Yankees Blog

YANKEES 3
BLUE JAYS 2

It what was an Opening Day to remember for many reasons. The Final Opening Day at the current Yankee Stadium, Joe Girardi’s first opening day as Yankee Manager, and to top it off…. a great Yankees win!!
Behind the great defense and homerun by Melky Cabrera, the Yankees defeated Roy Halladay and the Blue Jays 3-2.

“You play Opening Day and you want to get a lot of the firsts out of the way — the first hit, the first win,” Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter. “You want to relax and move on. I know he wanted to win this game, and I’m happy for him. Everyone was aware of the fact that this was our last opener here.”

In a pitching duel between Chien-Ming Wang and Roy Halladay, some great defense helped Wang through some tough times. Melky Cabrera made 2 great back to back catches in the outfield, to keep the game locked up at 1-1 in the third inning. Cabrera had a long way to run in the third inning, dashing into the gap in right-center field to flag down Lyle Overbay’s deep drive before hitting against the wall with a leap. One batter later, Cabrera raced toward left-center field, diving to make a catch to rob Aaron Hill’s low liner in the gap.

After getting the loud cheers from the fans…. Melky would contribute offensively, hitting a homerun in the sixth inning to tie the game at 2-2.
The Yankees took the lead in the seventh against Halladay when, with the bases loaded, Hill couldn’t find a quick handle on Hideki Matsui’s hot ground ball to second base. Hill flipped the ball to shortstop David Eckstein’s bare hand to record a putout, but Alex Rodriguez crossed the plate with the go-ahead run on the fielder’s choice.

Wang limited Toronto to two runs and six hits over seven innings, and then the 8th and 9th inning of Joba chamberlain and Mariano rivera shut it down for the 3-2 Yankees win.

GAME NOTES

WANG: 7IP, 6H, 2ER, 2BB, 2 SO
CARBERA: 1-3, HR
ABREU: 2-4
AROD: 2-3, RBI

Posted in Yankee Baseball |

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