2009 Yankees: Rookie Brett Gardner Begins to Emerge

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, rookie Brett Gardner was on a heater at the end of May and he helped lead the Yankees to a blowout victory over the Rangers which vaulted them into a tie for first in the AL East.

ARLINGTON, Tex. (May 27, 2009) - When South Carolina native Brett Gardner graduated from high school, one of 22 seniors in the 2001 class at Holly Hill Academy, he knew he wanted to play Division I college baseball. The problem was, no one was willing to give him that chance.

He received no scholarship offers, and the reasons were pretty clear: He was amazingly fast, but he wasn’t a great hitter, nor did he possess much of a throwing arm for someone who was only going to be an outfielder.

Gardner’s only choice was to enroll at nearby College of Charleston and walk on, but even that proved futile as his tryout went terribly and he was cut.

“If I was a coach, I’d be like, ‘This kid’s not going to cut it,’” Gardner once said when recalling that period in his life. “I was fortunate enough to get called back several weeks later to work out with the team, and it ended up working out.”

That call was made because his father, Jerry, who had played some minor league ball in the Phillies system in the 1970s, wrote to the coach and asked if he’d give Brett a second chance. He agreed, and that changed Gardy’s life.

“Within a couple of years he turned into something far greater than we could imagine,” that coach, John Pawlowski, told the Newark Star-Ledger, in 2009. “He turned out to be a heck of a player for us, that’s for sure.”

Indeed, Gardner went on to become an All-American in his senior season when he hit .447 and stole 38 bases and the Yankees took notice. They used their third-round pick in the 2005 draft on him, and when vice-president of scouting Damon Oppenheimer was asked why Gardner was chosen he said, “He’s an absolute flier. He’s a fast runner who can really patrol center field. He can steal bases, has instincts to run and has performed with the bat.”

Oppenheimer certainly wasn’t wrong and by the middle of 2008 Gardy was making his major league debut at Yankee Stadium, by the spring of 2009 he was beating out Melky Cabrera for the starting center field job, and by the time he retired in 2021, Gardner had put together a 14-year career - all with the Yankees - that might not have been jersey retired worthy, but was certainly impressive.

Gardner admitted he really wasn’t ready to play in the big leagues when he was called up in 2008, and he was right as he batted just .153 in 17 games and was sent back to Triple-A. However, when he was recalled in mid-August, he went on to hit .294 in 25 games, and that gave him the confidence to battle Cabrera - who had been New York’s primary left fielder since 2006.

“Whoever has the most talent takes the prize,” Brian Cashman said early in the spring. “Gardner’s tool is his speed. That’s his calling card. It’s a big dimension, especially for us, because we don’t have a lot of jackrabbits. We have some station-to-station guys, and having a tool like that stands out.”

Nick Swisher saw it right away. “If he gets on the basepaths, he’s going to kill you,” he said. “I love the way he plays.”

Ultimately, it was that speed that tipped the scale in Gardner’s favor. “Speed is an interesting dimension to the club and I like it because it puts a lot of pressure on the defense,” Joe Girardi said. “Speed is a good thing because sometimes you’re not going to be able to slug and you’re going to have to produce some runs.”

The Yankees caught a dynamic glimpse of Gardner’s speed on May 15 - the night they began a string of three consecutive walk-off wins against the Twins. Two nights before, Gardner hit the first home run of his MLB career, a shot down the right-field line at Rogers Centre against the Blue Jays.

Against the Twins came the second, only this one was a little different. The Yankees were trailing 4-1 in the seventh when Gardner looped a sinking liner down the left-field line. Denard Span ran in and was unable to make the catch, but even worse, the ball skipped past him and rolled into the corner. Gardner, hustling out of the box, motored all the way around the bases and scored easily for an inside-the-park homer.

That game, by the way, had been started by Cabrera, but when left fielder Johnny Damon got ejected in the fourth inning, Gardner went to center and Cabrera shifted to right and it was ultimately decided when Cabrera delivered a two-run single in the bottom of the ninth.

