The Closer (20 page)

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OU DON’T WANT TO
make hasty judgments, but the early returns on the new Yankee Stadium are pretty unmistakable. Home runs are flying out of the place, and from a design standpoint, the new park—for all of its grandeur and luxury and state-of-the-art amenities—is a much more open place: It doesn’t hold noise, or home-team fervor, anywhere near the way the old place did. It’s not that we worry about such things as players, but when you are used to having a full-throated full house connected with every pitch, it’s a little hard when people either aren’t in their seats or have no idea what a hit-and-run is.

The old Stadium was our tenth man—a loud and frenzied cauldron of pinstripe passion, with a lot of lifers in the stands. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s hard to see that the new place can ever quite duplicate that.

Some things are completely unaffected by new construction, though, and one of them is Derek Jeter’s swing. He’s had that hands-inside-the-ball magic going for fifteen years, and here it is on display across the street for the first time, in the eighth inning of our second game, with the score tied at five against the Indians. On a 3–1 pitch, Derek swats it to right, flings his bat away as if it were spring-loaded, and is off and running until the ball clears the fence.

Now it’s on me. After a long fly to center, I give up two singles, and Grady Sizemore steps in. He fouls off a couple of cutters in, and on 1–2, Jose Molina sets up outside for the backdoor cutter. Sizemore swings through it. Mark DeRosa comes up. The count goes full and the runners are on the move. I throw the cutter away, hoping to nick the outside corner upstairs. As I wind and deliver, it’s right where I want it. Jose barely has to move. DeRosa thinks it is breaking outside and takes it, but it is right there. Umpire Phil Cuzzi rings him up, DeRosa has a fit, and I have my first save in Yankee Stadium III.

The Yankees have dug deep to have a shiny new team for the new ballpark, spending tens of millions to bring in CC Sabathia, A. J. Burnett, and Mark Teixeira, but it doesn’t stop us from getting off to another sluggish start, including a forgettable weekend in Fenway in late April. We get swept, and the most painful loss comes Friday night. I strike out Ortiz and Pedroia and am one out from saving a 4–2 victory for Joba when I leave a 1–0 cutter over the heart of the plate to Jason Bay, who hits it to straightaway center, halfway to Boston Harbor. It’s another muffed save against a team that has gotten to me more than any other by far. I think about it and we talk about it and we look at film, and still I cannot pinpoint one thing the Red Sox are doing against me that others don’t. It’s not as if they are standing in a different place in the box, or altering their swings. I think it comes down to familiarity. They see me more times than any other team, so they have a much keener sense of how and when my ball moves.

I wish I had some epiphany about what the Red Sox are doing so I can attack them differently, but I don’t. I just have to pitch better against them—or maybe change my pattern so it’s not at all predictable.

We wind up losing in eleven on a Kevin Youkilis walkoff, and lose Saturday when Burnett can’t hold a six-run lead. In the Sox
triumph on Sunday, Jacoby Ellsbury has a straight steal of home off Andy, who actually picks two guys off of first in the game but gets caught by Ellsbury as he pitches from the windup.

A couple of weeks later, I give up back-to-back homers to Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria of the Rays, the first time I’ve ever done that in my career. I’ve already given up more homers than I did all of the previous year. I am not where I want to be velocity-wise; that much I know. I am coming off minor shoulder surgery in October and know that my arm is going to get stronger and that it’s just a question of building it back up. I have less margin for error than I did when I was throwing 96 or 97 miles per hour all the time, so I also know that regaining my command is critical.

My struggles, of course, bring a fresh round of panic that I am finished. It is almost comical. I love playing in New York, but it’s also the home office of overreaction. People are always searching for trends where none exist.

With the exception of our results against the Red Sox—we lose eight straight to them to start the season—I see something in this club that I haven’t seen in a long time. We are fighting to the end, game in and game out. Teams always say they do that, but not that many really do.

Example? Early in June at the Stadium, I have a brutal outing against the Rays, giving up three hits and three earned runs in two-thirds of an inning in a really bad loss.

The next day? We score three times in the bottom of the eighth and I pitch a clean ninth, and we win to move into first place. It’s the twentieth come-from-behind victory for us and the season is barely two months old. And then we keep the comeback theme going to start a Subway Series with the Mets, thanks to the all-out hustle of Mark Teixeira.

