In the spring of 1977 my parents moved from Manhattan to Westchester. I turned 6 that June and shortly after that came the blackout, which we missed. I don’t even recall anyone talking about it though the rest of my relatives experienced it first-hand in Manhattan.
Reason I bring it up is PBS is airing a documentary about the ’77 blackout tonight.
Check it out.
[Photo Credit: Credit Bolivar Arellano, via PBS]
Now, that there’s a fine way to go into the break. Big, fat win at Fenway Park with plenty of big hits and luck on the side of the visitors. Even when the Yanks kicked the ball around in the 9th inning, fortune was on their side and if Rob Refsnyder’s home run in the top of the 9th summed up what’s gone right this year in the Bronx, then Hanley Ramirez’s 7th inning strike out against Dellin Betances said all you need to know about the Sox.
Betances spotted a fastball for strike one, got Ramirez to swing and miss at a tight, unforgiving slider for strike two, and then busted him up with a fastball. Ramirez started to swing, then tried to hold up, and in the process punched the bat out of his left hand with his right hand. He then gave a little jump and shook his hand as if he’d slammed it in a car door. It was humiliating. (And this is against the great Ramirez who had 2 hits today.)
Brian McCann, Chase Headley, and Alex Rodriguez got the key hits for the Yanks–and Gardner had two hits again–but the hero of the game was Refsnyder. He didn’t look like much in his first two at bats but then got his first big league hit with a line drive to center the next time up. His home run over the Green Monster in the 9th bared no resemblance to Bucky Dent’s infamous 1978 pop fly. This was was a shot. Got my ass up, clapping, tell you that.
Refsnyder also made a decisive, confident defensive move in the 8th inning. Alejandro De Aza led off with a single, the Yanks up 6-4, and Shane Victorino followed with a slow ground ball to second. Refsynder fielded the ball and flipped to second, not the sure out at all. It was a close play but he’d measured it correctly and the Yanks got the force at second.
On the flip side, Refsnyder helped Andrew Miller botch a possible game-ending double play in the 9th, but hey, nobody’s perfect, and nobody will remember the near-miss. Refsnyder gets a few days off riding on a cloud. For a team that’s been uneven but often endearing, it’s been an unexpectedly decent first half. Not great, but not bad. Sort of sucky, sort of good.
Let’s hope these dudes can stay healthy during the long summer. Love to see them with a fighting chance come October.
[Photo Credit: Matthew Healey/N.Y. Daily News]
Tough loss of the Yanks last night--they showed some fight but didn’t have enough to catch up (5-3 was the final)–and this afternoon gives the final game of the first half of the season.
Again with the big question mark, Eovaldi. The Sox can hit, couple of their big guys (Hanley, Ortiz) are swinging hot bats. So will Eovaldi keep them down today? He’s been good ever since getting his tits lit down in Miami last month.
I’m…still skeptical.
Rooting for the dude, though.
Jake CF
Gardy LF
Al DH
Tex 1B
C.Y. RF
Mac C
Head 3B
Didi SS
Ref 2B
Let’s hope the Yanks score a mess-o-runs today to give him some support.
Never mind the heat:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Our dude Nova…
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Chris Young RF
Chase Headley 3B
John Ryan Murphy C
Didi Gregorius SS
Rob Refsnyder 2B
That’s a whole lotta scrap at the bottom of this lineup. Be great if Robbie Ref does something good, wouldn’t it?
Never mind the locals:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Credit: TS Flynn]
I was talking to a friend on the phone with the game on mute when Alex Rodriguez popped a home run over the Green Monster in the first inning. Course I had to interrupt our conversation to report what had just happened. My friend was amused, “Oh, you’re rooting for Alex Rodriguez again?” And I told him, I’d never stopped.
