter, dressed impeccably in a grey suit and looking for all the world as if he were about to announce a comeback. But he wouldn’t. He shook a few hands and nodded across the room at old friends Posada and Rivera as he walked straight to Nova.

“You looked good out there tonight, kid. But remember, you’ve still got a ways to go before you catch me.” He held up six fingers and smiled, then turned and left.

[Photo Credit: Joe Robbins/Getty Images]

Whenever the Yankees and Cubs hook up, which is every three years, I suppose, it’s hard for me not to think about how difficult it is to suffer through long championship droughts. The Yankees haven’t won the World Series since 2009, and I can’t help but feel for all the babies who have been born since then, all of them crying helplessly into the cold night, yearning for a mother’s love, a warm bottle of milk, and a World Series ring.

Will 2011 finally be the year to silence those cries? If Sunday night’s game in Chicago’s Wrigley Field was any indication, it just might be. CC Sabathia was on the mound for the Yanks, and although that’s usually a good sign, the Big Man didn’t have his usual easy outing. Brett Gardner had given him an early cushion with his leadoff home run, but Sabathia gave up a ringing double to Chicago’s Reed Johnson to lead off the bottom half of the first, and the game was tied after a sacrifice fly and a ground ball chased Johnson home.

CC slipped again in the third inning. Young phenom Starlin Castro singled to right, Aramis Ramírez singled to center, and our old friend Alfonso Soriano came up to the plate with two outs. Every time I look at Soriano I think of two things: first, I remember that home run he hit off Curt Schilling in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, the one that should’ve won that Series and etched Soriano’s name into Yankee history; second, I think of the player I hoped Soriano would have become with the Yankees, a perennial all-star at second base on his way to the Hall of Fame. Thankfully, though, the Yankees didn’t waste too much time replacing Soriano with another perennial all-star at second base on his way to the Hall of Fame, so I’m only bitter about the first memory.

But back to our game. Just seconds after the good folks at ESPN flashed some stats about Soriano’s success against Sabathia, Sorry unleashed that beautiful swing — too long for consistent success, but beautiful when it connects — and ripped a long blast into the left field bleachers to open a 4-1 Chicago lead. Bitter.

In the top of the fourth, however, the Cub defenders faltered a bit and let the Yanks creep back into the game. (The defensive problems in this inning were just the tip of the iceberg, but more on that later.) With Alex Rodríguez on first base after having drawn a walk, Robinson Canó tapped a dribbler out in front of the plate. Catcher Geovany Soto pounced out of his crouch, plucked the ball from the grass, and split the diamond with a strike to second where Castro waited at the bag for what looked to be the first out of an inning-ending double play. But Castro didn’t wait long enough. He skipped off the base just before the throw arrived, losing that out, then threw late to first, losing that one as well. Nick Swisher accepted Castro’s charity, grounding a ball through the right side of the infield to score A-Rod and cut the Cub lead to two. Russell Martin kept the train moving by drawing a walk to load the bases, and then the Cub defense gave the Yanks another run. Eduardo Nuñez hit a grounder to third. The ball was softly hit, certainly not hard enough to turn a double play on the speedy Nuñez, but not so softly to prevent Ramírez from coming home to cut off the run. As it turned out, Ramírez chose poorly. He went to second for the out, Canó came in to score, and the Yanks were only down by a run.

Two innings later the game was tied. A-Rod led off with a single and got to second on a Canó groundout. With A-Rod on second base, ESPN analyst Bobby Valentine spent about five minutes explaining what anyone who’s ever played the game (except A-Rod, apparently) already knew — A-Rod’s lead off second base put him directly in the baseline rather than a few feet towards left field to give him a better route around third base on his way to the plate. When Swisher singled to right, Valentine’s words seemed prophetic; Rodríguez had to stop at third. No matter, though. Russell Martin lofted a sacrifice fly to right to score him and tie the game at four.

Two innings after that, the game was essentially over, and again it was the middle of the lineup doing the damage. A-Rod singled again to start the inning (he’s got the average up to .289, by the way), Canó pushed him to third with another single, and Swisher stepped on a 2-o fastball from reliever Sean Marshall, dropping it into the stands in right for a 7-4 Yankee lead.

The Cubs had given us a taste of poor defense in earlier innings, but the main course was served in the ninth. Gardner led off by flipping a ball down the line in left, and as soon as the ball hit the grass I expected the speedy Gardner to have a shot at a double. Soriano, who’s never been confused with Tris Speaker as a defensive outfielder, obviously wasn’t thinking the same thing. He jogged after the ball and seemed legitimately surprised to see Gardner rounding first. He realized his error, but it was too late, and Gardner slid in safely with a double. This, however, wouldn’t be Soriano’s worst play of the inning.

Curtis Granderson ripped a line drive down the line in right, good for a standup triple and another Yankee run, then Mark Teixeira drove Granderson in with a booming double — or at least that’s what the box score would have you believe. In reality, Teixeira hit a soaring pop fly to right field. Jeff Baker, just switched out to right field from first base in the ninth inning, tracked the ball deep into the corner but somehow allowed it to drop at his feet. By the time Baker corralled the ball and fired it back into the infield, a confused Teixeira was standing on second base and the Yankees were up 9-4. A couple pitches later A-Rod rocketed a double off the wall in left — or at least that’s what the box score would have you believe. In reality, Rodríguez hit a towering fly ball to the gap in left center. Soriano and center fielder Johnson converged on the ball, with Soriano appearing to have the ball measured. And then the ball fell between them, bounced in and out of the ivy as the two fielders watched, and A-Rod’s “double” scored Teixeira with the game’s final run. Yankees 10, Cubs 4.

Those three ninth-inning runs were important, as they gave Mariano Rivera the night off, and Brett Gardner was the key. Gardner had three hits on the night, and is hitting .404/.481/.553 in the month of June, leading to all sorts of speculation about where Derek Jeter might fit in the lineup upon his return from the disabled list. I’m not overly concerned  about lineup positions, but if Gardner keeps hitting and Jeter keeps struggling, Girardi’s handling of the situation will go a long way towards determining whether or not this Yankee team will be the one to end the championship drought. Something to watch for this summer.

[Photo Credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images]

If there’s one thing that’s bothered me about the Yankees this year it’s that they don’t seem to play well in series openers. After tonight’s loss to the Red Sox, they’re only 9-12 in the first game of a series. (For the record, their record in those first 11 series that they started with a loss is 5-3-3.) I think the emphasis on winning three-game series during the regular season, a relatively recent idea, is a bit overblown, but I still find myself falling in to the trap and thinking, “Alright, now they have to win the last two” when they really don’t. Well, they have to win these next two against the Sox.

This game turned sour in the first inning and didn’t get much better later on. The Red Sox bats made it clear from the jump that Yankee starter Freddy García didn’t have anything. Jacoby Ellsbury opened with a long home run to right, Dustin Pedroia drew a walk, Adrian González rocketed a triple over Curtis Granderson’s head, and Kevin Youkilis his a sacrifice fly to the track in right, giving Boston a 3-0 lead. García’s troubles would continue in the second as he gave up a walk and a single before serving up some batting practice slop to Pedroia who thanked him for the charity by hitting a laser down the line in right to score both base runners. Joe Girardi smartly pulled García, but the damage was done.

The Yankees had a chance to answer Boston’s early outburst in their bottom half of the first against a less-than-sharp Jon Lester, but they squandered the opportunity. With Granderson already on first, Lester let a fastball run in to Mark Teixeira. As Teixeira began to stride into the pitch, putting all of his wait on his back right leg, the ball continued to dart inward and struck him on the right knee. By the time I watched the replay I already knew that the x-rays had come back negative, so I wasn’t nearly as worried as everyone who was watching live. Teixeira immediately crumpled into a heap at the plate, rolling around in obvious agony and cursing loud enough to be heard on the NESN field mike. I’m guessing that everyone — Teixeira included — thought he had shattered his knee cap. Thankfully it was only a bruise, but I wouldn’t expect to see him for at least a few days.