We are trailing, 8–7, down to our last out, after I give up an RBI double to David Wright in the eighth. Derek, who singled, is on
second, and Teixeira, who was intentionally walked, is on first. Alex is at the plate. Frankie Rodriguez, the Mets closer, fires and gets Alex to pop up a fastball to second base. Alex slams the bat down, because he had a fastball to hit and missed it. The pop floats into short right behind second baseman Luis Castillo. It is way up there. Castillo settles under it and the Mets are about to take the opener, and then somehow the ball glances off Castillo’s glove. Derek is running hard, of course, and right behind him, Teixeira is running all out, busting it from the time Alex swings the bat. He makes it all the way home and we win that game, not just on an error you might see once every five years but on the hustle of a star player who doesn’t assume anything… who goes hard until the game is over.

That’s what winners do.

Three games out of first, with a 51–37 record at the All-Star break, we take off on our best roll of the season. We win eighteen of our first twenty-three games after the break, sweep the Red Sox four games at the Stadium, and blow right past them into first place.

The last of those games is a microcosm of our season. Down 2–1 going into the bottom of the eighth, Damon and Teixeira blast back-to-back homers, and Jorge follows with a two-run single. I close it out by getting Ellsbury to ground out to Teixeira. I go seven weeks and 21 appearances without giving up a run, and by the time we pull off another four-game sweep, this time of the Rays, in early September, we are 41 games over .500 (91–50) with a nine-game lead. I am pretty darn sure this is not going to be another year when we have a division series meltdown.

I have 39 saves, and my ERA is 1.72. By mid-September, I have converted 36 consecutive save opportunities.

The panic has subsided.

Then, on a Friday night in Seattle, I come on in the ninth with
a 1–0 lead to save a game for A. J. Burnett, who outpitched the great Felix Hernandez. I strike out the first two batters looking and then Mike Sweeney hits a long double. The next hitter is Ichiro. He is so good at going the other way that I want to come in hard to him, jam him. I deliver a cutter, but he is not jammed.

The ball stays over the inner part of the plate. He is one of the best hitters in the world and knows just what to do.

He hits it over the right-field fence, a stunning turnaround in the space of two pitches. Against a hitter that good, you have to be better. I miss my spot. Save blown. Game over.

My bad.

I’m sorry, I tell A.J. You deserved to win that game.

Don’t worry about it, Mo. You’ve saved plenty for me, A.J. says. I walk out of the clubhouse with a chocolate ice-cream cone. It does nothing to take away the sting of letting down the team.

We draw the Twins in the division series and win Game 1 at the Stadium behind CC, but the best news is that Alex looks better than he has in years in October. We get homers from Derek and Matsui, and two big hits and two RBIs from Alex, and win, 7–2.

You see what happens when you don’t try to do too much and just let your ability take over? I tell him.

Game 2 is much more tense. The Twins rally to take a 3–1 lead into the bottom of the ninth, with Joe Nathan, one of the best closers in the league, on for the save. Nathan has saved 47 games during the regular year, but before he even gets an out, Teixeira lines a single to right and Alex hits one into the bullpen in right center and the game is tied. It’s the first magical October moment in the new ballpark, and it’s followed by another two innings later in the eleventh, when Teixeira hooks a ball around the left-field foul pole off of Jose Mijares and we’re up two games to none.

We head to Minneapolis and take a 2–1 lead thanks in part to another Rodriguez home run, and then get saved by a tremendous
defensive play by Derek and Jorge. Nick Punto leads off the bottom of the eighth with a double off of Phil Hughes, before Denard Span bounces a ball up the middle. Derek does well to snare it before it bounds in the outfield and knows he can’t throw out Span. He sees Punto has rounded third aggressively, as if he might try to score. Derek stops, turns, and fires to Jorge, who rifles a throw to Alex, whose swipe tag has Punto nailed. It’s a colossal baserunning blunder, but only perfect execution gets us the out.

I am warming up in the bullpen and you can almost feel the air come out of the Metrodome.

