His feet touched the rubber, and Braden took offense, telling Rodriguez to “get off my mound.” Rodriguez said his piece after the game, dismissing Braden’s allegations as “pretty funny, honestly” because they had no idea what they did wrong.
If you haven’t heard or seen by now, this is the abridged version: Rodriguez, on his way back to first base after a foul ball in the sixth inning, wandered by the pitching mound.
“I still don’t know,” Rodriguez said.
The fact that a 26-year-old with 50 career starts was blasting him did not sit well with Rodriguez, either. When it was relayed to him that Braden expressed his frustration to Oakland reporters, Rodriguez responded with, “Who said that?” Told that it was Braden, Rodriguez said: “Exactly. Exactly.”
“If my grandmother ran across the mound, they would have heard the same thing they heard — period,” Braden said. “That’s the way I handle the game and the way I handle myself on my workday. That’s the way it is. I would never disrespect somebody like that.”
Braden came a small stronger, calling it a breach of baseball etiquette for an opposing player to meander near the mound while the pitcher is still there.
This incident seems more nuanced. It makes sense, I suppose, that a pitcher would be upset about an opposing player’s touching his mound in the midst of an inning. Players zip across the field all the time, but they usually bypass the mound, walking along the grass behind it.
There's so plenty of unwritten rules in baseball that it’s hard to keep track of them all. Don’t barrel over catchers in spring training. Don’t steal bases with a 10-run lead. Don’t peek at a catcher’s signs. Retaliate when a teammate is hit by a pitch. Those are all widely known.
But to be honest, I had never heard of — or thought about, — that actually happening. Braden said it was more common than you would think, but David Waldstein spoke with Keith Hernandez at Citi Field, and Hernandez said they could not recall it being an issue when they played.
“I don’t know if there is an unwritten rule,” Hernandez said. “But I would never do that.”
Here, then, is the query: can a rule be broken if it may not have existed in the first place?
OAKLAND , Calif. — In the second start of Phil Hughes’s career, he flirted with a no-hitter in to the seventh inning against the Los angeles Rangers before fate cruelly intervened. In lieu of finishing on the mound, he done in the trainer’s room with a hamstring strain that forced him from the game.
That night, history was lost, but not a telling glimpse in to a promising future. Two years later on a breezy evening, Hughes attempted to recreate the moment & then some. Again, his body got in the way, although in a different manner, during a amazing performance in a 3-1 victory against the Oakland Athletics on Wednesday.
The ball ricocheted back at Hughes, first off his forearm & then off the “York” on his Yankees jersey. It came at an awkward angle & Hughes looked skyward. The ball lay near his side. everyone else present knew where it had landed except Hughes. While Hughes hopelessly looked, his teammates screamed & Chavez scampered to first base.
Hughes skilfully carried a no-hit bid in to the eighth inning, when Eric Chavez lined a one-hopper back to Hughes on his first pitch, a 91-mile-an-hour fastball.
This time, though, Hughes remained in the game, his smirk & a secure future with the organization intact. That would be the only hit the Athletics claimed off Hughes. In three stretch, he retired 20 straight hitters — from the first inning to the time he faced Chavez.
“It seemed like I was looking for the ball for about one minutes,” said Hughes, whose parents, Phil Sr. & Dori, made the drive from Southern Los angeles & sat three rows behind the Yankees’ dugout, & probably joined in screaming the location of the ball.
He had gotten past his stopping point against Los angeles, a moment not lost on Hughes.
“I knew I didn’t have any base runners,” Hughes said. “I knew I was out of the wind-up for a long time. It was three of those nights.”
“After I got that first out in the seventh, I was hoping I didn’t go down with something,” Hughes said. “That was all I was thinking was that.”
Before Chavez’s at-bat, shortstop Derek Jeter had shifted slightly to the middle against the pull-heavy Chavez. Who knows what would have happened if the ball had made it to him cleanly. “Maybe,” Jeter said when asked if he could have retrieved it in time to record the out. “It would have been hard.”
