| Craig Settimo. 17th May, 2005 - 5:06 am
 Bernie Williams, forced to sit during the recent Jason Giambi Farewell tour, has been biding his time, keeping quiet like the Yankee veteran has always done.
On Monday night Joe Torre penciled him in and sat a red-hot Tony Womack to get Bernie some cuts. It is moves like these that make Torre look like a genius.
Williams belted a 7th inning Grand Slam pushing the Yank’s to their ninth straight victory and more importantly edged them a game over .500 for the first time since April 9th.
Yankees rookie pitcher Chien-Ming Wang benefited from the slam as he was able to pick up his second win in as may starts - - both against the Mariners. The righty got into trouble early giving up two first inning runs. However he settled down and at one point retired 17 straight Mariners, striking out a career high four - - including Richie Sexson three times.
Mariner fans actually breathed a sigh of relief as the sizzling Tino Martinez came up with the bases loaded during the 7th and hit a would be double play. However Richie Sexson - - day dreaming of Wang’s curveball - -dropped the throw and gave the Yankees an extra out. As is always the case the extra out proved fatal as Williams lined the first pitch he saw over the right field fence.
Giambi - - in the middle of his six game re-audition - - had a single to keep his average hovering around .200. He struck out twice and is averaging a whiff every three at-bats. The question for every Yankee fan is how much longer will he be taking key at bats from the likes of Williams - - or on Monday Tony Womack.
With rookie Robinson Cano hitting at .579 over the last week and Tony Womack on a base stealing tear- - the Yankees can get back to playing small ball and move runners over and wait for the big guns to knock them in -- Torre’s preferred style of play - - and something that has disappeared from the Yankees the last few seasons.
Williams can bat 8th as he makes contact and provides needed power - -as the just Mariners observed. If he’s followed by Cano or Womack you’ll have plenty of base runners for Jeter to move over and Sheffield and ARod to knock in.
Monday though belonged to Bernie. The slam was Williams 11th of his career and places him in the company Baseball immortals Lou Gehrig (23), Joe DiMaggio (13) and Babe Ruth (12) on the Yankee career slam list.
A marginal Hall of Famer if Williams keeps entering this select company he’ll be joining those Yankee greats in Cooperstown when it’s all said and done. |
