推 pilihans:我也想看小王投出完全比賽的樣子XD 05/06 10:27
推 sandpaper:ha...Torre的話蠻好笑的 05/06 12:54
Righty's bid for history ends with Broussard homer in eighth
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/gameday_recap.jsp?ymd=20070505&content_id=1947516&vkey=
recap&fext=.jsp&c_id=mlb
NEW YORK -- Chien-Ming Wang took a seat at the far end of the Yankees' bench
for the sixth inning, a white towel draped over his right arm and a bronze
plaque of longtime clubhouse man Pete Sheehy serving as his only company.
The march toward perfection, as Wang learned in the Yankees' 8-1 victory on
Saturday, can become a lonely path.
"I don't know why everybody [wouldn't] talk to me," Wang said.
Wang's bid to become just the third Yankees pitcher to throw a perfect game
in the regular season ended in the eighth inning, as the Mariners' Ben
Broussard -- the 23rd Seattle hitter of the game -- slugged a hanging
changeup for a solo home run.
"I tried to throw it low. I got it higher," Wang said.
Barely breaking stride, Wang took a brief walk around the mound, gritted his
teeth and put the finishing touches on the eighth inning of work.
Wang later said that he wasn't upset to have lost the perfect game. If the
icy-nerved hurler had been, the Yankees probably would have been curious to
see what it looked like.
"He's about as even-tempered a starting pitcher as you can be," said Yankees
manager Joe Torre. "I was curious just to see what kind of emotion [he'd have]
if he did pitch the no-hitter. He may have jogged off the mound."
Claiming to have been blissfully unaware that he'd been pitching a perfect
game until it was later drawn to his attention, Wang seemed satisfied with
his one-run, two-hit performance, in which he stifled Seattle hitters and
allowed no walks, striking out four.
The Yankees, who have looked longingly to their pitching staff for solid
starting efforts all year, were similarly pleased.
"This whole team knows how important he is to this club," said pitching coach
Ron Guidry, who embraced Wang in the dugout with a series of slaps to the
back of the hurler's neck.
Catcher Jorge Posada, who received David Wells' perfect game against the
Twins on May 17, 1998, said that he'd started to allow thoughts of
immortality to creep into his head after Wang battled back from a three-ball
count to strike out Seattle left fielder Raul Ibanez, ending the seventh
inning.
"I thought he had it," Posada said. "I really thought so.
"When he's done after seven, striking out Ibanez, you feel pretty good about
it. You think about the next three outs and you're thinking in the dugout
[of] who's coming up, what you're going to call."
In the pivotal at-bat, Posada explained that Broussard, who'd flied out to
center field and grounded out to first in his previous at-bats, took a
first-pitch fastball and appeared to have timed the pitch pretty well.
Posada called for a changeup, the first Wang threw all afternoon, hoping to
get Broussard out in front. Instead, the pitch hung and Broussard smashed it
to right-center field, to the right of the 385-foot sign.
"It's not like he was completely dominating, but he did a good job keeping us
off balance," Broussard said. "In the sixth inning, you start realizing he
has a shot at this. We had to make him start throwing more pitches. We had to
be patient."
A 19-game winner last season, tying Minnesota's Johan Santana for the Major
League lead, Wang hadn't even been a certainty for the start, due to a
cracked fingernail on his right middle finger.
Wang, who missed three weeks of the season due to a strained right hamstring
suffered in Spring Training, quelled any fears over a second setback by
throwing a solid bullpen session on Wednesday in Texas.
"For a guy who we weren't sure he was going to make his next start, he did a
great job," Torre said.
Torre said that Wang, a ground-ball pitcher who relies on his bowling
ball-like sinker to induce easy plays for his infielders, might have been an
unlikely candidate for perfection because of the constant defensive action.
"When they're swinging at it, they certainly envision the ball going in the
air," Torre said. "It just doesn't happen because of the late movement.
That's the trick. The ball doesn't move until right at the end, when you've
already committed yourself."
Fourteen of the outs Wang recorded came on the ground. The pitcher also did
his share of glove work, fielding his position well in the effort.
The right-hander successfully defended against four batted balls, including a
fourth-inning play in which he took an Ichiro Suzuki grounder off his left
ankle, throwing out the Seattle speedster at first base after the ball
deflected up off his chest.
The Yankees also helped Wang with solid defense, notably a running
seventh-inning catch by Hideki Matsui, tracking down a drive into the
left-center-field gap, to keep the bid alive.
One day after putting up season highs in runs and hits, only to lose, the
Yankees' bats did more than enough heavy lifting to support Wang's sterling
effort on Saturday, including batting around against former Yankees righty
Jeff Weaver in the five-run sixth inning.
Staked to a 1-0 lead by Bobby Abreu's sacrifice fly in the third, Matsui
brought home the Yankees' second run in the sixth inning in painful fashion,
as he was hit in the right thigh with the bases loaded by the suddenly
erratic Weaver. Posada followed with an RBI single to center, and Weaver
walked in a run by issuing a free pass to Melky Cabrera.
The Yankees broke the game open on Derek Jeter's two-run double to left,
extending the Yankees' lead to six runs as Weaver exited, having allowed six
runs and nine hits in 5 2/3 innings, walking three and fanning three.
Robinson Cano added a seventh-inning sacrifice fly and Josh Phelps had an
eighth-inning RBI groundout.
Coincidentally, Wang's performance came on the 103rd anniversary of the first
perfect game in Major League history. On May 5, 1904, Cy Young pitched a
perfect game for the Boston Americans against the Philadelphia Athletics.
Bryan Hoch is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the
approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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