Anyway, that put runners on first and second for Alex Rodríguez, who beat a potential double-play grounder to create a first and third situation for Robinson Canó. Canó drove in the run with a single to center, and when Lester hit another batter (Russell Martin) with another fastball that ran in, Nick Swisher came up with a chance to tie the game. Swisher made Lester work, but eventually grounded out to third to end the threat.

The game settled down a bit after this, thanks partially to more strong work from the Yankee bullpen. Luís Ayala got four outs in relief of García, and then Girardi turned to the intriguing young Hector Noesi, who, for the most part, had another successful outing. He pitched the final six innings of the game, giving up just two runs on three hits and a walk while striking out one. The two runs he yielded were important at the time (stretching the Sox lead to 6-1) and could resonate through the final two games of the series. With González on first, David Ortíz came up and hit a no-doubter into the seats in right, then took a moment to soak it all in. He looked immediately across home plate into the Boston dugout on the third base side of the field, flipped the bat with disdain, and then executed a perfect pirouette as he finally left the batter’s box and began his circuit of the bases. I was surprised, because I don’t really remember Big Papi rubbing the salt like that, and Girardi didn’t like it either. “Yeah, I didn’t really care for it. I’ve never had a problem with David Ortíz… My reaction’s probably more protecting our young kid. And that’s what I’m going to do.” Papi’s response? “That’s Papi style.” I wouldn’t be surprised — or disappointed — to see Big Papi get a little A.J. Burnett style in the ribs tomorrow, maybe in the first inning.

One last note on Noesi. After the Ortíz homer Noesi retired the next thirteen batters before giving up a double to Ellsbury who was thrown at third trying to stretch. I think he’s done enough in the pen (15.1 IP, 1.76 ERA, 1.04 WHIP) to earn a start some time soon.

The rest of the game was rather uneventful. Swisher knocked in a couple runs in the fifth with a double, and, as he usually does in New York, Jonathan Papelbon made things interesting in the ninth, giving up a walk and a single to cut the lead to 6-4, and A-Rod even came to the plate with a chance to tie the game. But when he waved half-heartedly at a 97-MPH fastball that was riding up and away out of the strike zone, the game was over. Red Sox 6, Yankees 4.

A couple more things. Derek Jeter had two hits on the night, meaning he’s twelve hits away with nine games left in the home stand. Fingers crossed.

And if you think you’ve seen Alex Rodríguez strike out before to end a game, it’s because you have. The folks at ESPN, always happy to bring us good news, report that A-Rod has done that thirteen times as a Yankee, tied with Posada for most on the team during that time.

Tomorrow, though, is another day.

[Photo Credit: Al Bello/Getty Images]

The original plan was for me to go to this game. Friday night was too busy, Sunday is the wife’s birthday, so Saturday’s game — conveniently scheduled for an early evening start — was the one. But it didn’t work. I ended up watching on TV with the rest of you, and here’s what happened.

In a game that clocked in at a brisk 2:35, both pitchers looked good. Even though the numbers don’t bare this out, it always seems like the Angels’ Ervin Santana pitches well against the Yanks, and Saturday night was no different. He cruised through the first three innings and gave up a run in the fourth only because Torii Hunter’s leap into the stands over the short fence in the right field corner wasn’t enough to snare Robinson Canó’s 12th homer of the season.

That 1-0 lead looked like it might be all that Yankee starter CC Sabathia would need. But the scrappy Angels bounced right back in the bottom of inning as Alberto Callaspo doubled deep to center field, then advanced to third on a grounder (which Derek Jeter booted for an error). An out later Callaspo came home on a Jeff Mathis sacrifice fly. The run was unearned, but the game was tied.

The game stayed tied until the sixth when Curtis Granderson led off and worked a walk. Two batters later Alex Rodríguez put a crush on a ball and sent it towards the rocks in left center field and the Yankees were up, 3-1. There was never a doubt that those extra two runs would be enough for Sabathia.

As predicted yesterday, Sabathia was ready, and he took no prisoners, dominating the Angels all night. It wasn’t too long ago that conversations about Sabathia were lined with at least a hint of disappointment, but when you look at his season now, it’s hard to remember why. He has been the very definition of an ace. Saturday’s victory was his seventh of the year (tied with five others for tops in the league), and he’s won his past four starts, pitching at least eight innings in each of them. In a rotation where each of the other four pitchers takes the mound with some type of looming question (Will Burnett finally self-destruct? Will Nova make it through five innings? Will Colón’s deal with the devil run out? Will García turn back into a pumpkin?), the certainty of Sabathia has been a gift.

In recent years eight innings had become the equivalent of a complete game for the Yankee staff, but Sabathia came out for the ninth in an attempt to finish what he started. After he got two ground outs to third and stood waiting for someone named Peter Bourjos to walk to the plate, it looked like the bullpen would have the night off. But after Gorgeous Bourjos singled, was allowed to take second, and came home on a Macier Izturis single, manager Joe Girardi hopped out of the dugout and called on Mariano Rivera. As it turned out, it took Rivera longer to get to the mound than get off it; he needed only one pitch to retire Erick Aybar for the final out. Yankees 3, Angels 2.

[Photo Credit: Stephen Dunn/Getty Images]

It’s no secret that I hate the Angels. Hate ’em like the chicken pox, and it’s not just because they’ve had so much success against the Yankees over the past fifteen years. I hate everything about them — the halo, the stadium, the rally monkey, the waterfall in centerfield, even the name. Any team named the Angels should be playing Bobby Sox softball in a league with the Ponies, the Unicorns, and the Magic Rainbows.

So after all that ranting, this next part will seem kind of snarky, but I don’t mean it to be. I kind of feel sorry for the Angels. They already have to wear those ridiculous uniforms, and then when they go with the throwbacks, they just look even more ridiculous, no matter which uni they choose. Poor Angels.

The team is celebrating its 50th anniversary, so on Friday night they trotted out the 1960s uniforms, complete with the cute little hats with the with the cute little halos on top. Lucky for them they had Jered Weaver on the mound, who could probably pitch with a flower pot on his head, but the kid who looked a look for the Cy Young on April 30 (6-0, 0.99 ERA in his first six starts) came down from the clouds in May (0-4, 5.25 in his next four).

The Yankees appeared intent on making him work, and Derek Jeter started off with a fifteen-pitch at bat to lead off the game. He ended up popping out to center, and even though Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira also went down, the three had made Weaver work as he expended 27 pitches to get through a 1-2-3 inning.

After the long top half, the Angels came up in the bottom half and notched a couple runs off Ivan Nova. Erick Aybar singled, moved to second on a wild pitch, and was quickly cashed in on a double from our old friend Bobby Abreu. Abreu would take third minutes later on a passed ball, and then score from there on a ground out to open a 2-0 lead.

The Yanks would split that margin in half in the second with an Alex Rodríguez double and a Russell Martin single, then tie the score at two in the fourth when Jorge Posada followed a couple of walks with a ground rule double.

The Angels, of course, would answer right back in their half of the fourth to reclaim the lead at 3-2, and after that, a strange thing happened. In an unorthodox move, the Yankee equipment manager ordered that all the bats be put away. Every once in a while someone managed to sneak a stick up to the plate, but they were obviously under strict orders not to swing. The Yankees didn’t manage a single hit after the fourth inning (they only had three total on the night), and struck out eleven times, with four of those Ks being backwards. A pathetic performance. Angels 3, Yankees 2.

Ivan Nova, though, wasn’t bad. He worked himself into a few jams, but I think we’d all be happy with six innings and three runs every time out from him. But don’t worry, everybody. CC’s driving the Score Truck tomorrow night. Expect the Yanks to win big. Big, I said. And I heard a rumor the Yanks will be wearing their throwback jerseys, the ones the team wore from 1936 to 2010. You won’t want to miss that.

