You really see something new every day you come to the ballpark, and you didn’t have to think hard about what box to check Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.
The Yankees prevailed over the Rangers, 2-1, in a rain-shortened contest that emulated Little League’s paternalistic attributes perhaps more than any other game in Major League Baseball’s history. Essentially, this one was called just halfway through, with 4 ¹/₂ innings in the book, because the managers didn’t want to risk their players’ health on Yankee Stadium’s wet field after the Stadium grounds crew took a relative eternity to protect that field.
“We made a joke, if you put the two teams together on the DL, you could form a pretty good team,” Joe Girardi said of himself and his Rangers counterpart Ron Washington. “Neither one of us could really afford to put anyone else on the [disabled list] because of conditions that players shouldn’t be on.”
In a most bizarre sequence of events, the Yankees’ Brett Gardner had worked the count to 3-and-0 against Texas starter Yu Darvish, with one out and Francisco Cervelli on second base in the bottom of the fifth, when the skies opened and unleashed a torrential downpour.
Home-plate umpire and crew chief Dale Scott signaled the players off the field at 8:46, and for the next 14 minutes, the Yankees’ grounds crew struggled mightily to spread the suddenly heavy tarp over the infield.
At 9:00, with the assistance of security and clubhouse staff, the crew finally secured the tarp over the infield. Those 14 minutes of exposure greatly hurt the Rangers and helped the Yankees.
For as the showers dissipated and the Yankees went as far as announcing over the public-address system that play would resume at approximately 10:05, Girardi and Washington did a test walk of the neglected infield. They didn’t like the mushiness they saw. According to Girardi, Washington said, “This is a hamstring waiting to be pulled.” Girardi said: “I question if this is safe for our players.”
Washington didn’t look happy following the game, according to The Post’s Dan Martin, but he didn’t question the grounds crew’s professionalism.
Scott told a pool reporter: “After we set a time and went out there, both managers were very concerned about the softness of the base paths, and quite frankly, once we walked a little bit, it looked good, but … it was very soft.”
As the Rangers players, including Darvish, stood near the visitors’ dugout, the umpires communicated with MLB officials. And at 10:25, the rain picked up again, and the grounds crew placed the tarp back on the field.
“The field was just not playable,” Scott said. “They did a heck of a job trying to get it back, and I praise them for that, but it just wasn’t going to happen.”
Therefore, at 10:35, the game had been officially banged, and the Yankees experienced a sort of karmic payback: They suffered a 4 ½-inning loss to the Orioles July 13 in Baltimore. Now they had themselves a 4 ½-inning win at home.
The abbreviated game surely helped them in their efforts to overcome the excellent Darvish, and it gave David Phelps his first career complete game, albeit the cheapest one possible. Gardner reached double digits with his 10th homer, the game-winner in the third, and Cervelli contributed a pair of doubles. The Yankees (52-48) now own a 5-1 record since the All-Star break.
So the Yankees’ grounds crew, their good intentions notwithstanding, assisted the ball club. Of course, the Rangers — or at least their fans — probably didn’t mind terribly, as they fell to 40-61, baseball’s worst record, in their unanticipated quest to get the top selection in next year’s amateur draft.
“The grounds crew did everything they could,” Girardi said. “They physically did everything they could, and then Mother Nature took over.”
Mother Nature gets the save, the grounds crew the inadvertent hold. The Yankees, on the right side of the scoreboard when the craziness began, are in no position to be picky about how they pick up their victories.