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When the Yankees were at their lowest point — with a 21-29 record, after
Aaron Hill stole home to beat Andy Pettitte on May 29 in Toronto — Manager
Joe Torre canceled batting practice for the next day. The Yankees scored 10
runs that night and began their long climb to the playoffs.
Yesterday, after two punchless losses in buggy Cleveland, Torre canceled the
team workout at Yankee Stadium. Maybe a day off, and a revamped lineup that
may include Jason Giambi, will lift the Yankees from a slump. They are
hitting .121 in their best-of-five American League division series.
“I don’t have an explanation,” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said,
after praising the Cleveland pitchers. “I know I have confidence in our
players. It seems that this year’s team does its best work when their backs
are against the wall. That’s the way the season has been defined. So now we
put ourselves as far against that wall as we can possibly be.”
The Yankees have not been swept in the postseason since the 1980 American
League Championship Series against Kansas City. But that will be their fate
if they lose Game 3 tonight, when Roger Clemens faces Jake Westbrook.
“We’re here, we’re at home, we have our crowd, our energy,” Clemens said
yesterday. “We’ll see if we can work to our advantage now.”
Clemens has not pitched since Sept. 16 because of a strained left hamstring.
He battled the same injury, but in the other leg, in 2001, when he helped
steer the Yankees to a victory in Game 5 of their 2001 division series
against Oakland.
The Yankees lost the first two games of that series at home before rallying
to win. It has happened six other times in a best-of-five series, most
recently in 2003, when Boston beat Oakland. The Yankees’ comeback is still
fresh in the veterans’ minds.
“That is the first thing that we looked to last night in the clubhouse,”
said Pettitte, who shut out the Indians for six and a third innings in Game
2. “And the first thing that goes through your mind is: We’ve done this
before. We can do this. We can pull this off.
“I can’t judge how everybody’s state of mind is in that clubhouse. It was
a pretty quiet flight home last night; we got in late, and everybody was
tired. But I can’t fathom in my mind that we’re not going to pull this off.
”
With the 2004 Boston Red Sox, Johnny Damon and Doug Mientkiewicz pulled off
an even more improbable comeback, overcoming a 3-0 series deficit to upend
the Yankees in the A.L.C.S.
Their motto, Mientkiewicz said, was “win today.” Four days later, they had
won the series. The Yankees held that mind-set all summer to snag the A.L.
wild card.
“We’ve been in a must-win situation since May 29,” Mientkiewicz said. “
This is not a situation we haven’t been in before. We had to play in
must-win games for four and a half months. Why should it be any different now?
”
Mientkiewicz is a friend of the Yankees’ most important offensive player,
Alex Rodriguez, whose annual October struggles have flared up again.
Rodriguez has three pop-ups, three strikeouts and two walks in this series.
He is 4 for his last 50 in the postseason, with no runs batted in, and the
Yankees are 3-12 in those games. Rodriguez said Friday that he was not
pressing, but Mientkiewicz has tried to loosen him up.
“I’ve been texting him back and forth this morning to keep his mind right,”
he said. “He’s been through this before. We just need him to be him, and
then let everybody else do our own thing.”
Mientkiewicz added: “I believe in him, probably more than anybody else
outside of his family. I’ve seen him do it before. He’ll do it again. He’s
going to come through, I promise.”
When Rodriguez struggled in the first three games against Detroit last year,
Torre dropped him to eighth in the lineup for Game 4. He is probably planning
less drastic changes this year, but he said that some adjustments were coming.
“I’m not sure where, but we’re thinking about maybe, possibly, Jason,”
Torre said, referring to Giambi, who did not start in Cleveland. “We’ll
look and see what we’re going to do. We’ll look at matchups and stuff. But
we’ll probably shake it up a little bit.”
Cashman’s 4-year-old son, Teddy, would probably vote for Giambi to start. He
accompanied his father to yesterday’s news conference and wore a Giambi
T-shirt.
Two stools were set up at a table, and Cashman sat on his, facing reporters.
His son lay his chest across his stool, putting his head down and closing his
eyes.
“He feels like me right now,” Cashman said, managing a smile and a laugh.
The Yankees are still alive, down but not out. It is not where they want to
be, but it is a spot they know well, with a sore-legged pitcher to guide them.
“What I lack in stuff, I’ll throw my heart out there like I always have,”
Clemens said. “My will will have to take over.”
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