Behind another unspectacular yet effective performance from Shawn Chacon, the Yankees defeated the A’s last night 7-3. They jumped all over Barry Zito early and often, knocking the Oakland southpaw from the game by the fourth inning. Zito gave up six earned runs (including two solo dingers–Jeter, Bellhorn) on five hits and three walks. With the win, the Yanks are a game ahead of Oakland in the wildcard race, two in front of the Indians. They remain three-and-a-half behind the Red Sox in the AL East.
Mark Bellhorn started at second base, hit a home run, worked a walk with the bases loaded, and made several nifty plays in the field. In the first, he made a basket catch on Mark Ellis’ foul pop in foul territory, and in the fourth he started a slick double play. With Jay Payton on first, Dan Johnson hit a hard ground ball to Bellhorn’s left. He bent over and fielded the ball, and instantly spun toward second. Turning his body, and falling into right field he made a perfect throw to Jeter who then completed the play. I was surprised that Bellhorn attempted the double play in the first place. But there was no hesitation on his part and it was a fine play.
The Yankees had 23 base runners last night and in the end just seven runs to show for it. They had their chances to blow the game open and never quite did. Flash Gordon relieved Chacon in the seventh and Mariano Rivera was summoned in the ninth. Alex Rodriguez had three hits, Jason Giambi was on base virtually all night, Jeter, Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui each had two hits, and Andy Phillips (Giambi’s defensive replacement) made a nice play in the ninth. Gary Sheffield had an RBI single and two laser beam foul balls in five at bats. He is playing with a sore back and a creaky right knee and he clearly doesn’t look like himself.
I’m sure he appreciates the time off today. The Yanks are back home tomorrow to face their bugaboo, the Devil Rays (they are 4-9 against Tampa Bay this year), and then the Red Sox. No rest for the weary. The Bombers are going to need Sheffield and the rest of the offense to respond and pound out five of six here, wouldn’t you say?
It is sunny and cooler today in New York. There is a breeze too. It is an absolutely gorgeous end to a picture-perfect holiday weekend. Hope everyone is having a relaxing time of it.
1. Nice title. I don't know if "Baked Zito" is an Alex Belth original, but it made me laugh.
I didn't see the game today. I was taking 4 of my students to a prefectural speech competition here in Japan. I watched about 40 English speeches by Japanese high school students, and about 10-12 of them were very very good. My students didn't win, but they all did very well.
To tie my little anecdote in with the Yankees, as much of a stretch as that may seem....watching the other 25-30 speeches was a bit like watching a Leiter ballgame. You want to cheer for them, and you hope for the best, but in the end it's just a long grueling marathon filled with mistakes and near misses.
I was pleasantly surprised to come home and find a Yankee win waiting for me. We seem to always get Zito and this was right in line with our grand scheme to decide the season on the last day, in Fenway, with an extra-inning Bellhorn walk-off dinger against Curt Schilling.
Let's blitz the Devil Rays and pick up a game on the Red Sox going into that series. Take 2 of 3 and we will be about a game back going into the final 2 weeks.
2. So if he doesn't make his scheduled start, does the other team say "what, no fuckin' Zito?"
3. Great title indeed. Wish I could come up with another joke...
Sox are losing right now:
http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/boxscore?gameId=250905102
As I was watching the Yanks last night, I kept switching to my new favorite channel: VH1CR (VH1 - Classic Rock). I caught a Paul Simon video (who knew there were any?!) It was "Me and Julio down by the schoolyard" - anyway, not my favorite song from the old days, but the video caught my eye - especially the scene with Paul Simon pitching ball (stickball) to Mickey Mantle !
Of course, a 50ish Mickey creamed one. Anyone else ever see this ? The video ended with a young John Madden "coaching" some street football.
4. Let's go White Sox!
And didn't the schedulers realize that today is a holiday? Why not have a schedule where teams play on Labor Day?
5. Schilling was actually worse today than his numbers (6.1 IP, 4 runs). The White Sox made a couple of critical running errors, and left men on 3rd with < 2 outs at least twice.
6. Paul, the numbers were bad enough notwithstanding the White Sox's offensive shortcomings...but not according it seems to Rick Sutcliffe, who was so far up Schilling's ass he couldn't see his total lack of command or an effective breaking pitch. He threw 60+ pitches in the first 3 innings, almost 120 by the time he left after 6 and a third. You wonder what Sutcliffe would have thought about Al Leiter's performances this season? Oh, that's right, he would've said he was pitching to avoid bats because his stuff wasn't good enough to live in the strike zone.
7. Seattle phenom Felix Hernandez led a shut out against Oakland so puts us 1 1/2 up on Cleveland and Oakland in the wild card which I consider the likely way to the post-season rather than through Boston. Cleveland won and is looking like they may battle to the end. It also further validated randy's great performance against Hernandez. The wild card looks so tight that we need to be competitive battling the East now just so we stay strong in the WC even if we don't catch Boston.
8. If Schilling sucks as a closer and a starter then it's obvious they should use him as a middle reliever (grin)
9. If Wright comes back OK and if Wang comes back and is effective (a big if), than we're actually back to 5 starters without Leiter; Randy, Small, Chacon, Wright and Wang. Then Torre can use Leiter for middle relief in a lost cause to chew up outs, hours on the clock and antacids. With Joe seemingly in virtual playoff mode for the rest of the regular season I'm not sure how many games there will be to concede as lost causes
10. It seems like the Yankees never play on Monday holidays any more. Didn't they used to have day games regularly on Monday holidays before? Is it just some quirk of the schedule this year?
And why do the Red Sox have only one game against the White Sox? Is it a make up game or something?
11. randym77, the Sox game was a make-up for a game that got rained out a couple of weeks ago. It was a big deal at the time because the White Sox were up 5-2 and were whacking Clement pretty good, but the rain was so hard and persistent (I know...I was stuck in a traffic jam for two hours while it was happening) that they couldn't get a regulation game played.
It was thought that the Red Sox dodged a bullet at the time, but it ended up creating bigger issues because the scheduling of the make-up resulted in a big tug-of-war between Chicago, Boston, and Anaheim over when and how the game would be played...and now, the Red Sox only have one day off the rest of September, while the other contenders have two.
12. Thanks! I remember the game that was rained out. At the time, it seemed like the very heavens were conspiring to keep the Sox from losing.
13. I made it out to Oakland for the Leiter debacle. Ugh! No need to rehash that one so I offer up a brief review of the game experience in the Oakland Coliseum. Overall, it is not the greatest place to attend a baseball game. The sightlines of the seats are made for football. My seat on the first base side was angled toward center field--a nice 50-yard line view for the raiders but poor for baseball. There is nothing going on outside the ballpark-similar to Shea-in the middle of an industrial area. Getting to and from is easy via BART. If you are in the area, check it out but no need to go out of your way.
14. Anyone notice that Texas is getting hot now?
8 of last 10. And they'll be playing the Angels and A's all month.
If Texas can beat up on them, and Seattle's rookie can win a few against them, that could help us out alot in re the wild card.
15. joe, I remember seeing that "Me and Julio" video on VH1 a long time ago, and at first thinking, What the hell is this? and then thinking, "Holy crap that's Mickey Mantle!" A very cool video.
16. Hey Shaun P.
Thanks for the props. Yeah, I couldn't believe it either ! That was probably when Mickey needed a little dough (unfortunately). Anyone see the HBO special on him ???? Very good, but sad.
The Mick - my favorite Yankee.....