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Cliff Lee, Rangers shutout Yankess 8-0
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By Tim Brown
October 19, 2010
New York, NY – Cliff Lee didn’t just beat the New York Yankees, he humiliated them.
He turned their fans and he emptied their stadium and terrified their town.
From the moment the Texas Rangers stole him away from the Yankees more than three months ago, his role was to stand in this ballpark on a chilly mid-October night and win.
The Rangers did not ask him to keep them in the game, to do his best, to get through six and shake a few hands. They already had guys to do that. Their history is of guys like that.
They asked him to win, to stand there against the best lineup in the game, 50,000 people stomping and screaming, all those fancy banners whipped stiff in the wind.
Whatever it took.
Beat the Tampa Bay Rays twice. Beat the Yankees as often as necessary. Beat whoever else showed up.
On a Monday night at Yankee Stadium when the American League Championship Series underwent a dramatic shift in who’s running what around here, Lee went eight more scoreless innings. He struck out 13. He threw 122 pitches, two of which were turned around for hits. He would have thrown more pitches, too, except the Yankees’ bullpen rendered that overkill. So Lee, who’d consented to finish the Yankees by himself, zipped his jacket and watched the final three outs of the Rangers’ 8-0 win, the worst postseason shutout loss in Yankees history.
From a career of humble beginnings, he’s starting to run with men such as Koufax, as Gibson, as Hershiser. At 32, Lee reached his prime just as his ballclubs began reaching October, and the result is eight playoff starts, seven wins and a 1.26 ERA. Over three starts and 24 innings this postseason alone, he’s let in two runs, struck out 34 and walked one.
One.
“Every time he walks a guy, everybody turns to each other and says, ‘What happened?’ ” Rangers catcher Bengie Molina said. “He’s a special man.”
The crowd roared when Mark Teixeira took that 3-and-2 fastball with two out in the fourth inning for strike three.
It was Rocky bloodying Drago, the cornerman encouraging Rocky, “You cut him! You hurt him! You see? You see? He’s not a machine, he’s a man!”
Except then Lee was still a strike-throwing machine and pummeled Rocky anyway.
Those sorts of moments – three-ball counts, the random baserunner, the instant before the bottoms of innings when Lee hadn’t yet bounded up the dugout stairs – had to count for the Yankees as rallies. It’s all they had. Nothing worked. Lee simply went back to the strike zone, cutters after four-seamers after curveballs after two-seamers. He was the same guy he was against the Rays six days earlier. By the time Jorge Posada(notes) ended the no-hitter mini-drama in the fifth inning with a flare single to right field, Lee hadn’t allowed a hit over 24 Rays and Yankees.
The backdrop changes. The lineups change. The weather changes. The stakes change.
But, remarkably, Lee does not. Or, at least, the results do not.
In three playoff starts as a Ranger, he’s struck out 10, 11 and 13. He’s the first to do that in a single postseason. Of the 31 games in postseason history in which the pitcher has struck out at least 10 and walked no more than one, Lee started five.
He’s handed the ball and a sense of inevitability, even doom, follows.
Hours before the Yankees were run out of Game 3, Derek Jeter squatted on the first-base line at end of the national anthem, a lovely and extended version. At the last note, Jeter worked the brim of his cap, put the cap on his head and announced to no one and to everyone on that line with him, “Let’s go.
They knew what this would be. They knew they’d have to grind for every inch of this. And then seven of the first 11 Yankees struck out.
Lee was more willful.
New York started Andy Pettitte, the all-time leader in postseason wins. He threw a single bad pitch, and Josh Hamilton hooked it into the right-field stands for a two-run homer in the first inning. It beat him.
Lee was more precise.
About the worst thing that happened to him came in the postgame interview room. In the confusion over adding a chair to the front table, Lee went to sit down and nearly missed his, landing awkwardly on the riser.
“I’m OK,” he insisted. “Booby trap over here.”
He grinned, and Hamilton and Michael Young laughed with him.
“I mean, I do the same thing every game,” Lee said. “I’m going to throw strikes and I’m going to throw fastballs in and out and see how they swing and I’m going to make those adjustments on the fly.”
It’s true, Molina said.
“We go with what he has out there,” the catcher said. “We don’t actually follow any scouting report. We go by how he pitches. The only thing I notice, before the game we might talk about a few guys. … He’s the same guy every single time. He can throw everything for strikes. He doesn’t care who he’s facing. And that’s all.”
He has his plan, follows his routine, repeats his delivery and never ever backs down.
And then he wins.
Yes, and that’s all.
• MLB News Archive Index:
2010, 2009
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