I must confess up from that I was helped out a great deal by Baseball Reference, which keeps detailed stats and descriptions of thousands of MLB games from years past. I have a pretty good memory, but not THAT good.
I have rarely seen stud pitchers in the prime of their careers. In my trips to the ball park I've more often witnessed lions in the winter of their playing days.
I was in attendance when Tom Seaver, a legend with the Mets, made a late career appearance at Yankee Stadium in a White Sox uniform. He got beat up that August night in 1984, only lasting for 3 and two thirds. When he left the game the Yankee faithful gave him a standing ovation. He tipped his hat in recognition. It was a parish sponsored trip, and the girl sitting next to me, not a baseball fan, asked why we were cheering a player on the other team. "Because he's Tom Seaver, that's why!" I derisively barked back. I had a crush on the girl, but crush or no crush I couldn't tolerate the ignorant impiety of the question. It didn't matter that he was the Franchise for the disrespected Metropolitans. In our arrogance Yankee fans hate the Red Sox, but don't think much about the Mets at all, except to heap scorn on them for trading the best pitcher of his generation for a bag of balls and a couple of bats (all apologies to Pat Zachry, Steve Henderson, Doug Flynn and Dan Norman). Reggie Jackson once said that blind people go to ball games to hear Tom Seaver pitch. Those days of greatness were long gone, but no matter. He was and is a New York legend, as well as a baseball immortal, which meant that night we stood and we cheered, because we knew that his likes don't come around very often. I wasn't in attendance a year later when he came back to the Bronx, still playing for Chicago. This time he went all nine innings, defeating a superior Yankee squad to the one he had faced the previous season, for his 300th win. The packed house stood and cheered as if he was one of their own, which in the big picture he still was.
A few years later I was at the old River Front Stadium in Cincinnati. It was Tom Browning, a promising young hurler who had won 20 games a few years before, and would pitch a perfect game later that same season, against Nolan Ryan. Ryan was in his 22nd season in the big leagues, playing for Houston. Like Seaver he made his start in Queens in 1966, later pitching for the same 1969 Miracle Mets. He was traded away before his legend was solidified (he was still mainly a reliever transitioning to the starter role when he was exchanged, along with a few other less notable players, in 1971 for Jim Fregosi - arguably an even worse trade for the Mets than the Seaver debacle). He didn't have the deep New York roots of Tom Terrific, but he was no doubt Hall of Fame candidate. His seven no-hitters and 12 one hitters put the lie to the often made accusation that he was just a flashy .500 pitcher. His winning percentage was hurt by years pitching for mediocre California Angels and intermittently competitive Astros teams. He had broken Walter "Big Train" Johnson's career strike out record five years before, and by 1988, in his early 40's was still routinely leading the league in Ks. Browning would end up with a solid, but otherwise unremarkable twelve year career in the bigs, his early potential undermined by injuries. That season he was the ace of the Cincinnati staff, so it didn't take much for one of my college roommates to talk me into braving a frigid April night to take in this march-up between two marquee pitchers.
The Ryan Express was rolling along this night. Both men were pitching well, actually, with Browning taking a 2-0 lead into the ninth. Even though he was on the losing end when he exited after the 7th, Ryan had struck out 11 and given up only four hits.
I was feeling good. It was cold, and wanted to get out of there. Both pitchers had been efficient, with the game on pace to end before 9:30pm, which would give us plenty of time to get a bus before public transportation shut down at 10:00pm. Otherwise we'd have to pay for a taxi: we were at the end of the semester and my funds were low enough already. Then, with two outs and a runner on, the partisan Reds crowd on their feet screaming, anticipating the complete game shutout, disaster struck. On an 0-1 pitch first baseman Glenn Davis drilled a home run into the lower deck in left. The stadium went from being a house party to a mausoleum with one swing. Browning finished the inning, but had to settle for a no decision, a fate his counter part was more than happy to share in.
For me this wasn't about winning or losing. I'm a Yankee fan, so I had no dog in this fight. It as about the pitching match up, which I had seen, so could we please go home now? Greg Daugherty, my pal who had talked me into this game, insisting we had to see Nolan Ryan before he retired, was and is a diehard Reds fan, so there was no way we were leaving. Enduring the winds whipping around the upper deck, the game dragged on for 16 innings. Houston broke through for five runs in the top of what would be the last frame. The Reds went down 1-2-3 in the bottom half, as we were then stuck paying for a cab.
In the initial aftermath of the contest the story was about the heartbreak of letting a win slip away, and freezing in the early spring night as extra innings piled up. In the last thirty years since its about seeing Nolan Ryan, an ageless wonder defy the calendar, pitching like a player half his age.