[Photo Credit: Mark J. Terrill/AP Photo]

I went to school in the Bay Area from 1987 to 1991, just an hour or so away from what was then called Alameda County Coliseum. I always did my best to convince someone to make the trip across the Bay with me whenever the Yankees came to town, and even in the first few years after I graduated and returned to Southern California, I had enough college friends — even one who was a Yankee fan — who had remained up there to justify weekend road trips up north whenever the Yankees came out west.

The problem, of course, was that the during the late 80s, when the Yankees were at least above average, they always performed miserably on the west coast; in the 90s they were just plain awful. The A’s, meanwhile, were world-beaters, a team of superlatives from top to bottom. Their manager was hailed on the cover of Sports Illustrated as The Mastermind, and the closer he created revolutionized the game. Their right fielder wasn’t yet outing steroid cheats or allowing fly balls to bounce off of his head and over fences; he was simply the most prodigious talent in the game.

The results of these match-ups were predictably one-sided, but no one could ever have predicted how one-sided they actually were. In 1990, for example, the Yankees dropped all 12 games to the A’s and were outscored 62-12. A quick look at that 1990 roster reveals a team of injured stars, false prospects, failed free agents, and sideshows. Don Mattingly was there, but the back troubles had started by then, and Donnie Baseball only made it into 102 games and hit a paltry .256. Dave Winfield was old and injured and only managed sixty-seven plate appearances. Kevin Maas and Hensley “Bam Bam” Meulens were top prospects, but neither would amount to anything. Steve Sax, Jesse Barfield, and Mel Hall all made in the neighborhood of a million dollars, but none of the three earned his keep. For entertainment value, though, there was Deion Sanders and his .158 batting average, as well as the voodoo antics of Pascual Pérez. It’s no surprise that that ragtag group finished dead last.

The starting catcher most nights that season was Bob Geren, the current A’s manager, and you couldn’t blame him on Tuesday night if he thought back to that 1990 team as he sat in the Oakland dugout and wondered how he came to be on both wrong sides of the same rivalry, first as a Yankee back then, and then twenty years later as the skipper of the Athletics. Over the last three seasons Geren’s A’s have been 4-21 against the Bombers, and things aren’t getting any better for them in 2011.

If Monday afternoon was about Bartolo Colón, Tuesday night was all about the Score Truck. Mr. Almost 3000 started things out with an infield single, and Curtis Granderson opened up the scoring by launching a home run deep into the right field stands for a 2-0 Yankee lead before the seats were warm. (Granderson’s line on the night, by the way, was pretty impressive: 3 for 5, HR, 4 RBIs, 2 R, SB)

Jeter reached base again in the third inning, this time on a Mark Ellis error, and Alex Rodríguez came up with that rarest Yankee hit this year, the two-out RBI, as he grounded a single up the middle to push the lead to 3-0. Not to be outdone, Granderson came up with a two-out hit of his own in the next inning, this one coming with the bases loaded and scoring two. In the fifth, Robinson Canó laced a no-doubter over the big wall in right field, scoring two more and giving the Yankees a 7-1 lead.

Meanwhile, starter Freddy García was holding the Athletics at bay with his usual buffet of fastballs, curves, and changeups. He struggled a bit in the middle innings, giving up a run in the third, barely slithering out of a bases-loaded jam in the fourth, and surrendering a two-run homer (David DeJesus) in the fifth, but he settled down to skate through the sixth and seventh innings and eventually earn the win. If you had told me in March that the Yankees would be depending hugely on both Colón and García, I’d have thought you were crazy; now I can’t imagine where this team would be without them.

Aside from all this, there were a few interesting notes that should be mentioned.

• Jeter picked up two base hits, bringing his total to 2,983.
• Granderson’s first-inning homer off Brett Anderson was his 9th off a lefty, tops in baseball.
• The Yankees stole four bases in a game for the second day in a row.
• One of those steals came from Mark Teixeira, who stole home. I could explain exactly how this happened, but I think it’s more fun to leave you imagining that he pranced down the line like Jackie Robinson, bobbing and weaving, feinting and flinching, staring at Brad Ziegler and daring him to step off the rubber before finally putting his head down and breaking for the plate, sliding in in a cloud of dust with spikes high, barely beating the throw. Yeah, that’s how it happened.

All of that added up to a 10-3 Score Truck win. We’ve seen two of the young Oakland phenom pitchers and roughed ’em but good, but we’ve got another one coming tomorrow. Wouldn’t a sweep be nice?

[Photo Credit: Ezra Shaw/Getty Images]

First of all, I apologize for the title. There are few things that irritate me more than when someone says, “Hey, I’ll see you tomorrow…” and then checks his watch, notices that it’s a minute or two after midnight, and corrects himself. “Actually, I’ll see you later today!” Unless it’s New Year’s Eve, can we all just agree that the next day starts when you wake up… the next day? So if you’re waking up the next day and wondering how the Yanks made out in Seattle, you might want to head back to bed. It didn’t end well.

The part you probably saw — a struggling Felix Hernández giving up a solo home run to Robinson Canó in the second and a two-run blast to Mark Teixeira in the third — started out well. Even Ivan Nova looked good, inducing one ground ball after another as he cruised through the first three innings allowing just a single run, and even that run came home on a ground out.

But things soured for Nova in the fourth. Franklin Gutiérrez led off the inning with a hard ground ball that spun off the heel of Derek Jeter’s glove. (The play was initially (and properly) ruled an error on Jeter, but that decision was apparently changed at some point, as it’s recorded in the box score as a hit for Gutiérrez.) Adam Kennedy followed that with a double to push Gutiérrez to third, and Miguel Olivo bounced a ball over the fence in right center for a ground-rule double and a 2-1 Seattle lead. Nova then tightened the screws on his own fingers as he wild-pitched Olivo to third before allowing him to score on a Brendan Ryan single up the middle.

That was it for Nova, and for a good long time, that was it for the Seattle offense. Hector Noesi, David Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, Boone Logan, and Luis Ayala marched in and out of the game over the next 7.1 innings and gave up almost nothing. Here’s their line: 7.1 IP, 5 H, 0 R, 7 K, 1 BB. Impressive stuff.

The problem, of course, is that there wasn’t too much going on with the Yankee bats during all this time. They managed to climb back in the game with two out in the seventh when Jeter walked and Curtis Granderson lofted a ball to deep right center. Ichiro was tracking the ball all the way and looked poised to make one of his Spider-Man catches, climbing the wall to pick the ball out of the stands, but something curious happened just as he leapt — the ball hit the wall, probably two or three feet below the top. With Ichiro’s arms and legs flailing it was difficult to track the ball, but it bounded off of the wall far enough to allow Jeter to score as Granderson raced around the bases for a triple. With King Felix struggling with an elevated pitch count, it seemed like the Yankees might have an opportunity to grab a lead. When he walked Teixeira on five pitches, the stage was set for Alex Rodríguez to do something special, but it wasn’t meant to be. A-Rod struck out to end the inning.

After that, there was a whole lot of nothing from both sides. The Mariners managed a single off Robertson and a walk from Joba in the eighth, but couldn’t cash it in. The Yankees got consecutive singles from A-Rod and Canó in the tenth, but Russell Martin popped out end that threat. The only interesting thing, really, was the steady stream of knucklehead fans who kept running out on the field throughout the game, one of whom chose to do so without clothes.

All of which brings us to the twelfth inning. In case you’ve forgotten how great Mariano Rivera is, here’s the proof. By at least one measure — ERA+ — he is the greatest pitcher of all time by a considerable margin, but for some reason he seems to struggle in non-save situations, and he struggled on Saturday night. He certainly wasn’t hit hard, but he was hit. After dispatching Chone Figgins for the first out in the inning, Rivera allowed Justin Smoak to reach on a looping liner that a charging Brett Gardner wasn’t quite able to snare. Jack Cust did hit the ball hard, doubling down the left field line to put the winning run on third with one out. Manager Joe Girardi then consulted with Rivera and it was decided that Gutiérrez would be walked intentionally to face Kennedy. Much was made of what a tough match-up this was for Kennedy and how a double play was a strong possibility, but it didn’t work out that way. Kennedy was able to find a cutter that found just a little bit too much of the plate. Had it cut deeper into him, it likely would’ve dribbled out towards second for a double play. Had it cut a bit less, it would’ve hung up long enough for Granderson to race under it for the second out. But it cut neither too much nor too little, and Kennedy was able to bloop it out into very short center field, and the game was over. Mariners 5, Yankees 4.

