LOSER of one game, Roger Clemens goes for his 20th win tonight at the Stadium against what’s left of the Red Sox. No Major League pitcher ever has been 20-1. Twenty Ks and 20 wins on the same night?
Stranger things have happened, such as the Yankees adding 10 games to their American League lead over the Red Sox in a mere 16 days.
Anyway, to hear Andy Pettitte tell it, numbers only begin to tell the story of how much The Rocket means to the streaking 2001 Yankees.
Always big and strong, Pettitte has grown bigger and stronger since adopting the rigorous workout routine of the fellow Texan whose trophy case is about to welcome a sixth Cy Young Award.
Following the lead of Clemens, Pettitte has used that added strength to put an extra four mph on his four-seam fastball. It seems Clemens works on more than how Pettitte prepares his body. The Rocket spent some time on Pettitte’s mind yesterday in a pregame chat in the clubhouse.
“Roger’s been a big part of what I’ve been able to do this year,” Pettitte said. “He’s given me a lot of confidence. He even gave me a pep talk today before the game.”
The pep talk didn’t center on pitching mechanics and wasn’t delivered in animated fashion, Pettitte said.
“It was more . . . up here,” he said, pointing to his head.
It matters not what Clemens said. It only matters how Pettitte reacted to what he said.
He reacted by retiring the first 12 batters he faced, one day shy of the one-week anniversary of Mike Mussina’s one-strike-away-from-perfection domination of the Red Sox.
“He was dominant at times today,” Joe Torre said of Pettitte.
So dominant that even though it was only four innings, Pettitte acknowledged the thought of perfection crept into his mind, “maybe just a little bit.”
In the end, he wasn’t perfect, but he was just what the Yankees needed him to be to kill any concerns about the slump he ended. With two outs in the eighth, Pettitte walked off the mound to a stirring ovation from the 55,318 who took it all on in a beautiful afternoon. He allowed one run, four hits and three walks and struck out seven in the Yankees’ latest humiliation of the Red Sox, this time by a 7-2 margin.
In his previous four starts, Pettitte was 0-3, 8.63 and had allowed 43 hits in 24 innings.
The difference?
“I was backing off the last few starts,” Pettitte said.
Meaning?
“I’ve been pitching so differently, throwing a lot harder, throwing more four-seam fastballs and that takes a different physical toll on you,” he said. “I went back to throwing more sinkers.”
In other words, he committed a mortal sin for a power pitcher. He thought too much.
“I lost a little of my aggressiveness,” Pettitte said.
He recovered it yesterday and now all four of the Yankees’ postseason starting pitchers are coming off of positive outings.
“It’s nice to know I can take it to another level when I have to,” Pettitte said. “The way all the other guys have been going and the way I’d been scuffling, I needed a big start and I was able to do it.”
Not that Pettitte was worried about his slump. He didn’t make it out of the second inning of his final 2000 regular season start and was back to his normal efficient self in the postseason.
“The regular season is the regular season, still we want to finish up strong,” Pettitte said. “We all want to finish strong. We’re headed in a good direction right now.”
The Yankees have been headed in that direction for nearly as long as Pettitte can remember. He needed only to look in the opposite dugout to realize not every organization is as stable as the Yankees.
“A lot’s going on there right now that’s not good,” he said of the Red Sox. “I think everybody in this clubhouse appreciates (the Yankees’ stability). In Mr. Steinbrenner, we have an owner who loves to win more than anybody. He knows everything that’s going on in the organization, but he trusts the people he hired to make the decisions. He trusts Cash, a lot of others in the front office and Skip.”
By Cash, Pettitte meant general manager Brian Cashman, though it wouldn’t be inaccurate to say Steinbrenner also trusts the power of cash in building a powerhouse.
