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Yankees christen new stadium with a title
By Gordon Edes
November 4, 2009
NEW YORK — The ghosts may have been abandoned across the street, where the House that Ruth Built is awaiting the imminent arrival of the wrecker’s ball. But from old to new, the New York Yankees left no doubt in the House that George Built that their championship tradition runs as straight and true as a pinstripe.
The Yankees won their 27th World Series title and first in the new Yankee Stadium by beating the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 Wednesday night to take the 105th World Series in six games.
They christened their new $1.5 billion home in the same style as the original back in 1923, when the heroes were a left-handed slugger named Babe Ruth and a left-handed pitcher named Herb Pennock. Ruth hit three home runs, including one in the World Series clincher, and Pennock won twice, including the finale.
Eighty-six years later, only the names changed. Left-handed slugger Hideki Matsui, in possibly his last game in a Yankee uniform, tied a Series record by driving in six runs and hit his third home run of the Series, a two-run blast in the second that was the Yankees’ first shot across the bow against Phillies starter Pedro Martinez.
Matsui, whose aching knees limited him to a pinch-hitting role in the three games in Philadelphia, had hit a tie-breaking home run off Martinez in the Yankees’ Game 2 win and demonstrated anew that if Martinez wanted to discuss his ancestry, his Yankee “daddy” was the venerable Japanese star.
Matsui hit a two-run single in the third off Martinez, then doubled in two more against Phillies’ rookie J.A. Happ in the fifth to earn Series MVP honors.
Left-handed pitcher Andy Pettitte, pitching on three days’ rest, won the duel of old goats, as it was called by Martinez, holding the Phillies to a single run while the Yankees built a 7-1 lead against the 38-year-old Martinez and relievers Chad Durbin and Happ.
Pettitte, a sellout crowd of 50,315 creating chills independent of the 47-degree temperatures by thunderously chanting his name, came out in the sixth after giving up a two-run home run to Ryan Howard, the strikeout-ridden Phillies slugger, and a two-out double to Raul Ibanez.
Despite walking five batters, a number he has exceeded just once in 40 postseason starts, the 37-year-old Pettitte won for the second time in the Series and joined Boston’s Derek Lowe (2004) and Chicago’s Freddy Garcia (2005) as the only pitchers to win the clinching game in all three rounds of the playoffs: the division series, the LCS and the World Series.
Pettitte has won 18 postseason games, the most of any pitcher in history, including four this season. He also was the winner in a clinching game for the sixth time in his career, the most of any pitcher.
The last 10 outs were recorded by the Yankees bullpen, the final five by Mariano Rivera, who with Pettitte, catcher Jorge Posada and shortstop Derek Jeter are the only players left from the last Yankees team to win it all, in 2000. Joe Girardi, in his second season as Yankees manager, was with the team as a reserve catcher for World Series titles in 1996, 1998 and 1999 but left as a free agent before the 2000 season.
With their bookend Series titles, the Yankees now can make a compelling case that they are the team of the decade, having won more regular-season games (965) and playoff series (10) than any other team, and joining the Boston Red Sox as the only teams to win two Series titles.
The Yankees had four 100-win seasons in the decade, including 103 in 2009 after new owner Hal Steinbrenner, taking over for his ailing father, George, gave general manager Brian Cashman the green light to spend over $243 million on three players – starting pitchers CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett and first baseman Mark Teixeira.
Sabathia and Burnett each won a game in the Series while Teixeira, who came into Wednesday night batting just .105 in the World Series and .172 in the postseason, singled home a run in the Yankees’ three-run fifth.
And, of course, the Yankees are the most successful franchise of all time. Their 27 titles are 17 more than that of the St. Louis Cardinals, who have won the second-most in baseball.
The Phillies fell short in their quest to become the first National League team since the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds to win back-to-back Series titles.
Martinez, the self-styled “old goat” who didn’t join the Phillies until August, had counted upon “experience and survival” and his “frog’s blood” to carry him in a quest to add a triumphant coda to his rich history against the Yankees.
But Martinez lasted just four innings, succumbing to the master strokes of Matsui.
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Rodriguez, Yankees beat Phillies for 3-1 Series edge
By BEN WALKER
November 1, 2009
PHILADELPHIA — Alex Rodriguez waited all game long for this hit. Heck, he waited his whole life.
