TORONTO – The only thing missing was the keg of beer behind second base.
Pick your reason why yesterday’s Yankees-Blue Jays game at SkyDome had the look of a slow-pitch softball tilt. The ball is juiced. Weight rooms and other tricks have turned players into physical freaks. Big-league pitching has never been this bad.
All of them came into play as the Yankees halted a two-game slide with a 10-7 victory in front of an announced Easter Sunday gathering of 20,485 that witnessed baseball history when Bernie Williams and Jorge Posada homered from both sides of the plate. It was the first time two players accomplished that in the same game.
“I really haven’t thought about it, what can you say?” said Williams, who homered from the left side off starter Frank Castillo in the first with a runner on and from the right side off lefty Clayton Andrews in the fourth with two on. “You can look back when you retire and say, ‘They have played the game for a long time and that was the first time in history.'”
The power display was needed by the 12-5 Yankees to overcome Orlando “El Duque” Hernandez’ worst outing of the season.
Thanks to a seven-run fourth when Williams hit a three-run homer and Posada had a two-run poke, El Duque improved to 4-0 but was far from sharp.
El Duque, who spit up a 2-0 lead in the first inning, allowed seven runs and eight hits, four of which were homers, in 61/3 innings.
For the second straight game Jose Cruz Jr. led off with a homer. Carlos Delgado, Darrin Fletcher and Marty Cordova also homered to hike the Blue Jays’ AL-leading homer total to 41
“I am happy that the team won, but I was not happy with my control,” El Duque said. “They are a very good batters and they connected when I made mistakes.”
Staked to a 10-3 lead in the fourth, El Duque gave up three homers in the sixth and couldn’t get out of the seventh. After walking Raul Mondesi with one out, El Duque was replaced by lefty Mike Stanton. He responded by fanning Delgado and Brad Fullmer on nasty sliders.
With a seven-run bulge Joe Torre probably didn’t believe he would have to work through his top-shelf relievers, but he did. After Stanton gave up a one-out single to Fletcher in the eighth, Torre summoned Jeff Nelson to face Cordova. Nelson responded by wild pitching Fletcher to second, popping up Cordova on a 3-1 pitch for the second out and ending the inning on a stress-free fly to right by Alex Gonzalez.
Pitching for the first time since last Wednesday when he blew a save chance, Mariano Rivera recorded his sixth save by striking out Cruz, getting Homer Bush on a grounder and fanning Mondesi.
“I have said [El Duque] reminds me of Juan Marichal, and he used to win 10-9 and 1-0,” Torre said. “[Herandez] has that capability. When he got the lead, he didn’t want to walk anybody.”
After Williams took Andrews, who was appearing in his second big-league game, deep in the fourth for his team-leading sixth homer of the year, he had no idea Posada was one homer away from putting them into the record book.
“He said, ‘Why don’t you get one [more], too,” said Posada, who has five homers and is batting .333. “It’s good to be part of history.”
While acknowledging that it was nice to be part of baseball’s never-ending lore, Williams was also pleased with his right-handed swing, something that hadn’t been real smooth lately.
“I was pressing from the right side,” said Williams, who started the day hitting .246 overall and .192 against lefties.
Posada has been in a groove since the start of the season. Yesterday’s 3-for-5 performance upped his average to .333.
“The reason is that I am out there every day and it’s a lot of fun to be part of this lineup,” said Posada, whose 13 RBIs are second on the club to Williams’ 21.