Baseball's Back (& so is Baseball-Blogging)
My family had the good fortune of getting tickets to last night's opening day game at Yankee Stadium. On paper, it promised to be a great matchup - the first meaningful Yankees-Red Sox game since the Great Collapse of '04 (let us never mention it again), Randy Johnson's first game in pinstripes, the return of Yankees quasi-legend David Wells, now a heel and the BoSox starting pitcher, the return of Jason Giambi after myriad health problems and steroid accusations, the return of Tino Martinez, and so on and so on. And, while it didn't wind up being a "great" game - the Red Sox were never really in it after the second inning, Johnson pitched well but didn't have electrifying stuff - it was an unbelievably fun game to be at. Hands down the most fun I've had at a Yankees game in years, including the 13-inning game last summer (which was a different kind of fun - exhausting, world-historical fun; last night was little-kid fun, which I prefer).
Some thoughts:
1. Johnson didn't look like he had his best stuff last night - he looked a little tentative, and only went 6 innings with 6 strikeouts - and he still beat a good-hitting Red Sox team up and down the field. The crowd was on its feet for every two-strike count he had through the first two innings. It was nuts. I think my brother, who we'll call Bre'r Bear for the sake of keeping the family-zoology consistent-but-confusing, put it best: "It's like having Mariano Rivera on the mound all nine innings." Every fifth day, at least. I honestly haven't been this excited about anything Yankees-related in a long, long time.
2. The offensive performance we saw last night was classic 1996-2000 Yankees baseball. Take lots of pitches. (I kept track: the usually free-swinging Jeter took a first pitch ball in every one of his six plate appearances. The result? Two hits, a walk, two runs scored.) Pepper the field with singles and doubles. Sacrifice. Advance the baserunners. Use speed to disrupt the defense's rhythm and advance the runners, not to pad gaudy stats. Don't swing for the fences every at-bat. In the past five years, the Yankees had devolved into a slow, Beane-ball style team based on drawing walks and swinging for the fences. What did it get them? Exactly the same thing it's gotten Beane's Oakland Athletics: zero World Series rings. (Although, I must say that the one home run that did get hit, by Hideki Matsui, was an absolute monster.)
3. It means something when the most dramatic moment of the game is a defensive substitution. When Tino came in for Giambi in the seventh, the entire Stadium burst into a standing ovation. I'm quite confident that's never happened before. Yankee fans really love Tino. There are, I think a couple of reasons. One is that he's associated with winning - the team won four World Championships in his first six-year stint - and, despite spending the equivalent of the GDP of a Caribbean nation, the Yankees haven't won since he left. I also think people feel kind of guilty (I certainly do) about the way he was forced out after 2001. The team fell in love with a (steroid-powered) Jason Giambi and decided it could do without an aging first baseman whose offensive skills were starting to slip. So, rather than resign him for a few years and give him the dignified multi-year farewell that Paul O'Neill got, they just let him, and his still-sparkling defense, walk unceremoniously. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an a**hole move that had to be made for the good of the team, but as Giambi became more and more of a bust (94 homers, sure, but a declining batting average, no speed or defense, a series of "mysterious health problems" that forced us to play such luminaries as Tony Clark and Nick Johnson at first base most of the time) it started to look more and more, to me at least, like we were being punished for our greed and lack of class. Bringing back Tino, whose skills are now even more questionable than they were in 2001, is almost a kind of penance. Everyone wants to believe he'll be rejuvenated, that he'll hit .280 with 25 home runs and 85 rbi and finally win the Gold Glove he's been robbed of all these years, but frankly, even if the entirely ordinary happens and he's just a solid defensive backup for Giambi, it'll still be a kind of cosmic ledger-balancing.
