2013: Yankees in slump. July 2: Ashley and Rachel turn 6. The Yankees beat Minnesota 7-3.
My kind of coincidence.
After 4 innings at Target Field last night, the Yankees trailed 1-0. Phil Hughes had pitched pretty well in the 1st 3 innings, then got out of a 2nd & 3rd, nobody out jam in the 4th. But the Yankees had gotten only one hit off Twins starter Samuel Deduno. Yeah, it was looking like one of those games again.
But, as they did the night before, the Twins obliged. In the top of the 5th, Lyle Overbay led off with a single. After a Chris Stewart lineout, David Adams singled. Alberto Gonzalez doubled them home, to give the Yankees the lead. After a Brett Gardner groundout, Ichiro Suzuki singled home Gonzalez. 3-1 Yankees.
In the 7th, with 1 out, Adams doubled, and reached 3rd on an error. Gonzalez singled him home. After a Gardner flyout, Ichiro singled. Then Robinson Cano hit a home run, his 20th of the season and his 4th in the last 3 games. 7-1 Yankees.
Preston Claiborne had the worst outing of his major league career thus far. He stopped the Twins 1-2-3 in the 8th, but he allowed 2 runs in the 9th, before Joe Girardi made the move that he didn't need his Binders Full of Strategies to make: He brought in the Hammer of God.
Before the game, the Twins presented Mariano Rivera with an appropriate gift: A rocking chair made of broken bats.
Mo only had to face 1 hitter, Ryan Doumit, and he got him to ground into a force play to end it. Yankees 7, Twins 3.
WP: Hughes (4-7, but has picked it up lately). SV: Rivera (27). LP: Deduno (4-3).
The series continues tonight, with CC Sabathia going against P.J. Walters. He's a 28-year-old righthander from Alabama, who seems to be a "Quadruple-A" player: Too good for Triple-A ball, but not quite good enough for the majors. His full name is Phillip DeWayne Walters. I guess the "P.J." stands for "Phillip Junior."
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Elsewhere in baseball, last night at Pity Field, the Mets loaded the bases against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the bottom of the 7th, and then the umpires stopped the game because of rain.
Typical Met luck? Not really: Play was allowed to resume, and the Mets got it done. They ended up winning, 9-1.
Homer Bailey of the Cincinnati Reds, who pitched baseball's most recent no-hitter last September, did it again, and this time he blanked the defending World Champions, the San Francisco Giants.
Some sportswriter (I forget who, and I won't embarrass him by looking him up and mentioning his name) said that the last time a pitcher had baseball's 2 most recent no-hitters was in 1975, when it was Nolan Ryan, and, like Bailey does not, Ryan was wearing Number 34. Uh-uh: Ryan was still with the team then known as the California Angels, and he was wearing Number 30.
An achievement like Bailey's deserves a toast. Anybody got any Bailey's Irish Cream?
Which means that if Matt Harvey does what no Met has ever done, and pitches a no-hitter that cannot be questioned, we'll have to toast him with Harvey's Bristol Cream.
The Red Sox and Rays both won, the Oriles and Blue Jays lost. So, at the moment, the AL East standings look like this:
Boston 51-34
Baltimore 47-37 - 3 1/2 (3 in the loss column)
Tampa Bay 45-39 - 5 1/2 (5)
New York 44-39 - 6 (5)
Toronto 41-42 - 9 (8)
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