THESE moments don’t always find the obvious names. It was Bobby Thomson who hit the shot heard ’round the world, after all, not Willie Mays. It was Bill Mazeroski who broke five boroughs’ of hearts in 1960, after all, not Roberto Clemente. It was Bucky Bleepin’ Dent, back in the day. And Aaron Bleepin’ Boone. These moments don’t pay attention to how big your star is, or how bright your name looks in lights. And so here came Richard Stephen Crosby out of Houston, Texas, all of 139 big-league at-bats to his name, stepping to the plate just as the big clock at Yankee Stadium clicked to 10:10 p.m. last night.
Here came an Eric Dubose breaking ball, one Bubba Crosby has only looked for his whole life, one that looked big as a beachball coming in and looked as beautiful as a Maui sunset on its way out.
“I wasn’t sure what to do,” Crosby would say, “and so I just started taking off toward first base.”
Some things come naturally, though, no matter who you are. Hitting a walk-off home run, for instance.
Crosby had never hit one of those before, not as a kid growing up in Houston, not as a college player at Rice, not during years of endless toil in the Dodgers farm system, not at Columbus.
Not until right now, when the Yankees needed it most, untangling a 2-2 tie in the ninth inning, giving them a 3-2 victory that finally caught them even with the Red Sox in the loss column in the AL East.
“I always wondered what that would feel like,” Bubba Crosby said, and his eyes told you that sometimes, no matter how many miles you put on your career, no atter how many years you search waiting for a moment like this, it can still hit you with all the wonder and majesty of a kid looking under the tree for the first time.
“I wanted to slow down around the bases, make it last a little longer,” he said, but he didn’t have to. No matter what else happens the rest of his career, Bubba Crosby will always have this game, this night, this swing, and this wonderful moment, when he watched a baseball jump off his bat and scrape against the night sky, sending Yankee Stadium into its first officially tizzy of the home stretch.
“He hung on and he hung on and he hung on,” Yankees manager Joe Torre would marvel, “until we noticed him.”
That really is the story of these Yankees, isn’t it? They started the season with a $208 million payroll, an All-Star filling every corner of the clubhouse, and yet as the season enters the final two weeks they find themselves turning
to people like Aaron Small and Shawn Chacon and Richard Stephen “Bubba” Crosby, who will earn $332,950 this season, who shuttled back and forth between New York and Columbus six different times this year.
“Each time,” he admitted, “I figured I might never get back.”
He watched Joe Torre try everyone under the sun in the outfield, the Yankee defense turning into a bad vaudeville act most nights. Then Gary Sheffield’s hamstring started screaming at him like Sam Kinison, and suddenly Torre realized he needed to find someone who could catch the ball. He looked to his bench and he spotted Bubba Crosby. Bubba Crosby could catch the ball.
And he sure caught one last night.
Just not with his glove.
“Amazing,” he said to himself, as he wandered toward his locker. “Amazing.”
Around him the Yankees clubhouse was stuffed with all the splendid noise and color of autumn. In the player’s lounge, the Devil Rays were building one last rally against the Red Sox on the TV, and there were players screaming at the screen as if they were having a few cold ones in a sports bar somewhere. They could smell first place suddenly, all these millionaires who fill out the Yankees roster.
And this one $332,950 player, who for one night topped it.
“I want to enjoy this as long as I can,” Bubba Crosby said.
His teammates weren’t going to argue. They were having a hell of a time themselves.
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WILD CARD
TEAM REC GB
Indians 88-62 –
Yankees 86-63 1 1/2
Athletics 83-67 5