Long Night for Yanks and Their Pitchers Leads Into Long Day

There were 53,957 fans at Yankee Stadium last night, and those keeping score must have given up fast. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays batted around twice in the first five innings. The Yankees made five defensive changes in the eighth. It made for a messy scorecard and a game worth forgetting.

That was true whether you were making your 491st career start (Mike Mussina), your third relief appearance (Edwar Ramirez) or your major league debut (Shelley Duncan). The Devil Rays flattened the Yankees, 14-4, a dismal opening to a series that includes a day-night doubleheader today.

dismal a. 沈悶的，陰沈的

“Every once in a while, you get it handed to you,” Mussina said. “ Obviously I didn't pitch very well at all, and we played kind of flat. We were never really in the game.

“We've got a long day tomorrow, and we've got to come out and play with a
little more energy and get our heads in the right place. We can’t afford to
get down and lose a handful of games in a row here.”

handful a. 一把

Mussina tumbled to 4-7, allowing six runs and seven hits in four and two thirds innings. Duncan, just called up from Class AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre,
struck out twice with two runners on base before his run-scoring single in
the eighth.

tumble v. 跌落

But Ramirez might have fared worst of all. Brought in to relieve Mussina with two out and a 5-0 deficit in the fifth, he threw 19 pitches, only 2 for strikes. One of the strikes was hit for a grand slam by Dioner Navarro, who had the worst batting average in the majors among hitters with at least 200 at-bats.

fare v. 遭遇

Ramirez walked the other four batters he faced, and he looked rusty in his first appearance in two weeks. After the game, he seemed shaken, fighting back tears.

rusty a. 荒廢的

“My arm is good, I feel good, everything,” said Ramirez, who will probably head back to Scranton soon. “I don't know what happened.”

He ended the interview, saying he was sorry, and then reached into his locker to dry his eyes with his uniform pants. Manager Joe Torre held Ramirez blameless.

“He just hasn't worked,” Torre said. “That's just a product of that.”

The Yankees issued 10 walks, a season high, and they fell eight games behind Boston in the American League East. If they lose the doubleheader today — with the erratic tandem of Matt DeSalvo and Kei Igawa starting — the Yankees will drop back to .500.


issue v. 發給
erratic a. 不穩定的
tandem n. 兩個以上前後排列的人或物


The Yankees (48-46) plan to send down DeSalvo after he starts the second game, and Igawa might also head to the minors soon with Phil Hughes close to returning. In the meantime, the Yankees cannot afford to wait any longer for Igawa to improve. Only once in nine starts has he worked at least six innings while allowing no more than three earned runs.

“It's very important, because obviously we're trying to win games,” Torre
said. “We're not here, in the second half of the season, dealing with a lot
of patience.”

The Yankees have more patience with Mussina, given his long track record. But he has worked seven innings just twice this season, and for a pitcher who usually wins half his starts, he has won just 2 of his last 12.

Things started smoothly, but after Greg Norton led off the third with an infield single to short, Navarro drove a pitch off the fence in right-center for a double. The Yankees were playing Navarro shallow because of his .179 average.

Carl Crawford singled home Navarro to bring up B. J. Upton. The pitching coach Ron Guidry visited the mound, and catcher Jorge Posada set a target low and away. But Mussina said he was too concerned that Crawford might steal, as he did in the first inning, and he badly missed his location.

But Mussina's first pitch was up and in, a dangerous spot against a hot young hitter coming into his own. Upton unloaded on it, sending it screaming into the first row of the distant left-field upper deck for his first of two home runs.

screaming a. 叫喊的，令人驚嘆不已的

Mussina seemed peeved at the tight strike zone of the plate umpire, Scott Barry, but he blamed himself for getting in bad counts and losing confidence in his curveball. That is usually Mussina’s best pitch, and he showed why he cannot survive without it.

peeve v. 使...氣惱

“You just can't be throwing fastball after fastball,” Mussina said. “I don
't have the stuff to be able to do that. That's not how I pitch. If I have
to do that, I'm going to have a tough day.”

The homer made the score 4-0 Devil Rays, and by the end of the night, Upton would be 14 for 28 against the Yankees this season. When he scored in the fifth, on a two-out double by Brendan Harris, it ended Mussina's night and brought in Ramirez.

He walked Ty Wigginton on five pitches and Norton on four to load the bases for Navarro, the No. 9 hitter who had been 0 for 9 this season with the bases loaded.

But after a ball, Navarro hammered a pitch into the right-field seats for the grand slam. It was 9-0, a rout was on, and Ramirez had thrown his last strike of the game. Eight more balls followed before a painful part of the growing process was over. The end of a miserable game was still hours away.