The Yankees won again last night, A-Rod hit his 499th home run, and the AL East is tighter than it’s been all season:
KANSAS CITY, Mo., July 25 – When Alex Rodriguez was growing up in Miami, he idolized Dale Murphy, the star of the Atlanta Braves, whose games he could watch on cable. Joe Torre was the Braves’ manager in Murphy’s prime, and sometimes, when Torre would call for a hit and run, Murphy would smoke the ball over the right-center field fence instead.
Torre compared Rodriguez to Murphy after Wednesday’s game, a 7-1 Yankees victory over the Kansas City Royals at Kauffman Stadium. Rodriguez connected for his 499th career home run with a runner breaking from first and a full count in the eighth inning. It was a liner to right center that just kept carrying.
“He came in and I said, ‘That’s as good a hit-and-run as I could see,’” Torre said. “It’s a little reminiscent of Dale Murphy – you tell him to get the guy over, he hits a home run to right-center field. He’s stronger than Dale Murphy, but it’s the same principle.”
The victory was the Yankees’ 12th in 15 games since the All-Star break and it cut their American League East deficit to six and a half games behind Boston, the closest they have been to first place since May 9.
If things continue like this, it could, hopefully, be an interesting August.
July 26th, 2007 at 9:41 am
What interesting? Boston versus New York again? Get a different team (or teams) in the mix and then we can call it interesting.
July 26th, 2007 at 12:39 pm
Interesting for us New York fans, I meant
Though I do agree with you that the AL East was a more interesting division when Baltimore and Toronto could actually field a decent team.