All of that’s fairly depressing, but now let me kick you with some stats while you’re down. In games in which he issues an intentional walk, Mariano’s career ERA is 7.61. In road games this year, he is 0-1 with three blown saves, and a 7.50 ERA; opponents are hitting .423. (He’s yet to blow a save or allow a run at home.)

Don’t worry, though. I predict nine innings from CC on Sunday and an appearance by the Score Truck.  Everything will be fine.

[Photo Credit: Elaine Thompson/AP]

Believe it or not, everything started out well for the Yanks on Sunday night, better even than the most optimistic amongst us could’ve expected. Even though I usually look forward to the Yankees and Red Sox playing on ESPN on Sunday nights, I have to admit that I wouldn’t have been disappointed with a rainout. Everything was stacked against the Bombers: the four-game losing streak, the robotic Jon Lester on the mound, and the Jorge Posada Drama* looming over everything. The division standings were tighter than a six o’clock uptown train, and there was a sense that the Yankees had failed to take advantage of slow starts by their main competition, the Rays and the Sox. (Of course, fans of those teams might be saying the same thing, but I don’t really care about fans of those teams.)

But then something strange happened. In the opening innings Lester looked less like the T-1000 and more like the solution to the Yankees’ problems. Derek Jeter opened the first by reaching on a hit by pitch and advanced to second on a Curtis Granderson groundout. Then the Yanks did what they don’t usually do when Mark Teixeira simply grounded a ball through the infield and scored Jeter for 1-0 lead.

The Sox tied it at one in the second when Jed Lowrie’s sacrifice fly cashed in the first of two huge Yankee mistakes on the night. Kevin Youkilis had led off the inning by striking out, but he reached base when Russell Martin allowed the tailing breaking ball to bounce all the way to the backstop. Youkilis would get to third on a David Ortíz single and a walk to J.D. Drew, but it was the passed ball that started the whole thing.

No problem, though. Andruw Jones (in for Posada) snatched the lead right back with a no doubter into the bleachers in left, and four batters later Granderson, the only consistent hitter in the entire lineup this season, launched a laser into the right field bleachers with Martin on base to push the lead to 4-1.

After just two innings, it looked like this game was going exactly as the Yankees would’ve drawn it up. They had gotten the timely hit from Teixeira, the home runs from Jones and the Grandy Man, and Lester had already thrown well over forty pitches. What we didn’t know at the time, though, was that the Yanks would only manage two more hits the rest of the way, Lester would return to his usual dominant self, the Yankee defense would make a critical error, and the bullpen would falter. Aside from that, everything would be fine.

When the Red Sox came to bat in the top of the third, they did so against Freddy García, who had looked shaky in the second but still seemed confident enough to hold on to that three-run lead, at least for a while. He held it for four batters. Jacoby Ellsbury doubled to right, Adrian González followed a Dustin Pedroia strikeout with a walk, and everyone’s favorite meathead, Kevin Youkilis, came up. Youkilis fell into an 0-2 hole but quickly worked the count full before lifting what appeared to be an easy fly ball out to left. The pitch had run into him a bit, sliding down towards the handle of the bat at contact, so I fully expected Brett Gardner to settle under it easily, but instead he kept drifting back and drifting back until he ran out of room and watched the ball settle into the stands for a three-run home run that erased the lead and added a layer of trepidation to the proceedings. Given a new life, Lester worked efficiently the rest of the way, allowing just a hit and a pair of walks but never really letting the Yankees back in the game.

(There was one moment in the bottom of the fourth that didn’t have much to do with the outcome of the game but certainly has significance in the larger view of the season. Gardner was on first base with two outs, having reached on a fielder’s choice. With Jeter up, it seemed like a perfect time to steal, and when Jeter pushed the count to 2-1, everyone in the house knew Gardner would be going. He went, but he misread Lester’s move, the pickoff throw came to first, and Gardner was eventually caught in a rundown. I’m pretty sure a play like this is officially labeled a caught stealing, but the ESPN box score is a bit mysterious here. Here’s what is says:

CS: B Gardner (6, 3rd base by J Lester/J Saltalamacchia)
Picked Off: B Gardner (2nd base by J Lester)

The second part of that seems accurate, but the first part never happened. Either way, it underlines a disturbing trend with Gardner. Here are his stolen base numbers (SB/CS) from 2008 through 2010: 13/1, 26/5, and 47/9 for a total of 86/15. That’s a Tim Raines-like success rate, and we probably shouldn’t have expected that to continue, but this year Gardner has five stolen bases and his been caught six times. I suppose you could argue that his offensive struggles over the first month prevented him from getting in any sort of rhythm on the base paths, but that number is still a complete mystery to me. I’d love to hear a plausible explanation.)

So back to our game. With one out in the fifth Ortíz looped a short home run around the foul pole in right, giving the Sox a 5-4 lead and pushing manager Joe Girardi towards and interesting strategy decision. Still facing a one-run deficit in the top of the seventh, Girardi went against the book and brought in David Robertson. Typically managers use their “winning set” of pitchers only when they’ve got a lead, but Girardi trotted out Robertson, Joba Chamberlain, and even Mariano Rivera in succession, all to pitch with a deficit. Anyone would agree that you should try to use your best pitchers in high leverage situations, but there is a school of thought that holds that a one- or two-run deficit is just as high leverage as a one- or two-run lead. The point is to hold down the opposition in a game that is winnable. I tend to agree with this theory, even if it didn’t work this time.

Robertson pitched well enough in the seventh, but he was undone by a stunning error by Alex Rodríguez. Robertson started out by whiffing Ellsbury, but then walked Pedroia who eventually stole second, necessitating an intentional walk to González. Youkilis followed by dribbling a ball directly down the third base line, and it appeared Robertson might’ve wriggled free of yet another jam. A-Rod waited patiently for the grounder just a step away from third base, but he wasn’t patient enough. Hoping to field the ball, step on the bag, and fire across the diamond for the inning-ending double play, he started towards the base a bit early and the ball trickled between his legs, allowing Pedroia to race all the way home. It was a play a Little Leaguer could’ve made, and it turned into a play you’d only expect to see on a Little League diamond. Robertson recovered to strike out Ortíz and Lowrie, but the damage was done.

Girardi stuck with his plan, though, and brought Joba in for the eighth down by two. Joba was dominant, getting two ground outs, a strike out, and a short fly ball to right. The problem, though, was that Jarrod Saltalamacchia’s short fly ball travelled 332 feet. Had it travelled only 331, it likely would’ve settled into Nick Swisher’s mitt for an out; as it was it bounced atop the wall and bounded into the stands for a home run. (For his part, Rivera would retired the Sox without incident in the ninth. I’d love to know the last time he entered a game trailing by two.)

Jonathan Papelbon avoided his usual Yankee Stadium drama by retiring Granderson, Teixeira, and Rodríguez in order in the ninth, and it was over. There will be much hand-wringing over the sweep, the five-game losing streak, and the tightness of the divisional race, but I’ll leave that to others. Instead I’ll just give you the final score: Red Sox 7, Yankees 5. It will get better, I promise.

* I won’t recap that here, because Will did such an excellent job Sunday morning. If you haven’t read it yet, you should. It should be noted, though, that the fans are behind Jorge. He received a prolonged standing ovation when he came to the plate as a pinch hitter in the eighth.

