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A Yankee disaster Champs play like chumps in Game 1 loss to Arizona
Updated: Sunday October 28, 2001 3:28 AM
PHOENIX -- Really, the Yankees weren't supposed to win Game 1 anyway. Arizona Diamondbacks ace Curt Schilling is the closest thing to postseason perfection that baseball has seen in years. Beating him in this Series may take an executive order. But losing like this? Giving up the nine runs? Scoring only one? The dunderheaded errors? The decisions that backfired? Come on already. Were those really the Yankees -- the team with 26 World Series titles, three in a row, four in the past five years and all that -- bumbling their way about Saturday night? "We played bad. We can't change it," Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter, hitless in three at-bats against Schilling, said as he iced his sore shoulder after Saturday's disaster. "All we can do is play better tomorrow."
Yeah. There's setting your goals high. The Yankees were bad Saturday. Really bad. Their starter, a guy who they paid big money for in the offseason for games like Game 1, struggled from the start. Their hitters never even started hitting. Their defense didn't defend. The Yankees came into Game 1 as winners of 16 of their past 17 Series games. They left looking like this year's Series version of the Atlanta Braves. "We just," said David Justice, the Yankees' right fielder for the night, "weren't as solid as we normally are." Solid? The Yankees were a shaky mass, a lump of Jell-O melting in the desert heat. From the time Mike Mussina, their Game 1 starter, stepped onto the mound in the bottom of the first, you knew the mighty Yanks were in trouble. Five batters and 25 pitches later, the right-hander already had coughed up the 1-0 lead his team had given him in the top of the inning. Tiny Craig Counsell -- who has come up huge for the Diamondbacks lately -- popped a one-out, 2-1 fastball into the right-field seats to tie the score. Then came a third inning that was the worst Series inning for the Yankees since they gave up four runs to the Braves in Game 4 of the 1996 World Series. And a fourth inning that was equally as bad. The Yankees did everything wrong. Justice dropped a fly ball in the third. Third baseman Scott Brosius butchered a backhand groundball in the fourth. Even Yankees skipper Joe Torre -- a guy who has made few wrong moves in the team's magical run -- was bitten, twice, by the decision to intentionally walk a batter. For a team that supposedly packs a mystique, Game 1 turned out to be a complete mystery. "We're not a team that's been very good after long layoffs," said Yankees reliever Mike Stanton. The Yanks clinched the American League pennant Monday. "We're a team that likes to play often and get on a roll." Schilling never gave them the chance. He threw seven innings of three-hit ball, giving up only the first-inning run. The Yankees expected fastballs, so he gave them sliders. They expected the heat and he kept it off the plate. They had no chance at his splitter. And now he may be fresh enough to pitch Game 4, if Arizona manager Bob Brenly chooses to go that way. While the Yankees' hitters were busy hacking at Schilling, Mussina gave up five runs (only three earned) in his three innings then gave way to Randy Choate, who gave up four (only one earned) in one inning. "It was an ugly game," said Stanton. "But it still only counts as one." For sure, the Diamondbacks have a long way to go before they pull off this upset. Even with Randy Johnson going Sunday, they have a long way to go. The Yankees came back in the '96 Series, remember, from two games down. They rebounded from 0-2 down in the American League Division Series this season. They know pressure. But it's been awhile since the Yankees had to come back from something like this. So hideous. So shabby. So un-Yankee-like. "I think it's always easier to come back from a game in which you don't play well and get beat soundly," Justice said. "If we'd have played a perfect ballgame and got beat 9-1 ... that'd be different." Well, perfection is something they don't have to worry about right now. They don't even have to worry about Schilling now, at least for another couple of games. Right now, the Yankees should be worried about nothing but the Yankees. And getting back to playing like the Yankees. Before it's too late. John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.
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