MIAMI – The captain had gotten them this far, kept the Yankees in the game against the hard-throwing kid from Texas, Josh Beckett. The Yankees had gotten all of three hits off Beckett who, for most of the night, through all the rain and the annoying stoppages of play, had looked an awful lot like the pitcher he’d grown up idolizing, Roger Clemens. Derek Jeter had gotten all three of those hits, the only evidence the Yankees were still breathing. What they needed now was someone else to join the fray, and report for work.
Jeter had gotten rid of Beckett all by himself, and now it was Dontrelle Willis walking in from the Marlins’ bullpen, into this 1-1 game, top of the eighth inning, Game 3 of the World Series. Jeter was standing on second base, having stroked a one-out double down a right-field line that Marlins first baseman Derek Lee, inexplicably, was not guarding.
Jason Giambi was the first one to get a crack at Willis, but Willis wanted no part of Giambi, walking him on five pitches. Bernie Williams was next, but Williams has been a step and a half slow answering the open casting call for heroes all October. Williams flied out lazily to center.
So here came Hideki Matsui. Here came Matsui, the man they call Godzilla at home in Japan, the man who travels with a bigger press entourage than the president, the man who has lived this season under greater scrutiny than practically any athlete who has ever played on an American team sports.
Matsui had been the one who’d dragged the Yankees back into this Series Sunday night, smoking a three-run homer that officially ended the team’s post-Red Sox hangover.
Now, he had the stage – and the night – to himself again. Two men on. Two men out. The Marlins’ portion of the crowd of 65,731 – a majority, but barely – rose now to urge on Willis, the most surprising sensation to hit the National League since Fernando, who’d struggled through most of these playoffs but had looked so dominant in Game 1. Willis and Matsui are both rookies, but that’s like saying the Beatles and Men Without Hats both had No. 1 songs.
A day earlier, talking through a translator, Matsui had envisioned a scenario exactly like this one, a situation when he could earn his pinstripes. Some secret societies require a blood oath. The Yankees merely require you to do something memorable in October. Those are the dues.
Aaron Boone, who’s looked like Tanner from the “Bad News Bears” movies all autumn long, earned those pinstripes with one swing of the bat against Tim Wakefield.
Matsui had taken a step in the right direction with that first-inning rocket Sunday. And yet he still understood that hitting a blast early in a 6-1 game isn’t the same thing as delivering late in a tie game.
“If there’s some way to become a big-game player, I’d like to know,” Matsui had said. “I don’t really try and be like that. I do what I need to do.”
Now, that mission was plain. Willis came after him, all legs and arms, his release point coming from somewhere near Biscayne Bay. Matsui never flinched. He sent a rope out to left field.
Jeter, who’d advanced to third on Williams’ fly ball, trotted home. Lee Mazzilli, coaching first base, grabbed Matsui’s shoulders with both hands, gave him a good shake, patted him on the back of the helmet.
You couldn’t see what Mazzilli was saying, and it wouldn’t have mattered to Matsui, who not only doesn’t speak English, he doesn’t speak Brooklyn, either. But in the universal language of pinstripes, the point was plain.
Matsui officially belongs now. He’d had his playoff moments. Those were all nice. This, though, was different. This was Hideki Matsui winning a World Series game for the Yankees.
Forget the explosion that came later on, in the eighth, which padded the Yanks’ ultimate margin of victory to 6-1. By then, the Marlins’ spirit had clearly been broken. And it had clearly been broken by one man.
A Yankee named Godzilla.