Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 28

In today’s edition, the Yankees exploded out of the gate in Game 1 of the ALCS, but then had to hold off a furious Red Sox rally to secure the victory.

At the time, Hideki Matsui’s RBI single in the bottom of the sixth inning at Yankee Stadium seemed so inconsequential, almost as if the Yankees were piling on the moribund Red Sox because they could.

Matsui’s grounder through the right side off Tim Wakefield - the fourth of seven pitchers Terry Francona would call on in Game 1 of the AL Championship Series - made the score 8-0.

And while you could never really count the Red Sox out of anything, seeing as they scored 949 runs in the regular season which led all of MLB and was the third-highest output in franchise history, 8-0 seemed pretty damned insurmountable because of Mike Mussina.

Through six innings, Mussina faced 18 Boston batters and retired them all. Perfection, and he was sitting at a mere 77 pitches. As excited as the sellout crowd was about the offensive explosion, fueled by Matsui’s ALCS record-tying five RBI, it was even more energized by the possibility that they could be witnessing just the second postseason perfect game in history, the only other, of course, thrown by Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series.

“Sure, you think about it,’’ Mussina said. “You’re only human. I know what’s going on. It’s not supposed to be easy, I guess that’s just the way it must be. They’re a good-hitting club, and they proved it.’’

Did they ever.

“All of those people who say you sit in that dugout and it’s so calm, you didn’t want to be there tonight,” Joe Torre said after the Yankees held on for dear life and won 10-7. “You know it was like it was too good to be true. It was 6-0 and then 8-0. Moose was pitching a gem; I mean he did pitch a gem. Again, each game is going to be an emotional roller coaster, there’s no question.”

After Mussina whiffed Johnny Damon for the 19th straight out, Mark Bellhorn ended the drama with a double to left and the fans rose as one and gave Mussina a thunderous ovation. When they sat back down, they couldn’t have imagined what was about to take place.

In the blink of an eye, David Ortiz singled, Kevin Millar doubled home two runs and Trot Nixon singled in another and just like that, Torre was out of the dugout and taking the ball from Mussina, ending an outing that Torre was mesmerized by.

“It’s not going to get lost (amid the crazy end of the game),” Torre said. “Any time you record outs and get through innings against this ballclub like he did tonight, I mean he almost pitched a perfect game. Any time you can take an inning off the line there, you know you’re doing a heck of a job against this club because they can explode any time.”

Tanyon Sturtze found that out. He came in and Jason Varitek hit his third pitch into the right-field bleachers and now it was 8-5, though Sturtze regrouped to get the final out of the seventh.

If it seemed like the crisis had been averted, it wasn’t. In the eighth, Tom Gordon, who had been the bridge to Mariano Rivera all season, faltered. With two on and two out, Ortiz hit a rope to left-center and it looked like Matsui was going to track it down. Instead the ball hit off the heel of his glove as he crashed into the wall and it went for a two-run triple. Suddenly the Red Sox were jumping up and down in their dugout, trailing just 8-7 with the tying run 90 feet away.

Naturally, Torre’s next move was to bring in Rivera, even though the superstar closer had just returned from his native Panama earlier in the day. He had gone home to bury two relatives who were electrocuted on his property a few days earlier, but he let it be known that he was ready to go if needed.

“I didn’t see him until I shook his hand at the end of the game,” Torre said. “Mel (Stottlemyre) had gone in the clubhouse and had talked to him, and he said, ‘I’m fine. I’m ready to go.’ Mel tells me that and then I feel pretty good. I don’t think I trust anybody more than I trust Mariano. When he tells you he’s O.K., he’s O.K. He’s special, there’s no question.”

Now, it was no secret that of all the opponents Rivera faced during his Hall of Fame career, the Red Sox gave him the most trouble. By far. In fact, there were times when the Red Sox made Rivera look like just another closer, but this was not one of those nights.

Rivera got Millar to pop out to end the threat in the eighth, and after the Yankees gave him some breathing room in the bottom half when Alex Rodriguez and Gary Sheffield singled and both raced home on a clutch two-run double by Bernie Williams, Rivera pushed the door open for the Red Sox in the ninth before slamming it shut.

He allowed two singles which brought to the plate with one out and representing the potential tying run, the same Bill Mueller who had hit the three-run walk-off homer against Rivera in that memorable July 24 game at Fenway. This time, Mueller tapped one right back to Rivera who calmly started a 1-6-3 game-ending double play. Phew!

