IT DOESN’T take much to win over Yankee fans these days.
In fact, sometimes just a modest ground ball that bounces a half-dozen times on its way into centerfield, barely beyond the reach of a diving second baseman who had been shaded to the right, driving in a meaningless run in the late innings of a one-sided and utterly predictable early season baseball game will do it.
Yesterday, that ground ball came off the bat of Jason Giambi, and that run was the last in a 7-2 Yankee win over the Devil Rays, the inevitable result of the meeting of one ball club with a payroll of $126 million and another with a budget of about 22 cents.
But it didn’t matter, because whatever was left of the announced crowd of 37,343 erupted as if it had just gotten a do-over in the last half-inning of the 2001 World Series, and did it right.
Yo, Jason! Welcome to Da Bronx!
In the boxscore, Giambi didn’t have much of a day: 1-for-4, a strikeout and a very disappointing inning-ending double play in the fourth.
But in Yankee lore, Giambi did something unprecedented. He earned three standing ovations on a single at-bat, a new Yankee record.
The first came when he stepped to the plate with two on and two out in the eighth inning. The second came after his dribbler eluded Brent Abernathy, who was playing Giambi to pull. The third came when Joe Torre sent in Ron Coomer to run for him.
And just like that, the Jason Giambi Era begins in The Bronx.
“The 3,000 pound gorilla finally jumped out of the ballpark,” Giambi said.
You could almost hear the Lou Gehrig speech (“Today . . . today . . . today . . . I feel like . . . like . . . like . . . ) echoing in his head.
“It was a big RBI,” said Torre.
“I was pumped up for him,” said Shane Spencer, the first Yankee to greet Giambi on the dugout steps.
Lee Mazzilli offered to retrieve the baseball for him.
In the Yankee clubhouse, only Derek Jeter seemed underwhelmed, but then, Jeter seems underwhelmed by just about everything.
“What did we play so far, six games?” Jeter asked. “This won’t be the only six games that he doesn’t hit.”
For whatever reason, Giambi has been singled out by the crowd as this year’s Guy Who Has to Prove Himself in New York, despite back-to-back MVP-caliber seasons in Oakland.
The same was true for Mickey Mantle, of course, just for replacing Joe DiMaggio, and for Tino Martinez, Giambi’s predecessor, just for replacing Don Mattingly, and for Reggie Jackson, just for having a big mouth.
But it wasn’t true for David Wells, despite having a big belly, and it was only briefly true for Roger Clemens, who replaced the ever-popular Wells.
Despite averaging .330, 38 HRs and 127 RBIs over the past three seasons, Yankee fans had so far treated Giambi as if he were a flash in the West Coast pan.
That is, until a seeing-eye base hit in a regular-season game that made Luis’ Sojo’s World Series-winning dribbler look like a tracer bullet.
“It’s great to get that first one out of the way,” said Giambi, who had knocked in 675 runs in six seasons as an Oakland A but none in six games as a Yankee.
That, of course, was cause for alarm and consternation and even disdain Friday.
The crowd had softened a bit on Saturday, but yesterday reverted to Opening Day form, booing Giambi from his first appearance at the plate, jeering him whenever he allowed a strike to go by, groaning when his sixth inning fly ball to left died harmlessly in the glove of Jason Tyner.
They got one more chance at him when Jeter walked, sending Alfonso Soriano to second. Before he headed to first, Jeter turned to say something to Giambi.
“Same thing I always say,” Jeter reported. “‘Get a hit.’ “
He may have stifled the impulse to add, “Already!”
Batting against Jorge Sosa, who was welcomed to the major leagues Thursday by back-to-back home runs by Jacob Cruz and Michael Rivera of the Tigers in a 9-2 Devil Rays win, Giambi didn’t so much stroke the ball as poke it over second base.
“About halfway there, I knew it would go through,” Giambi said, as if following the majestic flight of a ball headed to the stands. “All I could think of was, ‘Thank God.’ “
After six games, Giambi is finally, officially a Yankee.
Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?