Rodriguez delivered the biggest hit of his career, a go-ahead, two-out double in the ninth inning off Brad Lidge and the New York Yankees took advantage of Johnny Damon’s daring dash to beat the Philadelphia Phillies 7-4 on Sunday night for a 3-1 lead in the World Series.
Derek Jeter came through again and Mariano Rivera finished it off as the Yankees moved within one win of that elusive 27th championship and first since 2000.
Rodriguez could really savor this victory—seething after again being hit by a pitch, he struck back with his potent black bat.
“There’s no question—I’ve never had a bigger hit,” Rodriguez said.
The Yankees will try to close out the defending champions Monday night when A.J. Burnett faces October ace Cliff Lee.
Of the 42 teams to take a 3-1 lead in the World Series, 36 went on to win the crown. The last club to overcome such a deficit was Kansas City in 1985.
Chase Utley and Pedro Feli hit late home runs for the Phillies that tied it at 4. Then it moved to the ninth and Phils brought in Lidge—a postseason star last year, he had struggled all season before regaining his touch this October.
But November was not so kind to him.
Lidge had been the only closer in the playoffs who hadn’t allowed a run until the Yankees tagged him. With two outs, Damon capped a nine-pitch at-bat with a single. The Phillies overshifted their infield to the right side for Mark Teixeira and Damon took off.
Damon beat the one-hop throw to steal second, popped up from his slide and noticed no one was covering third. That’s because Feliz had handled the throw, and Damon easily beat the third baseman to the bag for a rare double-steal— fact is, who’d ever seen it?
Rattled or whatever, Lidge hit Teixeira with a pitch. So up stepped Rodriguez, 1 for 13 to that point in his first World Series and looking nothing like the feared slugger he was earlier in these playoffs.
Putting all his prominent failures behind, Rodriguez lined a solid double into the left-field corner for a 5-4 lead. The three-time AL MVP connected so solidly, the sound echoed throughout Citizens Bank Park. Maybe it wasn’t such a surprise—Rodriguez had homered and doubled in three prior at-bats against Lidge.
“I get a good pitch and put a good swing on it, good things usually happen,” Rodriguez said. “Facing Brad Lidge, he’s a great competitor. He’s had a lot of success of late here. Just trying to make contact there.”
Rodriguez stood at second with his 15th RBI, tying the Yankees postseason record shared by Bernie Williams and Scott Brosius. A-Rod’s other hit this week came in Game 3 when his double was changed to a home run after an instant replay review.
The crowd was silent when Jorge Posada followed with a two-run single. Then it was Rivera’s turn and he quickly got three outs for his 11th World Series save. Chamberlain was the winner in his second Series appearance.
Just like that, the Yankees were 27 outs from their record 27th title and the Phillies were on the brink of getting eliminated. Philadelphia faces a daunting task; New York lost three in a row only twice after the All-Star break.
“I think we take a lot of pride on being resilient and the way we bounce back,” Phils manager Charlie Manuel said. “I’ve seen us go through it before. We’ve blown 22 games from the seventh inning on or something this year. That’s got to tell you something about the resilience of our team.”
The Yankees’ late burst hushed fans who had been festive from the start. Many of them had walked across the street after watching the Philadelphia Eagles rout the New York Giants 40-17.
Feliz rocked Yankees setup man Joba Chamberlain with a two-out, solo home run in the eighth that tied it at 4.
Utley homered again off CC Sabathia, finishing the New York starter in the seventh. It was Utley’s third shot off Sabathia in this Series and closed the Phillies to 4-3.
Down all evening, the Phillies kept scrapping. They eventually drew even on the home runs, a common sight at a park where the ball really flies.
Jeter put the Yankees ahead from the get-go, leading off the game with a single and scoring in a two-run first. The inning also included plate umpire Mike Everitt warning both teams after Rodriguez was hit by a pitch for the third time in two days.
Howard barreled home to tie at 2 in the fourth. The big Phillies slugger braced for a collision with Posada and got a piece of the New York catcher— replays, however, appeared to show Howard never touched the plate, yet another missed call in a shaky postseason for umpires.
Jeter and Damon hit RBI singles in the fifth off Joe Blanton and the crowd grew quiet as Sabathia, working hard on three days’ rest, kept working out of trouble in the middle innings.
Then Utley rang the big Liberty Bell in center field with his home run. And after Chamberlain struck out his first two batters in the eighth, Feliz gonged him with a no-doubt drive over the left-field wall.
