Most baseball executives are procrastinators, with nearly every team every year waiting until the final moments before the trade deadline to make key decisions about whether to buy or sell. Twenty-five years ago, though, the Yankees made sure to get their work done early. Brian Cashman moved swiftly, picking up veteran infielder José Vizcaíno and slugger David Justice in June. Mid-July, he found his rental ace in Denny Neagle, and a week later, the Yankees added the hulking Glenallen Hill to the fold.
Not every deal would prove to be perfect, but the Yankees had finished their shopping before most teams had even gotten to the store. On this day, Hill made his first start with New York, and the impact was immediate.
July 23: Yankees 4, Orioles 3 (box score)
Record: 52-42 (2 GA in AL East)
The Yankees were faced with 22-year-old lefty John Parrish, making his major-league debut for the Orioles. That lined up nicely for the newly acquired Hill, who was brought in with the explicit assignment of crushing lefties.
Parrish blitzed through his first inning in the bigs, striking out Chuck Knoblauch, Derek Jeter, and Bernie Williams. Roger Clemens, on a good run of form, looked shaky early on, giving up back-to-back singles to start the bottom of the first before Delino DeShields’ RBI groundout put Baltimore up 1-0.
Hill stepped in after that inauspicious start. Parrish gave him a fastball to hit and the man who hit a tank out of Wrigley Field and across the street back in May didn’t miss on this occasion either. He blasted it into the left-field seats at Camden Yards to tie the game on his first swing as a Yankee:
The 35-year-old knew the second it left the bat that the ball was gone, hitting Parrish with a confident bat drop and a skip out of the batter’s box. Not a bad way to introduce yourself to your new team.
Though Hill had given the Yankees some momentum, things remained a struggle for Clemens. It had taken him 28 pitches just to escape the first having only allowed one run, and even that came thanks to some good fortune. With a runner on second and two out, B.J. Surhoff grounded what looked like a sure double down the line, only for the ball to hit the third-base bag and carom to Scott Brosius, who tossed the ball to first and chuckled at his luck:
Even before that, the Yankees were fortunate when Knoblauch was ruled to have tagged out a runner trying to advance to second, but without the ball. Knoblauch had the ball in his right hand while he tagged Mike Bordick with his empty glove. Two outs just in the first inning the Yankees had to be thankful.
Clemens then hit Will Clark with a pitch to start the second, and Charles Johnson’s double put the O’s right back on top 2-1. But the Yankees had the answer again in the top of the third. Knoblauch came up with runners on second and third none out, and tied the game on a sac fly. Next up, Jeter came through with a classic piece of Jeterian hitting, staying through the ball and lining it easily up the middle for an RBI single and a 3-2 lead:
Jeter advanced to second on a groundout from Williams, and then scored on an error from the second baseman DeShields, and the Yankees were up 4-2.
But Clemens was still walking the tightrope. The O’s came right back again, with DeShields making up for his miscue by leading off the bottom of the third with a single, stealing second, and scoring on Clark’s single. There was more trouble in the fourth, Clemens walking the first two batters of the inning, the Yankees’ 4-3 lead looking more tenuous by the second. But he escaped, getting a lineout from Brady Anderson before Bordick bounced into an inning-ending double play.
Clemens’ up-and-down day came to a climax in the sixth. He lost Clark in a full count and walked him to open the frame, and a single from Johnson had the tying run in scoring position. Clemens was at 105 pitches, digging deep to keep his team ahead.
Harold Baines flew out to center, and Clemens struck out Ivanon Coffie to make it two down. But Clemens walked Anderson, and according to the New York Times, he started to cramp up in his quadriceps. Joe Torre went out to the mound, and Clemens pleaded his case, asking his manager to stand at the mound to give him a second to rest, but not to remove him. “I wasn’t coming out of the game right there,’’ Clemens said afterward.
Torre left his man in, and Clemens fought against Bordick. In a 1-2 count, Clemens spun a devastating splitter that Bordick swung over, and Clemens pumped his fist as he walked off the mound.
This was far from Clemens’ best game, the righty working around five walks and six hits over six innings. But it was one of his gutsiest efforts, and it was just enough to get the Yankees through.
Mike Stanton fired 1.2 shutout in relief of Clemens, and Torre went to Mariano Rivera for a four-out save. Rivera retired the first three batters he faced before issuing a walk with two down in the ninth, the Yankees still clinging to a one-run lead. He got to a full count on DeShields before throwing a perfect cutter, one that cut backdoor across the outside corner to get DeShields looking to end the game:
It wasn’t the easiest win, Clemens laboring all night, and the Yankees didn’t do much against the young Parrish, who settled in after a shaky start to throw seven innings while allowing just four hits. But they would take it, the club improving to 7-3 over their last 10 and pushing their AL East lead to two games.
Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.
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