The Yankees and Orioles offered up an interesting game to fill an Easter afternoon on Sunday, but things got really interesting in the bottom of the ninth. Joba Chamberlain had stumbled a bit in the seventh, giving up a two-run home run to Mark Reynolds to narrow the Yankee lead to 3-2, but that one-run lead certainly seemed sufficient after Mariano Rivera came on with two outs in the eighth and (with help from a sparkling grab by Brett Gardner in left) doused a fire started by David Robertson.

Once Rivera got to the bottom of the ninth with that 3-2 lead, the outcome seemed certain. Even after Adam Jones worked a lead-off walk, any feelings of doubt were quickly assuaged as first Reynolds and then Matt Weiters were set down on strikes.

But then things got a bit slippery when Jake Fox singled to right, pushing the tying run into scoring position and bringing up Brian Roberts, who rocketed Mariano’s 33rd pitch of the afternoon into the right field corner, easily scoring Jones and giving pinch runner Robert Andino a better than average shot at plating the winning run. But Nick Swisher did a good job of digging the ball out and hitting the cutoff man, and Robinson Canó was able to nail Andino at home, preserving the tie and sending the game into extra innings.

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Say what you will about Peter Gammons, but I love him. There was a time, when Gammons was a regular on ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, when I encouraged my children to refer to him as Uncle Peter. (My wife, incidentally, was not a fan of this.) Sure, his Boston Globe columns could be long-winded–perhaps even elitist, if a baseball writer can aspire to elitism–and there were the nagging questions about the accuracy of some of his reporting, but it never really mattered that much to me. I’m not a journalist, after all, I’m just a baseball fan, and Gammons always gave me exactly what I wanted. Heck, I even liked his guitar-nerd habit of dropping in bits about the Moody Blues or Third Eye Blind.

Anyway, like him or not, he’s got an interesting column about the Yankees over at MLB.com. In a nutshell, Jeter’s working hard, Ruben Rivera was a bust, Jesus Montero is the real deal, and Joba (gasp!) looks like the old Joba. Enjoy.

[Photo Credit: Justine Hunt/Boston Globe]

Babe Ruth was clearly the best player in Yankees history, Yogi Berra earned the most World Series rings, and Joe DiMaggio was, well, Joe DiMaggio, but somehow Mickey Mantle still stands apart. He came of age along with millions of baby boomers who curled the brims of their hats to match Mantle’s, imitated his swing, and even limped like he did.

Quite simply, he was the Mick.  Jane Leavy explores the man and the legend in her recent book, The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood.  Ms. Leavy was generous enough to talk with me about her book and a few other topics.

Enjoy…

Bronx Banter: Behind every good baseball book, you can usually find an author who grew up loving the game, who grew up playing catch with his father…

Jane Leavy: Ah, ah, ah… Watch that “his,” watch that “his,” Hank!

BB: But I think that’s what I want to get at, the fact that typically most of these writers are men who were boys growing up wanting to be baseball players and then settled for being writers. I was just wondering how much of that was true of you as a child?

JL: Well, I don’t think past the age of probably five I really thought there was much prayer I was going to be a baseball player. I think the inheritance of a passion for a game, whether it’s baseball, since baseball claims a supremacy in that, though certainly I know people whose devotion to the New York Football Giants or the Jets or even, God help us, the Redskins, is handed down along with the season tickets the same way. But baseball certainly has a claim on that matter of inheritance, and yes, I inherited my love of the game from my dad. I don’t think I had any illusion that I was going to be out there on the field with the guys, and that was pretty sad. I could dream, but that’s different. And I do think that that makes a big difference in the way that women write about sports. I’ve often said, and I really do believe this, reporters are supposed to be outsiders. There’s always been a little bit of a competitive thing going on when the guys who wish they could’ve been the second baseman for the New York Yankees are trying, almost, in their question to prove to the interview subject that they know as much and they could’ve been out there with them and the whole nine yards. I don’t think any woman is going to go into a locker room with that same notion. Reporters are supposed to be outsiders, that’s what we are. When you’re a woman in a locker room, that’s what you are. You’re an outsider.

BB: It reminds me of something that I heard Suzyn Waldman once talk about. She said that when a player is traded, a male reporter will immediately think about how it impacts a team, whereas she would always realize that behind that player there’s a family that’s being uprooted, and she felt like her female perspective allowed her to see more of a situation than just what was going on on the surface. It seems like you’re kind of saying the same type of thing, I suppose.

JL:  Well, I don’t think you can make the acute generalization that every male reporter is gonna not wonder about how somebody’s nursery school age kids are gonna feel, or how every baseball wife is going to deal with yet another relocation. Not every guy is an insensitive boob, and not every woman is an empathic shoulder to cry on. As a reporter, it’s partly determined not just by personality, but by assignment. If you’re just out there to write the game, whether you’re male or female, it doesn’t matter. For a while, once in a while I would trade bylines with a male friend just to see if anybody noticed. I think I wrote this actually once. When I first started sports writing, the gig was can you write so that nobody could tell you were a girl. You had to prove that it was an okay thing to be. I do believe, and this is what I was saying, there are advantages, though it’s certainly a double-edged sword, particularly early on – but there are advantages to being a woman in a locker room. There are things that guys tell women that are different than what they tell other guys. And there are questions that women may ask that are different than what a guy may first ask. I always use this example. I’ve heard countless numbers of men say to a player, “Well, that slider didn’t do much, did it?” The question presumes that they know exactly what the pitch was. Well, maybe they don’t. Half the time the hitters don’t. But a woman, certainly this woman, would presume nothing. I would say, “What was the pitch? Do you know what that pitch was? And where was it? Where did it go? What was it supposed to do?” That’s what I meant about the competitiveness. I didn’t feel the need to show my bona fides in that way.

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On the one hand, I love the playoffs.  After living and dying through 162 games, your reward as a fan is to watch your team as one of eight — and now four — still in contention for the world championship.  On the other hand, I hate the playoffs.  My TiVo is suddenly not good enough, so I have to plan my world around a baseball game being played three thousand miles away.  Heaven forbid I should miss a single pitch.  How bad is it?  A couple days ago my wife suggested that we schedule a date night for next Thursday.  The good husband answered quickly, “Sure, sounds good.”  But the bad husband inside was secretly calculating: Friday, Saturday, off-day Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, off-day Thursday… No problem! Look away.  I am hideous.

A.J. Burnett is also hideous, but rumor has it he’ll be pitching in this series, a fact that by itself gives the Texas Rangers a pretty good shot at advancing to the World Series.  The more I think about that, the more I think about belt-high fastballs and looping curve balls and line drives back through the box, the more worried I get.  If I were in charge, I’d pitch Burnett against Cliff Lee in Game 3, essentially conceding that game to the Rangers.  As the rotations stand now, it almost looks like Girardi is conceding both Games 3 and 4, meaning that Sabathia had better win the opener and Phil Hughes had better win Game 2.

What if they don’t?  What if Josh Hamilton comes to Yankee Stadium and remembers that Home Run Derby in the old Stadium?  What if Elvis Andrus gets on base seven or eight times and steals fourteen or sixteen bases?  What if Ian Kinsler plays like Ian Kinsler again?  What if Cliff Lee gets to pitch twice?

If you want to know what I really think, the Yankees will win this series, but it won’t take a miracle for the Rangers to win.  I just hope that when I’m sitting in the movie theater on Thursday night, I’m still looking forward to the World Series.

In my head the baseball season is divided into three distinct parts.  The first, of course, begins on Opening Day, a red-letter day on my calendar.  (Incidentally, I can’t be bothered with spring training.  I know that sounds like blasphemy, but with teams wearing t-shirts instead of uniforms, players with wide-receiver numbers, and pitchers jogging around the warning track while a game is being played, it just doesn’t feel like baseball to me.  Sue me.)  Those first few weeks of the regular season are like gold, but not for the reasons you think.  I’m a Yankee fan, you know, so it’s been sixteen years since I needed the false hope that Kansas City fans cling to in April.  For me, those games are a reunion with old friends.  “Look, there’s Nick Swisher!  And hey, Robinson’s swing looks just as quick as it was last year.  Wait a minute, can Derek Jeter possibly have — gulp! — grey hair?”  Even Michael Kay’s voice, absent from my living room for six months, is welcomed back with a smile.

