Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 9

In today’s edition, Bernie Williams hit a huge home run that helped the Yankees avert a sweep in the final regular-season series with Boston that would have really tightened the AL East race. Joe Torre, perhaps caught up in the emotion of it all, said it was the most significant regular-season win to date in his eight-year tenure with the Yankees.

Not long after the ticker tape and confetti had been swept out of the Canyon of Heroes in October 1998, the Yankees were confronted with a monumental decision. What should they do with center fielder Bernie Williams?

Then 29 years old, the Yankee lifer was eligible for free agency and what a time for that to happen. He had just helped the Yankees win their second World Series in three years, this time on a team that will forever be considered one of the greatest in the history of baseball, and there was a strong case to be made that he was the best player on that team.

On the way to a major league record 125 victories counting the playoffs, several Yankees had produced outstanding seasons, but no one could match the resume of Williams. He became the first player in baseball history to win a batting crown (.339), a Gold Glove, and a World Series title in the same season, and for good measure he also reached base at a .422 clip, slugged 26 homers which helped him to a .997 OPS, drove in 97 runs, and stole 15 bases.

Yet rather incredibly, the Yankees had not shown much interest in bringing back one of their true homegrown success stories, a player they had groomed in their farm system all the way back to 1986 when they signed him out of Puerto Rico at the age of 17 and then reaped the rewards of his blossoming stardom since he first debuted in the Bronx in 1991.

Every indication - both from his agent Scott Boras and the team - pointed to Williams signing with another club for the type of superstar money the Yankee organization, for some reason, wasn’t sure he deserved. George Steinbrenner was never averse to spending lavishly on big-name free agents, yet he had battled one of his own at every turn, first during strangely contentious arbitration hearings in 1995 and 1997, and now this standoff.

It wasn’t until a certain team began making overtures that Steinbrenner finally came to his senses. Right around Thanksgiving, the Red Sox made Williams a seven-year, $91 million offer, and Steinbrenner knew damn well he could not allow Williams to go to Boston. And the reality was that Williams didn’t want to leave, so even though the Yankee offer was a little less, seven years at $87.5 million, it would still be the richest contract to date they had ever given out and Williams happily accepted.

“All I’m looking forward to is having a great second career with the organization,” Williams said after the ink was dry on the contract. And in the four years since, Williams had made three more All-Star teams, batted no worse than .307, and driven in at least 100 runs three times.

He had continued to roll at the start of 2003 and was batting .390 as late as April 23 when the Yankees were 18-3 and seemingly destined to run away with the AL East before shoulder surgery stopped him in his tracks for more than a month and a half.

Since his return he had hit just .263 with only three home runs in 199 plate appearances, but with the Yankees on the verge of getting swept at home by the Red Sox and seeing what was a 7.5-game lead just two weeks earlier be reduced to a half-game, no one was surprised that it was Williams who on Sept. 7 came through in one of the biggest moments of the season.

In a scoreless game that had been pitched brilliantly by New York’s David Wells and Boston’s Jeff Suppan, Jorge Posada drew a two-out walk in the bottom of the seventh inning and Williams - mired in a 9-for-60 slump - followed with a two-run homer to right-center that sent 55,212 people into a frenzy.

The teams would trade single runs in the eighth, and then Mariano Rivera worked around a leadoff single by Kevin Millar in the ninth to wrap up a 3-1 victory which not only gave him his 33rd save, it clinched the season series between the two teams 10-9. That was no small detail because it meant homefield advantage for a one-game playoff if they were to finish tied for first in the division.

Joe Torre, perhaps caught up in the emotion of it all, said this was the most significant regular-season win of his eight-year tenure with the Yankees. That was a broad stroke indeed, but there was some merit because in finishing runner-up to the Yankees the past five years, this was the closest Boston had ever been to New York in September.

Torre knew 1.5 games ahead was better than a half-game, and so did Boston manager Grady Little who said, “I’d guess if you’re good at math, you would definitely say that’s what it is. There’s a big difference between being three games back in the loss column and one game back.”

Williams’ massive home run salvaged a tension-wracked weekend for New York because along with getting embarrassed 9-3 and 11-0 in the first two games, Steinbrenner had vented to reporters as he was so often willing to do when things weren’t going well.

“A few guys out there are making a lot of money and not producing; a few guys need a kick in the butt to get going,” he said after the first game, specifically meaning Jason Giambi and Alfonso Soriano without actually saying their names. And Torre and his coaches were in Steinbrenner’s crosshairs, too. “I think they better be a little uneasy,” the Boss said, a comment that perhaps fueled the level of importance Torre attached to this one victory.

