WHAT A CATCH! Yankees catcher Francisco Cervelli celebrates with Ichiro Suzuki at home plate after scoring the game-winning run in the 12th inning of a 4-3 victory against the Boston Red Sox. (Neil Miller)
Aug. 29. Lehigh Valley versus Scranton/Wilkes-Barre at Lehigh Valley. That, to answer today’s trivia question, marks the last time Francisco Cervelli batted in a game that counted.
At least, the last time until last night. When the colorful catcher’s first big-league plate appearance of 2012 turned into the Yankees’ biggest win of the season.
The third-string catcher, banished to the minor leagues at the end of spring training, drew a crucial, two-out, 12th-inning walk, and after a Curtis Granderson walk, sprinted from second and belly-flopped onto home plate on Raul Ibanez’s walk-off single, thrilling the Yankee Stadium crowd and his Yankees teammates. With the dramatic, 4-3 victory over Boston, the Yankees retained their one-game American League East lead over Baltimore (which edged Tampa Bay, 1-0) and maintained control of their destiny.
“It makes my season, because there’s just one game left,” Cervelli said. “To have that chance, I’m going to go home really happy.”
A win in tonight’s Game 162 over the Red Sox, with Hiroki Kuroda going against Daisuke Matsuzaka, would give the Yankees the division title and propel them straight into the Division Series, away from the dreaded one-game wild-card playoff on Friday.
For eight innings last night, it appeared that the Yankees, forever teasing their fans this season, would backslide into a tie for the 11th day since Sept. 4. The Yankees couldn’t deliver on several early scoring opportunities, and they were 0-58 in games they trailed after eight innings.
So if the Yankees did anything last night, they reminded us that an inability to come back late is not an intractable moral failing of any kind. It just means that it hasn’t happened. It was Raul Ibanez, the smooth veteran, who launched a pinch-hit, two-run homer in the ninth off Boston closer Andrew Bailey, knotting the game at 3-3.
It was when Ibanez replaced Eduardo Nunez in the ninth that Cervelli, recalled from the Yankees’ Triple-A affiliate on Sept. 1, started calculating that he might actually get in the game. With starting receiver Russell Martin having already been lifted for pinch runner Brett Gardner and then replaced by light-hitting catcher Chris Stewart (who took Cervelli’s major-league roster spot for the season), Cervelli correctly anticipated that Eric Chavez would pinch hit for Stewart, which indeed occurred in the 10th. And then Cervelli would go behind the plate for the 11th.
His first trip to the plate in over a month felt less strange, he said, because he has been on the field every day. You could’ve found him on the field at 3:00ish, working on his swing or his defensive game. He participated in the simulated games against Andy Pettitte as the Yankees’ veteran left-hander rehabilitated.
“I’ve been working so hard,” Cervelli said. “I know it’s not the same, but I’ve been doing everything I can to be ready, because this game, we cannot have excuses. We’ve just got to do the job the right way.”
Said Joe Girardi of Cervelli: “He didn’t get a ton of at-bats. He stays ready. He works.”
Andrew Miller, the Red Sox’s tall, lefty reliever, opened the 12th by retiring Mark Teixeira and Robinson Cano and then got ahead of Cervelli, 0-and-2. Four consecutive balls followed. Granderson looked at four straight balls, and then Ibanez sent an 0-and-1 offering through the left-side hole.
Cervelli’s dramatic dive onto home plate matched his kooky personality. “I don’t know,” he said, laughing, when asked to explain his actions.
“I don’t care how he did it,” Joba Chamberlain said. “He could have fell and rolled into it, as long as he touched the plate and we won.”
For the Yankees, the win brought relief and satisfaction. For Cervelli, whose season began in such terrible fashion, it brought even more.
“I feel like that happened five years ago,” Cervelli said of his early April demotion. “We’ve got to move on, keep moving forward, because I’m only 26 years old. I don’t think it’s going to stop my dream. My dream is to be a big-league player for the next 10, 12 years, whatever God wants. And no one is going to stop me.”
If he couldn’t believe in his dreams on this night, when he helped the Yankees move closer to their first goal, then when could he?