Bleacher Creature Feature

#58: "World Series Games 1-2"

19 October 2003

If Game 7 of the ALCS was a drunken party, Game 1 of the Series was the hangover. The Yankees played like a team that hadn't gotten enough sleep.

With all that, the Yankees came pretty dang close to winning this game. Everyone's talking about how the Marlins were unintimidated, and how they handle lefties well, and that may have been true, but the Yankees were at half-mast and still kept it to a one-run contest. In fact, if Nick Johnson hadn't forgotten who it is the Marlins have behind the plate or if Aaron Boone had thrown home instead of to first on Hideki Matsui's relay, today's papers would've been full of more tiresome platitudes about Mystique and Aura instead of what we got, which is lots of equally tiresome doom and gloom. Plus, of course, fish puns. Lots and lots of fish puns. Then again, we'll be getting those nonstop for a week regardless of who wins this thing. We'll be going to school on fish puns.

Still, the Marlins did not win with anything like authority, and attempts to paint it as such are the product of people trying to manufacture headlines.

Besides, given that each of the last three series started with a loss followed by an Andy Pettitte win, it's hard to get too worked up, when Pettitte's scheduled to start Game 2.

Game 2:

Notes as the game happens.

Alfonso Soriano's still batting leadoff, but Johnson's been dropped. Sigh. Right, leave the guy who makes lots and lots of outs and is in a slump in a position to make more of them, but keep your high OBP guy out of the top of the order. Yeah. That makes sense.

I know this horse is dead, but Soriano's not a leadoff hitter. He's a prototypical middle-of-the-order hitter, but he does not get on base enough to justify leading off, and bringing him up in so many situations where he doesn't have people on base in front of him is wasting his considerable talents.

Pettitte has about 50% of his patented serial killer gaze on in the top of the first.

Oooh, that was pretty. The strike-him-out-throw-him-out double play that Pettitte, Jorge Posada, and Soriano just pulled on Ivan Rodriguez and Luis Castillo was the Platonic ideal of the strike-him-out-throw-him-out double play.

Sweet Jesus. Soriano just drew a leadoff walk. Wonders will never cease.....

Derek Jeter just dug himself an unnecessary hole by trying to bunt twice. There are situations that call for a bunt, but the top of the first inning of a World Series game with the third-best batting average in the league at the plate is definitely not one of them. You don't waste outs this early on, and you don't indulge in one-run strategies in the first inning. Jeter then struck out, which was easy enough to do since two of the three strikes were gifts to the pitcher.

I wonder if the same idiots who called for Johnson's head when he got picked off yesterday will call for Soriano's head now that he's been picked off. I would argue that Soriano's being picked off was considerably stupider, since Mark Redman doesn't really have that great a motion to first, and if he's fooled by that....

Tim McCarver just described Bernie Williams as an "aggressive" hitter, which shows that he hasn't paid any attention to Bernie as a hitter ever.

Bernie just got a hit after Jason Giambi got hit by a pitch. It'd be 1-0 now if Soriano knew how to read a pitcher's motion.

GO GO GODZILLA! Hideki Matsui just made the entire nation of Japan happy by hitting a three-run shot to dead center. This is how this Yankee offense works best when it's on track: get people on base, then slug some big-ass extra-base hits. Meanwhile, I'm wondering if we'll be seeing "October-San" headlines tomorrow.

Johnson just bunted for a base hit. Let me state for the record that those are seven words I never expected to ever type in succession.

And the kids come through! Juan Rivera slams a double to left field, scoring Johnson easily. Johnson obviously is trying to make up for last night's brainfart: first the aggressive bunt, and then booking around third to score on Rivera's hit -- he didn't break stride once. Rivera was, sadly, thrown out at third trying to stretch it, but that was a chance worth taking with one out and a (now) four-run lead.

Pettitte labored through the first couple of innings, going to 3-2 on each of the three batters he faced in the first, and only getting fly-ball outs in the second. However, he just struck out the side in the third. He still doesn't have the serial killer gaze on, but his pitches are looking much better.

Redman's night is done as he walks Bernie, bringing Matsui up with two runners on base for the second straight at-bat. Rick Helling is in now, and he keeps history from repeating itself by inducing a force out.

Just for the record, while I'm sick unto death of the Skin commercials, I have yet to grow tired of the Giambi/Sammy Sosa Mt. Everest Pepsi commercial. ("Hey! Who Babe Ruth?") I still get a chuckle out of that one every single time.

Nice defensive work by the Yankees (six words I also never expected to write in succession) in the fourth on a diving stop by Boone then throwing to Soriano, who made a nice stretching catch to force the speedy Juan Pierre at second. This followed by a quick 6-4-3 double play. A vintage Pettitte inning, one that took longer for me to type about than it did to happen.

Johnson is now 2-2, having knocked a base hit up the middle. Obviously the Joe Torre Clinic's methodology of dropping players in the lineup has claimed another successful patient...

