PLEASE, please, I beg the executives at YES, do not make yesterday’s comeback victory over the Red Sox into a Yankees Classic.
I know you are already imagining what you can do with John Sterling’s narration and some sweeping orchestral music. You must be in heat about the last-ever Rivalry game at this Yankee Stadium concluding with a bottom-of-the-ninth-winning hit from Jason Giambi off Jonathan Papelbon.
YES can make Karim Garcia look good, so there is no doubt what can be done with Yankees 3, Red Sox 2 on a beautiful afternoon.
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But resist. These are the Yankees and if you have any sense of history, moving within six games of the wild card is not Classic. At these prices, it is actually closer to pathetic.
“There are a lot of Yankees-Red Sox games in this building that mean more than this,” Mike Mussina said.
The only way for this to become truly Classic has nothing to do with yesterday. It has to do with the next month. If this turns out to be a springboard toward the inconceivable – a Yankees charge into the playoffs – then go get John Sterling and that orchestra.
“You can’t make this one of the great games ever unless something else occurs down the road to make it important,” Mussina said.
To dramatize the point, Mussina referenced his relief outing in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS against Boston. He entered with the Yanks down 4-0 in the fourth, runners on first and third and no outs. He allowed no runs to score over three innings.
“But as good as that was nobody would remember it if we didn’t come back and win,” Mussina said. They did, in a true Classic, winning the pennant on Aaron Boone’s 11th-inning homer.
The following year, the Red Sox were down as hopelessly as a team can be, trailing the ALCS three-games-to-nothing, losing in the ninth inning of Game 4 against Mariano Rivera and with 86 years of Yankees-inflicted Cursed history on their back. Boston, though, won Game 4 and rallied historically to win a pennant and then a championship. So baseball miracles do occur.
“A lot of stuff doesn’t look important at the time it happens,” Mussina said. “It only becomes important from something that occurs later on.”
The Yanks will have to make this important. They are down six games in the wild card with 29 to play. They don’t face the Red Sox again until the final three games of the season, and the Yankees’ quest now should be to make those games relevant. It is a heck of a task.
They have Carl Pavano going tonight against the Blue Jays. They face A.J. Burnett tomorrow and Roy Halladay on Sunday. They follow that with a four-city, 10-game road trip that includes a stop against the first-place Rays and a cross-country flight (with no day off) to play in Seattle before concluding with three games against the first-place Angels, the Yanks’ unbeatable nemesis.
They then return for the final ever homestand in this Stadium, which includes three games against the first-place Rays and four vs. the first-place White Sox.
But there are no excuses about tough schedule or injuries, especially because the Red Sox announced after this setback that ace Josh Beckett had to be scratched for tonight with lingering arm problems. He is scheduled now to see Dr. James Andrews. Hank Steinbrenner, who set his outdoor world record by personally attending two straight Yankees games, might want to take note that even the wild-card leaders have devastating injuries.
That injury makes the Red Sox more vulnerable. What can the Yanks do about it? Yesterday they found a way to win when the best Alex on the field was Cora, not Rodriguez. They received seven strong innings from Mussina, and no-hit relief from Brian Bruney, Damaso Marte and Rivera. And they got two high-impact swings from Giambi, who did not even start the game.
Yet, as of now, yesterday’s win was merely a good dessert after a horrible meal. The Yanks lost the first two games, so they still lost one overall game in the standings and three off the schedule.
So this win – dramatic or not – was no Classic. Not yet anyway.