Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Dream’ has become Yanks’ nightmare

MLB snap shot

Zito (11-11) has struggled this season, but continuing his past success in the ninth month will be vital, in the wake of Mark Mulder's season-ending broken leg, for Oakland to remain atop the AL West.

The Athletics have lost in the first round of the playoffs three consecutive years.

The good news for Sox fans is that he has lost only one of his past five starts. The bad news is that he didn't win any of those other four. In his past three starts, he has given up 24 hits and 14 earned runs over 15 1/3 innings.

Detroit threatened to turn back the Mets with victories in consecutive games last week. Alas, they were, as usual, paper Tigers in losing five of their next six. At 34-102, they are tied with the pace of manager Casey Stengel's expansion Mets.

The Bombers have a 9-7 edge on the Red Sox, but fans of the Yankees know not to get too hyped about that slim margin. Both teams have scored 88 runs in those 16 games.

His trip to Single-A Tampa was shorter than expected, which just might describe pitcher Jeff Weaver's career as a New York Yankee, too.

The Bronx certainly isn't for everyone, as Ed Whitson and Hideki Irabu discovered during their pinstriped tenures. Weaver easily fits onto that list of players who have failed to make the grade, in the statistics and with the fans, in New York.

When Weaver was sent to Florida last week, his stay was going to be short, anyway. Rosters expanded to 40 on Monday, and the front office (i.e., owner George Steinbrenner) sent his 6-foot-5 right-hander to pitching guru Billy Connors for some pointers.

Weaver returned to the Yankees sooner than expected, on Thursday, when a sprained ankle sent Dave Dellucci to the disabled list. Then Weaver's horror show resumed Friday, when he gave up home runs in two of the three innings he worked in Boston.

He had relieved Jose Contreras, who yielded seven earned runs over three innings and with whom Weaver has battled for a spot in the rotation this season.

Contreras fell to 4-2 with the defeat, and his ERA shot to 5.09. Weaver, 7-9, sports a career-worst 5.91 ERA. He's 51-63 as a major leaguer. Somewhere along the line, he was nicknamed "Dream."

In Little League?

Manager Joe Torre has not hidden his displeasure with Weaver, saying he and his coaches have tried to get the pitcher "straightened out," but Torre "didn't know the answer."

Fans have booed Weaver regularly this summer, with the lowlight coming two weeks ago as he strolled to the Yankee Stadium mound to face the Kansas City Royals.

The game hadn't even started, but the Bronx Bombers faithful were giving Weaver the business.

That such drama exists on a club with the best record (83-53) in the American League should surprise no veteran observer of baseball's most-storied franchise.

Or Whitson. Or Irabu.

Or Jeff Brantley in San Francisco. Or Garry Templeton in St. Louis.

The public-address announcer couldn't even finish the former's name before Candlestick Park fans booed him, and the latter sealed his fate in St. Louis when he flipped off a Busch Stadium crowd.

Sometimes, changes of scenery are required for everyone's health and mental well-being.

Former Atlanta reliever Mark Wohlers, upon landing in Cincinnati in 1999, talked about the therapy he sought when the Braves sent him to Triple-A to try to recover past magic.

He wasn't talking about physical therapy.

What is intriguing about the time Whitson and Irabu spent with the Yanks is that both won more than they lost in each of their seasons in New York.

Whitson had been in the majors for eight years when New York got him in 1985. He lasted two seasons, going 10-8 and 5-2. However, a 7.54 ERA went with that second figure, and a banishment back to San Diego was inevitable.

Irate fans once trailed him en route out of the Bronx over one of New York's bridges. Then he ran red lights, so those enemies would not follow him home.

Irabu struck out nine in his major-league debut, in Yankee Stadium, in 1997. He left the game to two standing ovations in the seventh inning of a New York victory, then it all went downhill.

Although he went 5-4, 13-9 and 11-7 in three respective seasons, he had a rookie ERA of 7.09. Support evaporated, and Steinbrenner called the 6-4, 240-pound righty a "fat ... toad" in the spring of '99.

He repeatedly failed to cover first base that season, then the Yanks traded him. He was 5-15 with two teams over the last three years. Montreal tired of him when he reportedly showed for a minor-league rehab assignment in a drunken stupor.

Irabu was relegated to returning to Japan this season.

Wohlers saved seven games for the Indians last season, but right elbow surgery in March sidelined him for all of 2003. He was even a Yank, going 1-0 with a 4.54 ERA in 31 appearances two years ago.

He was hit hard, but nothing like Weaver, who has two years left on a contract -- which he signed in Detroit seven months before being dealt to the Yankees -- that will pay him $15.5 million.

What Steinbrenner & Co. saw in Weaver, 27, is anybody's guess. Weaver himself has said that this is his fifth year in the majors and the first in which he has struggled, but that isn't true.

In three seasons and half of '02 in Detroit, he never had a winning record. He neither struck out an exceptional number of batters nor had a scintillating ratio of hits and walks per innings pitched.

He did, however, cut his ERA from 5.55, to 4.32, to 4.08 and then 3.18, on what can conservatively be called a bad team. The Tigers have been even worse without the outspoken Weaver, who has conquered some of his mound emotions.

For now, Weaver will continue to work long relief from the bullpen. The Yankees have already used 20 relievers this season.

Torre, who broke into the majors as a catcher for the Milwaukee Braves in 1961, acknowledged how unusual that is for a first-place team.

As far as behavior by fans in the Bronx, Torre, a Brooklyn native, knows the routine. So Weaver isn't required to keep his head on a swivel every time he leaves Yankee Stadium, an offseason departure should benefit everyone.

His situation warrants watching the rest of this month, into the playoffs and during the winter.

"A lot of things that have happened throughout the year (that) I wouldn't have expected or have been through before," Weaver told reporters before going to Tampa. "This is one year out of, hopefully, a long time.

"Hopefully, 10 years from now I'll say 2003 (is) where things built me as a person and as a player."

For the millions of Americans who did not have to work, the national television broadcast of the game could not have been more enjoyable.

Unless you're a fan of pitchers' duels, or you're related to Philadelphia manager Larry Bowa.

The Phillies had leads of 2-0, 4-0, 6-5 and 9-7 before Boston outfielder Trot Nixon, wearing a dirty, grubby cap that looked like it was made in the Babe Ruth era, belted a grand slam in the ninth for the final runs of a 13-9 victory.

Valley High graduate and catcher Doug Mirabelli, 32, scored the first of Boston's six runs in the ninth when Lou Merloni slapped an infield single with the bases loaded.

By now, camera crews are well-trained to keep at least one lens on Bowa at all times, and he morphed from anger to disgust to utter frustration to mocking disbelief.

Between the ninth-inning relief meltdowns of Jose Mesa and Turk Wendell, Bowa sauntered up a tunnel toward his team's clubhouse with his head down. Unfortunately, for him, he returned.

Disregarding a weekend sweep of the Mets -- who barely have three everyday players who qualify as major leaguers, and that's when Mike Piazza plays -- the Phils have dropped 10 of 11.

Lucky for them they're still lurking in an NL wild-card race that nobody seems to desire.

Sidney Ponson of San Francisco and Curt Schilling of Arizona both threw eight innings of scoreless action, then Barry Bonds wielded his usual influence with a bases-loaded single that brought in the only two runs of the game in the ninth.

That game-deciding hit (the runs were charged to Oscar Villareal) came off lefty Mike Myers, against whom Bonds had gone 7-for-24, with a homer, in his career.

For the record, Bonds is 2-for-7 lifetime, with a home run and three RBIs, against Jose Jimenez, tonight's starter for Colorado at San Francisco.

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