The second part of the season begins on a different date each year.  The day after the Yankees clinch their playoff spot, I take a break.  I have little need for what usually amounts to five or six games of makeshift lineups and anticlimactic results, and the freedom from the nightly pull of the game feels like a vacation.  Auditions for the 25th spot on the playoff roster remind me too much of spring training, and after living and dying through 158 games, I just don’t have the energy left to care about who Royce Ring is and whether or not he might make the postseason roster.  If I see him standing on the chalk on the first Wednesday of October, I’ll pay attention.  (I must admit, though, that I loved Joe Torre’s old tradition of allowing one of the elder Yankees to manage the final game.  Who can forget watching Clemens come to the mound to pull David Wells, or, as Emma reminded us, Bernie Williams sending himself to the plate for a pinch hit double.  Good times…)

The third part begins today, and it’s the only part that really matters.  You sweat and bleed with the team for 162 games spread over six months, and suddenly five games in seven days will determine the value of the season.  The Yankees will match up against the Twins in the first round of the playoffs, and I can’t even pretend to be concerned.  Sure, once I sit down in front of the TV there will be butterflies, and I’ll get nervous if Minnesota manages to jump out to an early lead, but right now I keep coming back to one thing — it’s the Twins.

We’re not supposed to say things like that.  Somehow the characters I string together here are suspected by the superstitious to have some affect on CC Sabathia’s fastball or Alex Rodríguez’s psyche.  If I predict victory, or worse yet, if I assume victory, I’m somehow casting some terrible jinx over the team.  Rubbish.  Jinxes are for little girls who say the same word at the same time and count to ten to silence their best friend.  There are no jinxes in baseball.

So here’s how things will go.  CC Sabathia is CC Sabathia, so let’s just write down Game 1 as a Yankee win and move on.  In Game 2 the Twins have the audacity to pitch Carl Pavano.  I can’t find a link to support this, but I’ve also heard that they’ve brought in Jeff Weaver to relieve in that game.  This is the Twins’ only hope.  Pavano throws eight solid innings, Weaver comes in for the save, and the entire island of Manhattan bursts into flames, taking the Bronx down with it.  But since I can’t see that fairy tale coming true, I’ll put my money on the Yanks in that game also.

When the series shifts to New York for Game 3, Phil Hughes will finally get a chance to erase any bad memories he might have of last October when he takes the mound in the potential clincher.  Like a lot of folks, I think it might’ve made more sense for Hughes to pitch in Minnesota, but Joe Girardi surely made that decision because he preferred Andy Pettitte over Hughes in a possible Game 5.  What Girardi doesn’t know, though, is that there will be no Game 5.  Hughes will cruise in Game 3.

Yankees win, the Yankees win.  Cue Sinatra.

If you hung on to the bitter end on Sunday night, then you can imagine what a pain in the ass this game is to try to write about.  For the first six innings the story line was about the continuing ineptitude of the Yankee bats, as Boston starter Daisuke Matsuzaka was dominant throughout.  The recap for that game was called “The Darkness on the Edge of Town,” and the story pretty much wrote itself: the Yankee swoon continues, the Twins and Rays are now the top two teams in the league, and the Red Sox and ’64 Phillies are looming.

But then the seventh inning happened and I ripped that first story up.  With one out and Mark Teixeira on first base, Alex Rodríguez came up to face Dice-K, a pitcher against whom he’s always struggled.  A-Rod quickly dug himself into a two-strike hole, then lashed at an inside fastball with a swing very much like a Rafael Nadal two-handed backhand.  At contact my first hope was that the ball would dunk in in front of an outfielder, but then as the camera panned upwards both outfielders were racing towards to the gap in right center and suddenly I was hoping it would be over their heads.  A split second later it was scraping over the wall and the Yankees had a 2-1 lead.  A-Rod was the hero, and what’s better than a hero story?  Again, the story would write itself, and it would carry the title “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”

And then we got to the ninth inning.  Mariano Rivera had come in to get the final out in the eighth, and now he needed only three more outs to send everyone home happy.  Jed Lowrie almost ended the suspense early, but his rocket to right was cut down by a vicious wind and settled harmlessly into Nick Swisher’s glove.  Ryan Kalish followed with a single, and that’s when all hell broke loose.  Kalish quickly stole second, then a few pitches later stole third without a throw, and suddenly we were ninety feet away from a tie game.  Bill Hall then hit an absolute missile towards third, but the drawn-in A-Rod really had no shot, and the game was tied.  Proving that he had been paying attention earlier, Hall stole second and then third.  (You don’t have to be a SABR member to know that Mo has never allowed four stolen bases in the same inning.)  Now the winning run was on third, still with only one out, and the only thing keeping me off the ledge was everything I knew about Mariano Rivera.  But this wasn’t the Rivera we’re used to seeing.  He struggled with his control throughout, and eventually yielded a sac fly to Mike Lowell, giving the Sox a 3-2 lead.  This time, the story was titled “Cuts Like a Knife.”

But the ninth inning wasn’t over.  Even after Derek Jeter flied out to start the bottom half, I still had hope.  Nothing Jonathan Papelbon has done recently makes me fear him, so I wasn’t surprised when Nick Swisher started a Yankee rally with a sharp single to right.  When Teixeira kept the line moving with a single of his own, I just knew A-Rod would end it all with another dramatic home run.  Didn’t you?  Alas, he took a well-earned walk, loading the bases for Robinson Canó.  With MVP chants raining down (the first time I’ve noticed those for Canó), Robbie showed how far he’s come over the past two years.  He took two tough pitches to get into a hitter’s count at 2-0, then laced the expected fastball into right field to tie the game at three.  With the bases loaded, one out, and Jorge Posada and Lance Berkman, I was sure the game was in hand.  My only question was whose face would be covered in pie at the end.  But Posada struck out and Berkman flied out and we moved to the tenth.

The Boston tenth was uneventful, unless you count the fact that Joba Chamberlain looked good, and the stage was set for a walk-off in the bottom half.  With Hideki Okajima on the mound, things got interesting almost immediately.  Curtis Granderson roped a line drive for a single to right, then Brett Gardner reached when he was able to beat out an intended sacrifice bunt as Victor Martínez’s throw hit him in the back, allowing Granderson to race all the way to third.  As Jeter stepped towards the plate, I just knew Captain Clutch would wrap things up, and I started typing a story called “You Never Forget Your First Pie.”  Terry Francona made me rip that one up, too, when he walked Jeter intentionally to load the bases with nobody out.  Greg Golson was due up next (long story), but Joe Girardi sent Marcus Thames up in his place.  Thames did what he does — he hit a bullet — but it was snared by Adrian Beltré, who threw home for the first out.  Due next was Juan Miranda (long story) who worked an anticlimactic bases-loaded walk to end the game.  I don’t even know if he got any pie.  For a quick moment my story was called “Walk This Way,” but then I quickly realized that that was kind of lame.  The Yankees started bouncing around a bit, but then they quickly realized the same thing.  A walk-off walk isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, but a win is still a win.

Yankees 4, Red Sox 3.

[Photo Credit: Kathy Willens, AP]

We like round numbers.  Did CC Sabathia’s season get any better on Saturday night in Baltimore?  Certainly not.  All he did was what he always does.  He took the mound, took control, and after a relatively quick three hours, he got the win.  Same old CC.  But even so, Saturday night was special.  On Saturday night Sabathia earned his twentieth win and became the first pitcher in baseball to reach that milestone.

It was also the first time in Sabathia’s career that he had won twenty, and afterwards he admitted to being proud of the accomplishment, but he also correctly reminded reporters that the win was bigger for the team than it was for him.  With the Rays continuing to win and the Twins staying close in the hunt for the best overall record, every game counts.  (And by the way, I can’t tell you how irritated I am that I’m checking Minnesota Twins scores in the middle of September.)

