A friend was kind enough to invite me to the mission-critical Yankees playoff game against the Minnesota Twins last night. Foolishly, I accepted. It was only as I entered the stadium that I realized that I did not have the requisite mental toughness to spectate at this level of competition. Already down 1-0 in their best-of-five series, a loss tonight would put my Yankees on the abyss, and me on the window ledge.
Fortunately, all was well in Yankee-land as the game chugged into the late innings. The Yanks built a 5-3 lead and put the game in the lockbox, handing the ball to Tom Gordon to wrap up the seventh. Oh, we were having a great time in the cheap seats - Tom Gordon through the eighth, Mariano "Mr. Automatic" Rivera in the ninth, and everyine would go home happy. Start spreading the news...
But wait! The eighth gets off to an eerie start - Gordon gets an out, but a wild pitch on strike three puts a man on. Then a single puts men on first and second, and Joe Torre decides he would rather see Mariano do his thing.
But tonight, Mariano's thing is to give up an RBI single followed immediately by an RBI double - tie score, runners on second and third, one out. This is only Mariano's third blown save in his post-season history (everyone in the cheap seats immediately says "Cleveland '97, Phoenix 2001") and the gloom is enormous - Mariano blowing a save? The very foundation of our Evil Empire is crumbling! And there are still men on base. It was so quiet you could have heard a ticket stub being torn up.
Mo gets out of the eighth and sails through the ninth, but the good-time feeling has left the House That Ruth Built. We cling sullenly to our sense of entitlement as Twin relievers no-hit the Yankees, perking up only the tiniest bit as Tanyon Sturtze, the Grand Tanyon, unexpectedly shuts the Twins down. My friend is in an unshakeable funk, glumly muttering, "What am I doing here? If I had wanted to spend the night with a bunch of disappointed, angry losers I would have gone to see Fahrenheit 911".
Comes the twelfth inning, and Tori Hunter, who has been tormenting the Yanks this series, strides to the plate. "Man, I am getting tired of seeing him on base" says my eerily prescient friend, just before Mr. Hunter smotes a mighty home run.
"Well", I offer encouragingly, "He has a brisk home-run trot - he wasn't on base long at all."
We head to the bottom of the twelfth down 6-5. John Olerud does nothing to lift our spirits by promptly going out. But wait - a flicker of Yankee Pride sweeps the building, as the stalwarts still in attendance decide that we will not go quietly. Miguel Cairo is coming up, and Derek Jeter will be, in some other world, the last out. But not this world! This day, we fight!
Cairo walks on four pitches. Pandemonium! The presumably tired Twins closer has overstayed his welcome, but the Twins manager evidently wants to see the same thing the fans want to see - fear and humiliation. Jeter walks on four more pitches, and here comes the mighty A-Rod. Can the fans get louder? Yes, we can! A-Rod drops a bomb into the deepest part of the old "death valley". Jeter would have scored easily from first to end the game, but the ball bounces into the seats for a ground-rule double.
No worries. Sheffield is intentionally walked, and we do our bit for Japanese-American relations by cheering madly as Hideki Matsui delivers the game winning sacrifice line-drive to shallow right field. Could a good throw have nailed Jeter? We don't find out - the throw is off-line, so the first baseman cuts it off and tries to relay it home. Don't bother.
Jeter scores. Ball game over. The Yankees win! The-e-e-e Yankees win!
Iow, because the Twins have a right fielder who throws like John Kerry, you win. The planets were aligned.
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan | October 07, 2004 at 08:59 PM
Thank you, oh thank you for the blow-by-blow replay. I teach English classes to adults in my school until 9:00 pm every night and missed the whole game. I can now declare this a "good day".
Posted by: Mark in Mexico | October 07, 2004 at 10:33 PM
Torii. Remember: there's no I in Team, but there's two in Torii.
Posted by: bledsoe | October 08, 2004 at 07:05 AM
I thought he wrote a book about terror!
He did. I summarized each chapter here:
http://varifrank.com/archives/2004/09/summary_analysi.php
It was the hardest thing to read. I felt like jamming knitting needles into my eyes after reading it.
Posted by: Frank Martin | October 09, 2004 at 12:10 AM