Yankees Open Series in Minnesota With an Easy 5-1 Victory

The Twins came into Tuesday night having won 17 of their last 20 games, but the Yankees went up to Minnesota and opened this three-game series with a no-nonsense and surprisingly easy 5-1 victory. And in Pinstripe Past, we celebrate the birthday of Earle Combs who was born on May 14, 1899 and died on July 21, 1976. You can make a convincing argument that Combs was the greatest leadoff hitter in Yankees history. Lets get to it.

May 14: Yankees 5, Twins 1

Every time Carlos Rodon pitches, it feels like the opposition is pounding on him, and here’s why. Rodon has allowed 8.4 hits per nine innings across his nine starts which is tied for 57th in MLB with Cal Quantrill of the Rockies. Any time you’re tied with a Rockies player or pitcher in a category, that’s probably not a good thing.

Last year he was even worse as he allowed 9.1 hits per nine innings. But here’s one of the differences between Rodon horrendous Yankees debut in 2023 and his solid start to 2024: Last year he also walked 3.9 men per nine and with all those runners on base, many of them scored because Rodon could not escape trouble.

This year, he is walking just 2.6 per nine, on pace to be the lowest mark of his career, and when he’s been in trouble, he usually has found a way out.

Case in point was Tuesday when he gave up a leadoff homer to Ryan Jeffers, then a pair of singles to Carlos Correa and Manuel Margot. This game could have gotten away from him very quickly, but he struck out Carlos Santana to end the threat and from there, he was excellent.

“Just had to lock in,” Rodon said of his rebound from the first inning. “I gotta give it up to my teammates for really good defense out there today. Some hard balls hit and they made a lot of plays. Scored some runs and we won the game, that’s what’s important.”

Rodon overcame a high pitch count in the first three innings and wound up going six, and after that rocky first he never allowed another run as the Twins managed only three more hits. And, Rodon did not walk a batter all night, which is the third start in a row he’s done that. It’s just the third time in his career he’s had three straight walk-less starts.

“It’s big. You want to make them earn it,” Aaron Boone. “If he can eliminate that, with some of the swing-and-miss stuff that he has, it allows you to work around some where they do square you up, where they do create traffic, and you’re not doing it by issuing free passes. It just sets you up for more success.”

Here are my observations:

➤ Boone let Rodon start the seventh because lefty-swinging Santana was up and it didn’t work out as he singled. So on came Ian Hamilton and he immediately gave up a single to Edouard Julien so suddenly, the Yankees’ 5-1 lead was being threatened.

➤ Hamilton has been shaky in several of his appearances this season and this looked like it would be another one, but he really buckled down. A flyout and two strikeouts ended the seventh with no damage, and he had an easy seven-pitch eighth. Clay Holmes then entered in a non-save situation in the ninth because he had pitched just once since May 4 and needed the work, but he didn’t get much. The Twins went down 1-2-3 on six quick pitches.

➤ The offense had a weird night. It produced 13 hits which was great, but the Yankees also left 11 men on base. Still, that’s a quibble because they scored five times and it was more than enough to win.

➤ In the second inning, three straight singles by Anthony Rizzo, Gleyber Torres and Austin Wells loaded the bases with no outs against Chris Paddack before Oswaldo Cabrera’s sacrifice fly and Anthony Volpe’s double made it 2-1. Torres had another single in the third so maybe he’s finally starting to show some signs of life. It’s only his eighth multi-hit game of the year.

➤ Giancarlo Stanton hit a line-drive homer to left in the third that made it 3-1. And then in the fourth, the Yankees stretched it to 5-1 with a nice two-out rally. Juan Soto walked, Aaron Judge dribbled one to third for an infield single, and then Alex Verdugo - who has really been struggling and was 0-for-17 - lined a double to left-center for two runs with Judge hustling from first to score.

