Yankee Classics - Saturday, October 11, 2003

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One of the Yes Network's most aired shows are their Yankee Classics. Generally, during the regular season on off days and mornings before a game when there was none the day before, you can catch the Yankees Classics. Then they fill up a lot of the schedule with them during the off-season. As a Yankee fan, I think it's a great idea, although the ranking of some games as "Classics" can sometimes be questions.

Well, this is an attempt to log as many of the Yankee Classics that have been shown including some commentary and rankings on whether they really are classics or...not so much.

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AL Championship Series vs. Boston Red Sox

Game Three : Pedro Decks Zimmer/Clemens Beat Sox

Saturday, October 11, 2003

Final Score: 4-3

Yankee Classic Rating (1 low to 10 high): 6

This game is most memorable from Pedro Martinez taking his frustrations out on a 72-year old man when he basically threw Don Zimmer to the ground during a bench clearing incident. Typical of the always classless Martinez. Of course the whole thing started because he threw at Karim Garcia who had the gall of actually coming to bat after the Yankees scored two runs off Pedro to take a 4-2 lead in the 4th with no out.

Garcia challenged Martinez , Martinez starts threatening to throw at Posada's head, the benches empty, but nothing comes about.

Enter another of Boston's classless jerks...Manny Ramirez. Ramirez led off the bottom of the fourth against Roger Clemens. Perhaps expecting some sort of retaliation (which would have made no sense in a game as big as this), Ramirez basically took an exaggerated dive on a pitch that was high, but not even remotely inside. In fact, various replays showed the pitch to actually be over the plate.

Naturally, Ramirez starts jawing at Clemens and the benches empty again. This time with a little more contact as Zimmer charged over toward Pedro Martinez who grabbed the 72-year old veteran by the collar of his shirt and flung him to the ground.

Things seemed to calm down until the middle of the ninth inning when a groundskeeper in the Yankee bullpen started a fight with Jeff Nelson. Karcia, playing right field ran into the bullpen to help out his teammate and ended up with a cut on his hand. Naturally, since it happened in Boston, local law enforcement quickly heaped blame upon the Pinstripers who were charged with assault. The real story was that the groundskeeper, Paul Williams (not the short of stature singer/songwriter) started the fracas and this was just a sour grapes railroad job. Of course, the classless Boston fans and media hailed the miscreant employee as some sort of folk hero.

The reason this game gets a six is that other than the brawls, the game was fairly routine. Yes, at the time it was another edge-of-your-seat match-up, but by now it's more of a historical footnote. I would add another two or three to the rating if you enjoy watching Manny Ramirez get his comeuppance. You see after he instigated the second bench clearing affair, he went on to strike out on one of the most sheepish swings you'll ever see. Then in the 6th with runners on first and second and one out, down by one against a tiring Clemens, Ramirez grounded into an inning ending and threat ending double play to keep the score at 4-2. He ended his day by grounding out to start a 1-2-3 ninth by the Sox.

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