One pitch. One swing. One quick trip around the bases for Derek Jeter, who is on his way to becoming the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame without breaking a sweat.
On a pleasant Wednesday night at baseball’s epicenter, Jeter, the pressure-proof shortstop who had just been moved to the leadoff spot, put the New York Yankees ahead on the first pitch of the game. His blink-and-you-missed-it homer set the tone for a 3-2 victory in Game 4 of the Subway Series.
Now the Yankees are one victory away from their fourth World Series parade in the last five years. As surely as Jeter drove the first pitch from Bobby Jones over the left-field fence, the two-time defending champions regained control of the Subway Series, the one that Jeter says would go down as their crowning achievement.
Much to the chagrin of most people in the Shea Stadium crowd of 55,290, relievers David Cone, Jeff Nelson, Mike Stanton and Mariano Rivera protected the narrow lead for starter Denny Neagle, who was quick-hooked in the fifth inning. The Yankees lead the Mets three games to one, with all four games decided by one or two runs.
“We’re one win away from where we want to be, but the Mets team is not going to give up,” Jeter said. “In my opinion they’re the best team we’ve played in the five years of postseason [series]. Any of these games could have gone either way.”
Andy Pettitte will try to get the deciding victory for the Yankees in Game 5 on Thursday night. He faces fellow lefty Al Leiter.
If the Mets win, they’ll not only force the series back to Yankee Stadium but will get another shot at Roger Clemens. The five-time Cy Young Award winner, who was fined $50,000 for throwing the barrel of a broken bat in the direction of Mike Piazza in Game 2, would be the Yankees’ starter on Saturday.
But for the Mets to extend the series, they’ll have to find a way to contain Jeter. He had a triple in addition to the leadoff homer on Wednesday. He has hits in 13 consecutive World Series games and all 15 postseason games this year. He’s 8-for-18 with four extra-base hits and has scored five runs in the four games against the Mets.
“He’s a tough kid,” manager Joe Torre said. “In 1996, all our rallies, especially in postseason, either started with him or ended with him. You can’t teach that.”
Jeter’s homer came when Jones tried to sneak the first pitch past him. He threw a fastball over the middle of the plate and Jeter crushed it. The long, high drive sailed into the bleachers in left field. It was Jeter’s first homer of the World Series and third in this postseason.
“Putting a run on the board was the difference in the game,” Mets manager Bobby Valentine said. “It was a one-run game.”
Scoring in the first three innings, the Yankees built a 3-0 lead. The big hits were triples by Paul O’Neill in the second inning–his second in two nights at Shea–and by Jeter in the third.
Jeter hit a high drive to right-center that landed on the warning track and took a high hop off the fence. Jeter wound up on third and scored on Luis Sojo’s groundout to second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo, giving the Yankees a 3-0 lead.
The Mets closed that gap to 3-2 in the bottom of the third. Timo Perez, who had been 1-for-14 in the series, led off with a single up the middle. Piazza drove a 1-0 pitch from Neagle just beyond the wall in left field for his second homer of the series and fourth in the Mets’ 13-game playoff run.
So much for the scoring. The Yankees’ pitching staff made the narrowest of margins hold up over the last six innings. They have held the Mets to 14 runs and a .227 batting average in the four games.
It has been a series of near-misses for the National League champions. Piazza just missed a homer in the first. His high drive down the left-field line was just foul. Todd Zeile was inches away from homers in the two games at Yankee Stadium, where pinch-hitter Lenny Harris saw a possible homer go just foul.
“We have a lot saved up,” Valentine said. “I think it all can come in bunches. Sometimes when you’re just missing, they come back the same way. I’m hoping that’s going to happen.”
With Rivera working the final two innings for his sixth career World Series save, the Yankees did not allow the Mets to get a baserunner past first after the third inning. The only two really intriguing moments came in the fifth, when Torre pulled Neagle with two outs and nobody on base, and in the sixth, when Nelson turned a double play on Benny Agbayani’s liner back to the mound.
Torre brought in Cone, a former Mets’ ace, to face Piazza even though Neagle was only one out away from qualifying for the win (which was awarded to Nelson by the official scorers). Cone, booed on his way into the game, got Piazza to pop out, drawing cheers from the Yankee fans.