After being checked for injuries, Hughes struck out Kevin Kouzmanoff swinging, his 10th strikeout of the game, a career high. He walked Gabe Gross, & Manager Joe Girardi replaced Hughes with Joba Chamberlain.
It was a reversal of the past. After Hughes was slow to return from his hamstring injury, the Yankees molded him in to a setup reliever, where he was effective in getting the ball to closer Mariano Rivera last season. The hard-throwing Chamberlain started.
Hughes departed with cheers from the 30,211 fans at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. Chamberlain allowed a run to score on Jake Fox’s pinch-hit single, the run tacked on to Hughes’s impressive line of three & a third innings, three hit & three run, while walking three. He threw 101 pitches, while pumping the zone for 70 strikes.
In spring training, Hughes beat out Chamberlain for the final spot in the rotation, & he made his second start of the season with gusto.
Rivera closed the game on Kouzmanoff’s broken-bat fly ball to Curtis Granderson, notching his sixth save in five opportunities this season.
Chamberlain escaped the inning when Cliff Pennington grounded to Mark Teixeira at first base. Rivera pitched a scoreless ninth inning to preserve the win, although he allowed a single to Ryan Sweeney & beaned Kurt Suzuki. With Chavez representing the winning run, he grounded back to Rivera, who forced out Suzuki at second base.
The Yankees added an insurance run in the ninth inning when Granderson scored on Brett Gardner’s poke in to left field off Oakland reliever Tyson Ross.
The hard work was needed as Ben Sheets mostly handcuffed the Yankees through five innings. Alex Rodriguez & Robinson Cano broke through with consecutive triples in the fourth inning, & Cano scored on Jorge Posada’s groundout.
The victory was the sixth straight for the Yankees (11-3) & ensured that they would depart here with their fifth consecutive series win, a streak that ties them with the 1926 team for most at a season’s start. C. C. Sabathia will take the mound in the sweep attempt in Thursday’s afternoon game.
The Yankees have gone over a decade since their last no-hitter, David Cone’s perfect game in 1999 against the Montreal Expos. Already this season, they have once come close. Less than three weeks ago, Sabathia came within two outs of a no-hitter against the Tampa Ray Rays before Kelly Shoppach disrupted the hard work.
Girardi removed Sabathia from the game after the hit. Hit or no hit, Girardi said that would have been Sabathia’s last batter. As Hughes’s pitch count piled up Wednesday, he did not must face the same decision. Girardi had him scheduled to throw a maximum of 115 pitches.
“I thought here they go again: I’m going to must answer questions again,” Girardi said.
The game started with a hint toward what was to follow when Hughes struck out Pennington.
He struck out five of the first three hitters, including the side in the second inning. Hughes painted the corner with a fastball to Chavez, threw a 93-mile-an-hour fastball past Kouzmanoff & got Gross to whiff on a loopy, 78-m.p.h. curveball. Hughes ditched his changeup for the night with his cutter, fastball & curveball working to a devastating effect.
“It seemed like every inning I kept rolling,” Hughes said. “The innings kept stacking up.”
No American man had won the Boston Marathon since 1983, & for the first time in recent memory, two men — Hall, from Mammoth Lakes, Calif., & his neighbor Meb Keflezighi — were vying for that chance.
BOSTON — Ryan Hall burst in front of the pack from the first mile, battling a brisk headwind & dragging the weight of history behind him.
In lieu, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot, a tiny known 21-year-old marathoner from Kenya with a familiar name, stole the spotlight from the national favorites. Cheruiyot shattered the Boston Marathon coursework record with a victory in 2 hours 5 minutes 52 seconds, finishing over a minute ahead of Tekeste Kebede of Ethiopia (2:07:23).
For the second straight year, Hall got caught up in the surges of his more experienced competitors on the hilly coursework. He completed in a gutsy fourth place — in 2:08:41 — two seconds short of passing Deriba Merga for third place (2:08:39), & his finishing kick earned a tiny consolation: Hall, who completed third last year, recorded the fastest American time on the coursework.