It was an evening of good news for the Yanks. Big Mike pitched very well, his offense got lucky, thanks to some fast runners taking advantage of a couple of fielding gaffes by the Sox, and The Twin Towers closed it out in the final two innings. By that time the Yankee lead was four runs but Joe Girardi wasn’t leaving anything to chance–his best two relievers were going to nail this one down (after the game, Girardi told reporters that he wants Miller to pitch twice this weekend but not on back-to-back days, so we can expect to see him again Sunday).
Last piece of good news–especially to our pal Dimelo, president of Stephen Drew Fan Club–is that Rob Refsnyder is joining the big league club today.
Final Score: Yanks 5, Sox 1.
[Photo Via: NYC Nostalgia]
Of course, to most everyone in America that’d be the Yankees, but for us, it’s the folks up at Fenway.
It’s a nice pitching match-up of Big Mike and Clay Buc.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Brian McCann C
Garrett Jones RF
Didi Gregorius SS
Stephen Drew 2B
Cole Figueroa 3B
Never mind the pain, think pleasant thoughts and:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
[Photo Via: Godgazer]
Tanaka rebound? Check. Gardy an All-Star? Check. Yankee win? Check.
A good afternoon in the Bronx. And now, to end the first half, the Yanks go to Boston.
Promises to be annoying. In the meantime, let’s be happy like the gals in this picture. Especially for Gardner.
Afternoon baseball in the Bronx today.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Mark Teixeira DH
Brian McCann C
Garrett Jones 1B
Didi Gregorius SS
Chris Young RF
Stephen Drew 2B
Cole Figueroa 3B
Masahiro’s on the bump. Let’s hope fer good things for him and the sorta, kinda, not so bad, pretty good–but not that good–New York Yankees.
Never mind the drizzle:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
![catfish-hunter[1]](http://www.bronxbanterblog.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/catfish-hunter1.jpg)
What does it take to get CC Sabathia a win these days? Homers, lots of them. And a quick hook, so he doesn’t decompose after the fifth. And it doesn’t hurt at all for the other starter to leave injured after three innings. Maybe the bullpen bailing him out when he gets in trouble and some shiny defense along the way at points, but that’s the crux of what needs to happen. And if the baseball gods smile upon him and allow him to keep the ball in the yard during his abbreviated stint, well, there’s a chance.
Mark Teixeira supplied two homers and some shiny defense. Drew, using this season to prepare for his upcoming audition as an extra in The Walking Dead, chipped in another blast. Joe Girardi supplied the quick hook and the bullpen locked things down until the freshly reinstated closer Andrew Miller almost undid all that careful work.
Before his injury, Andrew Miller had only allowed two hits once in 26 appearances. And he only allowed one home run. He doubled the tally on both accounts, but held the lead at 5-4. And CC got a very rare win.
Sabathia’s demise calls to mind another very sad baseball story – that of Catfish Hunter. Both mega-stars in their twenties who came to pitch the Yanks into the World Series for big bucks, their careers dashed in their early thirties due to chronic health problems. Hunter did not have Sabathia’s opt-out clause and subsequent extension, and he retired at the end of his original five-year contract at the age of 33. If Sabathia had not re-worked his deal before his opt-out clause kicked in, he’d be retiring at the end of this year, at the age of 35.
Hunter had won so often so early and he appeared so regularly in October that when he did retire, he had done enough to get Hall of Fame votes. His career pales considerably when viewed with current metrics, but you don’t often hear too many people complain about his inclusion.
Sabathia has been the better pitcher for me, but I wonder if two more years of getting smashed by every right-handed hitter in the league will put a permanent stain on his record. Both guys are damn easy to root for though, maybe that will throw a veil over the gory ending.
It’s sad to be finsihed before you’re ready and I don’t think anybody was ready. Probably CC most of all.
Photo via Sports Illustrated
Game might be pushed back some tonight on a count of rain.
Jacoby Ellsbury CF
Brett Gardner LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Mark Teixeira 1B
Chris Young RF
John Ryan Murphy C
Didi Gregorius SS
Jose Pirela 2B
Gregorio Petit 3B
Meanwhile, Ellsbury and Miller are back!
