12 INNINGS
Red Sox 3
Yankees 2
His bats are dead. His gloves are made of stone. So Joe Torre appealed to the Yankees’ emotions.
Having sat through a 3-2 loss in 12 innings to the Red Sox with a Yankee Stadium crowd of 55,195, Torre yesterday gathered the Yankees in the clubhouse. He told them to show up mad today when they attempt to keep from dropping three straight to their blood rivals, who will start Pedro Martinez.
Will being ticked off at the Red Sox help? Who knows? But it can’t hurt. Not after what was supposed to be the best lineup ever assembled produced just two runs and four hits in a dozen innings. Three of those hits were singles in seventh, when the Yankees could only muster a run.
Torre wants to see some teeth today, and how do you think George Steinbrenner feels after losing five of six games to the Red Sox? The Boss, who is in Florida, was in a foul mood yesterday morning, and the loss didn’t improve his psyche.
Torre’s teams usually respond when he relays messages like yesterday’s. But even if they are hacked off, can they hit? The team batting average is an embarrassing .221, and they have committed 17 errors in 18 games.
“Baseball is full of streaks, and right now we are down in the valley,” said Torre, whose 8-10 outfit has lost three straight and is 2-for-16 (.125) with runners in scoring position during the slide. “Baseball is not easy to play, and this is where you earn your money.”
Right now you don’t need five digits on one hand to count the Yankee hitters earning their glue. Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui were hot before going a combined 0-for-8 yesterday. Alex Rodriguez, who homered, had two hits, walked twice and scored both runs, is ready to sizzle. The rest of the lineup? No good.
Kevin Brown put his club in an early 2-0 hole by walking the first two batters in the first inning and making two errors in the second. However, Brown blanked the Red Sox across the next five frames. Yet the best the Yankees could do against Bronson Arroyo was A-Rod’s homer in the fourth and producing one run out of a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the seventh, when the frigid Bernie Williams (0-for-5) banged into a 4-6-3 double play. Gary Sheffield’s RBI single in the seventh was the last hit as Boston hurlers didn’t allow a hit to the final 24 Yankee hitters.
“We had some gutsy pitching,” Torre said of Brown and Mariano Rivera, who loaded the bases in the 11th with one out but didn’t give up a run. “But we are not hitting. We are too talented up and down the lineup for this to last.”
Remarkably, the Red Sox won despite going hitless in 18 at-bats with runners in scoring position. Manny Ramirez opened the deciding 12th with a double to right-center off Paul Quantrill. Jason Varitek’s grounder moved Ramirez to third, and after Quantrill hit Kevin Millar, Mark Bellhorn lofted a fly to center that scored Ramirez.
“The pitch to Bellhorn I didn’t get it off the plate enough,” said Quantrill, who is 2-1. “It was a bad pitch to Manny, I left it up.”
Mike Timlin fanned Williams and Miguel Cairo to start the 12th and got Derek Jeter, who is hitless in 21 at-bats and batting .194, to ground softly to third for the final out.
Will getting hacked off help against Martinez, who for all his greatness is 9-8 against the Yankees in the regular season? Based on what the Yankees have done the past two games against the Red Sox, it can’t hurt.
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LUMBER SLUMBER
After 18 games, Yankee bats are still in the deep freeze.
Here’s a look at their big guns:
AB H HR RBI BB SO AVG.
Derek Jeter 76 14 0 5 6 12 .184
Alex Rodriguez 70 17 3 5 9 14 .243
Jason Giambi 50 11 3 7 16 7 .220
Gary Sheffield 64 17 1 10 11 6 .266
Bernie Williams 56 10 0 2 9 11 .179
