The Futility Infielder

Miguel Number Sixty One

Sunday's contest between the Yankees and Chicago White Sox was my final regular-season game at Yankee Stadium. But with thunderstorms looming beforehand and nothing much at stake for either team, I told my brother and fellow ticketholder Bryan that I'd be just as happy if the game were rained out and our tix applied to meaningful games next season.

As it was, the game went on, despite three rain-delays, the last of which ended the contest after six innings. Bry and I had an enjoyable time despite the rain, thanks to our foresight in moving from our Upper Deck seats to the covered Loge level a half-inning before everybody else got wise. We stayed dry while Andy Pettitte disappeared into a quagmire--literally and figuratively--in the third inning. The rain visibly gave Pettite problems with both his grip and his footing, and after he went from 0-2 on Aaron Rowland to walking him, the grounds crew came out to apply drying agent to the mound.

Following this ad-hoc landscaping, the next White Sox batter was catcher Miguel Olivo. With a Polaroid for his Jumbotron ID photo and legendary Yankee announcer Bob Shepherd introducing him as "Number Sixty-One, Miguel... Number Sixty-One," clearly this kid was making his major league debut. Indeed, Olivo had been recalled after the White Sox's Birmingham affiliate had won the Double-A Southern League Championship the night before. His 24-hour one-man fairy-tale continued. In the pouring rain, Olivo smashed Pettitte's second pitch over the right-centerfield wall for a three-run homer in his first major-league at-bat, the 83rd player to do so.

The White Sox put two more men on base before the umps got out of their rowboats to halt play. At this point the Yanks could be forgiven if they had hopes for a rainout. I'd have felt the same way had it not been for Olivo's homer. Aided by circumstances though it was, his auspicious debut didn't deserve to be washed away.

The delay lasted only about 35 minutes, so Pettitte found himself still in the muck once play resumed--first and third, nobody out. Robin Ventura instantly bobbled a Frank Thomas grounder to run the score to 4-0. At this point, with the Yanks having already lost the first two games of this series by a combined score of 21-3, a fan could be forgiven for shuddering as memories of the tail end of 2000 came flooding back. Recall that for the final three weeks of that season, with the AL East essentially locked up, the Yanks played baseball so badly that historians had to dig up the 1899 Cleveland Spiders (20-134) for an apt comparison. Had they begun folding the tents again?

Apparently not. They got down to business, Bronx Bomber-style, against White Sox starter Gary Glover in the fourth. Derek Jeter led off, lining Glover's first pitch into right-center for a single, and Jason Giambi followed two pitches later with a line-drive homer to rightfield. The sparse crowd (39,587 my ass) had scarecly quieted down when Bernie Williams sent a 2-2 pitch into the rightfield bleachers, cutting the deficit to 4-3.

Giambi's homer had tied him for the team lead at 37 with Alfonso Soriano. As I have a sushi dinner riding on this home-run race, I was even more gratified than usual to see Soriano send a Glover pitch into the leftfield bullpen in the bottom of the fifth, tying the game.

The rain started to sprinkle again as the Yanks loaded the bases in the bottom of the sixth, bringing up Ventura, the active leader in career grand slams with 16. Sox reliever Mike Porzio was called for a balk, allowing Jason Giambi to trot home with the go-ahead run. Porzio then walked Ventura, reloading the bases and ending his day. But before reliever Matt Ginter could retire Raul Mondesi, the tarps came out, sending us home. You can only watch a grounds crew roll the tarp so many times in a given day. Amazingly, play did resume briefly--long enough for all three runs to score on a Nick Johnson single and a throwing error by Magglio Ordonez. But we were long gone by then. And Miguel Number Sixty One's homer was safely in the books.