NOTES: Yankees CF Melky Cabrera hurt his left hamstring running out a grounder to end the sixth. Brett Gardner replaced him. … Rodriguez and Max Carey (Pittsburgh, 1925) are the only players hit by pitches three times in a Series. … Philly native Joe Frazier did a routine with the Phillie Phanatic on the field before the sixth inning to the sounds of “Rocky.”
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Lee offered to pitch on short rest
By Tim Brown
November 1, 2009
PHILADELPHIA — Cliff Lee confesses he is a product of a regular, unbending routine. He also says he volunteered to come out of it to pitch on short rest for the Philadelphia Phillies on Sunday night in Game 4 of the World Series. He obviously wasn’t convincing enough for manager Charlie Manuel.
While Yankees starting pitchers lined up to pitch on short rest, Lee was kept to his regular schedule, because, Manuel said, “You’re asking Cliff Lee to do something that he has never [done] before. But we’re also asking him to do it in a very big, important place, and that’s in the World Series.”
Manuel and Lee discussed the possibility before the series. Apparently, the conversation was brief. Manuel believed the World Series was no place to start “messing with Cliff Lee,” which does not explain why Manuel would approach Lee about it to begin with.
More likely, Lee told Manuel and Phillies pitching coach Rich Dubee he’d take the ball in Games 1 and 4 (and presumably be available for Game 7), but was not persuasive.
As a result, New York Yankees left-hander CC Sabathia, a veteran of short-rest starts, opposed Phillies right-hander Joe Blanton on Sunday night at Citizens Bank Park. A.J. Burnett, who pitched Game 2 for the Yankees, will oppose Lee in Game 5 Monday night. Andy Pettitte, who threw 104 pitches Saturday night, is in line to pitch Game 6 (against Pedro Martinez) if necessary, and Sabathia is expected to come back for a potential Game 7. Cole Hamels, whose ERA in four postseason starts is 7.58, is on schedule to pitch Game 7, but Manuel would not commit to pitching Hamels again.
Lee pitched a career-high 231 2/3 innings this season. He appeared to tire in spots near the end of the season, about a month after he’d been traded from the Indians, but has been very effective in the postseason, where his ERA is 0.54 in four starts. He allowed only an unearned run in a complete game at Yankee Stadium in Game 1, then went back to his routine for Game 5.
“It was a pretty quick conversation,” Lee said, “[Manuel] asking me if I had ever done it and me telling him no and saying that I think I could. Basically that was about the extent of it. … I just let him know I’d pitch whenever he wants me to pitch. I think I could do it, but he makes the calls.”
That, apparently, was that.
“I thought I made it pretty clear,” Lee said. “I’m not disappointed or mad or frustrated or anything. My job is to pitch when Charlie wants me to pitch, and that’s what I’m going to do. … I’m not going to try to second-guess anything like that. I would have been happy either way.”
In Game 5, he’ll either pitch to fend off elimination or to give the Phillies a one-game lead going back to New York. Meantime, the Phillies were hoping for a lightning-strike win from Blanton and, perhaps, an off night from Sabathia.
Lee would watch Game 4, however, on his routine.
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Howard’s slump puts Phillies in trouble
By Jeff Passan
November 1, 2009
PHILADELPHIA — Their eyes play tricks on them in different ways. When Ryan Howard falls into one of his 20,000-leagues-deep funks, his eyes don’t track the baseball. Even if it’s in the strike zone, he can’t connect. Alex Rodriguez, on the other hand, loses the strike zone altogether, swings in every which direction and prays that wood and cowhide get together on a blind date.
Each sight has been remarkable in a World Series that began with them as baseball’s hottest players and now, three games in, sees each soul searching at the most important time of the year. While A-Rod’s rescue party arrived in the New York Yankees’ 8-5 victory Saturday night that pushed them to a 2-1 advantage in the best-of-seven series and stole home-field advantage back from Philadelphia, Howard’s struggles deepened, and it left the Phillies worried just how long they’ll last.
They are, after all, so very integral to their teams’ success: the cleanup hitters among teammates full of power, the big stars in lineups that look like the Milky Way, the bellwethers of offensive success for teams whose struggles parallel theirs. When A-Rod took a Cole Hamels fastball, waited back and deposited it off a TV camera overhanging the right-field fence for a replay-supported home run, he had rung his bell. Gone was his 0-for-8 showing in Games 1 and 2, forgotten his six strikeouts and present again the fright factor he instilled in the Minnesota Twins and Los Angeles Angels in the AL playoffs.
