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 A comedy of errors Sports Illustrated baseball writer Mark Bechtel wonders: Can't anybody here play this game?
Posted: Saturday October 17, 1998 02:17 PM
My baseball-playing days ended in my early teens for two reasons: I kept getting hit in the head with baseballs, and I couldn't hit a curveball -- or a decent fastball -- to save my life. (Usually, I stick to the first reason, because it paints a more tragic picture of my all-too-brief career.) At any rate, right up to my last game one thing could be said about my game: I could bunt. It's not that hard. Get the bat out in front of you, watch the pitch and under no circumstances jab at the ball. Keep the bat still, but hold it softly and you won't have any trouble deadening the ball. I tell you this because watching Game 6 of the Indians-Yankees series had me convinced that no professional baseball player can bunt anymore. Instead of just laying one down nice and easy, everybody tried to deaden the ball on the chalk 30 feet down the line. The result was a parade of foul balls. In the top of the first Omar Vizquel, who shows bunt at least once in every at-bat, tried to sacrifice Kenny Lofton from second to third. Vizquel ended up striking out when he bunted foul three times. In the top of the second, Sandy Alomar blew a squeeze attempt, but fortunately it was a safety squeeze. Then in the bottom of the sixth inning Joe Girardi tried to move Scott Brosius up from second to third. He couldn't get the bunt down, but Dave Burba ended up walking him before he could foul out with two strikes. Chuck Knoblauch came to the plate after Girardi and also failed to get the bunt down, striking out when he popped an attempt foul with two strikes. The only guy who got one down all night was Lofton, who dropped a decent drag bunt down the third-base line on the game's first pitch. However, the ball was clearly headed foul when Brosius inexplicably picked it up and fired -- too late -- to first. That play set the tone for a night of really ugly baseball, capping a series chock full o' bad plays. To wit: One of the game's best clutch pitchers, David Cone, was staked to a six- run lead and came within a run of blowing it. Vizquel, who hadn't made a postseason error in 237 chances, forgot how to throw the ball in the sixth, allowing Brosius to reach and setting the stage for Girardi's and Knoblauch's how-not-to-bunt exhibition. The normally surehanded Brosius compounded his mental gaffe by firing the ball over Tino Martinez's head after fielding Lofton's bunt. Enrique Wilson had a routine forceout at second in the third, but his toss drew Vizquel off the base, opening the floodgates for three unearned runs. That bad play also featured some questionable umpiring, which was another recurring theme in this series. Vizquel's foot appeared to be on the bag when he fielded the ball, but umpire Ted Hendry called runner Bernie Williams safe. It was yet another bad night for Hendry, who was hit right in the butt by an Vizquel liner in the fifth. Even the guy who "calculates" the distance home runs travel had an off night. In the fifth, Jim Thome hit a moonshot off Cone. The point where the ball went over the wall had to be at least 360 feet from the plate, and the ball landed over 1/3 of the way up in the upper deck. (It was so far up in the stands that had the guy who caught it decided to throw it back, he would have needed a cutoff man.) I was sitting in leftfield, so I had a perfect view of the trajectory. The ball had barely begun to descend, and it's not like he popped it up. This was a line drive. After the game, George Steinbrenner said, "If it didn't hit something, that ball would still be going." So what was the estimated distance the ball traveled? 405 feet. Yeah. The worst play of the night, though, was Manny Ramirez's attempt to field Derek Jeter's opposite field smash with two on in the sixth. Jeter did an incredible job driving a pitch in on his hands the other way, but Ramirez should have caught the ball. He gave chase, and when he got near the warning track he appeared to be convinced the ball was going over the fence. Instead of just stopping and trying to relocate the ball, Ramirez put his head down and ran as hard as he could at the wall, then took a little hop and jumped on the fence with all fours. He looked like Spider Man. I thought he might stick to the fence, or at least shoot a web and wrap up Jeter before he could get to third. To make matters worse, the ball short-hopped the fence. It almost landed in Ramirez's back pocket. Two runs scored, Jeter came around on a single two batters later, and the game was over. Scenes from the clubhouse: Spike Lee was on hand again with a Super 8 camera, getting hounded by Homer Bush to let him be in a movie. Rudolph Giuliani was there with his son, Andrew. The kid was wearing a Jeter cap, which he kept taking off while asking people to douse his crew-cut head with champagne. "Right here, right here," he'd cry, pointing to his noggin. It really reminded me of that Saturday Night Live skit where Chris Farley plays him. Boyish GM Brian Cashman was there, looking like a freshman at a raucous frat party. He was standing up against the wall, covered in beer, holding his dress shirt and tie in his hand (he was wearing an AL Champs T-shirt), and it looked like his glasses were about to fog over. The strangest thing, though, had to be Andy Pettitte. I think he was in a hurry to leave, because he climbed under the plastic sheet they put up over everyone's lockers to get into his, and as he changed, I couldn't help but think of John Travolta, the original Boy in the Plastic Bubble.
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