| Blue Jays 7, Yankees 3 Rodriguez Milestone Brings Little Relief
Alex Rodriguez, met by Johnny Damon and Derek Jeter, cut the Yankees deficit to 4-3 with a three-run home run in the third inning. It was his 450th career homer and 2,000th career hit.
Frank Gunn/Associated Press TORONTO, July 21 — The timing was all wrong, or so it would seem. Alex Rodriguez smashed his 2,000th career hit Friday, a three-run homer that made him the youngest player to reach 450 home runs.Yet the Yankees lost to the Toronto Blue Jays, 7-3, for their third consecutive defeat. Rodriguez let a pop foul drop to the turf. He also made his fifth throwing error this week on the only grounder he handled.It might be over analysis, or it might be aggressive spin control. But Rodriguez insisted that this was a perfect time to achieve two personal milestones.“It’s cool for it to come in this week,” said Rodriguez, who turns 31 on Thursday. “In a week with so much criticism, it’s kind of good to get a little reminder that you’ve done some special things in this game for my early age.” Continue reading the main story
“This is the ultimate,” said Karen Dragu of Barrie, Ontario, who snagged the ball. “It bounced off my niece Ashley and onto me.”Rodriguez smiled for pictures, making eye contact with the fans, congratulating them and asking about the catch. He seemed determined not to dwell on his fielding woes and the scrutiny they have brought.“Unfortunately, we couldn’t do it in a win,” Rodriguez said. “But I’m going to enjoy it.”
“But they’ve got two guys that you build your team around — Vernon Wells in center field and Roy Halladay pitching. That’s a great place to start, and they’ve got talent, they’ve got youth, and it seems like they’re pretty deep, too.”Damon said any three-game losing streak was a cause for reflection. When Manager Joe Torre considered the last three losses, he said, the only one that troubled him was Friday’s. The Yankees did not pitch or field well enough to win, he said.
Trying to throw too hard is a habit Wright thought he had broken, but it troubled him in the first inning, when the Blue Jays put their first five runners on base and took a 4-0 lead.“I should have backed off a little bit more and tried to hit my spots and get my fastball back down,” Wright said. “Playing for a while, it still happens. You’d think you wouldn’t do that, and you’d recognize it sooner. But I didn’t.”
Rodriguez cut the lead to 4-3 with two on and two out in the third, tearing into a 94 mile-an-hour fastball with a liner into the second deck, an estimated 416 feet from the plate.But in the bottom of the fourth — with Shawn Chacon pitching for the first time since July 4 — Rodriguez could not find a pop foul by Wells in the twilight sky. It fell to the turf, and with new life, Wells grounded a ball to Rodriguez, who dropped his arm angle and looped a throw to first that pulled Andy Phillips off the bag.
It moved Frank Catalanotto to second, and a wild pitch advanced him to third. Glaus drove the run in with a sacrifice fly. Two singles soon followed, making the run earned, but Torre was not pleased.“We just can’t give outs away,” he said. “If we expect to win ballgames, we’re going to have to pitch and keep ourselves in the game and limit the opposition to three outs. This wasn’t a good game for us.”The only positive might have been Rodriguez’s personal reminder: in spite of everything, he is still an exceptional player.