The Yankees and Red Sox untangled themselves Wednesday like familiar heavy weight fighters finishing the first round of their latest title bout. In the final analysis, the initial skirmish had more circling than scuffling, more probing than attacking. But this was Red Sox vs.Yankees, and no one was going to allow it to be just another season-opening series, particularly the press and fans who were rabid for the inevitable subplots that are part of this storied rivalry each year. As the Red Sox head to Toronto and the Yankees wait on the arrival of Sammy Sosa and the Orioles, you wondered if the intense scrutiny of this first series had both teams secretly cursing the schedule maker who thought this would be a groovy way to start the season.
Of course, the early spring air was thick with posturing, clichés and mathematical gibberish meant to dismiss this 3 game series as just that–3 games. Less than 2% of a 162 game season. For those still trapped in football mode, that’s 5 feet of a Tom Brady 90 yard drive, or less than $1 Million of Eli Manning’s $54 Million rookie contract.
But when you are a player, manager or fan in the Yankee-Red Sox drama you don’t get to write off a series as anything less than transcendent. The ebb and flow of this rivalry, goaded by fundamentalism and seasoned by history, prescribes that every game is important, every foul ball, inside pitch and raised eyebrow seminally epic and capable of shaping events that we can not envision.
Or so we’ve been led to believe.
The Yankees won the series, 2 to 1. Depending on where you lay your head at night, it might have been either 3-0 Yankees or 2-1 Red Sox. This is because Yankee prodigy Mariano Rivera continued a perplexing pattern of being mortal against the Red Sox, making games 2 and 3 more exciting then they should have been. In game 2, Rivera looked human in giving up a home run to Jason Varitek. In game 3, after an Alex Rodriguez error that might have relieved him, he simply melted, walking 3 and needing to be retrieved by a clearly uncomfortable Joe Torre. The Red Sox gave notice that last year’s success against Rivera can no longer be written off as an aberration, and back in the office of Brian Cashman, the concern for Rivera was officially elevated to DEFCON 2.
It must have been awful for the reserved Yankee closer, who was booed as he left the field in Game 3 by either frustrated Yankee faithful or jubilant Red Sox fans, or both. Regardless of who did the jeering, it was a surreal, unsettling scene that continued in the locker room, where Rivera needed a pulling guard to clear a path through the media to his locker after the game. Just another season-opening series, right?
The Red Sox said all the right things, paid homage to Rivera. But they must be astonished at how they have decoded the Yankees’ secret weapon. It is no small feat when you consider that many of the games played between these two teams will be decided after the seventh inning.
Rivera’s velocity seems fine, but the cutter isn’t cutting the way it can. The antidote is likely time, time to gain some confidence and feel again, and then time to close a game successfully against the Red Sox. We can be sure that Joe Torre will give Rivera all the time he needs.
The Red Sox pitchers had control problems, hitting Yankee batters five times. Derek Jeter took 2 of these pitches, including an inside Mike Timlin pitch off his arm and into the bill of his helmet, giving his brains a brief stir and the Yankees a big scare. The chicken little alarmists whispered “intentional”, an absurd premise when one considered the Red Sox’ respect for Jeter, the date on the calendar, and the baseball situation that Timlin was pitching in.
The other 3 pitches found Jason Giambi, who seemed only too happy to reach base via the bruise. Against David Wells, Giambi could have avoided both pitches. Instead, he slightly leaned into the first and remained completely still for the second, in his best Rudi Stein Bad News Bears impression. Giambi’s willingness to have laces embossed on his arm as a first step in his redemption from steroid use was admirable. When compared to Barry Bonds’ crisis-management skills, it was thoroughly endearing.
Five hit batsmen is significant, and the retaliation advocates from the Yankee side were out in force before the last out had been made in Game 3. None of them were players, managers, or front office types. They were angry men who live in an angry, eye for an eye world, men who drive their cars with anger and prattle on about retribution and violence from the comfort of their couch. They were more incensed than the welted Giambi or woozy Jeter. Randy Johnson, a man who was upset when jokes were made about the bird he inadvertently killed with a pitch, must be amused by those who think they understand intent, yet couldn’t throw a baseball without requiring pain killers afterwards.
The league will watch the next series closely, and the ball will be in the Yankees court. There is some truth to the idea that some Red Sox hitters should be less comfortable diving into a pitch. There is less truth to the idea that the Yankees need to flagrantly hit a Red Sox hitter.
So, at the close of the series, the seeds of ominous sub-plots were planted by the press and fans, but the players and managers refused to water them. Certainly not the sort of stuff that sells newspapers, but the rhetoric of teams that may not like each other, but do seem to respect each other.
159 games to go.