Yes, even Mo
If you were expecting crisp, efficient baseball — sorry, it was too hot for all that.
But despite a sweaty afternoon at the ballpark, numerous lapses on the field, and a near-eruption of hot tempers toward the end, the Yankees staved off a mid-game meltdown and won 11-5.
The Bombers won their fifth straight game to run their record to 64-33 and improve to a season-high 31 games over .500.
The beat down of the Rockies lasted over three and a half hours on a day that began with a first-pitch temperature of 94 degrees.
The Yankees came out bats ablaze, scorching Rockies starter Antonio Senzatela with a five-run outburst in the second inning that chased him from the game trailing 6-0. He threw 60 pitches but only had four outs to show for his effort. The Rockies burned Senzatela with two errors, but if nothing else, it accelerated
As Mariano Rivera settles into Cooperstown, Aaron Boone remembers one surprising thing about his brief time as Mo’s teammate: the boos.
Not for Boone, who hit a weak .254 with six home runs in the regular season, and went 5-for-31 before one big, bleeping bomb in the playoffs. No, the boos that came to mind were for Mariano.
“When I got traded here at the deadline in ‘03, [Mo] went through a stretch where he had a blown a couple of saves and had a couple of rough outings,” Boone said before Saturday’s matinee at
the Stadium against the Rockies.
Indeed, Rivera went through one of the worst stretches in his unanimouslyvoted Hall of Fame career. After Boone arrived in a trade deadline deal from the Reds, the AllTime saves leader had one of the worse stretches of his career, blowing four saves from August 1 through the 16th and going 0-2. Batters slugged .326/.348/.488 against him, an .836 OPS.
Need a comparison. Rivera’s teammate Derek Jeter, who will join him in the Hall next year, had a worse batting average (.310) and slugged less, too (.440) through his