A-Rod and Yankees Beat the Red Sox
A-Rod Gossip about Toronto Blonde Woman May Have Helped Bombers
Amid all of the gossip surrounding Alex Rodriguez's personal life and playing tactics, the third baseman leads the Yankees to a series victory over the Boston Red Sox.
Last week in Toronto, Alex Rodriguez was spotted with a blonde mystery woman on several occasions, which included trips to a restaurant, a hotel room and a strip club. The news of A-Rod and the Blonde Woman dominated the New York tabloids for the next few days and threatened to further submarine the Yankees season. Then on Thursday night against the Blue Jays, Rodriguez yelled something at Blue Jay's third baseman John McDonald while the latter was trying to field a pop-up. McDonald was distracted by A-Rod and dropped the ball. Although the play had no impact on the game's outcome, it did lead a lot of Blue Jays and other observers to call A-Rod's pop-up play a bush league move.
So when the Yankees traveled into Boston on Friday, June 1st, with these potential dual distractions threatening to throw them further off track, most thought the Sox would pummel the Bombers. But that is not what hapened. On Friday night, the Yankees won 9-5. They lost Saturday, 11-6. Sunday therefore became yet another "must win" game for New York. Lose, and they would fall back to 14.5 games out of first place. Win, and it wouldn't look much better, but at least they'd have a win.
The game was up and down all the way. The Yankees took a 4-0 lead on the strength of run-scoring singles by Rodriguez, Josh Phelps and Jorge Posada. But the Red Sox came back strong in the bottom of the fifth, scoring five runs and taking a one-run lead.
The score remained that way until Robinson Cano smacked a triple that scored Hideki Matsui, knotting the score at 5-5.
Brian Bruney shut out the Red Sox in the bottom of the inning, setting up a ninth inning with the score tied. Releiver Jonathan Papelbon quickly struck out Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu to set up a Papelbon-Rodriguez showdown. The Sox reliever quickly got ahead 0-2. Then he threw a fastball on the edge of the right side of the plate, which A-Rod promptly deposited into Boston's bullpen just over the wall in right-center field and more than 400 feet away from home plate.
Rivera pitched the bottom of the ninth and held back the Red Sox to earn his fifth save of the season.
Now that A-Rod has shown that he can hit in the clutch with such ugly scandals hanging over his head, one has to wonder just how well he can perform for the rest of the 2007 MLB season.
