It was a long drive back from the Bronx this morning. I rotated the radio dial between 660 and 610 to try and piece together parts of the evening I may have missed. From my vantage point it looked as if A.J. Burnett simply bested the Phillies on the evening. Much like Cliff Lee dominated the Yankees in game one, Burnett stymied the Phillies batters. Props to him.
There was a lot of discussion on the radio of the strike zone widening about six inches when Mariano Rivera took the mound. I obviously couldn't see much of that from my seat in section 129, but Mo ended up getting out of his one real jam by forcing Utley to ground into a DP. That was the one play all night I really second guessed why the runners weren't moving on the pitch.
Chalk this one up to the Yankees. Teixeira demolished a ball and Matsui showed a really nice piece of hitting by being able to lift Pedro's off speed stuff over the wall. The cheap homers in the series are tied at one a piece.
The final point that was being beaten into the ground was Pedro's comments after the game about being under the weather.
"I didn't feel strong. I've been under the weather the last couple of days," Martinez said. "That's not an excuse. I felt good enough to make pitches and that's what I told them and they trusted me. But I was going to take this start. When I chose this team it was to pitch in the World Series. I'm extremely happy to have had the opportunity."
The late night host on WIP was irate with Pedro's excuse and his seemingly selfish comment about being happy to have had the opportunity despite a loss. Do you think Pedro's comments were way out of line? Sure, he's no Chase Utley in terms of hiding any real plausible excuse and simply manning up, but was Pedro said really all that bad?
Personally, I didn't see all that much wrong with the comments. Pedro's a "wackadoodle" as one caller put it and his mouth is an uncontrollable force that has minimal impact on the way he performs on the field. And he performed pretty well last night.
Tough loss. The Yankees beat them to send it back to Philly tied. Despite losing, it was quite the fun game to attend. I'll have to do it again sometime.
Who's got my extras?
Original Story:
http://www.the700level.com/2009/10/pe...
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