http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/sports/baseball/06yankees.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Chien-Ming Wang of Tainan, Taiwan, is a talented and polite Yankees pitcher
who has little to say in two languages. But Wang came close to giving the
baseball world and 51,702 witnesses something special to talk about yesterday
at Yankee Stadium.
In an 8-1 victory against the Seattle Mariners, Wang carried a perfect game
into the eighth inning. With one out, Ben Broussard hit the ball over the
right-field fence for a home run that also spoiled Wang’s no-hitter and his
shutout.
After the game, in a series of short and soft answers, Wang kept smiling and
insisting through an interpreter that he had no idea that he had been five
outs from perfection until he finished the inning by giving up a single and
getting a double-play grounder, then walking off to a standing ovation.
When Wang reached the dugout, he said, he answered questions from catcher
Jorge Posada and all the other players who came up to him and wanted to know
what happened.
What happened, Posada said, was an 0-1 changeup that Posada called for the
first time in the game. Wang left the pitch too high to Broussard, a
left-handed hitter, who pulled it hard.
“I’ll think about it,” Posada said of the pitch. “You never second-guess
yourself. But, after it happens, you do.”
Posada said that Wang seemed to weaken somewhat in the fourth inning,
after Ichiro Suzuki’s hard smash back to the mound hit Wang in the left leg
before Wang found the ball and threw out Suzuki. After that, Posada said,
Wang landed less aggressively after throwing.
Posada said that he began to think seriously about a perfect game in the
seventh after Raul Ibanez, batting with two outs, took the first three
pitches for balls but struck out swinging.
Wang struck out four batters and got 14 of his 24 outs on ground balls
because of his sinking fastball. Third baseman Alex Rodriguez said that
when Wang pitches, “I’m so consumed with the thought that I’m going to
get a lot of work.”
Because Wang works quickly and efficiently, fielders stay alert behind him
and often make sharp plays. One example yesterday was a catch by Hideki
Matsui on a long fly to left by Suzuki in the top of the seventh.
Matsui gloved it on the run near the warning track.
Broussard, in describing the sinking and horizontal movement of Wang’s
pitches, said: “It’s hard to explain. His pitches break real late.
You think it’s going to be down the middle, and it’s off the black,”
or the borders of home plate. Wang has said that he can make the ball break
either way as it sinks.
“He’s not complicated,” Yankees Manager Joe Torre said of Wang.
“He’s not necessarily a one-pitch pitcher, but he makes you dig the ball
out.
“He throws a lot of strikes.”
Wang’s showing was a tonic for a high-salaried team that started the day in
last place in the American League East because of, among other things,
injuries and inconsistent performances among the members of the starting
rotation. Two other Yankees starters, Jeff Karstens and Phil Hughes,
have been injured in the past week.
Wang finished with 65 strikes in 103 pitches. He got the better of Seattle’s
Jeff Weaver (0-5), a former Yankee who pitched well until tiring and giving
up five runs in the sixth.
Wang was the runner-up last season to Minnesota’s Johan Santana for the
American League’s Cy Young award. Wang, Andy Pettitte and Mike Mussina
form the core of the Yankees’ rotation.
The Yankees, who have won four of their past five games, took a 1-0 lead
in the third inning on a sacrifice fly by Bobby Abreu.
In the sixth they made the score 6-0 as Matsui was hit by a pitch with the
bases loaded, Posada singled home a run, Melky Cabrera walked with the bases
loaded and Derek Jeter drove home two more with a double. At that point, the
game was essentially over, although the suspense was not.
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