All across the city, at Yankee Stadium and beyond, thousands of volunteer managers had already made the choice for the one who gets paid to do the job. Out Here, we have all the answers: We bench the quarterback, trade the power forward, demote the goalie.
And you’d better believe we pinch-hit for Alex Rodriguez.
Of course, we don’t have to look Alex Rodriguez in the eye when we do it; Joe Girardi does. We don’t have to steel our stomach for the moment when you officially substitute a fine journeyman player named Raul Ibanez for one of history’s five greatest players, no matter how much he’s struggling.
Joe Girardi does. Joe Girardi did.
“You’re scuffling,” Girardi told Alex Rodriguez in the bottom of the ninth inning, and he most certainly was. It wasn’t just that A-Rod no longer looked dangerous at the plate anymore, he was barely competitive. On Twitter, in saloons, in a million living rooms across the city there was one obvious, unanimous choice (well … except in Mark Sanchez’ house, probably):
Make a switch. Make it now.
Easy for us to say. Harder for Girardi to do.
He did it anyway. He did it and he hit the greatest jackpot of his managerial career, cashed the biggest Lotto ticket of his life. Ibanez tied the game with one mighty swat of a Jim Johnson fastball. Three innings later, one pitch from Brian Matusz, and he sent it flying to the same neighborhood beyond the right field fence.
Yankee Stadium was delirious, the Orioles devastated, the night suddenly alive with an old October song, the din so loud it even drowned out Sinatra. Yes, you really can get the new joint to sound like the old place across the street; you just have to give it a forever moment or two to savor. Give it Yankees 3, Orioles 2. One more win for a trip to the ALCS.
One more time, the Orioles flew a little too close to the sun, and one more time the Yankees wouldn’t let them sneak by them. The Orioles had scratched their way to a 1-0 lead, and a 2-1 lead, and they were two outs away from sending the Yankees into a perilous place, 27 outs away from winter.
“One pitch,” O’s manager Buck Showalter said. “That’s the world we live in.”
“A gut move,” Girardi said.
Girardi understood the risk. He knew Joe Torre had ruined his relationship with Rodriguez six years ago when he batted him eighth in an elimination game in Detroit. And even Rodriguez himself admitted: “Ten years ago, I probably don’t handle this as well.”
Ten years later, nobody has to remind A-Rod how badly he is struggling because he’s right there for every pitch, for every fastball that speeds past, every half-swing called a strike, every boobird and cat-call careening out of the grandstand. Girardi has defended A-Rod, stubbornly at times, almost to the point where they seemed destined to fail together in the same foxhole.
Until they weren’t.
Until Girardi said, “I’m just going to take a shot,” and took his shot, and sent Ibanez up for Rodriguez. This wasn’t a talk radio conversation, or an e-mail blast, or Bald Vinny and the boys screaming lineup ideas from the bleachers. This was the real thing.
“You know you’re going to be asked a lot of questions if it doesn’t work,” Girardi would say, much later, laughing.
But it worked. Holy mackerel, it worked like you wouldn’t believe, worked as well as any long-shot hunch has ever worked in Vegas, in Atlantic City, at Aqueduct.
The Yankees aren’t in the clear yet, not with Derek Jeter’s foot howling (“If you have a ball, throw it off your foot, you can relate to how it felt,” he said, before adding, of course, “I’m playing [today].”) Not with the O’s, ever-resilient, still in the arena. But that’s OK. The Yankees know better than anyone that it isn’t official until champagne stings your eyes.
A lot closer now than they were in the bottom of the ninth.
“Well, [Joe] knew Raul was going to hit a home run and that he was going to come back up … and hit another home run.” Jeter quipped. If only it was that easy all the time. Turns out all the volunteer managers were on top of their game last night. And so was the real one.
michael.vaccaro@nypost.com