And as Howard kept swinging and missing, five times in Game 3 and 13 in the series, it was apparent: The Phillies are a troubled team when pitchers turn Howard’s equilibrium upside down, and he needs to flip himself back before it’s too late.
“He’s not following the ball,” Phillies hitting coach Milt Thompson said. “He can’t track it. He’s trying to pull it, and when balls are away from you, you can’t do that. Hopefully, he’ll correct it. Slow down and you’ll see the ball. He knows that.
“You can’t hit what you can’t see. If you’re up there committing and flying without seeing the baseball, it’ll make for a long night.”
And not just because of daylight savings time. Howard’s evening was disaster on loop. Of the 16 pitches he saw, 11 were sliders. In his first two at-bats, Andy Pettitte struck him out swinging on them. And come his final at-bat, Damaso Marte, another left-hander in the long line Yankees manager Joe Girardi keeps parading at Howard, blew a fastball by him after teasing with three straight sliders.
The Yankees’ strategy with Howard is fairly obvious: feed him breaking balls and watch him chomp at them like an off-register Pac-Man. The Yankees have thrown Howard 51 pitches in the World Series. Eighteen were sliders and 10 were curveballs. And it’s not like they’re burying the breaking balls, either, for fear that Howard will hit those in the strike zone. More than 72 percent of the Yankees’ pitches to Howard have been strikes, something that portends incredible success with a swing-and-miss king such as Howard.
“I’m just a little bit anxious at the plate right now,” Howard said. “It’s just a matter of trying to calm it down.”
He succeeded in Game 1 with a pair of RBI doubles. Since then, it’s been ugly: 0-for-8 with seven strikeouts. Even worse than Rodriguez’s swoon in the series’ first two games.
Rodriguez entered the World Series so keyed in, the two-game fade metamorphosed into instantaneous fodder. Was A-Rod an AL-only wonder? Can he simply not succeed in the World Series? Would he walk out to the batters’ box in Game 3 with a man’s torso and horse’s lower body?
Yes, the same garbage that so often derailed Rodriguez’s last two years in New York – the tabloid musings about his life, his interests, his … idiosyncrasies – emerged again during the off-day before Game 3. A-Rod, apparently, has a portrait above his bed of him as a centaur. Like, half-man, half-equine.
Were evolving into a horse his real fantasy, perhaps he should’ve taken Equipoise or Winstrol instead of Primobolan. Rodriguez instead focused on something far more novel as he returned this year from hip surgery: evolving into a ballplayer who isn’t ensnared in daily drama. So he shook off Games 1 and 2 (and the centaur flap), studied his swing and figured out what was wrong: His eyes, as they tend to do on occasion, were deceiving him.
“The game plan is simple: swing at strikes,” Rodriguez said. “If I swing at strikes, I can do a lot better.”
Rodriguez swung at only one pitch outside the strike zone Saturday after flailing at five in the first two games. His patience showed: Of the 16 pitches he saw, eight were called balls, including a pair that crossed the strike zone. When Rodriguez is taking maybe-maybe not strikes, he is at his most dangerous. His personal strike zone shrinks to the point that his swings tend to generate line drives to all fields.
The home run – his sixth this postseason – barely crept over the right-field wall, and yet it was the kind that inspired grins around the Yankees dugout. Not only did it cut a 3-0 deficit to 3-2, it told New York that the opposite-field-hitting, good-pitch-choosing Rodriguez had returned. And that does not bode well for the Phillies.
“I helped out the opposing pitchers by swinging at balls that were borderline and not strikes,” Rodriguez said. “And I thought that the game plan today was to swing at strikes and to keep them in a zone, like I’ve been talking about all postseason.”
Philadelphia can’t pitch Rodriguez like the Yankees do Howard. Breaking balls don’t faze him. Nearly 62 percent of the 55 pitches Rodriguez has seen in the World Series, in fact, have been fastballs – and over his career, Rodriguez has hit fastballs markedly better than any other pitch. When he is at his most discerning, Rodriguez forces pitchers to throw fastballs, a terrifying proposition.