While CC was doing his thing on the mound, the hitters were killing the Orioles softly all night long.  It was never anything terribly spectacular, just a train that kept rolling from one inning to the next.  In the beginning it was about doing the little things: a two-out base hit by Posada plating two in the first, a sacrifice fly by Jeter scoring one in the second, a ground out by Jeter scoring another in the fourth.

But the lumber got louder in the fifth, as Robinson Canó homered deep to right, a shot that was rocketish enough that he was able to pose a bit at the plate before trotting around the bases and collecting his 100th and 101st RBIs.  (With Robbie joining A-Rod and Mark Teixeira in the Century Club, this year marks the first time in Yankee history that three infielders have driven in a hundred runs in the same season.)  The offense nicked the O’s a few more times before Curtis Granderson closed out the scoring in the ninth with a three-run home run to dead center field.

Lots of good things happened for the Yankee hitters in and around those highlights.  Jeter collected two hits to extend his hitting streak to seven, Nick Swisher hobbled off the bench rap a single and a double (and later ham it up during an extended on-field interview with Kim Jones), A-Rod continued to hit the ball hard, and Brett Gardner finished with a tri-cycle.  (A tri-cycle is when you get everything but the home run.  I just made that up.)

But the big story was the Big Man.  Mr. Sure Thing wasn’t nearly as good as he was the last time out in Tampa, but he was still able to do what he had to do to get the win.  Yankees 11, Orioles 3.

You know the best thing about CC Sabathia?  Not the strikeouts, not the innings, not even the dominance.  It’s the fact that he’s a Sure Thing.  A suuuure thing.  The Yankees have been blessed with a lot of great starting pitchers over the past sixteen years, including guys like Jimmy Key, Andy Pettitte, David Cone, Roger Clemens, El Duque, Mike Mussina, and probably someone else who’s slipping my mind, but there’s never been anyone like Mr. Sabathia.  All those other guys were great and played the role of ace at one point or another, but Sabathia lives the part.  When he takes the mound, he takes the game by its throat and doesn’t let go until either Girardi pries the ball from his meaty left hand or Posada squeezes the final out.

All of that is always a good thing, but it’s never been more valuable than this season.  As the other four starters have struggled with injury and inconsistency, Sabathia has been a rock, showing his brilliance not only with dominant outings like Thursday afternoon but with a measured consistency that makes him the solid front-runner for this year’s Cy Young Award winner in the American League.  When you look at his game log, all of this becomes clear.

His last three months have been ridiculous.  From June 3 to September 2 his numbers look like this:

18 GS  15-1  131.1 IP  113 H  42 BB  111 K  2.39 ERA  1.18 WHIP

Which isn’t bad.  But even during these past three months, Sabathia’s strength is that he’s been consistently… really, really good.  On Thursday afternoon he was dominant.  After the game Jorge Posada said that Sabathia had had no-hit stuff, and it almost translated to an actual no-no.  Mark Ellis punched a ground ball to right field to lead off the second, and that would be the only base hit surrendered by Sabathia over his eight innings.  (Our old friend Jonathan Albaladejo would pitch a scoreless ninth to finish the shutout.)

Sabathia allowed only six balls to be hit in the air, three lazy flies to the outfield and three pop-ups to Mark Teixeira at first.  He found himself in trouble only twice, but quelled the uprising both times without breaking a sweat.  Shortstop Cliff Pennington laid down a bunt to lead off the third inning and ended up on second after Posada air-mailed the throw down the right field line.  Pennington arrived at third with just one out after a tapper to the mound, but CC wriggled free by popping up Rajai Davis and striking out Kurt Suzuki.

CC faced the minimum twelve batters over the next four innings, but made things momentarily interesting when he followed a hit batsman (Jeff Larish) with a walk to Landon Powell.  He held a 4-0 lead, but with two men on and no 0ne out, suspense entered the equation for the first time all afternoon.  But don’t worry.  A quick strikeout, a floater out to right, and a ground ball to second, and the mini-crisis was averted.

For their parts, the hitters gave Sabathia what he needed for his nineteenth victory.  Posada homered in the second for the first run, Curtis Granderson (fresh off the bench for Nick Swisher, whose sore foot kicked him out of the game after the first inning) homered for the second run in the sixth and added a two-run jack in the seventh to make it 4-0.  A string of hits in the eighth inning started by Lance Berkman (whose helicoptering bat almost decapitated Posada in the on-deck circle) and finished by Austin Kearns closed out the scoring at 5-0.

The story, though, was Sabathia.  The Sure Thing.  With Sabathia going once every five days in September and pitching two or three times in each playoff series, I like the Yankees’ chances.

We’ve been away for much of the past two weeks — Seattle, Portland, and Palm Springs, in case you’re interested — and whenever I get away from the day-to-day and hour-to-hour kvetching about the Yankees, I find that the new perspective does me a world of good.  In Seattle I stayed with a college friend and met his seven-year-old son who loves — get this! — the Mariners.  A quick glance at the paper told me that the Mariners had lost almost 70 games, and there at the top of the American League’s Eastern Division, with the best record in baseball, sat the New York Yankees.  Suddenly I was less worried about Javy Vazquez’s dead arm, Joe Girardi’s managerial quirks, and Alex Rodríguez’s power outage.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t be worried, nor am I saying that I won’t be worried about all those things tomorrow, I’m just saying.

Tuesday night’s game against the Toronto Blue Jays, a bottom-dwelling team that’s given the Yanks fits all year long, was the first game I’d watched end to end in quite a while, and it was a great way to get back in the swing of things.  The Score Truck started rolling early, modestly at first with a run in the first (courtesy of Mark Teixeira’s 90th RBI) and another in the second when Eduardo Nuñez beat out a would-be 4-6-3, allowing Jorge Posada to score, but then things started really heating up.  Toronto lefty Marc Rzepczynski (somewhere, Diane Firstman is smiling) was walking a fine edge in the first two innings; he’d fall off in the third.  (And by the way, you know that old probability bit that says if you put a hundred monkeys into a room with a hundred typewriters, you’d eventually get “Romeo and Juliet” if given enough time?  I think if you give one typewriter to one monkey and put him in a closet for thirty seconds, you’d probably get “Rzepczynski”.)

With one out in the third, Teixeira launched a shot to left that warranted no more than a courtesy glance from left fielder Travis Snider.  Robinson Canó walked, and then Marcus Thames launched a shot to left that warranted no more than a courtesy glance from left fielder Travis Snider.  Next up, Jorge Posada launched a shot to left that warranted… you get the idea.

It was 6-0 at that point, but the Score Truckers weren’t finished — Curtis Granderson added a three-run blast in the fifth, and two batters later Derek Jeter homered, his tenth of the year, but his first hit over the fence since way back on June 12th.  Another run would score in the sixth, bringing the total to eleven, and that was enough.

The beneficiary of all this was my friend Dustin Moseley.  He skipped through the first three innings, and when he finally saw some trouble in the fourth, allowing a run by giving up a walk and two singles to open the frame, he minimized the damage by setting down the next three hitters.  He gave up another run in the sixth on a bases-loaded single by John Buck, but this time it was Granderson who minimized the damage as he threw out Adam Lind at the plate to end the inning.  Later in the game, as Ken Singleton and John Flaherty were making small talk in the closing innings of a blowout, Flash said something I never thought I’d hear someone say: “This was a good game for the Yankees, as they got Dustin Moseley straightened out.”  Really?  Dustin Moseley is that important?  I think I’m starting to worry again.

Chad Gaudin coughed up a few runs in the eighth, Kerry Wood closed out the ninth, and everyone went home happy.  Yankees 11, Blue Jays 5.

