Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Yanks 11, Tigers 6

Funny thing. I had two wildly different emotions during tonight's game.

The first: sixth inning, 6-1 Yankees, Aaron Small cruising, man on first, nobody out, Pudge on deck. Routine grounder to Jeter, easy double play--only a horrendous bounce shoots the ball off Jeter's wrist and into right-center field. Runners advance, still nobody out.

So: instead of bases empty, two outs--thus allowing Small the luxury of going after Pudge, and if Pudge takes him to Lake Michigan, oh well--the Tigers now had runners on second and third, nobody out, and Pudge still up.

Not a soul at the park or watching would fail to guess what, approximately, would happen next. Triple, single, and all of a sudden it was 6-4 with Mariano Rivera a long, long way off.

Of course the Kardiac Kid himself, Kyle Farnsworth, would eventually be summoned. Of course (now the score 6-5) he would surrender a single, two walks and a fielder's choice . . . but, to his credit, did get a strikeout with the go-ahead run on third. It was here that I thought: ah, the Yanks will win. And so they did, albeit two innings later.

What I wasn't prepared for was three innings of Rivera, the first such sighting in ten years, going back when he was John Wetteland's set-up man. Giambi hit the go-ahead run the eleventh, which opened the floodgates . . . but the player of the game was Rivera: nine outs on twenty-five pitches. I've had this feeling with Larry Bird, with Tom Brady, with Jeter, with Reggie Bush . . . the notion that I was watching just one more small piece of immortality unveiled before me.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I had similar emotions during this game. Rivera was the real hero as it was the absolute best form I've seen him in all year. The 25 pitches to get nine outs clearly bore that out.

I had an additional emotion ($#%*) related to the Detroit announcers (you were subjected to them via Fox)infatuation with the Detroit players mouthfull of bubble gum (you had to be there).

Anonymous said...

Super color scheme, I like it! Keep up the good work. Thanks for sharing this wonderful site with us.
»