“Well, I mean, it was tough leaving my family there,” Rivera said. “I wanted to be with my family, but there’s nothing that I can do, so I talked to my wife and I talked to the family, that I need to be (at the game), and that’s the reason why I’m here. I have a job to do and I have 24 players that were waiting for me and a manager that are happy for me to be here and I’m happy to be here, also. It went well.”

Had all of that not taken place, Matsui would have been the man in the headlines after going 3-for-5 with two doubles, a single and five RBI. It was his RBI double that started an onslaught against hobbled Red Sox starter Curt Schilling during a two-run first inning, and his ringing three-run double during a four-run third that ended Schilling’s night, the shortest and worst of the 19 postseason games he pitched in his career.

“If we’d sent anyone else but me out there, we’d have won this game,” Schilling said. “These guys (his teammates) are amazing the way they’ve hit this year. We need a starting pitcher who will give them a chance. That wasn’t me. If I can’t go out there with something better than tonight I am not going back out there. It’s not about me, it’s about winning a world championship. If I can’t do better than that, I won’t take the ball again.”

Well, more on that to come later (hint hint, the bloody sock).

When Matsui joined the Yankees in 2003, he came to Gotham with the nickname Godzilla and expectations that seemed to dwarf both the city and the fictional monster. During his 10 years with the Yomiuri Giants in Japan’s Central League, Matsui was a three-time league MVP, a nine-time All-Star, and he cracked 332 home runs including 50 in 2002, compiled a .304 average, a .413 on-base percentage and a .996 OPS.

Typically a dead pull hitter, the short porch in the Bronx seemed tailor-made for his swing, but in his first two months in pinstripes Matsui was struggling. Yes, he was getting on base, but at the end of May he had only three home runs and the problem was his inability to hit the two-seam fastball, a pitch he rarely faced in Japan.

During that early stretch he made his debut in the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry when the teams met at Fenway and he admitted to being a bit overwhelmed by its intensity. In those first three games he went 3-for-13, all singles, and of the 10 outs he made, seven were harmless grounders to the right side of the infield and he left Boston wondering how he could turn it around.

“In Japan as a home run hitter, I was able to have results and statistics at pretty high levels, but here it’s difficult to put up somewhat higher numbers,” he told The Sporting News. “In Japan, they throw the ball outside the strike zone and make you swing at balls. Here they are more aggressive and make you swing inside the strike zone. The adjustment has been difficult. If I continued to play the way I played in Japan, it would be very difficult to adjust here. I feel it’s important to change your approach accordingly. I definitely feel that difficulty, even on a daily basis.”

But things began to turn for Matsui on June 5 in Cincinnati. During a 10-2 Yankees blowout he went 4-for-5 with three doubles, a home run and three RBI. Over his next 28 games he went on a lethal tear batting .449 with an on-base of .524 and an OPS of 1.244. During that scalding stretch the Yankees split a four-game series at home against the Red Sox and Matsui went 8-for-17.

It was then that he realized he could handle anything major league pitchers had to offer.

“I did have a little anger, a little upset feeling during that time,” he told The Sporting News. “Why doesn’t this work? Why doesn’t that work? When I started to change my mentality, be more enthusiastic towards changing the approach, that’s when things started to turn.”

He finished the season with only 16 homers, but he had 42 doubles and drove home 106 because he batted .335 with runners in scoring positon. In the 2003 postseason he hit .281 with two homers and 11 RBI in 17 games, and then during the 2004 regular season he was exactly the player the Yankees hoped they were getting as he hit .298 with a .390 on-base, a .912 OPS, 31 home runs which would prove to be his MLB high, and 108 RBI.

“I don’t think there’s anyone you would want up with runners on base more than him,” Torre said. “He has an idea when he goes up there. It’s not always going to work, but he’s never in between and he’s not afraid of the field. When he gets in a situation where there are men in scoring position and he has knowledge of the pitcher, he just has a feel of what pitch he wants to hit.”

Matsui had now played eight postseason games against the Red Sox and he improved his average to .354 with five doubles and nine RBI. He had grown accustomed to the out-sized intensity of the rivalry and was now thriving amidst it.

“I was aware of the rivalry in Japan,” said Matsui. “But having experienced it last year and this year, there’s no doubt it’s more than what I imagined.”

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Red Sox vaunted offense was muted by surprisingly effective Jon Lieber and the Yankees opened a two games to none lead.