Slow Games Becoming a Tradition

The Yankees defeated the Athletics, 17-13, on Friday and called it baseball. A couple of hours later and 100 miles south in Philadelphia, the Phillies edged the Braves, 1-0, and identified it as an exercise in the same sport. The former result was more characteristic of the era than the latter.

Consider that the Yankees didn’t even lead the major leagues in scoring on the day they celebrated the 75th anniversary of Yankee Stadium. Well after they retired for the night, the lowly Cincinnati Reds accounted for eight, three and four runs over the last three innings to club the Colorado Rockies, 18-7, in the thin air of Coors Field. Meanwhile, in Montreal, the Cubs equaled the A’s output in New York. The major difference was that they won, 13-0, behind Kevin Tapani.

Amid such a profusion of offense, with pitching staffs stretched thinner by the presence of two more expansion franchises, a 1-0 game is a precious jewel. Baseball fans stand a better chance of witnessing a save by the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen (four pitchers employed vs. the Boston Red Sox on Friday night, seven batters faced, none retired) than a gem like Curt Schilling’s duel with Greg Maddux that yielded no runs for eight innings.

Of the 2,200 games played in 1997, only 29 ended in 1-0 decisions and only seven of those featured complete games by the winning pitcher.

“I’m doing radio for the Charlotte Knights,” Tommy John said Saturday before serving as color commentator on the Yankees’ WPIX telecast. “When that score came across, I asked my partner, ‘Would you pay to see that?’ He said he would and asked me if I would pay. I said, ‘No, I’d get a free ticket. But I’d certainly go watch it.’ To me, a game like that between two dominating pitchers is an art form.”

Of course, John was an outstanding pitcher for several teams, the Yankees included, and he believed in working fast. From a purist’s standpoint, the fact the Phillies and Braves needed two hours to finish what they started at the Vet was almost as pleasing as the individual performances.

When Schilling and Maddux hooked up at Turner Field last week--a 2-1 game also won by Schilling--the game stretched 2 hours, 7 minutes. The two games combined took one minute more than the 4:06 required Friday by the Yankees and Athletics.

Alas, slow games are becoming something of a Yankee tradition. Joe Girardi, who caught all nine innings on Friday, was fresh enough to start behind the plate Saturday. In fact, he never gave it a second thought. The team played those back-to-back marathons in Baltimore two years ago and, just last September, the Bombers were defeated by the Orioles at the Stadium in a nine-inning game that lasted 4 hours, 22 minutes.

Girardi did notice something remarkable about the fifth inning, however. “That may have been the longest inning I ever caught,” he said. The A’s sent 13 men to the plate in the top half, when they scored eight times. The Yankees had 10 batters in the bottom half and four of them scored. The catcher reported that his wife, Kim, left home at the start of the fifth. When she arrived at the ballpark, the inning still was in progress.

Last season, the Yankees--despite boasting the best overall pitching in the American League--participated in only two 1-0 games. They beat the Braves, 1-0, in 10 innings in a contest started by Andy Pettitte and Tom Glavine and finished by Mike Stanton and Mike Bielecki. Four days later, Kelvim Escobar outdueled David Cone in Toronto.

It might be another year, or another century, before the Yankees find themselves in a similar situation. “You’re not going to see many of those games over here,” said Darryl Strawberry, who spent many years in the National League before George Steinbrenner rescued him in 1995. “The pitching’s too thin, too short. Maybe with [Roger] Clemens, [Pedro] Martinez, guys like that.”

But Clemens is hurt and, other than Martinez, there aren’t many other guys who can pitch like that. Certainly, Randy Johnson would have been included in such a discussion last year and the year before that and the year before that. But Johnson was hammered in his first two starts and, when he finally reminded people of the Big Unit (yielding two hits and two runs, striking out 15 in eight innings at Fenway Park), the Seattle bullpen sabotaged him.

Not all 1-0 games are neat and swift. After all, the Mets needed 14 innings to top the Phillies on opening day at Shea Stadium. Naturally, Schilling was the starter for Philadelphia, although he left with a no-decision. Still, if any two teams can drag a 1-0, nine-inning contest past three hours, rest assured the Yankees will be one of the parties.

The average time for a nine-inning Yankees game last season was a major-league long 3:06. Credit (or discredit) the New York hitters for the dubious achievement. They led the league with 676 walks. “We have some people that will take it,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said Saturday.

There’s no doubt the A’s tested the Yankees’ patience on Friday. The Athletics issued 12 bases on balls, leading to 10 New York runs. Saturday, seven Yankees walked. One came around to score and another forced in a run in a 3-1 victory that ended 3 hours, 8 minutes after it began.

Some would blame the pitchers for nibbling. John said it’s incumbent on major-league organizations to school pitchers on throwing strikes while they’re still in the minors. “We had a pitching coach [Red Adams] with the Dodgers,” he recalled, “who preached that the worse your stuff, the greater the need to be aggressive.”

In other words, even a mediocre pitcher is no easy mark with an 0-and-2 count. Once he falls behind 2-and-0, the tendency is for a deluge of runs and the kind of silliness that marked the Yankees’ home opener. It was baseball, sort of, even if it was polar to what transpired in Philadelphia later.

Abner Doubleday must have had the same sense of humor as the Supreme Being who, to the wonder of William Blake, created such diverse creatures. “Did He who made the Lamb make thee?” the poet asked of the fierce tiger. Can baseball’s mythical inventor be held responsible for both 17-13 and 1-0?

As Bob Newhart asked in a classic comedy routine from the 1960s, “Why three strikes, Mr. Doubleday?”