Not going down without a fight
TORONTO — The odds favor this coming week marking the bleakest Yankees homestand in a generation. So give Joe Girardi’s guys some credit for arriving back in The Bronx on a wave of light.
“Our team has been fighting all year,” Mark Teixeira said, following a memorably crazy 7-5 victory over the Blue Jays Monday night at Rogers Centre. “We’re probably not going to make the playoffs, and so we’re just going to enjoy ourselves the rest of the year.”
That’s easy for him to say. Barring a historically miraculous playoff run to defy Teixeira’s own forecast, the first baseman will retire after Sunday’s game. Unless the Yankees run off a winning streak and benefit from a few Orioles losses up here in Canada, though — their tragic number remained two — then there will be only one good reason for Yankees fans to show up this week, and that reason’s name is Gary Sanchez.
The rookie catcher went 0for-4 Monday with a sacrifice fly in the game-turning, fiverun top of the ninth which featured Teixeira’s game-tying homer (and subsequent bat flip) and Aaron Hicks’ goahead two-run blast, both off Toronto veteran reliever Jason Grilli. The Yankees barely survived a wacky bottom of the ninth in which Dellin Betances got lifted for Tommy Layne after loading the bases with no outs, with the last two outs coming on Layne’s diving tag of home plate on a Russell Martin swinging bunt and Brett Gardner’s sliding catch in foul territory on a Troy Tulowitzki pop fly. That’s how the Yankees ended their four-game losing streak.
Oh, and we probably should mention the pair of bench-clearing skirmishes that occurred in the second inning and resulted in the ejections of Girardi, bench coach Rob Thomson, pitching coach Larry Rothschild and starting pitcher Luis Severino. Whew! Had the stakes been higher, this would’ve gone down as an epic ballgame.
Blue Jays catcher (and former Yankee) Russell Martin channeled Ron Burgundy from “Anchorman” when he said, “It just escalated.” While he was referring to what went down in the early going, it applied to the whole contest. The Blue Jays, fighting for a playoff spot, lost prized reliever Joaquin Benoit to a leg injury the veteran appeared to suffer running in from the bullpen en route to the first incident.
The last three times the Yankees missed the postseason, they offered their fans pleasant diversions from the reality. Derek Jeter retired in 2014 and Mariano Rivera in 2013 and Yankee Stadium closed in 2008. With all due respect to Teixeira, who will be honored before Sunday’s finale, his stardom doesn’t rise to that elite level.
Actually, the most compelling honoree this week will be David Ortiz, whom the Yankees plan to salute before Thursday night’s game against the Red Sox. Given the Yankees’ near-dormant state, you’ve got to think that Sawx fans will storm the Stadium via StubHub purchases from disinterested New Yorkers, thereby rendering moot the “How badly will get Ortiz get booed” question.
Which takes us back to Sanchez, whose explosive major-league debut kept the Yankees surprisingly afloat in the race before this road trip from hell — 3-8 through Boston, Tampa Bay and Toronto — sank their ambitions. Sanchez still has motivation to play, and the Yankees still have motivation to play him.
First, there’s the American League Rookie of the Year race. Then you have Sanchez’s continued run at home run history, which remains very much in play. The 23-year-old became the fastest player ever to hit his 18th and 19th career homers, and with 48 career games on his ledger, he needed to hit number 20 by his 50th game in order to stay ahead of Wally Berger, who attained the milestone in his 51st game in 1930.
They return home beat down and bruised, yet still breathing. Still battling. And instead of offering a goodbye to an iconic player or building, the Yankees can offer only a hello to Sanchez, whom they hope will be around for a long time.