I’m guessing that even the most optimistic among us were a bit on edge heading into Sunday night’s game.  Josh Beckett was on the mound for the Red Sox, and the Yankees were countering with Dustin Moseley, starting in place of A.J. Burnett, who’s been at least temporarily shelved due to back spasms.  (Unconfirmed reports indicate that these “back spasms” could be the result of torque on the spine caused by his frequent need to snap his head around to follow the flight of home runs.)  The good news coming in, though, was that Moseley had showed promise in his last outing against Toronto while Beckett had struggled against the Yanks this year, allowing 19 runs in three starts.  Both trends would continue.

Moseley worked efficiently through the first four innings, yielding just two hits and two walks.  Bill Hall led off the fifth with a home run, but this was only a minor blip as Moseley needed just six pitches to retire the next three hitters.  On the other side of the scorecard, Beckett was struggling.  After working around two singles in the opening frame, he gave up two runs in the second inning thanks to a Lance Berkman double and consecutive two-out singles by Brett Gardner, Derek Jeter, and Nick Swisher.  (Jeter’s hit was the 2,874th of his career, one more than Babe Ruth.)

Beckett appeared to settle down, looking disturbingly like the old Josh Beckett as he blitzed through the fourth, but Mark Teixeira opened the fifth with a no-doubt home run deep into the right field bleachers, and things unravelled from there.  A walk to A-Rod was followed by a plunking of Robinson Canó (no drama, though — the pitch just nicked Canó’s knee cap), and Berkman plated the fourth Yankee run when he laced a double down the left field line.  My daughter Alison and I looked at her scorebook and noticed that Fat Elvis was 3 for 3, and she said, “You were right when you said he’d have a good game tonight.”

But the inning wasn’t over.  A few batters later Jeter smacked Beckett’s last pitch of the night into the gap in right center, and suddenly it was 7-1.  Beckett grimaced atop the mound as he waited for Francona’s inevitable hook, and I tried to explain to Alison why it was extra delicious to watch Beckett suffer.  “Is he mean?”  Well, no, but he isn’t very nice.  “But if he isn’t nice, doesn’t that mean that he’s mean?”  I didn’t have an answer, so we just turned back to the game.

All that was left was to watch Joe Girardi mismanage the bullpen.  Moseley got in a bit of trouble in the seventh, putting runners on first and third with one out.  With a six-run lead and a low pitch-count (82), it seemed like it might’ve been a good idea to let him try to finish the inning, if only to see how he’d respond to a jam like that, but Girardi pulled him in favor of Joba Chamberlain.  Joba wasn’t bad, he just didn’t get the job done.  He allowed a run to score on an infield single, but that wasn’t the problem.  After getting Jacoby Ellsbury to pop up for the second out, he quickly jumped ahead of Marco Scutaro, and the inning looked to be over.  With a 1-2 count and a 96-MPH fastball in his quiver, Joba tried to get cute with his slider and walked the Boston shortstop to load the bases for David Ortíz.  Minutes earlier the game had been in hand, but suddenly it was just a swing away from being 7-6.  Lefty Boone Logan replaced Chamberlain and made things a bit sweaty by running the count full before getting Papi to ground out to end the inning.

But wait — there was more mismanagement.  Girardi brought David Robertson in to pitch the ninth inning, and I was thinking that it was nice that Mariano Rivera would have  the day off.  But when Robertson walked Ellsbury to put runners on first and second with two outs — and a five run lead on the eighth day of August — Girardi called for Rivera.  He threw one pitch.  Scutaro bounced a ball to Canó, who flipped to Jeter to end the game. Yankees 7, Red Sox 2.

The one good thing about all this is that Girardi’s machinations gave me an excuse to write a little more about Rivera.  In 1990 Dennis Eckersley had what is probably the best season any closer has had in the current era.  His ERA and WHIP were identical at 0.61, but here are the interesting numbers: 48 saves, 41 hits, 4 walks.  Right now Rivera has 23 saves, 19 hits, and 6 walks.  Following that 1990 campaign, Eckersley said (and I’m paraphrasing), “I had more saves than hits and walks combined.  If anyone ever does that, I’ll walk out to the pitcher’s mound and kiss his ass in front of 50,000 people.”  It just might be time to pucker up.

* You can get a cool scorebook just like Alison’s by visiting http://www.ilovetoscore.com/, a New York-based company operated by loyal Banterite, Michael Schwartz.

I had been planning a longer piece on the historical significance of Alex Rodríguez‘s 600th home run, focusing specifically on the rapidly growing ranks of the four-, five-, and six-hundred home run clubs, but since I couldn’t possibly come with anything better or more thorough than Joe Posnanski’s recent column over at SI.com, I thought I might go in a different direction.

It used to be that hitting four-hundred home runs gave you an automatic ticket to Cooperstown, but then Dave Kingman had to go and mess things up by hitting 442 home runs.  Since any rational person knew that Kingman most definitely did NOT belong in the Hall of Fame, the entrance requirements were rewritten.  Now 500 was the milestone you’d have to hit to assure your place in the Hall, and for a long time that number seemed nonnegotiable.  But you know what happened next.

If you take a look at the top twenty-five players on the all-time home run list and scan up starting with Eddie Murray’s 504 , you’ll see a host of names that will never be enshrined in Cooperstown.  There’s certainly a lingering drug cloud that will keep several of them out, people like Barry Bonds and the Unholy Trinity of McGwire, Sosa, and Palmeiro, but there are others who simply don’t seem to belong.  Gary Sheffield comes to mind, drugs or no drugs.  And I know Jim Thome‘s had a nice career and will finish with more home runs than all but six or seven guys, but somehow I don’t think Hall of Famer when I look at him.

So what do 600 home runs mean for Alex Rodríguez?  It was just a few years ago that people looked at him completely differently.  Boxing had a string of Great White Hopes, but A-Rod was baseball’s Great Clean Hope.  He was the one who could race to the top of the charts, surpassing Bonds and scoring a victory for what we hoped was clean baseball.  (This, by the way, is the part where I resist the urge to launch into a diatribe on the hypocrisy of a sport that allowed amphetamine use for decades, or start talking about the slippery slope of ligament transplants and lasix surgery.  But I digress.)

But with great hope comes great disappointment, and so it was with Rodríguez.  The optimists among us suddenly had no ammunition against the pessimists.  Maybe everyone really was juicing.  Maybe nothing was real.  And so when A-Rod came to bat with 599 home runs in Cleveland and Kansas City, people booed as they waited for history.  There weren’t as many asterisks as we saw in the stands when Bonds was chasing 755, but they were definitely there.

So the question now is, will Alex Rodríguez be elected to the Hall of Fame?  Even though he may end up with something in the neighborhood of 800 home runs, there are those who believe the doors to the Hall are closed to him forever.  Buster Olney doesn’t think his colleagues will ever elect him, but Olney himself has voted for McGwire and plans to vote for Bonds, Sosa, Clemens, and A-Rod once they’re eligible.  Here’s the money quote from his larger explanation:

I think most of the elite players were using performance-enhancing drugs, and within the context of that time — when baseball wasn’t doing anything to stop the growth of drug use — this was what the sport was. And we don’t know exactly who did what. There are a lot of superstar players who were broadly suspected within the sport of having used steroids, but they avoided the crossfire; the only difference between those guys and McGwire was that McGwire had Jose Canseco as a teammate. And here’s the other thing — we don’t know exactly who did what, and when they did it. So I think in order to have a consistent standard when considering the steroid-era players, you either have to vote for no one at all, or set aside the steroid issue and just vote for the best players of the era.

Alex Rodríguez, then, emerges as the ultimate test case.  Most of the big-name steriod users saw their names dragged in the mud after their careers had ended.  A-Rod had the sense to admit what he had done, which might count for something with some writers, and by the time he retires he will have played six to eight years — presumably clean — following that admission.  Certainly some writers will never forget the stain, but I hope that enough do.  Alex Rodríguez belongs in the Hall of Fame.

[Photo Credit: Simon Bruty/Sports Illustrated/Larry Roibal]