Long Season-Opening Road Trip Ends on a Winning Note

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, Derek Jeter’s clutch hitting delivered a victory over the Rays as the Yankees ended a season-opening three-city, nine-game road trip. Lets get to it.

TAMPA BAY (April 15, 2009) - With his team anxious to finally get off the road after more than six weeks of spring training followed by a three-city, nine-game road trip to open the regular season, Derek Jeter cooked up just the right potion to make sure that flight back to New York was a pleasant one.

With defending American League champion Tampa Bay clinging to a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning, Jeter doubled and came around to score the tying run on a double by Johnny Damon. And then in the ninth, after Cody Ransom doubled, Jeter drove him home with a go-ahead single.

The captain being the captain, and when Mariano Rivera recorded the final three outs to secure a 4-3 victory which gave the Yankees a series win at Tropicana Field, the Yankees boarded their chartered jet bound for New York having won five of the nine road games.

“It’s a lot better than going the other way,” manager Joe Girardi said. “Nine games on the road to start out, that’s not an easy task. To come here for three, that’s not easy at all. To end up 5-4 and win two series, that’s big.

“Our guys stayed after it and stayed after it. We understand how good of a team this is. We were reminded of it every day. They raised the flags on Monday, had a ring ceremony Tuesday, and gave their rings to the employees today. It was a constant reminder of who we were playing.”

Saying the Yankees had been on the road for two months wasn’t quite accurate. They had actually been in New York briefly to play two exhibition games at the new Yankee Stadium, sort of a dry run for the home opener. But as Jeter said, “It still feels like we’ve been on the road the whole time. We didn’t even have time to unpack. The season doesn’t start until you have that first home opener.”

Well, be that as it may, the reality was that the season was nine games old and the Yankees won two of their first three series - they dropped two of three games to the Orioles, then took two of three from both the Royals and Rays - and now would be heading north to officially open their new ballpark the next day against Cleveland.

“I told you our season wasn’t over after two games,” Jeter quipped, recalling the 0-2 start in Baltimore. “We’ve been playing pretty good now after losing the first two games and it all starts with pitching. Andy (Pettitte) was remarkable on the mound, just following up what A.J. (Burnett) did yesterday. We just want to get the confidence rolling now and play well, especially with the pitching staff we have.”

Not surprisingly, Jeter played a key role in getting the Yankees off to their respectable start, especially with Alex Rodriguez sidelined. Across the nine games he went 11-for-38, hit two homers and drove in seven runs as the Yankees never scored fewer than four runs in any of the games.

Of course, they lost four because they got a bad start from CC Sabathia on Opening Day in Baltimore, and then two from Chien-Ming Wang, one in Baltimore and the other in the first game against the Rays who rolled to a 15-5 victory.

With a front end of the rotation that included Sabathia, Burnett, and Pettitte, it was a first-world problem for the Yankees that their No. 4 starter, Wang, had gotten off to a poor beginning. Still, in the loaded AL East, which had produced the last two AL pennant winners - the Red Sox in 2007, the Rays in 2008 - the Yankees needed Wang to get things figured out.

Against Pettitte in the rubber match against Tampa Bay, the Yankees fell behind 2-0 in the third but Robinson Cano’s two-run homer tied it in the fourth. Carlos Pena put Tampa Bay on top with a solo homer off Pettitte in the bottom of the fourth, and the score stayed at 3-2 until Jeter’s heroics at the end.

“They’re a good team and we’re going to have to show that we can beat them,” said Pettitte after giving up three runs in 7.1 innings. “It’s not like we’re the defending American League champions. Any time you can come in, play a really good team and take two of three, you have to be happy with that.

“It’s been a long trip. We’re just excited to get home and looking forward to breaking in a new ballpark. It’s going to be an exciting day for us.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 2 went for the Yankees:

• April 13: A second straight disastrous outing for Chien-Ming Wang as he gave up eight runs and didn’t record an out in the second inning of a 15-5 loss at Tampa Bay. Carlos Pena drove in six runs for the defending AL champion Rays.

• April 14: A.J. Burnett out up a second straight winning start allowing two runs on three hits with nine strikeouts over eight innings in a 7-2 victory over the Rays. “He did a good job of not giving us anything over the plate to hit,” said the Rays’ Evan Longoria. “He was throwing 95 on the corners. That makes it difficult.”

NEXT SATURDAY: It may have been exciting, as Pettitte said, but it certainly wasn’t much fun as the Yankees were bombed by Cleveland in the first official game at the new Yankee Stadium.