Mere blip on radar en route to Boston
THIS time it seemed like the Yankees were going to challenge themselves a little bit on a scorching-hot day at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium. It took them a little longer than usual to start threshing an opponent like a big Kansas farm. They’d been no-hit for six innings by the Royals’ Alec Marsh, and shut out for seven.
Most days and nights so far this spring, it’s seemed that by the time you crack open your first cold one, fully extend your recliner and properly identify what network the game is on, the Yankees are already up 2-0, runners at the corners. It’s been that kind of dream ride, especially against the AL Central, 17 wins in 18 games coming in.
Baseball isn’t supposed to be that easy. And yet here the Yankees came. Here came Anthony Rizzo, returning from a brief sabbatical with a home run. The Royals kicked the ball around. Anthony Volpe tied the game at 2 with a terrific at-bat, and Juan Soto did what Juan Soto does, knocking in the go-ahead run just as all 21,875 fans and all 52 players assumed he would.
Of course they were going to win again, sweep the Royals, become the first team to reach 50 wins on the season, get to 18-1 against the Central. Clay Holmes got two outs in the ninth, despite a brain-lock ground ball that allowed a runner. He got to two strikes on Kyle Isbel, the ninth man in the Royals’ batting order.
A long time ago, the T-shirt in the Yankees clubhouse said it this way: “We play today, we win today.” The Yankees were about to honor that old slogan, which they’ve taken about as literally as it can be taken. “It was right there,” Holmes said. And, well … as a wise man once said, “That’s baseball, Suzyn.”
Isbel fought back to 3-2, singled. Holmes fell behind Maikel Garcia 2-0, and then Garcia shot one just inside the third-base line, and suddenly it was over, Royals 4 and the Yankees 3, and there were 21,875 delighted fans inside the ballpark who’d undoubtedly already marked this one down on the right side of the hyphen.
“I can’t fall behind there,” Holmes would say. “I need to make a better pitch there.”
And look, nobody likes to lose, ever, and nobody likes to lose when you’re a strike away, ever, and nobody likes to lose when theoretically it could’ve been a 1-2-3 ninth inning if maybe Rizzo had charged for that one-out grounder off the bat of Drew Waters, not let it play him. Ever.
All true. All fair. We’ve seen a lot of those ninth innings around here this spring, after all, although almost all of them have happened to the team in Queens, and it requires late-inning viewing of that team come with a Surgeon General’s warning. It’s helped submarine the Mets’ season so far.
This is surely to be a blip. The Yankees took three of four from a team that had felt good about itself on Monday, 12 games over .500. They lost no ground to the Orioles, who also finally lost. Now they a few days in Boston this weekend against their old friends the Olde Towne Team.
These used to be days that would be circled on the calendar in the beginning of March, especially when they played 19 games against each other every year, especially when the there was an expectation there’d be seven more to follow sometime in October. It’s not what it was. There are fewer games now. The Red Sox apparently grew sleepy with all the prosperity they enjoyed from 2004 to 2019. They are a .500 team.
Now, the city is going to be in a wonderful mood this weekend. Friday’s game has already been moved up to 6:30 so the locals can see if the Celtics can add an 18th banner in Dallas later that night, maybe add a 13th civic championship since the Patriots started this boffo Boston bonanza back in 2001. Even if that doesn’t happen, Yanks-Sox will serve as a nice appetizer for the C’s trying to win the title at home Monday.
Either way, it’s going to be lacking the old sizzle, which is understandable. The teams exist in different places now. The Sox are a secondary (probably a tertiary) story in Boston, and the Yankees are all we’ve got right now.
“Have to shake this off,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, “and get ready for Boston.”
There isn’t a reason in the world to believe they won’t do that. The blips along the way — even aggravating ones like Thursday’s — are just small parts of the grander blueprint.