Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 22

In today’s edition, Jose Contreras failed once again for the Yankees, and the Red Sox swept a three-game series at Yankee Stadium which dropped New York’s record to an ugly 8-11.

There is certainly a phenomenon known as buyers’ remorse, and at some point or another, we have all experienced purchasing something that we would soon come to regret.

For me, the one that stands out was the stupid pool table I bought for my basement 25 years ago. It never really fit properly in the only reasonable space I had, I might have racked the balls 200 or 300 times total including zero in the last 20 years or so, and now it sits down there will all kinds of junk piled on top.

For the Yankees, there have been many player signings or trades made through the years where they surely experienced buyers’ remorse, and during the zenith of their rivalry with the Red Sox in 2003-04, one of those was outbidding Boston in order to sign Cuban defector Jose Contreras.

There were times during the 2003 season when Contreras showed some of the talent the Yankees thought they were getting for their $32 million investment, particularly when he returned from the injured list in late August and went 4-1 with a 2.56 ERA in seven starts.

But in the postseason he was relegated to the bullpen and had two massive clunkers, one in the Game 6 ALCS loss to the Red Sox, the last in Game 5 of the World Series to the Marlins, and he was the losing pitcher in both.

Not surprisingly, coming into 2004 there was a lot of talk about how the Yankees might have whiffed on Contreras, and even though he won a spot in the rotation coming out of spring training, that was out of necessity because Orlando Hernandez was not going to be ready to pitch until July.

Contreras was firmly embedded as the fifth starter behind Mike Mussina, Kevin Brown, Javier Vazquez and Job Lieber, and in his first two starts, he certainly didn’t imbue any more organizational faith. He got hammered in losing to the White Sox, and then was knocked out by the Red Sox at Fenway inside of three innings in a game the Yankees ended up winning.

Five days after that start in Boston, Contreras was back on the mound with the Red Sox visiting Yankee Stadium for the first time in 2004, and the change of venue did him no good. He faced 19 batters and nine of them reached, five via hit, four via walk. Five of them scored and he was yanked after getting just one out in what became a five-run fourth inning for Boston which keyed an 11-2 blowout.

By this point, Red Sox president Larry Lucchino may have been ready to re-name the Yankees. He had called them the Evil Empire after they plucked Contreras from Boston’s clutches, but now, maybe the Three Stooges - starring George Steinbrenner, Joe Torre and Brian Cashman - was the better moniker.

It was becoming plainly obvious that Contreras had not been worth fighting over, though Torre said, “He has too good a stuff for me to give up on him. I’m not even close to doing that.” Maybe, but others were.

“I’m very upset with myself,’’ Contreras said. “I’m bothered because I haven’t proven I’m the pitcher I am, the pitcher I know I am. To have it end the way it did, this is the worst I’ve felt after one of my starts.”

After losing three of four in Boston the previous weekend, this was not the start New York had been looking for on Friday night, April 23 in the Bronx. There were 55,001 on hand eager for some payback, but the Yankees went kerplunk in a hurry. Contreras gave up an RBI single to Mark Bellhorn in the second and then exploded into flames in the fourth.

With one out, Kevin Millar and Bellhorn hit back-to-back homers, Pokey Reese singled, Johnny Damon walked, and when Torre took the ball from Contreras he left the field to a cacophony of boos. “That’s their right if they want to boo,” Contreras said. “They’re not getting the results they expect. I’m not getting the results I expect, either.”

Catcher John Flaherty began the night with some hope because Contreras and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre seemed to have corrected a flaw in his mechanics, but the righty did not implement it on the mound.

“Nobody’s trying harder than Jose to figure this thing out,” Flaherty said. “He’s got a lot of people trying to help him now and maybe he’s thinking about too many things. We have to keep working, because (the talent) is in there.’’

It took more than an hour for those boos of Contreras to be earned. It took reliever Donovan Osborne about 90 seconds before the fans began unloading on him as his third pitch wound up in the left-field bleachers courtesy of Bill Mueller for a three-run homer that made it 6-0.

Meanwhile, the Yankees did nothing against Derek Lowe until the seventh when Gary Sheffield singled and Hideki Matsui hit a two-run homer that cut Boston’s lead to 10-2.

The next day, Kevin Brown was given the task of putting an end to the Red Sox early domination and two innings into the game, the Yankees were down 2-0 because Brown walked two men, hit a batter, made an error, and gave up a pair of sacrifice flies.

However, he settled down and proceeded to pitch five straight scoreless innings which gave the Yankees time to pull even at 2-2 on a solo homer by Alex Rodriguez in the fourth and consecutive singles by Rodriguez, Jason Giambi and Sheffield in the seventh.

The Yankees blew a great chance to win when Ruben Sierra grounded out with the bases loaded in the 10th, and the Red Sox returned the favor when they loaded the bases with one out against Mariano Rivera in the 11th only to have him retire Mueller and David Ortiz.

Finally in the 12th, Manny Ramirez led off with a double against Paul Quantrill and eventually scored on Boston’s third sacrifice fly of the game, this one by Bellhorn, and that was the difference in a 3-2 victory.

Somehow, the Red Sox won despite going 0-for-19 with runners in scoring position, but as Torre said, “Things are clicking for them right now. When things are clicking for you, things go your way. And it’s not sour grapes, because we’ve been on that side many times.”

In the clubhouse afterward, Torre told his team to show up for the finale pissed off. They were going to be facing Pedro Martinez who, yes, they had handled pretty well in 2003, but who was also capable of greatness every time he took the mound.

“Baseball is full of streaks, and right now we are down in the valley,” said Torre. “Baseball is not easy to play, and this is where you earn your money.”

Sunday afternoon, a third straight crowd in excess of 55,000 came out in the hopes of jeering Pedro and seeing the Yankees end their early-season misery against the Red Sox. Instead, the boos were once again directed at the home team as Martinez threw seven shutout innings allowing just four hits and Scott Williamson retired the final six Yankees in order to close out a 2-0 victory and a stunning three-game sweep.

Javier Vasquez was nearly Pedro’s equal, but his six fine innings included one mistake which is all it took to lose the game: He hung an 0-2 breaking ball to Ramirez who crushed it for a game-deciding two-run homer in the fourth inning.

Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS seemed eons ago given how dominant the Red Sox were in the first two series of 2004, winning six of seven. “I wish we could go back to Game 7 and make these games count,” Damon said with a devilish smile.

As the Yankees dressed in near silence in their clubhouse, now sitting 4.5 games behind the Red Sox and three games under .500, there were very few answers available for what was ailing them. But you could start with the fact that Derek Jeter was batting .175 and mired in a 0-for-25 slump; Bernie Williams was at .167 and in a 2-for-26 slump; Giambi was at .204 with just three homers and seven RBI; Sheffield had one homer in 68 at bats; and A-Rod was at .257 with just three homers and five RBI.

“We are in the abyss right now, no question,” Cashman said. “But we'll get out of it. With what’s going on right now, we just need an in-house fix. We just need to give these guys time to get going. We’ve got 12 new guys from last year, all these new people in a new environment jet-setting all over the place, not really having time to unpack. It just takes time. This is a Derby horse that’s slow out of the gate.’’

NEXT WEDNESDAY: Starting the next day, the horse found its legs and began to hit stride as the Yankees ripped off an eight-game winning streak which turned their season around and by the time they saw Boston again in late June, the Red Sox were in their rear view mirror.