One batter later, I come in to face Joe Mauer, with the tying run on base. Mauer is a .365 hitter that year, the AL MVP, but you can’t worry about that. You trust your stuff and know that if you throw your best pitch and truly believe in it and put it where you want, you can get your man, even if it’s Joe Mauer. When you have that belief, you are in attack mode, ready to bring your very best—and that’s when you finish it well, with all that you have.

Against a hitter like this, if you back off just a little bit, it could mean the difference between a hit and an out.

I bust Mauer’s bat and he grounds out to first.

Jorge and Cano get RBI singles in the ninth off Nathan, I save the victory for Andy, and now it’s on to meet the Angels in our first ALCS since 2004. We take Game 1 behind CC, 4–1, and then Alex saves us in Game 2, drilling a Brian Fuentes fastball over the right-field wall in the eleventh inning, answering an Angels run. It’s Alex’s third game-tying homer of the postseason, and we win two innings later when Jerry Hairston singles, gets bunted to second, and scores on a wild throw.

After the Angels win in extra innings back in Anaheim, CC pitches another great game in a Game 4 blowout, we head home, and suddenly I am having a new experience. I have never been the subject of a little Internet tempest before. It happens courtesy of a
video that supposedly shows me loading up the ball with spit as I stand behind the mound with my back to the plate.

The video looks convincing, I admit, but I do not throw a spitball, and have never thrown a spitball. That is the truth. Major League Baseball looks into it and clears me of any wrongdoing, and even though I answer whatever questions the reporters have, even though I have always done everything legally, there are still some reporters who seem to be positive that they’ve unlocked my secret fifteen years into my career.

It doesn’t bother me, and it changes nothing. If somebody wants to try to get in my head or throw me off my game, they are going to have to come up with something way better than that.

We wind up closing the Angels out in six games, Andy winning, me saving my third game of the series, giving up a run in two spitless innings. Next up: the Philadelphia Phillies, baseball’s defending World Series champions.

Being in the World Series doesn’t seem as if it comes with the uniform anymore—not with six years passing since our previous appearance. I have a new appreciation for how hard it is to get here. I am a month away from turning forty. I pray that I will glorify the Lord and savor the experience.

I don’t know if I am going to pass this way again.

My first big test comes against Chase Utley, with two on and one out in the top of the eighth in Game 2. Cliff Lee was dominant in Game 1 in a complete-game 6–1 victory, Utley belting two homers in support of him. Now here Utley is again, after Burnett delivers a superb effort in getting the better of Pedro Martinez. The Phillies acquired Pedro for games like this. He pitches well, but Teixeira and Matsui get him with solo homers, and then Jorge has a huge pinch single. So I am protecting a 3–1 lead as Utley works the count full. I go at him with nothing but cutters, mostly working on
the outside, for good reason. He is trying to pull everything, and Jorge and I both see it. I don’t know if this is another instance of a lefty hitter getting seduced by the short porch, but Utley sure seems to be thinking that way. On a 3–2 pitch, I come at him with another cutter away, and he does just what we are hoping for—tries to pull it. He makes solid contact but hits a bouncer that goes from Cano to Jeter to Teixeira for an inning-ending double play.

An inning later, I get Matt Stairs swinging to finish things up, and we square the Series at one.

With Alex, Matsui, and Nick Swisher homering in Game 3, and Andy pitching around two Jayson Werth homers, we take an 8–5 decision in Citizens Bank, and then score three in the ninth to break a 4–4 tie in Game 4, the big hits coming from Alex and Jorge. I nail down a 7–4 victory with a 1-2-3 ninth and we are one game away.

After the Phillies push the Series to a sixth game by winning their last game of the year in Citizens Bank, we return home for Game 6, Andy vs. Pedro. Matsui hits a two-run homer in the bottom of the second to get us going, then hits a two-run single in the third and a two-run double in the fifth. He has six RBIs in three at-bats.

If only he would start hitting in the clutch.

A two-run Ryan Howard homer makes the score 7–3, but Joba and Damaso Marte shut them down from there, and I get the final two outs in the eighth and then two more in the ninth, sandwiched around a Carlos Ruiz walk. Shane Victorino steps in. The Stadium crowd is on its feet. Victorino battles. He always battles. He’s another one of those guys, like Pedroia, who can play on my team anytime. He falls behind, 1–2, then keeps working it, fouling off four straight pitches on 2–2. Finally, he works the count full.