Hardball Hyperbole: Chapter 5

In today’s edition, during the second 2003 series between the teams May 26-28 at Yankee Stadium, history was on the line in the opener. Roger Clemens was trying for his 300th career victory, but the Red Sox were having no part of it and they denied him. Still, as the Yankees had done a week earlier, they took two out of the three games.

You know the old saying “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” In Roger Clemens’ case, he probably shouldn’t have counted his 300th career victory before it actually happened.

When he strode to the Yankee Stadium mound on a chilly, rainy Memorial Day afternoon, Clemens did so with a brand new glove embroidered with a very cool, specially-designed for the occasion monogram that featured his image behind the number 300 and the Major League Baseball and Yankees logos on the wrist covering.

Not only did that piss off the Red Sox, it led to manager Grady Little protesting to umpire crew chief Joe West that the white 300 was going to be a distraction for his hitters. West agreed and made Clemens change gloves.

“I didn’t have to go up there, so it didn’t bother me,” Little said, “but if it bothers my players, I’ve got to do something.” Gee, gamesmanship in a Yankees-Red Sox game?

For the 55,093 on hand hoping to witness history as Clemens was bidding to become just the 21st man to reach 300 victories, the 14th who began playing in the 20th century, the whole glove imbroglio probably should have been a sign that it wasn’t meant to be.

“This game wasn’t just hyped as ‘Come see Roger Clemens go for his 300th win,’” said Boston’s Kevin Millar, who did his part to ruin Clemens’ big day with a single and a sacrifice fly which helped Boston to an 8-4 victory. “It was hyped as a sure thing: ‘Come watch the old Red Sox star get number 300 against his old team.’ A sure thing? Our job was to try and win a friggin’ game. The odds are against you. The Rocket’s home, he’s going for his 300th win, the storybook’s there, but I think you have to tip your hats to us. We had good at-bats all day, from Johnny Damon on down, 1 to 9.”

Perhaps it was the 102-minute weather delay, maybe it was the irritation with having to change gloves, or maybe Clemens’ right hand was still bothering him after he’d taken a line drive off it in his previous start when he beat the Red Sox for win No. 299. In reality, it was this: Clemens just wasn’t very good and the red-hot Red Sox made him pay.

He exited with two outs in the sixth inning having thrown a laborious 133 pitches, on which he allowed eight earned runs - just one shy of his career-worst - on 10 hits and two walks to the voracious Boston lineup.

“It was just great that I had the opportunity,” Clemens said. “It didn’t work out. But to me, I don’t want it to supersede what’s going on here. It will be nice to get it and get it over with and put a nice streak together. That’s something we need to do.”

On that point, there was no doubt. The Yankees’ tremendous 20-4 start was long in the rearview mirror, and speaking of rearview mirrors, that’s where the Yankees were for Boston. This loss was New York’s fifth straight, coming on the heels of a terrible four-game sweep at the hands of the Blue Jays which had the aggravated Yankees fans booing the home team. With a 9-18 mark since that blazing beginning, the Yankees fell 2.5 games behind Boston.

“Everything was set up; it was a perfect atmosphere,” Derek Jeter said. “But we didn’t show up, that’s the bottom line. Everybody’s trying. It just seems everything is going wrong at the same time. Usually, your pitchers are not pitching well but you’re hitting. Or you’re not hitting well but your pitchers are winning some games. But here, it’s a combination. We’re not pitching, we’re not hitting.”

Clemens worked an easy 11-pitch first, but then came a 35-pitch second where he struck out the side but also yielded three hits capped by soon-to-be-former Red Sox third baseman Shea Hillenbrand’s RBI single. Thereafter, every inning was a grind as the Red Sox worked deep counts which produced two runs in the third and two in the fourth for a 5-0 lead.

Here, the Yankees finally made some headway against Tim Wakefield after he’d pitched three hitless innings as they scored three runs, all with two outs in the fourth. And they were poised for more in the fifth after Wakefield walked the bases loaded, but Raul Mondesi hit a hard grounder up the middle only to have Nomar Garciaparra glove it and turn it into an inning-ending double play.

Clemens then crumbled in the sixth after retiring the first two men. The next three singled and they all ended up scoring to blow the game open.

Torre was asked about the tailspin his team was in and whether he sensed the end of it was near. “We’re going to have to find out,” he said. “I have great confidence in the club. They don’t, not like we did when we were blowing people away earlier this year. Right now it seems like we’re going uphill all the time. We don’t wait for sympathy - no one will give it to us. We have to work our way out of it because that’s the way you win.”

Which is exactly what they did over the next two nights.

In the middle game of the series, Andy Pettitte did what he so often did during his career with the Yankees. With the team in need of a strong, shutdown performance, he pitched two outs into the eighth inning and gave up just two runs on five hits and a walk as the Yankees brought the hammer down on their losing streak.

Pettitte told reporters afterward that as he was arriving at the stadium, the daily cache of fans gathered outside the players’ entrance were imploring him to end the misery.

“They weren’t booing me or anything. They were yelling, ‘Stop the bleeding!’ I told them, ‘I hear you,’” Pettitte said, smiling at the recollection.

