BALTIMORE – Here comes the cold shower.
Yankees fans who want to feel good about last night’s 9-4 win over the Orioles in front of 43,543 at Camden Yards should understand this: Carl “American Idle” Pavano starts tonight.
Welcome the biggest buzz kill ever.
Pavano, who hasn’t faced big league hitters since early last April because of Tommy John surgery, was the Yankees’ only option when they required a fifth starter. So, tonight something many thought would never happen and some in the organization never wanted to happen, is scheduled to happen.
Pavano, off five minor league starts, takes the mound after the Yankees grinded out a victory that was made possible by two runs in the eighth inning and easier by four runs in the ninth when Cody Ransom clubbed a three-run homer and Xavier Nady followed with a solo blast.
“We looked like we came to play baseball,” starter Mike Mussina said.
Bobby Abreu certainly did. After purchasing tickets, a bus and hotel rooms for 25 members of the Venezuela Little League team to ride from Williamsport, Pa., to Camden Yards to see their first big league game, fellow countryman Abreu delivered a 5-for-5 game and added a running catch to the show.
Derek Jeter, who went 1-for-5, recorded his 2,500th hit with his first-inning single. Robinson Cano and Jose Molina hit back-to-back homers in the fifth.
Mariano Rivera recorded the final four outs for his 29th save in 30 chances, and Ransom has two homers in two Yankees at-bats.
The victory enabled the Yankees to remain 10 1/2 games behind the AL East-leading Rays and six games back of the Red Sox in the wild-card race.
“It’s huge,” Joe Girardi said of winning the first game of a series for the first time in eight tries. “It’s the one thing we haven’t been able to do. To get this win is huge.”
Trailing, 4-3, in the eighth, Abreu singled and Alex Rodriguez doubled to open the inning. After Jason Giambi popped out, Kemeron Mickolio’s first pitch to Nady was a wild one and Abreu scored. Nady followed with an RBI single and the Yankees grabbed a 5-4 lead.
“I felt good about the way we swung the bats and our approach tonight,” Girardi said of his lineup that went 4-for-11 with runners in scoring position and had 16 hits.
Mussina (16-7), who hasn’t lost since July 28 (five starts), earned a no-decision, pitching six innings and allowing four runs and nine hits.
“That was pretty good, did you see the other two games I pitched against them,” said Mussina, who was 0-2 with an 11.12 ERA in two games against his former team this season. “I could have been better, I could have been sharper.”
If the cliché about momentum in baseball being determined by the next day’s starting pitcher, the Yankees likely won’t build off last night’s victory. Even if Girardi, ever the optimist, was thinking that way.
“When you win a game like tonight it makes you feel good about tomorrow,” the manager said. “It’s a big start for Pav, but we are swinging the bats good.”
But likely not good enough to prevent an ocean of icy water from pouring out of the shower spout and killing whatever buzz last night’s victory created.
Yankees 9 Orioles 4