Considering the thoroughness of the second straight beating the Boston Red Sox were administering to the New York Yankees, the Fenway rabble was strangely subdued. Even as they filed out in orderly fashion after Saturday’s 5-2 Sox win that seemed more like 10-2, there was nary a “Yankees —-!” chant.
Maybe it was disbelief at how embarrassingly awful Joe Torre’s troops have played these first two games in Beantown. Or maybe it was because they realized it’s still April and they’ve come to know how deceiving these early triumphs over the Yankees can be.
It is hard to believe that Red Sox Nation could actually feel sorry for the stumbling, bumbling Yankees, and sure enough, the mocking “you do steroids!” chant whenever Jason Giambi came to bat belied that. It is only April and the Yankees have to keep telling themselves this, but be advised that the guy in the turtleneck who signs those $2 million bi-weekly paychecks doesn’t know April from October. “A slump,” reasoned Torre, “is a slump. Good hitters go into slumps. If they didn’t, they’d all hit .700. We’re very talented and very committed, but right now we’re not getting the job done.”
They can blame it on the ever-lingering hangover from the Japan trip, or the general “getting-to-know-you” process that is the product of so many free agents being plugged into the roster in one offseason. All we know is, this is a $180 million team that looks bewildered right now. About the only thing the Yankees have done right in their first Boston visit of the season is to figure out a way of saving Bubba Crosby. That was accomplished Saturday when reliever Felix Heredia was put on the disabled list with what was described as a bruised fingertip, which he allegedly slammed into his apartment door, to make room for Travis Lee, the team’s third first baseman. Not that it mattered – Heredia wasn’t getting anyone out anyway.
And once the game began, the Yankees couldn’t do anything right. Surely the Nation is quietly gloating over Alex Rodriguez’s repeated misfires with the bat, as evidenced by the hush that came over Fenway when A-Rod came up against a struggling Mike Timlin with two on and one out in the seventh. The resulting collective yowl of relief when A-Rod bounced into a 5-5-3 double play and flung his helmet to the ground was about the loudest it ever got.
“I think,” said Red Sox closer Keith Foulke, “it was more of a product of us being in the lead and not making it too exciting.”
Even when they got the lead, courtesy of a torturous 38-pitch, two-run second inning from Mike Mussina, it wasn’t exactly a fireworks display. Rather, it was fashioned by three walks, a single and a hit batter as, once again, Mussina battled himself and couldn’t get the big outs when he had to. Were it not for two sensational plays on scorched liners by his infield cornermen – A-Rod snaring Gabe Kapler’s bases-loaded shot to third in the third and Tony Clark turning a double play on Mark Bellhorn’s liner to first in the fifth- Mussina’s effort would have been far worse.
“The first two games here we haven’t shown any life to put ourselves into it,” Mussina said. “When you come up here you especially want to play your best game and we just have not.”
Their lone consolation is that in playing such uninspired sloppy baseball here, they seem to be lulling the Nation to sleep. At least their manager isn’t about to start panicking and, as always, he’s the perfect guy to make sure they don’t. He even keeps A-Rod’s struggles in perspective.
“To be honest,” Torre said of Rodriguez, “even in spring training he wasn’t the hitter he’s going to be. This is still an adjustment period for him. Unfortunately, now it counts.” And for some people it counts more than others. Torre can at least take heart in getting his nine-year contract extension before his team’s journey to Boston. Today, he looks to Jose Contreras, the $32 million enigma and central figure in the “Evil Empire” hissing match, to stop the April bleeding.
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(c) 2004, New York Daily News.
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