Though he is still only 1-for-10 in the series, Rodriguez got on base with a pair of hit-by-pitches and a walk Saturday night and bumped his postseason on-base percentage to .491. Howard, meanwhile, stared from the bench as the Phillies’ No. 5 hitter, Jayson Werth, hit a pair of solo home runs. Had Howard milked a walk or stroked a single or coaxed Pettitte into hitting him – had he done anything aside from swing and miss – perhaps the Rodriguez home run isn’t quite the game changer it became.
Instead, Howard had a simple plan to excavate himself from his doldrums: “Go home and sleep.” He might see something in his dreams or realize what’s wrong with his swing or come to the sort of between-games revelation Rodriguez did.
It is more likely, though, that Howard is going to awaken in a panic: CC Sabathia on the mound for Game 4, a second straight World Series slipping from the Phillies, his greatest nightmare realized in a fury of swings and misses.
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A-Rod delivers the hit of a lifetime
By Gordon Edes
Novenber 1, 2009
PHILADELPHIA — Maybe it’s passé to cast him in mythic terms, if it’s true, as one magazine reported a few days ago, that Alex Rodriguez owns paintings portraying him as a centaur. But let there be no doubt as to the identity of the horse the New York Yankees are riding in their bid to win their first World Series title since 2000.
With his ninth-inning, tie-breaking double following a true World Series rarity – two stolen bases on the same play by Johnny Damon – Rodriguez is within one more Yankee victory of placing himself in the company of those he most envies, the pinstripers who can call themselves champions.
“No question, I’ve never had a bigger hit,” Rodriguez said.
The Yankees, responding to Pedro Feliz’s game-tying home run off Joba Chamberlain with two out in the bottom of the eighth, scored three runs in the ninth off Philadelphia Phillies closer Brad Lidge to win 7-4 and take a three games to one lead in the World Series, pushing the defending champion Phillies to within a game of elimination.
“He’s the reason why we’re sitting here right now in Philadelphia,” Damon said of Rodriguez. “He’s been driving in the big runs.”
The Phillies will send ace Cliff Lee to the mound in Game 5 in an effort to prolong the Series. The Yankees will counter with A.J. Burnett, the Game 2 winner who like Sunday’s starter, CC Sabathia, will be pitching on three days’ rest.
Rodriguez tied a Yankees record for RBIs in a postseason (15) when his double scored Damon, who had singled with two out and taken advantage of an overshifted Phillies infield to steal both second and third base on one pitch to Mark Teixeira. Damon fouled off five pitches during a nine-pitch at-bat before lining an opposite-field single. On the first pitch to Teixeira, Damon bolted for second, where third baseman Feliz took the late and low throw from catcher Carlos Ruiz. Feliz was covering the bag because he’d swung over to the shortstop position while shortstop Jimmy Rollins shifted to the right side of the second-base bag to defend against the left-handed hitting Teixeira.
Damon, immediately recognizing that no one was covering third, jumped up and ran to the unprotected bag. Neither Lidge nor Ruiz reacted in time to the unfolding situation.
“I think what I had to see before I started running for third base was how Pedro caught the ball,” Damon said. “I knew it [dragged] him off. I’m just glad when I started running, I still had some of my young legs behind me.
“It worked out, because being at third base, it took away a tough slider in the dirt (from Lidge). Alex got two fastballs. It did work out for us.”
Lidge, who had blown 11 saves during the regular season but had been unscored upon in five previous postseason appearances, got two quick outs in the ninth, retiring pinch-hitter Hideki Matsui on a pop fly and striking out Derek Jeter. But Damon, who already had doubled and scored in the first and singled in a run in the fifth, refused to give in.
“I kept sitting slider, and he kept throwing fastballs,” Damon said of his extended at-bat. “You’re not taught to do it that way.”
Lidge threw one more fastball, and Damon timed it well enough to line it in front of left-fielder Raul Ibanez. Moments later, he was standing on third base, and Lidge hit Teixeira with a pitch, bringing up Rodriguez.
Phillies manager Charlie Manuel lamented the breakdown in his team’s defense.
“That’s the first time we’ve had that happen to us this year, but at the same time somebody has got to be covering third base. Usually it’s the catcher tries to get down there.”
Yankees manager Joe Girardi, meanwhile, was effusive in his praise of Damon.
“That’s instinct,” he said. “You’ve got to be sure, when you’ve got Teixeira and A-Rod coming up behind him, but that was a great instinctual play by Johnny.”
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