 |
| |
|
 |
 |
||
 |
 |
||
 |
|||
EVENTS
CENTERS
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|
 |
Escape to New York Behind Bernie's big day, Yanks force Game 5 in the Bronx
Updated: Monday October 15, 2001 7:10 PM
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -- The New York Yankees calmly boarded a plane on Sunday night for another cross-country flight to another playoff showdown. For any other baseball team, it would have been a thrilling journey to a game almost nobody thought would be played. But these are the Yankees. There is no postseason territory over which they haven't soared before. Bernie Williams drove in five runs as the Yankees tied their AL division series with the Oakland Athletics at two games each with a 9-2 victory. Playing with poise and pride on the brink of postseason elimination, Williams and New York finished two days in Oakland with two wins -- and afterward, nobody in a New York uniform would admit to even an ounce of surprise. "We were all aware of the situation," Williams said. "There was no sense in rubbing it in. We knew we were down two games to one, and it was a must-win situation ... but you don't want to be pins and needles out there." After the A's won the AL division series' first two games in New York, the three-time champions seemed doomed. Age, inconsistency and the energetic A's made the Yankees look like relics of a passing era, mere shadows of their once-mighty selves.
But with two gutsy wins at the Coliseum -- where Oakland had won 17 in a row -- the three-time World Series champs earned a trip back to Yankee Stadium for a deciding game Monday night. Roger Clemens will face Mark Mulder in a rematch of the opener. "Surprised? I guess I can't be," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "We've done a lot of things in the last six years that make me proud, and this certainly goes up there among the proudest [moments]." The day was disastrous for the young A's, who lost their fourth consecutive home playoff game to the Yankees. What's more, cleanup hitter Jermaine Dye broke his leg on a foul ball in the third inning and was lost for the rest of the postseason. Dye will be in a cast for 8-to-12 weeks, Oakland trainer Larry Davis said. Though the A's professed the same professional indifference as the Yankees, it was clear which team was under the most pressure. "I don't think our spirits are down at all," Jason Giambi said. "The biggest thing is we're going to Game 5. We have our big gun on the hill. As far as I'm concerned, we're starting fresh." This isn't new territory for the two teams. Last year, the Athletics beat Clemens on the road in Game 4, sending their first-round series back to Oakland. The Yankees built a big lead and hung on for a 7-5 victory. After hanging on for a 1-0 win on Saturday night, New York had no problem evening the series on a balmy California afternoon. The Yankees were baffled by the A's starters in the series' first three games, but they chased Cory Lidle in the fourth inning. "We're not shaken at all. I expected this to go five games," A's manager Art Howe said. "We were pretty fortunate to come in here two up. I wish I wasn't a soothsayer, but I thought it would go five. Hopefully, we can turn the tables on them tomorrow." Williams had a two-run double in the third inning and a two-run single in the fourth, connecting for the big hits that neither team had seemed capable of getting early in the series. He added an RBI double in the ninth and scored. While the Yankees scored early and often against Lidle, Orlando Hernandez -- who didn't win a game until September in a regular season filled with injuries and inconsistency -- survived for 5 2/3 innings on veteran guile. El Duque faced his biggest test in the first inning after the A's put runners on first and third with no outs. He retired Jason Giambi and Dye on popups and, after a walk loaded the bases, got Jeremy Giambi on a foul pop. Those three outs made Oakland 0-for-26 with runners in scoring position in the series. Hernandez gave up eight hits, but limited Oakland to two runs while constantly pitching out of trouble. "It seemed like we were ahead in the series," Hernandez said through a translator. "Everyone was focused on winning, not necessarily on what would happen if we lost." After getting outstanding starts from their rotation in the series' first three games, the A's got little from Lidle, a former Tampa Bay castoff who closed the season with five consecutive victories to earn a spot in the A's playoff rotation. Never appearing comfortable in his first postseason appearance, Lidle yielded five hits and six runs in 3 1/3 innings as the Yankees scored as many runs (4) in the first three innings Sunday as they did in the series' first three games. The Yankees scored two unearned runs without a hit in the second. After Lidle walked two batters, journeyman second baseman F.P. Santangelo -- a curious last-minute substitution for Frank Menechino in Howe's starting lineup -- allowed Paul O'Neill's routine grounder to go right past him, scoring a run. New York added two more in the third when Williams drove a double well over Johnny Damon's head in center field. In the fourth, Williams lined a two-run single to boost New York's lead to 7-2. Terrence Long's RBI single in the third was Oakland's first hit in 28 at-bats with runners in scoring position. Miguel Tejada had four hits for Oakland, but he was stranded on base three times.
Notes: Clemens didn't see the game. After throwing briefly in the
bullpen for the second consecutive day, he hopped a plane home to New
York for Game 5. ... The game's painfully slow pace was no help to
Lidle, who normally works quickly. The first inning took an hour,
and the first five innings lasted nearly three hours. The game
lasted four hours, 13 minutes -- the longest Division Series game on
record, and one minute short of the longest nine-inning postseason
game. ... After the largest baseball crowd in Coliseum history
watched Game 3 on Saturday night, Oakland's fans returned to their
apathetic ways. The upper deck at the Coliseum wasn't close to sold
out, and the thousands of seats built atop the outfield were
completely empty.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
