For Yanks and Fans, One More Day to Wait
Yankee Stadium has never played host to a regular-season baseball game in March, and now it never will. Judging by the raw and soggy conditions in the Bronx on Monday, it may be just as well.
The final opening day at Yankee Stadium was rained out and postponed until Tuesday at 7:05 p.m. Chien-Ming Wang was supposed to have started on his 28th birthday, and he said he had planned a special performance against the Toronto Blue Jays.
“Very good,” Wang said. “No-hitter.”
An opening day no-hitter would have been just as rare as a Yankees home opener held at night. There has been only one no-hitter on the season’s first day — by Cleveland’s Bob Feller in 1940 — and there has been only one nighttime opener at Yankee Stadium.
That came in 2005, when the Yankees and the Boston Red Sox played on a Sunday night for national television. This late start comes strictly from the dreary forecast.
Before the game was called around 2:30 p.m., Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman had spent much of his day inspecting the field, conferring with Manager Joe Girardi and huddling by the stadium radar system located in the groundskeeper’s office. Cashman did not like what he saw.
“It’s supposed to be dry tomorrow night, and tomorrow in the day, it’s supposed to be like this,” Cashman said. “We don’t want to put our fans through this again.”
He added: “We didn’t lose it because of the field. We lost it because of the precipitation. The field’s still fine. But if it’s not going to let up, it’s not possible to go.”
Cashman said he was puzzled by the radar, because it showed the band of storms as being north of Yankee Stadium, where clearly it was already raining. The idea to play at night, he said, was simply a guess for when clear skies will come.
“By the time we get there tomorrow, it could be the reverse,” Cashman said. “We’re doing the best we can with it.”
An hour or so after the game was called, the principal owner George Steinbrenner was escorted to a waiting car with his daughter Jennifer. Steinbrenner’s spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, said he did not know whether Steinbrenner would stay for Tuesday night’s game or fly home to Tampa, Fla. Steinbrenner, 77, attended only one home game last season, on opening day.
The Yankees have a 10-year winning streak in their home opener, though the Blue Jays’ scheduled starter, Roy Halladay, is one of their least favorite to face. Halladay is 10-4 with a 2.99 earned run average against the Yankees. Derek Jeter smiled when it was mentioned that maybe the rain would keep putting off the date with Halladay.
“I think both teams are anxious to get the season going,” Johnny Damon said. “I can’t say we are really looking forward to facing Doc Halladay, but we’re going to have to face him a couple of times anyway.”
Damon — who actually hits Halladay well, at .328 — was in the lineup as the leadoff hitter, playing left field. Jeter was second, followed by Bobby Abreu and Alex Rodriguez.
A sign on the clubhouse door, just next to the lineup and pregame schedule, included these words in small print: “Whatever It Takes.” Yet there was nothing the players could do about the weather, which was so foreboding that Rodriguez did not even inspect the field.
The teams stretched indoors, and the Yankees and the Blue Jays shared the only weight room and batting cage in the old park.
“The season has a lot of challenges,” Rodriguez said. “This is the first one.”
For the Yankees, Tuesday was to have been their only day off until April 21. They have a punishing early schedule, which now includes seven games in a row against Toronto and Tampa Bay before an eight-game trip to Kansas City, Boston and Tampa Bay.
The Yankees return home for two midweek games against the Red Sox, then play in Baltimore for three. After the day off, they travel to Chicago and Cleveland, concluding a stretch of 18 out of 20 games on the road.
“We’re going to Chicago, Cleveland, Boston — all the warm-weather states,” Jeter said. “I’ve got a feeling we won’t be playing 21 in a row.”
Several warm-weather teams played on the road Monday, including the Los Angeles Angels, the Tampa Bay Rays, the Texas Rangers, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Houston Astros. So did the Milwaukee Brewers, who play in a park with a retractable roof.
A reporter asked Jeter what he thought of the Yankees and the Blue Jays dealing with rain while the Rogers Centre sat empty in Toronto.
“I don’t make the schedule, buddy,” Jeter said. “It would make sense, you would think.”
Reliever Joba Chamberlain also laughed at the question, but he did not seem in a hurry to start the season. Chamberlain, who a year ago had not yet thrown his first pitch as a professional, has his father, Harlan, in town from Nebraska.
“He’ll be here tomorrow, and he’ll be just as excited,” Chamberlain said.
The same will probably be true for the rest of the fans. They have waited almost six months to see the Yankees again, and now there is one more day of anticipation.
News source ：http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/01/sports/baseball/01yankees.html?_r=1&ref=baseball&oref=slogin
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