Mojo Rising

The self-destruction of the Yankees’ bullpen has the author looking to a higher power.

I’m depressed.  If these last two Yankees-Red Sox games had taken place later in the season, I’d be a shell of my former self.  You’d have found me wandering down route 117 in Bedford Hills muttering to no one in particular.  Both teams entered the series hot—New York had won three games in a row, Boston seven—and they matched up Friday night for a compellingly taut battle.  Both teams worked the count and drove the starters’ pitch counts up early in the game.  Joba Chamberlain exited after throwing 91 pitches in 5.1 innings of work, having yielded just two runs.  Jon Lester was able to finish the sixth, hurling 114 pitches and also allowing only two runs.  By the seventh, the match-up had evolved into a battle of the bullpens.  Over the winning streak, including the two outs gathered by Mariano Rivera in the ninth, New York’s bullpen had thrown 15.1 innings and given up one earned run on seven hits.  Then, with a runner on first and Jason Bay at the plate, everything went to hell.

Rivera hung a cutter to Bay, who crushed it just to the right of the homerun line in the Green Monster in almost dead center field.  Two innings later, Damaso Marte did what he does best and gave up a walk-off homer to Kevin Youkilis.  Flash forward a day later, and the Yankees’ bullpen is a mess.  In three innings of work on Saturday, Jose Veras, Phil Coke, Jonathan Albaladejo, Edwar Ramirez, Damaso Marte, and David Robertson combined to allow 7 ER on 5 H.  The game was ridiculous and anything but crisply played.  Both teams made errors, committed base-running blunders, and we even saw a case of catcher’s interference!  Catcher’s interference in a major league game is like catching a re-run of Seinfeld’s Puerto Rican Day Parade episode—it just doesn’t happen.

After fifteen games, it’s pretty clear that this Yankees team is going to rise and fall with its bullpen, describing which as streaky would be an insult to streaky athletes everywhere.  So, whom do we blame for this debacle?  The front office for dumping hundreds of millions of dollars on high-profile free agents and not dropping a few hundred thousand to acquire some proven late inning hurlers?  Pitching coach, Dave Eiland?  Actually, I blame the YES Network.

With one out in the ninth inning of Friday’s game, Rivera was cruising to his ninth save, and the Yankees were en route to a fourth straight win.  Then YES announced their Chevrolet player of the game: the Yankees’ bullpen!  The next pitch Rivera threw was rapped up the middle for a single.  Two batters later, Bay took him deep.  In my March 23rd running diary of the WBC, I wrote the following.

8:39 pm:  Miller and Morgan throw it down to Pedro Gomez with Jake Peavy.  Gomez concludes the interview THAT OPENS THE BOTTOM OF THE SECOND INNING by alluding to the fact that the U.S. currently leads and could win the game.  New rule: all broadcasters must complete a graduate course on religions, superstitions, and jinxes before they are hired.  I’m calling it right now: if the U.S. loses, blame Pedro Gomez.

The YES broadcasting crew has become one of the most egregious culprits of introducing bad mojo to an otherwise positive atmosphere.  During A.J. Burnett’s bid for a no-hitter, every sentence uttered by Michael Kay contained the words “no” and “hits,” despite the time-honored tradition that you should not talk about a possible no-hitter.  Ever.  You reference it; you allude to it, but mention it?  That’s the kind of offense that would lead to you washing up on the Jersey shore with Sylvio Dante’s fingerprints embedded in your neck.

What makes the actions of the YES booth so particularly galling is that it’s filled with recent athletes that should know better.  I’d be willing to give Kay a pass, because he never played.  Joe Morgan and Tim McCarver get similar passes, not because of their talents as broadcasters, but because at some point in their careers, they crossed the line from ex-ball players to journalists.  But the YES booth comprises people only a few years removed from their playing days, such as David Cone, John Flaherty, Al Leiter, and Paul O’Neill.

In “Bull Durham,” Kevin Costner’s Crash Davis explains the situation perfectly to Susan Sarandon’s Annie Savoy.  “A player on a streak has to respect the streak.  You know why?  Because they don’t happen very often. If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting laid, or because you’re not getting laid, or because you wear women’s underwear, then you ARE! And you should know that!”

In this case, I’m Crash Davis and I’m wagging the proverbial finger at Cone, Leiter, Flaherty, and O’Neill.  You should know better.  Chevrolet couldn’t wait two more outs to present the player of the game?  As a fan, when the game progresses in your favor, you don’t talk about it.  You don’t switch seats.  You certainly don’t reward the players with sponsored fake awards until the end of the game.  You just don’t.  Watch “Major League.”  Bob Uecker’s Harry Doyle sips whiskey and rubs a little behind his ears.  He doesn’t shout, “Oh my god, the Indians win it!” as Willie Mays Hayes rounds third.  He certainly doesn’t announce Rick Vaughn as the player of the game after his big ninth inning strike out.  Why?  Simple: he understood the rules of the game.

Baseball is a game where failure is constant.  Players do anything to repel negativity, from skipping over a foul line to Chris Von Der Ahe’s strategy of touching a cross-eyed person.  A teammate of mine once refused to wash his socks for so long that they eventually could stand up on their own.  Knowing this, why do announcers take part in levying bad mojo back on the players?  Shouldn’t they respect the nuances and subtleties of the game they claim to care so much about?

Now, if you’ll excuse me.  I have to spin around three times, eat exactly twenty-two sunflower seeds, and take a shower at precisely 5:57 pm.  Without it, the Yankees just don’t stand a chance tonight.