Two weeks later, the Yankees were playing the rubber game of a series in Texas and there was no player hotter at the plate than Gardner. With the Yankees up 3-0 in the sixth, Swisher drew a walk and Gardner dropped down a bunt that was not meant to be a sacrifice. He was bunting for a hit and sure enough, he beat it out. As a bonus, pitcher Derek Holland threw the ball away so Gardner was able to go to second while Swisher held at third.

The next batter, catcher Kevin Cash - yes, the same Cash who is now the Rays manager who had a brief playing tenure with the Yankees - singled to left and the speedy Gardner raced home just behind Swisher to make it 6-0. Later, Gardner added a single but did not score, though it didn’t matter as the Yankees won 9-2 and for the first time since Opening Day, they were in first place in the AL East, tied with the Red Sox at 27-20 after winning for the 12th time in 15 games.

Gardner was overlooked because Hideki Matsui hit two homers and Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano one each, and A.J. Burnett threw six three-hit scoreless innings, but Gardner played exactly role the Yankees were hoping he would - that of a sparkplug.

In his last 11 games since the home run in Toronto, Gardner was slashing .419/.486/.774 for an OPS of 1.260 with two homers, four RBI, three stolen bases and eight runs scored.

“It’s great to see,” Andy Pettitte said when he was asked about the contributions Gardner and some of the other young players had been delivering early in the season. “You have to have young guys come up, and the organization, if you looked at it over the past few years, hasn’t developed a whole lot of players. We definitely needed it, that’s for sure.”

Pettitte had been part of the last wave of homegrown products who became the core of a World Series dynasty, one that also included Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada and Bernie Williams. But since then, the Yankees had reverted to their old ways from the 1970s and 1980s, spending lavishly in free agency and the result had been no championships since 2000.

Now, Gardner was looking to be part of the next wave, one that included Cano and Cabrera, and players like Francisco Cervelli, Joba Chamberlain, and Phil Hughes.

Here’s how the rest of Week 8 went for the Yankees:

• May 25: The Yankees opened a series in Texas with an 11-1 romp as Alex Rodriguez went 5-for-5 and drove in four runs, part of a 19-hit explosion, while Hughes threw eight scoreless innings. Entering the game, A-Rod had only 10 hits in his first 16 games and was batting .189, though seven of those were home runs.

• May 26: The Rangers won the middle game as Marlon Byrd hit a two-run single in the first off Chamberlain, and later, Chris Davis hit a pair of solo homers, one off Joba and one off Phil Coke.

• May 29: The Yankees opened a four-game series in Cleveland with a 3-1 win as Pettitte, Alfredo Aceves and Rivera combined on an eight-hitter while two of New York’s runs off Indians starter Cliff Lee were recorded on outs. For the first time in 2009, the Yankees moved into first place in the AL East, a spot they hadn’t occupied since the final day of the 2006 season. This was the 58th time Rivera had saved a Pettitte victory, a new MLB record, breaking the mark held by Oakland’s Dennis Eckersley and Bob Welch.

• May 30: Posada, who came off the disabled list the night before, homered, as did Swisher, while Cano had three RBI and Jeter and Damon had two each as the Yankees rolled 10-5. This made things easy for CC Sabathia in his return to Cleveland where he spent the first eight-plus years of his career.

• May 31: The Indians avoided the sweep with a walk-off 5-4 victory courtesy of Jhonny Peralta’s RBI single off David Robertson in the ninth. Teixeira drove in all four Yankee runs but it wasn’t enough. “We didn’t do much right,” Teixeira said of a mistake-filled day. “It wasn’t meant to be today.”

• June 1: The Yankees won the series with a 5-2 win as Chamberlain pitched eight stellar innings and got the victory thanks to a four-run seventh that saw the Yankees draw four walks in addition to a two-run double by Swisher and a two-run single by A-Rod. This was their 15th win in the last 19 games and this one made history as it was their 18th straight without a fielding error, a new MLB record.

NEXT SATURDAY: The man Gardner originally beat out for the starting center field job, Melky Cabrera, produced his fourth game-winning hit of the season with a two-run homer that beat Texas.