推 HansLee:torre也鄉民化了,居然是說想看小王如何慶祝... 05/06 13:04
推 isaacchen:這篇好精采~~ 05/06 13:26
Wang Keeps Demeanor Calm and Sinker Low
By JACK CURRY
Published: May 6, 2007
Chien-Ming Wang’s audition for the Yankees took place in a gymnasium in
Taiwan seven years ago. It rained that day, so Wang’s workout was moved
indoors. Wang threw for about a half-hour before he was offered
a $1.9 million signing bonus. He accepted.
From that humble start, Wang has developed into an unusually cool pitcher.
He barely blinks, he seems as if he never sweats and he throws an
overpowering sinker that drops like a bowling ball off a cliff.
Hitting Wang’s sinker feels like connecting with a weighted baseball.
On a breezy day at Yankee Stadium, thousands of miles from where he
auditioned to became a Yankee, Wang was better than cool. He was
almost perfect yesterday. He rolled through the first 22 Seattle
Mariners he faced, silencing them with his sinker. He was a glorious
sight to a team that is starved for decent pitching.
He did not end up with perfection because Ben Broussard clubbed Wang’s
first changeup for a home run with one out in the eighth inning.
But Wang and his trusty sinker powered the Yankees to an 8-1 victory
and made them feel like the team they could potentially be and not the
wayward team they have been.
“It’s most important,” Alex Rodriguez said. “We’re not going
anywhere without Wang.”
Wang throws fastballs, sliders, changeups and splitters, but the pitch
that distinguishes him and makes him difficult for hitters is the
sinker. Wang’s sinker is devastating because it has such great movement.
It is especially effective because the movement comes late. Hitters
usually commit to swing before Wang’s sinker darts or dives in another
direction.
Willie Bloomquist, Seattle’s third baseman, explained how he was
tricked into thinking that Wang had misfired on some pitches because
they were zooming right down the middle. They looked appetizing.
But by the time Bloomquist swung, he said, the pitches had veered
out of the strike zone. He grounded out in all three at-bats.
“He threw a great game, basically with one pitch,” Bloomquist said.
“He shut us down with it.”
Richie Sexson, the designated hitter, who was also 0 for 3, gushed
about how Wang’s sinker starts in one spot and ends up in a much
different place.
“He’s chewing guys up,” Sexson said.
Ichiro Suzuki said that he did not know how dominant Wang had been
until the seventh. That is when Suzuki approached his teammate
Kenji Johjima and asked him, “Is this a perfect game?” Johjima told
Suzuki it was. Suzuki opened the seventh with a twisting shot to
left-center field, but Hideki Matsui snagged it in front of the
warning track.
“I was kind of hoping that I would be the one to get the hit,” said
Suzuki, who was also hitless in three at-bats against Wang.
Suzuki chuckled at the notion that hitting Wang’s sinker is like hitting
a bowling ball, and said that he did not know how heavy a bowling ball
was. But Suzuki eventually acknowledged that hitting one of Wang’s
sinkers that are out of the strike zone does feel like hitting a heavier
ball.
In describing what it was like to hit against Wang, Suzuki did not
focus on the sinker, but rather on another one of the pitcher’s
attributes — his calm exterior.
“He’s a quiet guy,” Suzuki said. “He’s the kind of guy who burns
inside. As an opponent, he’s a tough guy to face.” Then Suzuki paused
before adding, “But I like him.”
Unlike Suzuki, Broussard did not need to quiz teammates to know that
Wang was pushing for perfection.
“After four, you don’t think about it,” Broussard said. “In the sixth,
you start realizing he’s got a shot at doing this.”
With one out in the eighth, Wang still had a shot. The concern about
Wang’s torn middle fingernail was long gone. All Wang needed was
five outs to become the first Yankee since David Cone in 1999 to pitch
a perfect game. All Wang had to do was continue throwing his sinker.
But after Wang got ahead of Broussard with a first-pitch fastball,
catcher Jorge Posada called for a changeup. Wang, who is at his best
when he keeps his pitches down, hung the changeup and Broussard hit
it over the right-field fence.
“It was the first off-speed pitch I’d seen all day,” Broussard said.
Broussard sounded relieved to have broken up Wang’s perfect game. He
said Wang was deceptive, with a methodical motion in which he hesitates
when he lifts his glove over his head.
“You wait and you wait and then it’s on you,” Broussard said.
Manager Joe Torre said that “pressure doesn’t seem to bother” Wang and
called him as “even-tempered as any pitcher I’ve ever seen.”
Torre said it would have been nice if Wang had pitched a no-hitter,
in part because it would have been interesting to see how he would have
celebrated.
“He might have jogged off the mound,” Torre said.
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