He certainly did, and he also had help from the Yankee bats which finally woke up. After six straight games where they failed to score more than four runs, they erupted for a 14-hit assault on Bruce Chen and three relievers that resulted in an easy 11-3 victory.

“I feel like we won a World Series game tonight,” Pettitte said. “We’ve been down, so this was a big win.”

Pettitte retired the first 10 men he faced and he was staked to a 2-0 lead when Derek Jeter led off the bottom of the first with a solo homer and Robin Ventura hit a solo shot in the second. Boston finally got to Pettitte for a run in the fifth, but Todd Zeile delivered a two-run homer in the bottom of the fifth which gave Pettitte a little breathing room until the eighth when the Yankees blew it open with a six-run rally, the key hit a two-run double by Jason Giambi, one of four the slumping first baseman had in this game.

Giambi had started terribly in 2003 and entering this game he was batting .207 and his OPS was just .714, not what George Steinbrenner wanted to see from the free agent he signed for $120 million in 2002. Naturally, the Boss had taken his concerns to the media like he always did when the highest-paid members of his team weren’t producing to the level he demanded.

“It never really concerned me,” Giambi said, referring to his season-long struggles and Steinbrenner turning up the heat. “I still came to the ballpark ready to play every day. Joe would ask if I needed a mental day off, and I’d say no. This may be the day that changes everything.”

Giambi wasn’t the sole problem, though, and that’s why between the last series with the Red Sox and this one, Steinbrenner had called organizational meetings seeking answers to the nearly month-long malaise.

Yet in the next breath, he said, “We’re going to try to fix the machine because it’s not running right right now. I’m not happy with (the team). We have a helluva problem on our hands, teams are beating up on us. We have to get straightened out. I think Joe will get us straightened out. It better happen. He knows what has to be done, but he also has been given everything he has asked for.”

For one night, all was well after such a beatdown of the Sox. And then it got even better the next night when the Yankees pulled out a 6-5 victory which gave them two straight series victories over their arch rival and pulled them back within a half-game of the top rung in the division.

This one, though, came at the cost of severe agita. The Yankees jumped on Boston starter Derek Lowe for four runs in the first two innings on the strength of RBI doubles by Jorge Posada and Zeile, and then a two-run double by Hideki Matsui. And Alfonso Soriano crushed a long solo homer off Mike Timlin in the seventh that made it 5-0.

The way Mike Mussina was pitching, that lead could not have looked safer, and no one even blinked when Hillenbrand homered in the top of the eighth to make it 5-1. Mussina escaped further trouble, and Torre sent him back out to start the ninth rather than turn immediately to Mariano Rivera in a non-save situation.

But Mussina proceeded to walk Varitek and then gave up a single to Damon, so then it became a save situation and that’s when Torre made the call to Mo. And for one of those rare nights, Mo had nothing. A single by Bill Mueller loaded the bases and Garciaparra grounded a two-run single to left and now the sellout crowd began getting restless.

Rivera seemed to regain control when he retired Ramirez on a fly out and Millar on a fielders’ choice. But then Hillenbrand and Mueller delivered RBI singles that tied the game at 5-5, and it looked like the Red Sox would take the lead when Trot Nixon hit a sizzling grounder that caromed off Zeile’s glove at first base and was corralled barehanded by Soriano at second. Hillenbrand, starting from second base, was sent home by Red Sox third base coach Mike Cubbage and Soriano was able to fire a perfect throw to Posada who tagged out Hillenbrand.

“I can’t explain anything; they put the ball in play,” Rivera said of his first blown save of the season. “It’s horrible. You don’t go out there to do that, especially when your starter gives you eight strong innings. Those nights don’t happen too often, but they’re going to happen. What can you do? Move on. Thank goodness we won the game.”

And that’s because in the bottom of the ninth against Brandon Lyon, Matsui hit a one-out fly ball to left which Manny Ramirez butchered, a classic Manny being Manny moment. First he failed to make the catch, and then as Matsui was running to second Ramirez made a terrible throw to the infield and Matsui advanced to third.

Lyon was instructed to intentionally walk Soriano and Giambi to set up a force at home, but Posada walked on a 3-2 pitch to push across the winning run. One pitch earlier, Varitek thought Lyon had struck out Posada but umpire Joe West disagreed, prompting Varitek to rip off his mask, spike the ball into the ground, and yell at West.

“Were you near a TV monitor?” Little asked the gathered reporters afterward. “What did you think about the pitch? It’s on tape, just like a country full of people saw it.”

The Red Sox were not a happy bunch as they packed up and headed to the airport, but Todd Walker - playing for the first time in this rivalry - showed he had full appreciation for what it was all about.

“What a battle,” Walker said. “Outside of one or two games, these games with these guys have been battles, and I don’t anticipate anything different all year.”

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The Yankees dropped the first two games of a Fourth of July weekend four-game series, but rallied to win the last two as Byung-Hyun Kim, now with Boston, had another miserable time at Yankee Stadium. George Steinbrenner was so moved by his team’s performance, he actually shed some happy tears.