Last night I was at White Sox Park, aka Guaranteed Rate Field - possibly the worst naming rights deal since Enron sponsored the Astros' ballpark before they went belly up amid scandal a decade ago. Their logo is a down arrow, which unfortunately denotes the direction the South Siders have been heading in the last few seasons more than the interest rates the stadium's sponsor offers on mortgages. The sad part is that this successor to the old Comiskey Park is a good place to see a game. Wrigley has the charm but Comiskey II has spacious and conveniently located lavatories. It may seem like a small point, but we're baseball fans, not angels, and when the beer is flowing no one wants to turn finding the restrooms into a scavenger hunt. The food selection is great (I recommend the Cuban Sandwich). I've never been, but they tell me the restaurant is first class. The staff is friendly (which is not to say Wrigley's isn't, by any means). If I were to put it in a nut shell, the North Side has the outside the stadium street experience down. The neighborhood has great atmosphere, with plenty of cool bars and restaurants for pre and post game noshing. But the Sox have the inside game down pat.
Unfortunately, that game in 2018 isn't baseball. While I just spent a paragraph talking about the pros and cons of the "fan experience," as the kids call it, of the two Chicago baseball teams, the only experience I go to a ball game for is the game. Right now there is no denying the Cubs are putting the better product on the field. This didn't stop me from availing myself of a friend's generosity and going down to see my beloved Yankees face off against the Sox at the ball yard on 35th and Shields.
The Yankees are coming off a brutal four game sweep at the hands of those other Sox from Boston, punctuating a five game losing streak. New York won on Monday, pounding the White Sox 7-0. Tuesday night they put up C.C. Sabathia to face Chicago's Reynaldo Lopez.
Sabathia isn't in the same category as either Seaver or Ryan, both first ballot Hall of Famers (Seaver was elected with highest percentage of votes in history). But by the time its all over C.C.'s plaque very well may end up in Cooperstown, even if it takes him a few tries to get there. He was a big flame throwing lefty when he was young, who has learned how to pitch now that he's entered the twilight of his playing days. It looked like he was done a few years back when injury and alcohol sent his career into a tailspin. He stopped, removing himself from the MLB merry-go-round just before the post season in 2015 to enter rehab. Realizing not just what the game meant to him, but more importantly his wife and children, and got the help he needed to put the bottle away and get himself back into shape: as a player but also as a husband and father. Other players bow out before the play-offs and you hear whispers about lack of guts or wimping out. Not with C.C. He had already proven himself to be a tough competitor, a team player, who knew what it meant to pitch through adversity. So, with the blessing of his teammates Sabathia made the tough call, but also the right one. He did comeback, and was key to the Yankees unexpected playoff run 2017. This year he's been a steady presence in an otherwise questionable starting rotation.
As I wrote, C.C. doesn't mow them down as he once did. He is now the image of the cagey southpaw using guile and finesse to induce ground outs and swings and misses out of the zone. He struck out 12 in 5 and two thirds innings last night. He got in and out of trouble a few times, with the Sox managing to scrape across a run on a sac fly in the third. His landing knee is shot, and he needs to pitch with a brace. At one point they bunted against him, and C.C. didn't get off the mound cover first: not because of indifference, but because he simply couldn't. I though the they could do this all night against him, but they didn't. He struck out the side in the 4th and pitched out of a jam in the fifth, including that devious bunt. He got two outs in the sixth, but after giving up a ground rule double to Ryan LeMarre, manager Aaron Boone made the long walk to the mound to pull his starter.
There were plenty of Yankee fans in the crowd, and as he walked to the dugout Sabathia received a standing ovation. But there were Sox fans cheering too. Because they understand that this might be the last time he pitches in Chicago, they showed their appreciation.
Lopez, who's not having a particularly good season for Chicago, pitched the game of his life. He took a no hitter into the sixth, before Aaron Hicks hit a ground rule double to start the frame. He was helped by his fielders, highlighted by center fielder Adam Engel who, for the second night in a row, robbed a Yankee of a home run with a leaping catch over the left centerfield wall. A long fly by Miguel Andujar in the 7th went a bit farther so that Engel's acrobatics didn't come into play. Lopez left with a tied game, but was replace in the top of the eight, so he was denied the ovation he richly deserved.
The Yankees took the lead in the top of the 10th, then the Sox tied it up again in the bottom of the inning - both teams exchanging two run homers. The Yankees won in the 13th on an Andujar RBI single.
Like that game in Cincinnati in 1988 and the Tom Seaver appearance in 1984 (which the Yankees eventually won, staving off a Chisox comeback attempt) what I'll remember about August 7, 2018 are the pitchers. In this case, the old, battle tested veteran using all the tricks he's learned over the years, against the young hot shot still trying to find himself. It's seeing a player who's glory days are behind him, but who's guts and will drive him to give every last ounce he has, in spite of the pain. Sabathia is loved in New York, a place he came to reluctantly, because he's always given his all. What's more, he quickly grew to love playing in the Bronx and it showed. For that, as well as for his personal courage, we stand and cheer one more lion in winter.
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