➤ Some injury news: DJ LeMahieu is hoping to try again on a rehab assignment later this week, probably at Double-A Somerset; Jasson Dominguez started what will be a lengthy rehab assignment Tuesday at Single-A Tampa, though he’s only DH’ing as his elbow isn’t ready for game throwing; Oswald Peraza is working his way back at Somerset and could be available for recall to the Yankees, if they choose, in a couple weeks; Tommy Kahnle is pitching and was moved up to Somerset to continue his progress; Lou Trivino is going the other way though as his rehab was shutdown because of his forearm soreness so now, we won’t see the reliever until at least July, maybe later.

Overlooked Earle Combs Was a Leadoff Savant

Back in the era when baseball was only played in the daytime, there was a term that became synonymous with the dynastic Yankees of the late 1920s and early 1930s: “Five O’Clock Lightning.”

Its roots were first planted in the 1927 season when the Yankees won 110 out of 154 games, swept the wholly overmatched Pirates in the World Series, and, led by Babe Ruth and his record 60 home runs, their batting order became known as Murderers Row.

The leadoff man for that team was center fielder Earle Combs, arguably the greatest leadoff hitter in the history of the franchise and also the man who coined the term “Five O’Clock Lightning.” It was a reference to the fact that so many of the Yankees victories came in the later innings which on most days would have been right around 5 o’clock in the afternoon. It was such a popular moniker that if you take a cruise around Amazon.com, you will see it became the title of numerous Yankees-themed books.

Combs was born on May 14, 1899 near Louisville, Kentucky and he grew up intending to become a teacher, not a future baseball Hall of Famer. He attended Eastern Kentucky State Normal School and enrolled in their two-year teaching program, and in his spare time he played for the school’s baseball team where he was far and away the best player.

After he graduated he returned home and taught in one-room schoolhouses while moonlighting in the semipro Bluegrass League, and pretty soon he came to realize that playing baseball was more fun, not much mention more profitable. Of course his career change was possible because he was such a terrific player and he eventually drew interest from the Louisville Colonels who competed in the Double-A American Association and his life changed forever.

He went to Louisville in 1922 where his future Yankees manager and Hall of Famer Joe McCarthy was running the team, and it didn’t start well. In his first game he made three errors in center field, the last of which cost the Colonels the game. As he sat glumly in the locker room figuring he’d be returning to teaching, McCarthy came over and said to him, “Look, if I didn’t think you belonged in center field on this club, I wouldn’t put you out there. And I’m going to keep you there.”

Combs soon became an excellent fielder but it was his bat that really caught fire. He hit .344 in 1922, then soared to .380 in 1923 and major league teams were lining up for his services, though one team, the A’s of Connie Mack, dropped out of the bidding because Mack did not think Combs would become a great major leaguer. The Yankees disagreed and their $50,000 offer - pretty hefty in those days - was the one Combs accepted and many years later, Mack admitted his evaluation of Combs was one of the worst mistakes of his career.

“I’ve heard much about this fellow Combs,” Yankees manager Miller Huggins said in spring training prior to the 1924 season. “They say that he is a wonder. If he’s half as good as they say, I think he’ll give Whitey Witt a stiff fight for the center field berth. The other two are fixtures - Meusel and Ruth.”

It was quite a fight indeed, and while Combs didn’t initially beat out Witt, he made the roster of the defending World Series champions serving as a pinch-hitter and late-inning defensive replacement. When Witt struggled at the plate during the first month, Huggins gave Combs his first MLB start on May 31 against the A’s of Mack which was a bit karmic.

Combs was an instant success, but two weeks later he broke his ankle sliding into home plate in Cleveland and his season effectively ended with him sitting on a .400 batting average in 39 plate appearances.

In 1925, there was no denying that Combs was the best man to patrol Yankee Stadium’s vast center field. None other than Ruth told the Daily News in the spring of 1925, “I suppose Hug will start Earle Combs in center field. Now there’s a willing kid who ought to do himself a lot of good if last summer’s ankle hasn’t slowed him down. He’s got plenty of spirit.”

Combs played 150 games, hit .342 with a .411 on-base percentage, and center field was all his for the next nine years, during which the Yankees won three World Series.

