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For the Yankees to win the World Series, they need A.J. Burnett to perform nearly as well as ace CC Sabathia.
The weather cooperated to allow a baseball game on Saturday night in the Bronx. But son of a gun if it didn’t feel like a football game, with temperatures in the 40s, winds making it feel worse and two hardened teams going into overtime as the clock turned to Sunday.
Weather watch: It was 47 degrees at gametime on Saturday night, 2 degrees warmer than on Friday, but it was again blustery, with a 15 mph wind from the north-northeast and gusts up to 23 mph that made the ceremonial red-white-and-blue bunting flap.
Pretty, pretty, pretty amazing.
And then it was over, 5 hours, 10 minutes after it began, with Jerry Hairston Jr. racing home at 1:07 in the morning, Game 2 of the ALCS to the Yanks, 4-3 in 13 innings.
Hairston Jr. might not have been the unlikeliest of heroes, but close. He came over from Cincinnati at the trade deadline to strengthen the Yankee bench, a veteran of 12 seasons, five teams and zero postseasons. He’s a 33-year-old with a .259 career batting average chasing perhaps his last shot at a ring. He sat and watched for 12½ innings on Saturday into Sunday morning.
Then Joe Girardi told him to go up and pinch-hit for Freddy Guzman leading off the 13th against Ervin Santana, Hairston’s first postseason at-bat.
“One thing (Reds manager) Dusty Baker taught me was to manage the game myself,” Hairston said later in the clubhouse, the left side of his Yankee hat still caked with whip cream compliments of A.J. Burnett. “You would see SportsCenter when I was in Cincy and see those guys coming back (from deficits) and having walkoffs. I thought, these guys have a lot of fun.”
Hairston promptly singled to left-center field. “I wasn’t nervous at all,” he said. “I kind of told myself, you’ve been waiting for this your whole life.”
Hairston went to second on Brett Gardner’s sacrifice bunt. Santana intentionally walked Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera hit a one-out grounder to second. Maicer Izturis fielded it to his left and threw wide of shortstop Erick Aybar covering second for the force. Third baseman Chone Figgins went to pick up the errant throw, and might have gotten Hairston at the plate. But Figgins dropped the ball picking it up and Hairston slid into home without a throw.
“When Melky hit the ball, I kind of anticipated that it might get through (the infield),” Hairston said. “The third-base coach held me up, then I turned my head (seeing the ball get past Aybar) and made a break for home. It seemed like I never got home.”
The Angels had thrown away another one, finally reverting to Game 1, and the Yanks had won in typically dramatic fashion.
Can the Angels recover? Maybe not.
“Are we going to be complacent now?” Nick Swisher said. “Absolutely not. Are we going to keep battling? Absolutely.”
This was two ballclubs who couldn’t imagine the thought of losing Game 2, and a willing crowd of 50 large enduring cold and rain and not daring to take their eyes off the action.
It was Burnett holding up his end, keeping the Angels to two runs across 6 1/3 three-hit, two-walk innings, showing the kind of belly needed for the Yanks to reach their goal.
It was the Angels at first returning to form after kicking the ball around in Game 1, back to quality pitching and defense and applying pressure to the opposition.
It was the Yankee captain, Derek Jeter, putting his stamp on another playoff game with a third-inning home run, then an improbable signature with a double-play groundout with two-on, none-out in the fifth.
By then it was a a game of twos, 2-2 score in Game 2, two teams trying to win it in the trenches.
It was first baseman Mark Teixeira doing a series of splits and stretches taking throws at first base, a cubicle featuring one close play after another, about half of which were called correctly by first-base ump Bill Miller.
It was Vladimir Guerrero – Vladimir Guerrero! – leaving the bases loaded in the seventh inning of a tie game. He’d wind up leaving eight runners on base, the last two in the 13th by grounding out with teammates on second and third two outs.
It was Joba Chamberlain – you didn’t think he was gonna stay out of it, did you? – striking out Guerrero on a nasty slider low and away to end the top of the seventh.
“I can understand why some of these guys have gray hairs for being here,” Swisher said. “This game was so intense. For the last six innings (after being removed for pinch-runner Gardner in the seventh), I got to watch. I felt like I was a fan and I could feel exactly how they were feeling.”
It was Mariano Rivera pitching 2 1/3 innings, squelching a two-on threat with one pitch in the eighth and shutting down Los Angeles in the ninth and 10th.
It was Los Angeles getting out of the 10th unscathed despite allowing runners on first and second with one out, despite Aybar missing the bag on an apparent 4-6-3 double play off the bat of Jorge Posada.
It was, of course it was, played in a teeming rain from the bottom of the 10th inning on.
It was the Angels scoring a run in the 11th off Alfredo Aceves, providing the perfect setup for another Yankee walk-off.
It was, instead, Alex Rodriguez leading off the bottom of the 11th by hitting an 89 mph, 0-and-2 fastball off closer Brian Fuentes inches over right fielder Bobby Abreu’s outstretched glove for a game-tying home run.
“You are certainly not thinking home run after you’re down 0-2,” Rodriguez said. “You are just trying to get on base. I finally got a pitch I could handle and hit it well.”
“It’s pretty unbelievable what he’s done for us so far,” Girardi said of A-Rod. “I talked about it before the playoffs started that I thought he was in a great place. He’s been huge for us.”
“He still works harder than anyone else to this day,” Johnny Damon said of A-Rod. “He’s just in a great frame of mind.”
On it went to the 12th,, now colder, now rainier, with folks abandoning their seats en masse to seek shelter from the storm. But those remaining at their spot, still most of the sold-out crowd, stood to watch, too cold and juiced to sit, their game now going on five hours long.
It was A-Rod, the script needing a tidy ending, stepping to the plate with the bases loaded and two outs in the 12th. But the script had been discarded innings and hours earlier. A-Rod popped out to center.
Onto the 13th.
Who could even imagine how this thing was going to end?
“We did everything,” Rivera said at his cubicle, “to win this game. When you win like this, it shows a lot of heart and determination, and that’s where we’re at.”
“That’s as crazy as it gets tonight,” Phil Hughes was saying. “I think we outdid ourselves.”
The Yanks headed straight for their charter plane that was awaiting. Swisher was asked what he’d be doing on the plane.
“Going to sleep,” he said.
Tags: alex rodriguez, baseball, Bronx News, Bronx People, CC Sabathia, derek jeter, Joe Girardi, Jorge Posada, Los Angeles, Mariano Rivera, Mark Teixeira, Melky Cabrera, Nick Swisher, robinson cano, score, Sports, The Bronx, World Series, YankeesRelated posts
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