“Hit the bag!” Joe Girardi screamed.
And sonofagun: The ball hit the damned bag. It hit the bag and it bounced over the head of Adeiny Hechavarria, and it rolled harmlessly into left field, and Raul Ibanez trotted in from second, and Russell Martin replaced him at second.
And suddenly each of the 46,010 people inside Yankee Stadium, all of them on their feet, now were thinking exactly what the Yankees manager was thinking standing on the top step of the first-base dugout:
“Maybe this’ll be our day after all.”
The Yankees aren’t completely at the point where they are looking for harbingers and pixie dust and four-leaf clovers. But as things stood in the bottom of the eighth inning yesterday, it wouldn’t have been so terrible if some kind of sign had presented itself. CC Sabathia had squandered leads of 2-0 and 4-3 to the Blue Jays, who had entered this series having lost 10 of 11 games.
Now, though, it was impossible not to think that maybe — maybe — they had spotted a magic penny on the turf. Martin, on the Interstate all year with his batting average, had nicked the base, nudging the Yankees to within 6-5. Ichiro Suzuki, Eric Chavez and Derek Jeter were due, with nobody out.
“You’re thinking that something good is going to happen,” Martin said.
If something good was going to happen, it was probably going to happen here. The Yankees were 0-46 when trailing after eight innings, a shocking stat for a team that in ancient days was known for its five o’clock lightning and in more recent years was known to throw a pie party or three when trailing in the ninth.
But eight times this year, while entering the eighth behind, they had managed to jump to the proper side of the hyphen. That’s almost as extraordinary a number as the other one. And here they were again.
In truth, it was a marvel in itself that the Yankees were this close at all. Curtis Granderson had driven in three runs; two because Toronto left fielder Rajai Davis had turned a routine fly ball into the shower scene from “Psycho,” and one because second baseman Kelly Johnson had played a double-play grounder more casually than a leisure suit.
Sabathia had surrendered five runs but it could have been more if not for a 5-2 double play (a day after an even rarer 5-4 DP). And now there was this gift of a rally, the ball actually doing exactly what Girardi had begged it to do.
“You’re always yelling, ‘Hit the bag! Hit the bag!’,” Girardi said. “And this time it did.”
They were in business. And then they weren’t. Suzuki lined out to center after failing to lay down a sacrifice (“I failed to create momentum,” he would say ruefully). Chavez struck out. Jeter flied out. It was 6-5. Soon enough Andruw Jones would be crawling the outfield on his belly for the second time, two insurance runs would score, and the ninth inning would go like a tired old waltz, 1-2-3. 8-5, Jays.
The final out, a lazy pop to short by Jones, would come at 4:48. One more day lacking 5 o’clock lightning. Oh-and-47 now.
“I’ve never been a good loser,” Girardi said, and it’s a good time for his team to start channeling those dyspeptic thoughts. The Orioles are in town tomorrow, saddlebags of house money strapped to their sides. For most of the summer, we assumed the Yankees’ next big game would come in October.
Instead the next big game is actually the next game. Period.
“We have to be better than this,” Girardi said, and he’s right. And not only in the ninth inning.