As much as Williams was the hero, so too was Wells. His previous four starts had been nightmarish - the Yankees had lost all four and his ERA was 9.67 in 22.1 innings - but against the best lineup in baseball, Wells looked like the 1998 version of himself when he went 18-4 for the Yankees.

“I knew we needed a big game and I was just happy to provide and do the job,” Wells said after allowing just one unearned run on five hits and a walk. “I stepped up to the occasion, that’s something I haven’t been doing of late. It’s a nice feeling. You don’t want to come in and get swept by the Red Sox. Guys were focused. You have to get a little attitude and that’s what the guys had today.”

The team with the attitude the first two nights was certainly the Red Sox. By now it had become abundantly clear that this was one confident, fun-loving bunch who soon enough would be lovingly referring to themselves as “idiots.”

After the disappointment of dropping the final two games of the series the previous weekend at Fenway which left them 5.5 games back, the Red Sox won three straight games while the Yankees dropped two of three to Toronto and just like that, they were two games closer.

And then they were two more games closer when Pedro Martinez - shaking off a season-long malaise against New York - pitched six innings of one-run ball with nine strikeouts while his teammates teed off on Andy Pettitte for eight runs in the first three innings.

Pettitte yielded three separate RBI singles in the first inning and another in the second, and then a game-breaking three-run triple by Johnny Damon which sent the lefty to the showers and the Yankees never threatened in a 9-3 loss.

“Pedro was outstanding from his first pitch all the way through his six innings,” Little said. “That was a different pitcher than they saw last week. He was as good as you’re going to see.”

Pedro was so relaxed that he was even able to laugh at one of those classic Manny being Manny moments in the fourth inning. With Boston comfortably ahead 8-0, Ramirez went back to the warning track in left and made a nice catch on a fly ball by Williams for the second out, then absentmindedly tossed the ball into the stands and started trotting toward the infield thinking the inning was over.

He was completely oblivious as his teammates just watched him, and Pedro had to put his glove over his face to hide his laughter. When Ramirez also caught the third out, the Red Sox mobbed him as if he was a hero. “I got to get a new brain for his head,” David Ortiz said afterward. Yeah, these easy-going Red Sox were a much different team than the uptight, always under pressure Yankees.

There was more laughter the next day, a beautiful Saturday afternoon that was ruined by the game, this New York loss even worse than the night before. Roger Clemens, making his fifth start against Boston and looking to win for the third time, imploded in the fourth inning by allowing six runs, five of them earned, on six hits and two walks, one of the worst innings of his career.

On the other side, Tim Wakefield’s knuckleball was dancing all over the place and the Yankees flailed away helplessly, managing just four hits and three walks in his seven scoreless innings. This was the fourth time Wakefield and Clemens had squared off in 2003, and each had won twice.

“He probably gets overlooked sometimes, but he’s never forgotten inside this locker room,” catcher Doug Mirabelli said of Boston’s longest-tenured player. “Maybe to the fans. If they think Boston Red Sox, they probably don’t think Tim Wakefield, but last year he was hands-down our MVP. The team knew it. This year he’s been a rock in the starting rotation. His won-loss record might not show it (10-6), but he keeps us in ballgames for a long time. That’s his job.”

Millar opened the rout with a solo homer in the second, Garciaparra launched a two-run shot in the catastrophic fourth, and Todd Walker put the ugly exclamation point on the day with a three-run bomb off reliever Gabe White in the eighth.

Later Saturday back in Boston, Bruce Springsteen was playing the first rock concert ever at Fenway, and as entertaining as that surely was because there is nothing like a Springsteen concert, the entertainment value of this Red Sox romp was nearly as good.

“We’re playing as good as we have all year,” said Walker. “We’re swinging the bats well, we’re pitching, we’re playing defense. It’s fun. I think everybody anticipates us being in the playoffs and has stepped it up a bit.”

Now the question would be, would the Red Sox make the playoffs as winners of the AL East, or would they remain stuck behind the Yankees for a sixth straight season and go in as a very dangerous wild card team?

“Momentum is something we haven’t really had all year,” Damon said. “This team hasn’t had a long winning streak all year but we feel very confident and feel this is ours for the taking right now.”

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Yankees won the AL East, Boston earned the wild-card spot, and then both teams took care of business in the divisional round, setting up the AL Championship Series that everyone wanted to see.