“THE WRIGHT STUFF” and “THE DIVINE COMEBACK”

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768. NEW YORK YANKEES VS CLEVELAND INDIANS

AMERICAN LEAGUE DIVISION SERIES
GAME TWO

OCTOBER 2, 1997

YANKEE STADIUM

QUALITY OF PLAY—6.44

DRAMA—5.78

STAR POWER—8.64

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.95

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.19

LOCAL IMPACT—8.07

TOTAL: 44.07

“THE WRIGHT STUFF”

Late-summer New York in 1997 was a time of tension and discontent. The City continued to roil from the horrible revelation that a Haitian-American man named Abner Louima had been beaten and sodomized with a broom handle while in police custody. A loud, conservative columnist in the Post, Steve Dunleavy, churned the angry waters by stoutly defending several of the cops involved, but to no avail. Three cops went down for the assault, one of the more heinous in the long history of NYPD tuneups.

Baseball was supposed to provide a pleasant distraction from such violent realities. The Yanks were defending champs for the first time since 1978, and for most of the spring and summer there was a valedictory feel at the Stadium. But after the Louima beating in Brooklyn on August 9, things seemed to turn. New York fell behind and was unable to catch Baltimore for the A.L. East title, finishing two games back, fortunately good enough for the lone wild-card berth and a playoff matchup with Cleveland. And they were without their standard-bearer, pitcher David Cone, whose health once again was betraying him.

Coney was one of the best pitchers in baseball in the first half of 1997, but bone spurs in his shoulder caught up with him, and he missed most of September, then was shelled in Game One of the ALDS by the Indians, though the Yanks came back to win 8-6. Cone was unlikely to pitch again, and the sight of their warrior, who had returned the season before from an aneurysm to help lead them to the World Series title, on the shelf seemed to “shrivel the team,” in the words of Roger Angell in The New Yorker.

But they had a glorious chance to get out of round one, thanks to the Game One comeback. For Cleveland was pitching a rookie in Game Two, Jaret Wright. The son of former MLB pitcher Clyde Wright (who once lost 20 games in a season while with the Brewers), the youthful Jaret was in his rookie season in the Show, going 8-3 with a 4.38 ERA with the Injuns in his debut campaign. Wright utilized a two-seam fastball that scraped 98 MPH and dove in on righties. Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove may have been hyperbolizing a wee when he compared the 21-year old Wright to “a very young Roger Clemens,” but the similarities were apparent.

But promise and good stuff were one thing—starting a postseason game at Yankee Stadium quite another. Wright himself said of pitching in the Stadium, “There’s no feeling like it, especially those fans. It feels like they’re right in your ear.” 57,360 screamers jammed right next to Wright’s hearing holes on Thursday night, October 2, 1997, determined to deafen the rookie while spiraling him out of the game.

It sure worked at first. Wright’s stuff was all wrong in the first frame, one complete with three consecutive walks, a sac fly, and a two-run double by Tino Martinez. It was 3-0 Yanks, and it sure seemed like a rout was at hand, and the Yanks would be a game away from the ALCS, especially with Andy Pettitte, aka Big Game Petty, on the hill.

All was fine for three innings, but Pettitte was shockingly hammered in the Cleveland fourth, although his defenders didn’t give him much help. Both Chad Curtis in left and Charlie Hayes at third, both inserted ostensibly for their gloves, fouled up; Hayes threw away a grounder to start the frame, and Curtis helplessly botched a Tony Fernandez liner with the bases loaded and two outs. The Indians struck four straight hits, good for five runs. In the next inning Matt Williams clubbed a two-run homer to make it 7-3, and the game was lost. Wright recovered strongly after his catastrophic first inning, settling in and dominating thereafter. “I just threw up a big wall and concentrated on pitching, nothing else,” Wright said. He silenced the huge crowd, allowing just two hits after the first before giving way to the pen in the seventh.

In the eighth the Yanks loaded the bases and scored a run on a hit batsman but couldn’t come up with a big hit. Jeter homered in the ninth but Cleveland won, 7-5.

It was the 12th time during the season Wright had started after an Indians loss, and he was now 8-0 in those games, the definition of a stopper. With the last three games of the series scheduled for Jacobs Field, Wright had now given his club an excellent chance to advance.

The Yankees, by contrast, were downcast, faced with a brand new series and the fact that Cone was on the shelf. A win would have made the injury a sidebar, but they lost, and that was all that mattered—or as hurler David Wells put it, “It’s glory, or you’re a dog.”

AFTERMATH:

Wells was all glory and no canine as he dominated Game Three in a 6-1 Yanks win, and New York held a 2-1 lead in the eighth inning of Game Four, five outs from advancing. But Mariano Rivera, at that point a new closer and not yet the automatic save machine he would become, gave up a tying homer to Roberto Alomar. Cleveland scratched out the winner off Ramiro Mendoza in the ninth and evened the series. The Indians then bested Petite again, 4-3, to win a tight series and dethrone the champs. It was the only postseason loss the Yankees took between 1996-2000.

Jaret Wright’s showing at the Stadium was enough to convince Cleveland manager Mike Hargrove that he had the intestinal fortitude for another stress test—starting Game Seven of the World Series, which Wright did against the Marlins. Wright was solid, leaving in the sixth with a 2-1 lead. But the Indians gave up the lead in the ninth, and Florida won in the 11th. Shoulder injuries took the wind out of his promising career subsequent; Wright had some good moments in Atlanta and pitched with the Yanks in 2005-06, but never lived up to his rookie season.

