They entered the game from opposite places, riding different tides of momentum. The Mets had just played three gritty games against the world-champion Phillies in front of three full houses at Citi Field, winning a one-run game, losing two extra-inning struggles, still feeling quite good about themselves.
“They know who we are and we know who they are,” David Wright had said after the last of those games. “They know we aren’t going anywhere.”
The Yankees had just lost three straight to the Red Sox at Fenway, going from a game up in the AL East to two back, dropping to an astonishing 0-8 against the Sox so far in the young season. They weren’t pitching well, weren’t hitting well. They were 34-26, heading in the wrong direction.
“We were in one of those phases where you wonder if you’re ever going to win another game,” Johnny Damon said earlier this week.
It’s helpful to remember the Yankees and the Mets were in similar stratospheres that evening of June 12, 2009. Since the start of 2006, the Yankees were 314-232 heading into that night, the Mets 305-239. Both had suffered their share of recent late-season heartache, but both were regular-season bullies. The Mets weren’t whole; Jose Reyes would sit out his 19th straight game that night. Carlos Delgado was still out. Both were expected back soon.
“We have to tread water until the troops come back,” Jerry Manuel, the Mets’ manager, said a few hours before Yankees starter Joba Chamberlain threw the game’s first pitch, a letter-high fastball, to Alex Cora.
The game itself was a classic. The Mets chased Chamberlain with a four-run fifth that gave them a 6-3 lead, capped by Gary Sheffield’s back-at-ya homer that quieted the jeers he’d heard from Yankees fans. Derek Jeter responded in the bottom half with a solo shot off Livan Hernandez, and when Manuel brought in journeyman lefty Jon Switzer the next inning to try to stifle Hideki Matsui, Matsui slammed a three-run blast to give the Yankees a 7-6 lead.
But the Mets tied the game on a double-play grounder by Fernando Tatis in the seventh, went ahead on a two-out rally in the eighth, Carlos Beltran drawing a walk off Mariano Rivera, David Wright slamming an RBI double. Sean Green and Pedro Feliciano kept the score at 8-7 in the bottom of the eighth. In the ninth, Francisco Rodriguez retired Brett Gardner on a foul pop, surrendered a single to Jeter, struck out Damon — “He was electric that night,” Damon remembers — then walked Mark Teixeira intentionally.
There were 47,967 people inside Yankee Stadium, all of them standing, 75 percent of them bedecked in Yankees navy blue, the others in Mets royal blue, the invaders awfully loud now. It was 10:54 p.m.
Up stepped Alex Rodriguez.
*
“Rodriguez to the set . . . and the 3-1 . . . popped up! Castillo . . .”
— Michael Kay, YES Network.
“POPPED UP! Castillo settling under it . . . now backpedaling . . .”
— Gary Cohen, SNY.
“Here’s the pitch . . . and it’s POPPED UP! In the air behind second base . . . Castillo backing up . . . onto the grass . . . under it . . .”
— Howie Rose, WFAN.
It was a quintessential Francisco Rodriguez inning; to that moment, at least, it was a quintessential Alex Rodriguez at-bat in the clutch, too. Two on. Two out. Then three straight balls to A-Rod; the Mets fans in the crowd quieted. Omar Minaya, the Mets GM, was at home, sick, and what he was watching wasn’t making him feel any better. On 3-and-0, K-Rod poured over a strike; A-Rod was taking all the way.
Two years later, K-Rod admitted: “If I hadn’t let guys on base, maybe what happened next wouldn’t have happened.”
The 3-1 pitch might have been the best one K-Rod threw all inning: at the knees, inside corner. It was a 94-mph fastball. But A-Rod saw it well.
“I got a great pitch to hit,” he said a few days ago. “And I hit it to the moon.”
The moon, unfortunately, was located in short right field. It was a major-league popup, but a popup all the same. As soon as the ball left his bat, A-Rod knew he’d missed it; he slammed the bat hard on the ground with his left hand, discarded it, looked to the Yankees dugout in anger, spit out a sunflower seed shell with disgust.
On the mound, K-Rod lifted his right arm in triumph. Even over the din, you could audibly hear him scream, “YEEAAAHHHHH!”
Jeter, on second base, put his head down and ran. Teixeira, on first, did the same. As a kid in Kalamazoo, Mich., Jeter’s father, Charles, had instilled in him the right way and the wrong way to play; in Severna Park, Md., John Teixeira (who had played high school baseball with Bucky Dent) had drilled the same lessons in his son.
“He taught me to always play hard,” Teixeira said. “In all sports: baseball, basketball, soccer. He never got upset with me for not succeeding; he only got upset if I didn’t play hard, if I didn’t play the game the right way.”
As the ball drifted over the infield, Teixeira already was past second. He couldn’t see what was taking place just over his left shoulder. Luis Castillo had won three Gold Gloves, from 2003-05, as a Marlin. Age had robbed him of a few steps of range, but if a baseball was anywhere near his glove, it died there. He had four errors to that point of the 2009 season; three had come on throws.
Now he was tracking A-Rod’s ball, and from the start he looked as if he had a hard time picking it up. Once he did, he started backtracking. Three steps. Five. Seven. Nine. Then, with the wind playing tricks, he shifted his path to his left. Three steps. Five. Seven. By this point, it might have been helpful if the right fielder behind him, Ryan Church, had called Castillo off the play. He didn’t.
“I was watching it come toward him and peeled off,” Church said a bit later, back in the visiting clubhouse. “It seemed like he was right under it. He was right there . . .”
In the WFAN radio booth, Howie Rose was preparing for his signature post-win call, but reminded himself to wait until he knew for sure. Out in the left-field stands, in a moment frozen forever on YouTube, an unnamed Mets fan wasn’t so prudent. Standing in the midst of quiet, disappointed Yankees fans, a cell-phone camera pointed at him, he steals Rose’s line. “PUT IT IN THE BOOKS!” he yells. “PUT IT IN THE BOOOOOOKS!!!”
And then, inexplicably, all those Yankees fans explode.
And the Mets fan, puzzled, turns around, muttering, “What the . . .?”
“Castillo on the outfield grass . . . DROPS THE BALL! HE DROPPED THE BALL! Here comes Teixiera! He scores! Yankees win! Oh, wow! Luis Castillo dropped the popup, then he threw to second and Teixeira scored without a play and the Yankees have overcome an 8-7 deficit to win it 9-8! Ballgame over! Yankees win! THUHHHH . . .”
— John Sterling, WCBS
“Castillo . . . DROPS THE BALL! In to score is Jeter! Teixeira coming to the plate! He scores ahead of the throw! The Mets walking slowly off the field are stunned! … And the Mets have lost about the toughest game available . . .”
— Rose, WFAN
*
In spring training 2011, Luis Castillo said, “I make lots of errors in my career, but I’m only going to be remembered for one, because it was at the worst possible time. Subway Series. Not good.”
Was it the wind?
“No. I just drop it.”
Could Church have . . .?
“No. No one else. My error.”
On the field, Castillo had done almost everything wrong: he’d wandered tentatively, he’d used only one hand. When the ball dropped, he hesitated for a split second, panicked, inexplicably threw to Alex Cora covering second, even as first baseman Daniel Murphy pleaded with him to throw home. Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. It probably wouldn’t have mattered.
Yankee Stadium had turned into V-J Day, something K-Rod observed in silence with his hands on his head, something Castillo would quietly have to walk through. At home plate, Jeter hugged Teixeira, and they were joined by Damon and Matsui, by Gardner and Chien-Ming Wang, Nick Swisher and Ramiro Pena. At first base, Melky Cabrera and Robinson Cano assaulted A-Rod, Cano slapping him on the back five times, then leaping on him.
The Mets’ clubhouse was morgue-still. Yet into this silent breach walked Castillo, ashen-faced, broken. He had been crying. His eyes were still wet.
And he answered every question. Every single one.
“I feel bad . . . I feel bad . . . I feel . . .” He stopped. Gathered himself. “It’s a routine fly ball. I grabbed at it and . . .”
He shook his head. You never saw a ballplayer look more . . . ruined.
“I tried,” he said.
There are a lot of Mets fans who never forgave Luis Castillo for the drop, the reason a simple one, summarized by David Wright: “From the fans’ perspective, the Subway Series is probably bigger and more important than it should be. But on that stage, it’s a tough situation.”
Still, in his clubhouse, Castillo’s behavior had been noticed.
“Everything went downhill for him after that,” Cora said yesterday. “I’d always respected him before, but getting to know him that season, and what he did that night and Saturday morning, I knew the type of player he was and he was a pro.”
Said K-Rod: “He took all the bullets.”
The Yankees had other reasons to feel good about things. From that night on, they would go 69-33, they would cruise past the Twins and Angels in the playoffs, they would beat the Phillies for their 27th World Series title. The Mets? They would go into an almost immediate tailspin, 39-65 the rest of the way. Nine days later, they would lose Beltran for 21⁄2 months, and their disabled list soon would read like the Manhattan phone book.
Was this the game that sealed those fates?
The Yankees, at least, believe it helped them become what they became.
“It was a huge moment,” Teixeira said. “We were struggling a little bit. We really needed that game. We kind of stole it.”
And as much as that one play marked Castillo for the rest of his career as a Met — he finally was waived this spring after 365 games, a .274 average and 21 total errors — it had the same effect on Teixeira, who would go on to finish second behind Joe Mauer in the ’09 MVP vote.
“Sometimes that’s what it takes, a lucky break here or there to get you going, and we seemed to capitalize on it,” Joe Girardi said a few days ago.
“The most amazing thing,” Alex Rodriguez said, “was the hustle by Tex. That’s why we won. If he only goes 90 percent, he only gets to third base.”
Admitted Teixeira: “That was my Welcome to New York moment. It showed people in New York what I’m all about.”
Tonight, three weeks shy of two years since the most memorable — if not the defining — game of the 84 regular-season meetings since 1997, the Yankees and the Mets enter a Friday night at Yankee Stadium from opposite places. The Yankees burst with expectation. The Mets have struggled: injuries, losses, bad karma, troubling ownership issues. The Yankees are 186-119 from the moment the ball popped out of Castillo’s glove, the Mets 139-170.
Can you blame the play?
Not for everything, no. But it lingers. On both sides now. And maybe for years to come.