GOING STREAKING: Alex Rodriguez making a play on a grounder at third base and being greeted back in the dugout (inset) yesterday, helped the Yankees pick up their fifth win in a row, a 5-3 victory over the Blue Jays. (
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It Was Day Two of the truce, the whole truce and nothing but the truce in the matter of Alex Rodriguez v. the New York Yankees after the appealing athlete (alternate meaning) on Wednesday disclosing he had instructed his camp to turn off the spigot.
So with the flow of raw sewage having ceased as the Yankees completed a four-game sweep of the hapless Blue Jays, 5-3, to extend their winning streak to five and move within six games of the division-leading Red Sox and 3 1/2 behind the second wild card-holding A’s, it was all and only about baseball in The Bronx.
Except it was also at least indirectly about Boston DH David Ortiz telling USA Today he took issue with teammate Ryan Dempster’s apparent attempt to extract vigilante justice against A-Rod by throwing at and ultimately hitting the pinstriped pinata on the left elbow with a pitch Sunday night at Fenway.
It wasn’t a matter of morality to Ortiz, but rather a matter of judiciousness. Or as Big Papi put it: “That pitch woke up a monster in the Yankees’ team at that moment.”
The Yankees had actually begun to stir the previous weekend by taking two-of-three from the Tigers and had already won six-of-nine even as they trailed 2-0 when Rodriguez strolled to the plate Sunday to lead off what would become a fateful second inning.
“I don’t know about that,” Rodriguez said when asked about Ortiz’s take on the matter. “I have a lot of respect for Big Papi but for me, I’m laser-focused on the mission at hand, which is the three games coming up.”
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Again, it is not as if the Yankees were exactly sleeping dogs before Rodriguez pounded a homer to center leading off the sixth to key that four-run rally in which his team surmounted a 6-3 deficit on the way to a 9-6 victory; not at all.
But make no mistake: If the Yankees, 10-2 in their last 12, can pull this off, this unlikely charge to the postseason, the episode in Boston will be marked for all time as the season’s flash point and Dempster will be remembered as the individual who, even if unwittingly, detonated the charge that ignited the comeback.
“I know everybody was fired up and as a club we felt we would win that game no matter what,” said Andy Pettitte, who threw six innings of one-run ball yesterday. “I feel we’ve handled [everything] well as far as focusing on baseball and keeping [anything else] out of the clubhouse.”
Rodriguez was cheered enthusiastically each time he came to the plate yesterday, Yankees fans apparently having no interest in defending the honor of team president Randy Levine, who has led the counter-attack on A-Rod from the executive suite. No roll call chant of “Ran-dee” from the bleachers.
The third baseman went 0-for-3 on three infield grounders, reaching on a throwing error and a walk. But he did make a couple of nifty plays in the field that likely saved three runs, first charging a soft grounder in the fourth to retire Brett Lawrie with two out and a runner on third before his backhand stab on a Rajai Davis drive started an inning-ending 5-5-3 double play with the bases loaded and one down in the fifth.
“He smoked it right down the line and I got my glove down and stopped it,” said Baseball Only A-Rod. “It was a big play.”
Rodriguez, who stole second base in the sixth, sure looked spryer than he did a year ago, benefiting from a day off on Wednesday that followed Tuesday’s day/night doubleheader. Imagine if his surgeon had actually tried to repair the torn labrum. (Legal disclaimer: that is a joke).
“I definitely felt better today,” Rodriguez said. “My body felt pretty good.”
Things have settled down around the Yankees, who have stirred but have not been shaken by the controversial return of Rodriguez that pretty much came in conjunction with the acquisition of Alfonso Soriano, the activation of Curtis Granderson and the revival of Pettitte.
So there is surely more to this than Dempster’s act of vigilantism last Sunday night in Boston, but it sure didn’t hurt and it sure seems to have galvanized the Yankees at least for the short-term.
Now it’s on to Tampa Bay for three before three more in Toronto as A-Rod and his team pursue truce, justice and the American way.