Of course, it figures that today's debacle is one I did get to see.
First up, seeing A-Rod hit that line drive that hit David Huff in the head was brutal to watch. Yikes! Poor guy. Fortunately, Huff is already out of the hospital, and appears to be A-OK.
I was pretty peeved to see Joba Chamberlain have yet another bad outing, and for the Yankees to lose this game. Geez, you have a six-run lead, you should win the game.
Squawker Jon was so pleased about what happened, he watched the seventh inning on the replay just to see it all!
And Wally Matthews, of all people, made an interesting observation, noting how Joe Girardi referred to Chamberlain:
Afterward, Girardi could barely conceal his disgust.Yes, that's how strange a day it was - Wally Matthews made some good points!
"We had the game where we wanted," the manager said, his face tight and the veins in his neck throbbing. "We had our eighth-inning guy in, we needed four outs from him ... and he left pitches in the middle of the plate. He just didn't make the pitches when he had to."
Not once did he refer to his pitcher by name. Chamberlain, the darling of the final days of the old Yankee Stadium, had become "he" and "the eighth-inning guy." No longer to be trusted, neither was he fit to be named.
"Players aren't going to be bulletproof," Girardi conceded. "But he's had some bad outings. He's our eighth-inning guy and he's got to get it done for us."
4 comments:
All I can say for this one is yeccccch! Happened to be in the lakeside town of Saugatuck, MI and went into a bar where, lo and behold the Yankee game is on - and just in time to watch Joba implode. He was throwing, not pitching - most of the hits were with two strikes - and my wife kept saying after each hit - "why don't they take him out?" I think Girardi was trying to make a point to Joba - you can't just throw as hard as you can with no movement on the ball and get anybody out - much less the Cleveland Indians.
As I wrote in my Blog
Is Joba the real life Ebby Calvin 'Nuke' LaLoosh aka Meat.
Has anyone ever seen them in the same room at the same time?
If only the Yankees had Thurman Munson to tell him
"You just got lesson number one: don't think; it can only hurt the ball club".
"You have a million dollar arm and a ten cent head”. .
"You got a gift. When you were a baby, the Gods reached down and turned your right arm into a thunderbolt. You got a Hall-of-Fame arm, but you're pissing it away."
When I found out about the comebacker, I thought about Herb Score. He was the Indians' "Phil Rizzuto," a former star who became a quirky broadcaster, and from Queens like the Scooter as well.
May 7, 1957, same two teams, Yanks and Indians at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium. Score has pitched 2 seasons in the majors, and with Bob Feller now retired, it looks like Feller to Score is going to be the pitching equivalent of DiMaggio to Mantle. Except Gil McDougald hits a line drive right up the middle, smacking Score in the eye. He's out for the season, and although he spent the rest of his life saying that it was an injury the following spring training that really derailed his career, everyone wondered. McDougald was never the same, either, and was so distraught over almost killing Score that lost his hitting edge.
There was another game in 1995, at Jacobs Field, only this time it was the Yankees in the field. I don't remember the batter and the pitcher, but the pitcher just got his glove up in time to save himself. Rizzuto, in his first season as a broadcaster in '57, mentioned what happened to Score, and the camera caught him reaching out of the press box to get the attention of Score, in the next room of the box. Score, wearing headphones and not having access to the Channel 11 transmission, was unaware of Rizzuto's words and gestures, but he had to be having flashbacks, too.
And then the Yanks blew a 10-4 lead. Take the scare and the collapse, and this was one of the worst games in Yankee history. At least they won today, getting some big late hits.
Regarding the Comebacker that hit Huff, I thought of on Matlack of the Mets getting a line drive off of his head by the then Atlanta Braves 2nd baseman Felix Millan
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