[外電] Wang looks back in form as Yankees top Blue Jays

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Wang looks back in form as Yankees top Blue Jays
Johnette Howard
April 2, 2008

It was the last-ever Opening Day at the Stadium, but the nostalgia didn't
feel nearly as thick as the excitement. Baseball was finally back in the
Bronx - 30 rain-soaked hours later than scheduled, but so what?

Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson were back in the house, Joe Girardi was
sitting in the dugout where departed manager Joe Torre used to be, but
the only ghosts that really mattered last night weren't Torre or the other
legends who are evoked here dating to Babe Ruth. It was that personal ghost
who's been trailing Yankees starter Chien-Ming Wang in the here and now,
ever since his playoff debacle last fall.

That Wang began last season's Division Series against Cleveland as the
Yankees' ace and ended as a question mark isn't the biggest worry the
Yankees have. Girardi's plans to, say, count on reliever Kyle Farnsworth
more or play Jason Giambi in the field at first base for 130 games might
scare you more, even if Giambi did leap and snag a liner last night like
the second coming of Don Mattingly.

But in a new season when the Yankees can't be sure what they'll get from
anyone in the rest of their starting rotation - not the kids Phil Hughes
and Ian Kennedy, not the old standbys such as Mike Mussina or Andy Pettitte,
who could both be gone next year - Wang needed to hang up the same sort of
gloom-chasing outing against division rival Toronto last night that
Johan Santana did Monday for the Mets. Especially after the rocky spring
training Wang had. And he pulled it off.

"Awesome," Girardi raved.

Wang needed this. He needed something like last night's seven-inning,
two-run, six-hit outing - the cornerstone of the Yankees' impressive
3-2 win - to chase away the bad karma of the 12 runs he allowed in two
games but just 5 2/3 innings of work against Cleveland, and the resultant
worrying that maybe he isn't so impervious to pressure after all, maybe
the league is catching up to him. On and on it went ...

For the Yankees to go anywhere this season, Wang needs to get back to the
19-game winner he's been in each of the last two years.

It was important that he show that the 8.02 ERA he hung up in spring
training this year was, as Wang emphasized again last night, just
something that happened while he was working on things rather than
cause for alarm. Especially because what Wang has been working on is
twofold: varying his pitch selection more and, as Yankees catcher
Jorge Posada said last night: "Trying to find the same delivery he had
two years ago. Because his ball wasn't sinking like it used to."

Wang without a nasty sinker is like Reggie without October or Alex Rodriguez
without his home run stroke. But the sinker came rushing back to Wang. And
it seemed to make everything that came later for the Yankees fall neatly
into place.

Rodriguez drove in the Yankees' first run and scored the winner.
Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera electrified the crowd by setting
down the Jays in the eighth and ninth. But even by the time centerfielder
Melky Cabrera made two back-to-back spectacular catches in the fourth,
then snuck a home run just inside the rightfield foul pole, Wang already
was coaxing ground ball after ground ball from the hitters. Same as he
ever has.

"It all starts with pitching," Girardi said. "That's the bottom line . . .
I thought our pitching was great. Our defense was great. And that's how you
win games."

Wang was happy about all of it - especially how successful he and Posada
were at mixing in some sliders, splitters, even a few changeups along with
his sinker. "Three changeups, one splitter" to be exact, Posada said.

Asked if that were a lot, Wang smiled and said, "It's a lot for me."

The variety should help Wang down the road. Posada admitted by the end
of last year some hitters were sitting too much on Wang's sinker, and
that, combined with whatever drop his bread-and-butter pitch lost by the
end of last year, made Wang more hittable, not just very predictable.

But last night, Wang's pitches were coming off the hitters' bats like
a bowling ball. And Wang - the old Wang - was back just in time to help
start the countdown on the old stadium.

The real tear-shedding for the ballpark will come sometime in late October.

After a terrifically played game like last night, the Yankees expect to still
be playing then.

http://tinyurl.com/2arvxp

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