More stupid commentary from Fox: Joe Buck was just talking about how the Yanks' primary reason for being patient with Rivera is because they were thinking about trading him for a veteran. Right. In fact, they traded the veteran (Raul Mondesi) to make room for him. They don't always get it, but the Yankees mostly understand that there's more long-term value to a talented young player than there is to a "proven veteran" in the down phase of his career. Which is why Mondesi's a Diamondback and Rivera's starting Game 2 of the World Series.

We have a poster in our hallway that Terri found on eBay. It was a giveaway at a Norwich Navigators game in 1999: Soriano and Johnson standing next to each other in their Navigators uniforms, bats on their shoulders, with a caption reading, "Hitting: The Next Millennium." (This was the year that Johnson and Soriano played first and second for the Futures Team at the All-Star Game at Fenway Park.) Four years later, and in that next millennium, the two of them were responsible for the Yankees' fifth and sixth runs in Game 2 of the World Series, as Soriano's bat finally woke up and he hit a two-run shot to left field following Johnson's base hit. I love it.

The Yanks' six RBI are by three players who do not have World Series rings: Matsui (3), Rivera (1), and Soriano (2). Aside from Bernie, the six runs have also all been scored by players who do not have World Series rings: Giambi (1), Matsui (1), Johnson (2), and Soriano (1).

Pettitte has now pitched six innings. He very clearly doesn't have his best stuff, but not his worst, either, and he's getting it done. He's got six strike outs, which has made all the difference, as the ball's going in the air much more than usual. He also seems to have settled down, as he's looked better each inning.

After the last BCF, two different people wrote me to point out that Boone didn't really fit the criteria of unlikely hero, given that he's a legitimate everyday player, but he sure as hell hasn't played like one since he got here. He's looked truly pathetic in all three of his at-bats tonight, striking out twice on pitches he had no business swinging at and had no chance of coming close to the vicinity of hitting. He looks completely lost at home plate, Game 7 heroics notwithstanding.

Johnson hits a two-out double. He is now 3-3. It did no good, as Boone and Posada's strike-him-out-throw-him-out DP preceded it and Rivera then flied to right, but it's still good to see.

The Yankees were just handed a gift, as the home-plate umpire blew a call on what turned into a 5-4-3 DP. Castillo's hit it off his ankle, and it bounced in the batter's box. That was a foul ball, and it instead resulted in two outs.

Fox just showed a bit of footage with Pierre visiting Monument Park on Friday, showing that he appreciates where it is he's playing right now (my favorite was his asking where Mickey Rivers's plaque was). Buck also mentioned that he spent the workout day rolling balls up the line to see the tilt of the infield and also bouncing balls off the outfield walls to see how they carom. I'm starting to really like this kid...

More words I didn't expect to type: Giambi just got an opposite-field double.

Following a walk to Bernie, Matsui is up for the third time this game with two runners on base. In fact, it's the same two runners who were on base in the first inning when he hit his home run.

Sadly, reality doesn't always follow the script. Matsui grounded out to Castillo.

Pettitte is going for the complete game. Good on Torre. He's only thrown 97 pitches, he's only given up four hits and one walk, he's got seven strikeouts, and he's staked to a six-run lead. He can at least afford a long leash. |

The only relief pitcher who should even be considered right now is Mariano Rivera. He's the best pitcher on the team. Period. This is the World Series. This is all the marbles. Don't muck around with the weaker end of your bullpen just because the situation doesn't fall within the wholly arbitrary requirements for a non-statistic like the save. After all, if you're not going to use him when you can in the World Series, why bother having him?

The remaining crowd is cheering Pettitte's name loud enough to be heard clearly over Fox's microphones. He's now facing Miguel Cabrera with two outs and a runner on.

Unfortunately, Boone boots Cabrera's grounder, and then Derrek Lee gets a hit that kills the shutout, so out comes Andy--

--and in comes Jose Contreras. Sigh. At least Mo is warming up as backup.

Mike Lowell grounds out to Boone to end the game, and we hear Frank Sinatra for the first time this Series.

I forgot to mention one of the more amusing things that happened at Game 6 of the ALCS. It was, to say the least, windy in New York last Wednesday, and whenever it's windy in New York, it's even windier in the funnel that is Yankee Stadium. I was in attendance with my mother (Terri couldn't get time off from work, and Fox insisted on bumping the game back to 4pm so Game 7 of the NLCS could get the prime-time spot), and both of us lost our Yankee hats in one particularly massive gust. I managed to catch mine.

My mother didn't.

It blew into the ambulance bay where, luckily, several cops were stationed. They retrieved the hat and tossed it back up to us.

Or at least tried to. The first toss missed.

So did the second. And the third.

All right, I stopped counting, but eventually, with three different cops flinging the hat up like a frisbee, one of them got enough on the throw to get my mother her hat back.

On to Florida. Harold Reynolds said on Sports Center that it'll help the Marlins to be in front of a home crowd, but Reynolds did not take the huge number of expatriate New Yorkers in Florida -- we see them every time the Yankees play the Devil Rays on the road -- and there may be as many Yankee fans as Marlin fans in the crowd Tuesday.

NEXT: "World Series Game 3"

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