(By the way, he wound up making a spectacular diving grab to end the seventh, which generated another wild standing-O. We then started calculating how many people had to get on base to bring Tino to bat. He wound up making it up, and again the Stadium crowd - or what was left of it by the bottom of the eighth - was on its feet, alternating chants of "Ti-NO" and "LETS-go, TI-no". He wound up drawing a walk and coming around to score on a Derek Jeter bouncing single through the pitcher's legs - shades of Buckner? The walk was preferable to a home run, for the reasons detailed above - the last thing you want is for Tino to spend the first few months of the season wasting his limited at-bats trying to re-hit a dramatic opening day home run.)
4. What the f*** happened to Tanyon Sturtze? Two perfect innings in relief, three strikeouts, all the confidence in the world: he was more Johnson than Johnson. I've decided he's going to get two Post headline-style nicknames this season: "Grand Tanyon" when he pitches well, and "Colonel Sturtze" (the horror! the horror!) when he pitches poorly.
5. Speaking of nicknames, Tony Womack's nickname is now "the Moustache", or "the Stache" for short. I will not rest until everyone uses this. Seriously, have you seen his moustache? It's incredible!
6. More generally, everybody (the players, the fans, everybody) seemed much more relaxed last night. I really do think that, as I said last fall, a Red Sox championship has reaped tremendous psychic benefits for the Yankees. We're no longer the evil enforcers whose job it is to keep The Curse in place. When we play the Sox now, it's just about winning, rather than preventing THEM from winning. Which is a mountain of difference.
And now, some pictures. They're not great, because my camera doesn't have enough zoom (let alone enough zoom-zoom) to take really detailed shots from the Loge seats. But they are what they are:
A broad view of the Stadium, taken just after the Red Sox 25 man roster had been announced. Why Curt Schilling and Wade Miller, both injured - Miller for at least a month - were taking up roster spots on opening day I'll never know. Lest we forget, Terry Francona and Theo Epstein are geniuses.
Steinbrenner really pulled out all the stops during the pregame. A color guard from West Point, a flyover by the Blue Angels, the first pitch thrown out by Yogi Berra (who's at least a foot and a half shorter than the actual starting pitcher - we're talking Gandalf / Bilbo Baggins proportions here).
As I said, Randy Johnson is really, really tall.
Sadly, this is the closest I have to an action shot. I believe this is Bill Mueller, just after he's hit a towering fly-out to mid-center.
I had a lot of fun. (Can you tell?)
And, last but not least, here's a sight from just outside Penn Station this morning (they were doing a promotion for the Mets' opening day today):
Y'know, I wouldn't've thought that a man with a giant baseball for a head would be camera shy.
(All pictures posted via Southron Appeal, my new photoblog.)
Some thoughts:
1. Johnson didn't look like he had his best stuff last night - he looked a little tentative, and only went 6 innings with 6 strikeouts - and he still beat a good-hitting Red Sox team up and down the field. The crowd was on its feet for every two-strike count he had through the first two innings. It was nuts. I think my brother, who we'll call Bre'r Bear for the sake of keeping the family-zoology consistent-but-confusing, put it best: "It's like having Mariano Rivera on the mound all nine innings." Every fifth day, at least. I honestly haven't been this excited about anything Yankees-related in a long, long time.
2. The offensive performance we saw last night was classic 1996-2000 Yankees baseball. Take lots of pitches. (I kept track: the usually free-swinging Jeter took a first pitch ball in every one of his six plate appearances. The result? Two hits, a walk, two runs scored.) Pepper the field with singles and doubles. Sacrifice. Advance the baserunners. Use speed to disrupt the defense's rhythm and advance the runners, not to pad gaudy stats. Don't swing for the fences every at-bat. In the past five years, the Yankees had devolved into a slow, Beane-ball style team based on drawing walks and swinging for the fences. What did it get them? Exactly the same thing it's gotten Beane's Oakland Athletics: zero World Series rings. (Although, I must say that the one home run that did get hit, by Hideki Matsui, was an absolute monster.)