In that famous 1927 season, Combs led the major leagues with 726 plate appearances, 648 at bats and 23 triples, while his 231 hits led the American League. That hit total was a Yankees record that stood until 1986 when Don Mattingly made 238 hits, and it remains No. 2 on the all-time list.

“If you had nine Combs’ on your ballclub, you could go to bed every night and sleep like a baby,” said Huggins, who died late in the 1929 season, eventually opening the door for McCarthy to become manager in 1931.

Combs played at least 137 games every season from 1925 to 1932, then dipped to 122 games in 1933, but it was in 1934 that his injury luck really began to wear out. Then 35 years old, Combs was still the primary center fielder, but during a game in St. Louis at Sportsman’s Park he crashed into the wall chasing a fly ball and suffered knee and shoulder injuries but more serious, a fractured skull. He was taken off the field on a stretcher and spent two months in the hospital, part of that time on the critical list.

No one was sure if Combs’ career was over, but he recovered that offseason and went to spring training in 1935 confident he would make the team and regain his position.

“I wasn’t thinking of my 1935 contract when I crashed into the wall at St. Louis and I’m not thinking about it now,” he said. “I was thinking only of winning for the Yankees when I hit that wall and I’m thinking mostly of winning for the Yankees now as I prepare to go to the St. Petersburg camp. The Yankees have always been fair to me and I’m sure they always will be.”

Sure enough, Yankees general manager Ed Barrow re-signed him and Combs was going along just fine, though his .282 average in late August was the lowest of his career. Unfortunately, that’s exactly where it stayed because on Aug. 25, 1935, he collided with teammate Red Rolfe at Chicago’s Comiskey Park chasing a fly ball. He suffered a shoulder injury which pretty much ended his career. He actually did make three more appearances in September as a pinch runner, but he never batted or played the field again.

“I reckon I must be jinxed and my number’s up,” he said shortly before announcing his retirement. “Looks like I better get out of baseball before anything worse happens. I was getting near the end of my string anyhow. So it will probably be back to the farm and here’s hoping one of my Kentucky cows don’t step on me.”

Combs’ 12 years in New York produced wondrous numbers, a .325 average and .397 on-base percentage, 1,866 hits including 154 triples, 58 homers and 633 RBIs.

He joined the Yankees’ coaching staff under Joe McCarthy in 1936 and one of his first duties was to take a rookie named Joe DiMaggio under his wing and teach him the intricacies of playing center field at Yankee Stadium. He stayed with the Yankees through 1944, later coached for the Browns, Red Sox and Phillies before retiring to his 400-acre farm in Kentucky in 1954.

He was not selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the writers, but the veterans’ committee elected him in 1970 and he modestly said, “I thought the Hall of Fame was for superstars, not just average players like me.”

⚾ May 14, 1996: George Steinbrenner gave Dwight Gooden a chance to resurrect his sagging MLB career when he signed him as a free agent after he had sat out all of 1995 due to a drug suspension. The former Met great began paying dividends for the team in just his seventh start in pinstripes as he became the eighth Yankee to throw a no-hitter in New York’s 2-0 victory over the Mariners. Gooden recalled what the Boss told him when he signed him. “Stay out of trouble, pitch hard, and everything will work out.” That’s what Doc did. “When I first came back, I wanted to get an opportunity with the Mets, but they didn't want me back,” Gooden said. “But when George gave me a chance to come back to New York, it was all about doing what was right not just for me, but for the fans and for George.”

⚾ May 16, 1932: In a season in which the Yankees returned to prominence and won the World Series for the fourth and final time in Babe Ruth’s tenure with the team, this Yankees squad led the AL in runs scored with 1,002 and was second in home runs to the A’s with 160. But the pitching staff was every bit as dynamic as it led the AL in ERA (3.98), shutouts (11), complete games (96) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.39). And on this day, Lefty Gomez shutout the Indians 8-0 for the Yankees’ fourth straight shutout. Johnny Allen against the Browns, George Pipgras against the White Sox, and Red Ruffing against the White Sox had preceded Gomez. Counting the last four innings of a game against the Browns on May 10, the Yankees had a 40-inning scoreless streak.

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