On Good and Bad Baseball

Wowww…I hate to say it, being a long-time Yankee hater, but the Yanks looked great last night. And it was a great game to watch on TV, even with Michael Kaye just saying obvious stuff all night long.

The new guys came through for the Yanks, i.e. Burnett and Swisher, even Gardner, and the old Yanks, especially Jeter, seemed to reach back to their past to do what they always had done. Jeter and those inside-outers, that swing that dumps even inside pitches into right field for either a single or double. He went 3 for 5 last night, and his last hit was the Rays-killer, a long drive that kept goin’ and goin’……..

I was rooting for the Rays all the way too, especially as Garza (Rays SP) is one of my fantasy pitchers. And, after that 15-5 drubbing of the night before, I had been looking forward to a repeat – bad pitching, especially early, that just knocks the life out of a team, any team of competitors.

But it wasn’t to be. The Yanks took a quick early lead as another old-timer, Posada, hit a sac-fly to score Gardner who had earlier singled. Then Swisher killed a ball that landed waay out in right field for a second run.

Burnett held the lead through six tough innings, with A.J. providing the kind of no-hit pitching and showing the kind of stuff I hadn’t seen since David Cone. Longoria, Upton, Pena, it didn’t matter, they came, they saw, they sat down. It was awesome really, even if a little depressing for a Mets fan.

Ah, but you can’t keep a good team down forever and even the greats suffer a lapse sometimes. Burnett’s lapse came in the bottom of the seventh as a string of base hits by Crawford, Longoria and Pena plated one and a sac-fly tied the score at two.

But Burnett woke up and the Rays went to sleep. The Rays’ Navarro struck out looking, and just for good measure, just to make sure the Rays were shut down, catcher Molina threw out Pena at first for the third out. Just like that, the fire was put out.

And, just as a good football team scores on its next possession, the Yanks fired back in the 8th. Gardner and Jeter again were the culprits to set the table for Teixeira, who managed a sac-fly off the usually tough J.P. Howell, and the Yanks had the lead once again.

But it was a tenuous lead, and the Rays didn’t win the AL East last year for nothin’. I thought for sure the Yanks would replace Burnett, they’re so nutsy about pitch counts. But Burnett hadn’t thrown too many, they kept him in, and the bottom of the order for the Rays went very quietly.

Then, just to make absolutely sure the Rays were dead, the Yanks unleashed guys like Cano and even Melky Cabrera. They hit straight singles off Wheeler, one of the Rays closers, to set up Gardner, who hit a hard liner out to centerfielder Upton, who misjudged the ball coming straight at him and then over his head for the ground-rule double and that always so important insurance run.

But that wasn’t enough for Jeter. He clubbed a Wheeler offering for a big, big 3-run homer and it was all over. We didn’t even get to see Mariano, now that the Yanks had a big 5-run lead. And they didn’t need him, Bruney was just fine, thank you, as he mowed down the heart of the Rays order in the ninth, striking out the side, Upton, Longoria and Pena, boom, boom, boom.

The game was over but the impression remained. It was the Rays who made the big mistakes, it was the Yankees who maintained their focus throughout, and got contributions from everybody. They played not only like a team, but like a winning team, the kind of team that could put away the likes of the Rays and the Red Sox.

Mets fans can appreciate good baseball, not that we’ve seen much of it from our empty-headed local heroes lately. Reyes’s over-slide of second base the other day pretty much killed the Mets in that one. Before that, we had watched as our good ol’ Murphy just flat-out dropped an easy fly ball.

Aah, maybe it was an isolated incident, the Yanks playing like that, just the right place and the right time. After all, their ace was on the mound and they had just been drubbed and embarrassed. But still, the contrast between their heady play and that of the Mets is just too hard to ignore.

To make things worse, I read that Reyes is looking to steal home, just to show off his Jackie Robinson-ness. Give me a break, Jose! Learn how to take second. That would be a good start. As Jose goes, so go the Mets, and, if he sets the wrong tune, a totally bone-headed tune, the Mets will readily follow suit.

There are some likenesses between the two clubs though. The Yanks have their Wang getting banged around and we have our Oliver Perez. But with Yang, it’s a relatively new thing while with crazy Ollie, it’s just same thing, different season. You get the feeling Wang will come around; is there any real hope for Perez?

But there the likeness ends, at least as far as starters go. Sabathia and Burnett are the Yanks two aces, we have a legitimate Santana, but then a very questionable Mike Pelfrey, who’s been hittable to the max, especially early in the game, when a lot of games are decided. At number 3, they’ve got Pettite, we’ve got Maine….and pray for rain.

Even with all our nifty relief pitchers, Green and Putz and Frankie, these early deficits provided by all the Mets pitchers but Santana, drain the life out of a team. It’s just exhausting to have to keep coming back.

We need to see a change……soon.