C’mon, ol’ CC, we’re behind you, dude.
Never mind the umbrellas:
Let’s Go Yank-ees!
Peekaboo. I suppose you can say this is the theme of tonight’s contest, as quite a few things you haven’t seen in a while occurred while I was away:
Yanks kicked off their latest homestand against the recently anointed All Star battery of Sonny Gray-Stephen Vogt and the Oakland A’s’; of note, Gray had missed two starts due to a severe case of salmonella poisoning, so while it behooves us to wish him the best of health going forward, it was also important for the Yanks to take advantage of any rust he might have accumulated during his time off. And so it appeared they did; after starter Nathan Eovaldi gave Oakland a head start with a run in top of the first, the Yanks responded with two of their own by loading the bases right from the start and scoring leadoff hitter Brett Gardner and Chase Headley on a looping infield single by Brian McCann and a hard hit by Garrett Jones. It seemed like they could have gotten more in the frame, but had A-Rod not flied out and Mark Teixeira not struck out during the earlier run-making seminar, then Chris Young popping out to first wouldn’t have been quite as irritating.
Eovaldi ran into some issues in the third when the first three batters reached base on singles, the third one by All Star Vogt plating a run, but then he struck out trade-bait Ben Zobrist induced a double-play to escape with the game tied. It stayed that way until the next inning when… (double-checking my notes)… Didi Gregorius drove in McCann on a line drive single to right center. I’ve heard he was getting better with that bat-thingie… so it stood for a couple more innings as Sonny got his groove back and stifled the Yanks for the rest of his start (7IP, 3ER, 3BB, 5 SO, 2.20), while Eovaldi pitched into the sixth.
That’s when Girardi turned away from baseball for a minute and breaking out the chess board, removing Eovaldi with 86 pitches and one out for lefty Chasen Shreve. There was no official explanation at the time for this move as many probably feared that he was hurt, so I suppose in Girardi’s mind this was genius (and it might have been as Eovaldi has been high and low all season, though lately he’s been on a bit of a hot streak). Shreve struck out Josh Reddick, which was purportedly what Joe was thinking of when he made the move, but then Billy Butler; out of pure habit which has defined his career against the Yanks, homered just inside the fair pole in left. Derp.
The game stayed tied into extra innings, where All Star Dellin Betances, pitching a second inning (again, a Girardi decision) hung a breaking pitch to leadoff hitter Brett Lawrie, who promptly deposited it in the Billy Butler Bank of New York (left), giving the lead back to the A’s. For Betances, this was his eighth earned run in his last 14-1/3 innings after having given up absolutely nothing for the first couple of months of the season (there are lots of stats to throw in that basically say the same thing). I’m not going to give him a hard time; he’s young and has been exceptional since last season, so if this is what others are calling a rut, there are plenty of reasons to think he’ll come out of it soon; not the least of which is the pending return of Andrew Miller on Wednesday. But for now, Eovaldi had a relatively good outing go to waste on a questionable decision that backfired, and the Yanks tried hard to make up for it in the bottom of the tenth against former Yank Tyler Clippard when he walked Gardner and Alex in between pop-ups by Drew and Headley, but after going 3-0 on Teixeira, he battled back with a strike and a foul before throwing a change-up that everyone in the stadium knew he was going to throw, and because they also knew that Teix always seems to miss change-ups, that’s exactly what happened.
After the game, I guess there was no point in asking Joe why he did what he did because I didn’t hear a word from him in any post game report (note: Joe actually did admit to being a bit overconfident in the match-ups). I did hear poor Dellin telling himself and the reporters that it was just another game and he would have to knuckle down and get himself right. Somehow it just didn’t seem fair; it wasn’t his idea to pitch two innings and give up a go-ahead homer in a close, relatively low-scoring game that didn’t need to get there, but that’s Life in Baseball, and you’re an All-Star, so keep it moving kid and don’t let it get to you.
A winnable game under the circumstances, but a rather annoying 4-3 10 inning loss.
