IT gets late early around here. Yogi once said that, now Willie Randolph agrees. Five games into what would be an unacceptable fifth year without a World Championship, it already is September in The Bronx.
The Yankees came to work yesterday with a two-game losing streak. It only seemed like four games, or more like 14 games, to Bernie Williams, hitting .062; to Gary Sheffield, who has driven in one run; to people who booed Mariano Rivera, the best postseason closer of all time.
It probably was more like 44 games to Derek Jeter, hitting .477, which is why the Yankees are the Yankees, and why, as Joe Torre stares at the ceiling at 3 a.m., he knows not to blame it on the marinara.
“At one time, I thought it was what I ate before I went to sleep,” the manager said. “Now I realize that doesn’t matter, it’s whether you win or lose.”
“One in a row is enough for me.”
Six million dollars a year and all the green tea you can drink cannot replace the stomach lining Jose Contreras, Esteban Loaiza and Jeff Weaver ate away. A year ago, Donovan Osborne put the stop to the Yankees’ season-longest, four-game losing streak (look, we couldn’t make something like that up), but far too much over-the-counter pitching did them in during October, which is why The Big Antacid now works here.
“If you are going to have somebody trying to get you back on track,” Torre said, “well, I can only go from experience on the other side. And that is, facing a Randy Johnson, it’s hard to put a game plan together.”
With a rotation of Erik Bedard, Rodrigo Lopez, Sidney Ponson, Bruce Chen and Daniel Cabrera, the Orioles have a game plan to keep scoring. They stopped yesterday only after Johnson came out, trailing 5-3, after pitching as spottily as Roger Clemens during his first Yankees season.
We don’t know whether this was just the soiling of one bed, as Johnson put it, or a sign he will toss and turn in the one he’s made here, as many have. We only know that yesterday the stopping was done not by Johnson, but when the Orioles stopped catching the ball, and the fans halted the booing of Rivera when he came through the bullpen gate to close the 8-5 comeback victory.
Remorse talking from the tier reserve?
“No, they aren’t necessarily the same people,” Torre said. “I think we all have the same confidence in Mo, but frustration got to them the last time he pitched.
“They don’t forget who Mo is. They still believe he’s going to do it.”
It matters more that the manager believes it, matters most the pitcher does.
“Even though I have confidence in him, unless you do it yourself you don’t have the feel you want,” Torre said.
And after Brian Roberts hit a 1-2 cutter for a leadoff double in the ninth, and the fans kept encouraging, Rivera found something. He splintered Melvin Mora’s bat with a 3-2 cutter, and after Tejada’s liner hung up for Sheffield in right, locked up check-swinging Sammy Sosa with a chest-high fastball.
By then, all those “Boston fans,” as Rivera wants to believe them to be, had left.
“If they were New York fans, I wouldn’t be sleeping,” he said after saying the booing Wednesday didn’t bother him, before saying he pitched no differently yesterday, only with better movement on the ball. Whatever.
“I was able to work on mechanical stuff in the bullpen and the baseball was moving better,” Rivera said. “I’m not the kind of guy to have doubts.
“Those games are going to happen, I don’t know how many times I have to say this.”
Only every time Rivera surprises us by failing, then reminding us the guy who really puts the stop to Yankees losing streaks is still doing it after eight years.