3. It means something when the most dramatic moment of the game is a defensive substitution. When Tino came in for Giambi in the seventh, the entire Stadium burst into a standing ovation. I'm quite confident that's never happened before. Yankee fans really love Tino. There are, I think a couple of reasons. One is that he's associated with winning - the team won four World Championships in his first six-year stint - and, despite spending the equivalent of the GDP of a Caribbean nation, the Yankees haven't won since he left. I also think people feel kind of guilty (I certainly do) about the way he was forced out after 2001. The team fell in love with a (steroid-powered) Jason Giambi and decided it could do without an aging first baseman whose offensive skills were starting to slip. So, rather than resign him for a few years and give him the dignified multi-year farewell that Paul O'Neill got, they just let him, and his still-sparkling defense, walk unceremoniously. It seemed like a good idea at the time, an a**hole move that had to be made for the good of the team, but as Giambi became more and more of a bust (94 homers, sure, but a declining batting average, no speed or defense, a series of "mysterious health problems" that forced us to play such luminaries as Tony Clark and Nick Johnson at first base most of the time) it started to look more and more, to me at least, like we were being punished for our greed and lack of class. Bringing back Tino, whose skills are now even more questionable than they were in 2001, is almost a kind of penance. Everyone wants to believe he'll be rejuvenated, that he'll hit .280 with 25 home runs and 85 rbi and finally win the Gold Glove he's been robbed of all these years, but frankly, even if the entirely ordinary happens and he's just a solid defensive backup for Giambi, it'll still be a kind of cosmic ledger-balancing.
(By the way, he wound up making a spectacular diving grab to end the seventh, which generated another wild standing-O. We then started calculating how many people had to get on base to bring Tino to bat. He wound up making it up, and again the Stadium crowd - or what was left of it by the bottom of the eighth - was on its feet, alternating chants of "Ti-NO" and "LETS-go, TI-no". He wound up drawing a walk and coming around to score on a Derek Jeter bouncing single through the pitcher's legs - shades of Buckner? The walk was preferable to a home run, for the reasons detailed above - the last thing you want is for Tino to spend the first few months of the season wasting his limited at-bats trying to re-hit a dramatic opening day home run.)
4. What the f*** happened to Tanyon Sturtze? Two perfect innings in relief, three strikeouts, all the confidence in the world: he was more Johnson than Johnson. I've decided he's going to get two Post headline-style nicknames this season: "Grand Tanyon" when he pitches well, and "Colonel Sturtze" (the horror! the horror!) when he pitches poorly.
5. Speaking of nicknames, Tony Womack's nickname is now "the Moustache", or "the Stache" for short. I will not rest until everyone uses this. Seriously, have you seen his moustache? It's incredible!
6. More generally, everybody (the players, the fans, everybody) seemed much more relaxed last night. I really do think that, as I said last fall, a Red Sox championship has reaped tremendous psychic benefits for the Yankees. We're no longer the evil enforcers whose job it is to keep The Curse in place. When we play the Sox now, it's just about winning, rather than preventing THEM from winning. Which is a mountain of difference.
And now, some pictures. They're not great, because my camera doesn't have enough zoom (let alone enough zoom-zoom) to take really detailed shots from the Loge seats. But they are what they are:
A broad view of the Stadium, taken just after the Red Sox 25 man roster had been announced. Why Curt Schilling and Wade Miller, both injured - Miller for at least a month - were taking up roster spots on opening day I'll never know. Lest we forget, Terry Francona and Theo Epstein are geniuses.
Steinbrenner really pulled out all the stops during the pregame. A color guard from West Point, a flyover by the Blue Angels, the first pitch thrown out by Yogi Berra (who's at least a foot and a half shorter than the actual starting pitcher - we're talking Gandalf / Bilbo Baggins proportions here).
As I said, Randy Johnson is really, really tall.
Sadly, this is the closest I have to an action shot. I believe this is Bill Mueller, just after he's hit a towering fly-out to mid-center.
I had a lot of fun. (Can you tell?)
And, last but not least, here's a sight from just outside Penn Station this morning (they were doing a promotion for the Mets' opening day today):
Y'know, I wouldn't've thought that a man with a giant baseball for a head would be camera shy.
(All pictures posted via Southron Appeal, my new photoblog.)
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