WHAT THEY SAID:

“The Division series is a serious series again. Very serious.”

—Jack Curry, The New York Times

FURTHER READING:

Full Count: The Education of a Pitcher by David Cone with Jack Curry

VIDEO:

767. ALICE MARBLE VS HELEN JACOBS

U.S. NATIONAL TENNIS CHAMPIONSHIPS

WOMEN’S FINAL

SEPTEMBER 12, 1936

WEST SIDE TENNIS CENTER

QUALITY OF PLAY—7.45

DRAMA—6.96

STAR POWER—7.62

CONTEMPORARY IMPORT—7.69

HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE—7.05

LOCAL IMPACT—7.21

TOTAL: 44.08

“THE DIVINE COMEBACK”

As some (hopefully most) of you know, I wrote an entire book about Alice Marble, the Queen of women’s tennis before WWII ended her career (and—sorta—started a new one…). As such I am loathe to write much more about her, having trod that soil into mud.

Having said that, her triumph at the 1936 U.S. Nationals was so unlikely and inspiring, especially in its day, that it remains one of the sport’s most redemptive stories. Alice was a top prospect in the early-30s, rising from a humble background in San Francisco, where she learned the game on the municipal courts of Golden Gate Park, to challenge for the top spot in the rankings.

But in 1934 she collapsed at Stade Roland Garros in Paris, while preparing (in brutal heat) for the Wightman Cup, the distaff version of the Davis Cup. She was wrongly diagnosed with tuberculosis, sent away to a sanitarium in Southern California, and her career presumed over.

In the facility she nearly lost her mind, gained thirty pounds, and contemplated suicide. At last, her coach/svengali/lover, Eleanor “Teach” Tennant, who taught tennis to Hollywood royalty, took matters into her own hands, busting Alice out of the sanitarium and bringing her home—in this case a mansion borrowed from actress Marion Davies, the mistress of media mogul William Randolph Hearst. There Eleanor put Alice under a punishing regimen of exercise, diet and tennis.

Marble recovered, and after being denied a berth in the 1935 Nationals (long story) she was raring to go in ’36. Her long absence from the sport made her a curiosity and a long shot, and she was hardly at her best, winning early round matches by sheer dint of physical superiority rather than elite tennis skill. But Alice kept going through. She won an 11-9 set in the quarterfinals to advance to the final four, thereupon she destroyed her semifinal opponent 6-0, 6-1 in under half an hour.

Alice’s opponent in the final would be a far stiffer challenge. Helen Jacobs was the four-time defending champ in New York, having filled the power vacuum atop the sport left by Helen Wills. Jacobs, among the finest Jewish players of all time, was also from the Bay Area, and was coming off her only Wimbledon title as well. Few gave the brave but still rusty Alice any chance against the “Hebrew Hammer.”

Nevertheless, a sellout crowd of 13,000 packed the Stadium Court at the West Side Tennis Center in Forest Hills on a humid Saturday afternoon, September 12, 1936, to see if the “blond, beautifully proportioned” Marble could pull the upset. Already a crowd favorite due to her girl next door looks and sunny personality, Alice now added underdog status to that potent mix, and the crowd cheered for her vociferously.

But this was a steep step up in class, and Jacobs saw out the first set 6-4 with little trouble, and took a quick 2-0 lead in the second. “The huge throng, taking it for granted the match was over, groaned with every point,” wrote Grantland Rice. Alice seemed to be a good tale that wouldn’t quite have a storybook ending. But from nowhere, Alice raised her game to a level previously unseen, even before her collapse. She began to wallop her serves with abandon, unleash powerful passing shots, and race forward to eliminate Jacobs’ tricky drop shot game. In the blink of an eye, Alice took six of the next seven games to knot the match at one set apiece.

It happened with such stunning speed and surprise the crowd was almost too shocked to roar, but in the third set they let loose, as Alice turned up her play yet another notch and completely overwhelmed the four-time champ. Jacobs won but four points in the first four games of the decisive third set, and before she could even get her bearings, Alice was raising the trophy as National champ, 6-2 in the third set. “It was ear-splitting excitement,” wrote George Currie in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Two years before a doctor told Alice she would never play tennis again. Now she was atop the tennis world.

She nearly broke into tears as she was presented the championship trophy.

AFTERMATH:

In the wake of her sensational comeback Alice became the toast of the sporting world. She was deluged with letters of congratulations from stars like Clark Gable and Carole Lombard and from John Q. Public alike. Anyone with any hint of illness wrote to ask Alice her secrets to recovery, or to let her know she was an inspiration to them. She became the best known female athlete in the country, a title that would cling to her as she captured three more U.S. National titles and the Wimbledon crown in 1939, after which the Second World War arrived to end her dominant run.

Also buoyed by Alice’s victory was her coach, Eleanor Tennant, who became the first tennis coach of renown, of either gender, in the wake of Marble’s comeback. Her valiant, loving lift of her charge from the depths of the sanitarium to the Forest Hills championship was an extraordinary tale in its own right. As the English writer Laddie Lucas put it, “It will remain in my mind as one of the most moving tales in all sport." Mentor and athlete would split up after the war, naturally, but in its time the Marble/Tennant combo was unstoppable.

WHAT THEY SAID:

“The most stunning comeback in tennis history.”

—New York Daily News (headline)

FURTHER READING:

What else? The Divine Miss Marble by Yours Truly

VIDEO: