2009 Yankees: A Weekend of Walk-Offs in the Bronx

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. Today, Mark Teixeira scuffled through his first six weeks in pinstripes, but during a crazy four-game sweep against the Twins when the Yankees walked off the first three games, Teixeira finally began to show why the team spent $180 million to acquire him. Lets get to it.

NEW YORK (May 18, 2009) - On the night that Alex Rodriguez made his season debut and hit a dramatic three-run homer on the first pitch of his first at bat, Mark Teixeira went 0-for-3 and saw his batting average dwindle to a pathetic .192 through his first 29 games as a Yankee.

The pressure of living up to his massive contract, and having to do so in the toughest baseball fan market there was, seemed to be weighing the slugging first baseman down, and he was feeling some heat. Not that he had lost confidence, but he knew Gotham was scowling.

For instance, in the last game of April the Yankees and Angels were tied 4-4 in the bottom of the seventh when Tex came up with two men on and one out. A surge of adrenaline coursed through the crowd, but then he doused the burgeoning flame by promptly rapping into an inning-killing 4-6-3 double play and here came the boos. Tough place, the Bronx, but this is what you sign up for and when you’re banking $180 million, expectations soar.

“If I don’t get a hit with men on base, I’m booing myself,” he said that night. “They can boo all they want. They deserve better from me and better from our team.”

A couple days after that, Teixeira was asked if he was starting to press, and if he was concerned that he hadn’t yet produced a definitive “Yankee moment” which is a rite of passage that all players who don the pinstripes go through.

“I hit a home run in my second game at the new Yankee Stadium, that was pretty awesome,” he said, recalling his shot against Cleveland on April 17. “But I don’t know exactly what the Yankee Stadium moment is going to be.”

Two weeks later, he had his answer.

By the time the Yankees opened a four-game series at home against the Twins, Tex was slashing an inadequate .203/.333/.424 for an OPS of .757 with seven homers and 19 RBI. Still, Joe Girardi had no intention of moving him out of the 3-hole, especially now that Rodriguez was back with the team and hitting cleanup.

Girardi knew that with A-Rod protecting him, Teixeira was going to get pitches to hit and man, did the Twins’ pitching staff prove Girardi correct.

The Yankees swept all four games, winning the first three in walk-off fashion, and if you were looking for Teixeira’s “Yankee moment” there were several to choose from.

In the first game Friday night, May 15, the Yankees trailed 4-2 in the bottom of the ninth and were facing star Twins closer Joe Nathan. Brett Gardner, who had hit an inside-the-park-homer in the seventh, led off with a triple and on Nathan’s next pitch Teixeira drove him home with his second single of the night. Then, after walks to Rodriguez and Robinson Cano, Melky Cabrera looped a single to left center and Teixeira and pinch runner Ramiro Pena raced home with the winning runs.

The next day, Teixeira went 4-for-4 with a double, a three-run homer, and an RBI single in the eighth inning that tied it at 4-4. In the 11th, he drew a leadoff walk against Craig Breslow and two pitches later he was jogging home on A-Rod’s winning two-run homer.

On Sunday, Teixeira went 0-for-4 but an A-Rod homer and a Cabrera RBI single created a 2-2 tie in the seventh, and Johnny Damon eventually hit a solo homer in the 10th for the third consecutive walk-off victory, after which the Twins Denard Span said, “I can’t wait to get out of here. Not just the stadium, but the whole city.”

Ah, but there was one more night of misery for Span and the Twins because on Monday, Teixeira highlighted a six-run explosion in the first inning with a three-run homer batting right-handed, and after the Twins pecked away, Teixeira blasted a solo shot batting left-handed in the seventh to give the Yankees a 7-4 lead. That last run proved vital when Minnesota crept within 7-6 before Phil Coke - closing the game because Mariano Rivera was unavailable - retired Mike Redmond to end it as the stadium breathed a sign of relief.

For the series, Teixeira went 8-for-16 and had nine RBI and in the span of 10 days since A-Rod’s return, he slashed .342/.409/.816 for an OPS of 1.225 and he slugged five homers with 13 RBI.

“Pitchers are just making a few more mistakes,” Teixeira said. “It puts a lot of pressure on them when Alex is in the lineup and, you know, a pitcher is not going to want to get into deep counts and maybe walk me with a guy like A-Rod behind me. He’s obviously a great player and he’s helping out the whole team and it’s great to have him out there.”

This was the weekend when it all changed for Teixeira, the demarcation line for his first season with the Yankees. Over the final 16 games of May he batted .418 with a .473 on-base, nine homers and 25 RBI, and from the first win over the Twins through the end of the season, in the 125 games he played, Teixeira slashed .314/.396/.599 for an OPS of .995, 32 homers and 103 RBI and the Yankees went 84-41 in those games.

This was the guy the Yankees thought they were getting when they splurged in free agency.

Here’s how the rest of Week 6 went for the Yankees:

• May 12: Before all the excitement against Minnesota, the Yankees went up to Toronto for a three-game series and they lost the opener 5-1 as Roy Halladay pitched a complete game to outduel ex-Blue Jay A.J. Burnett who returned to Toronto and was booed. He had opted out of his contract at the end of 2008 rather than re-sign with the Jays. “I was prepared for that, but that kind of stuff drives me,” he said. “I like going into places where my back is against the wall; that brings out the warrior.” He did his part, pitching into the eighth inning, but his teammates were stymied on five hits by Halladay.

• May 13: They didn’t know it at the time, but this was the start of the Yankees’ turnaround as they began what became a nine-game winning streak with an 8-2 rout of the first-place Jays. Brett Gardner hit his first career homer during a five-run second inning.

• May 14: CC Sabathia was signed to be an ace, and he was certainly that in a 3-2 victory that gave the Yankees the series win. He went eight innings and gave up two runs on five hits and four walks. He wound up the winner when Derek Jeter tied the game with an RBI single in the seventh, and Hideki Matsui won it with a solo homer in the eighth. “We decided we’d both come back today and try to help us out,” Jeter joked about he and Matsui returning after they had each missed a couple games. “It was my idea. I called him this morning.”

NEXT SATURDAY: The defending World Series champion Phillies came to the Bronx for a three-game set May 23-25 and while the Yankees’ dropped the opener to snap their nine-game winning streak, then lost the finale, in between they managed their sixth walk-off win in their new ballpark as Robinson Cano was in the middle of a dramatic comeback victory.