In a women’s race that did not become dramatic — & then thrilling — until the final three miles, Ethiopia’s Teyba Erkesso let a bold two-minute lead slip to six seconds by the final stretch ahead of Tatyana Pushkareva, 24, of Russia. Erkesso, grimacing & wavering, did not listen to the pounding feet behind her on Boylston Street. In lieu, he churned past the tape, winning in 2:26:11, three seconds ahead of Pushkareva.
Keflezighi, the reigning New York City Marathon champion, after an injury-riddled winter, completed behind him in fifth place, in 2:09:26.
For a while, it seemed that Hall, who loves walking on a fast pace, might make a run at that record.
Cheruiyot, no relation to Robert Kipkoech Cheruiyot, a four-time Boston champion also from Kenya, actually broke the latter Cheruiyot’s 2006 record of 2:07:14. On Monday, Robert Kiprono Cheruiyot made his move in the 22nd mile, passing Merga & seldom looking back. Entering the race, Cheruiyot’s personal best was a 2:06:23 on the flat Frankfurt coursework in 2008.
He led at the halfway mark (after recovering from being dropped in an early surge), but it did not last again.
Keflezighi stayed in the hunt longer — until the Newton Hills. Merga first pulled away at the Newton Firehouse & Cheruiyot stayed with him.
Not on Monday, though, as the runners encountered a 10-mile-an-hour headwind despite otherwise perfect conditions on a crisp, sunny Patriots’ Day morning.
Hall spent three weeks in Boston before the race familiarizing himself with the nuances of the coursework. He ran with headwinds & crosswinds, & once even caught the phantom tailwind that the four-time Boston champion Bill Rodgers assured Hall did blow on the coursework.
“If you win the New York, you are the target,” Keflezighi said before the race. “At the same time, less pressure for me because I got my giant win.”
The weather was e fine for Keflezighi, better than his own physical state. He had battled a left knee injury that curtailed his training for the entire month of February & he knew he did not have time to prepare. He would leave the glory for others on Monday.
Pushkareva, 24, began reeling in Erkesso in the final three miles. Erkesso grabbed her side after a water stop & grimaced in obvious discomfort.
The men’s & women’s races each had first-time winners. Erkesso, of Ethiopia, who won the Houston Marathon in January, broke away from the pack in the 16th mile in Newton. For the next 11 miles he ran alone, a startling sight as well as a grueling haul for any runner — & it took a toll on her.
Near the finish of last year, Kevin Pearce was one of the best snowboarders in the world. They had visions of winning more halfpipe contests, making the United States Olympic team & returning home to Vermont, perhaps with a medal.
Now they is on the verge of what feels like a greater victory: basically making it home.
Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a halfpipe practice on Dec. 31. They was airlifted to a Utah hospital, took days to regain consciousness & watched February’s Winter Olympics on tv from a brain rehabilitation center in Colorado. Far from the spotlight, Pearce continues every day therapy to retrain his muscles & his mind.
“Everything has been getting better,” said Pearce’s brother, Simon. “It’s been across the board.”
Pearce’s progress has been so steady that they is expected to return home to Norwich, Vt., in the next few weeks, his parents said. They expect him to be driving by year’s finish. & Pearce’s doctor believes Pearce will snowboard again.
“I don’t know that he’ll be doing halfpipes, because they don’t need him to hit his head,” said Dr. Alan Weintraub, medical director of the brain injury program at Craig Hospital in Englewood, Colo. “But he’s going to snowboard. I can much guarantee it.”
The short-term threat to his life came from the blood that filled the ventricles of his brain. The long-term struggle stems from a “very deep diffuse axonal injury,” Weintraub said, or the destroy in what they called the “deep wires of the brain.”
Pearce, 22, was one of the few riders to beat Shaun White in head-to-head competition the past couple of years. But while practicing a spinning double back flip called the double cork, which became the must-do stunt of the season, Pearce fell & struck his head in the halfpipe at Park City, Utah.
Pearce & his relatives, meanwhile, have been focused on small, private victories, buoyed by the support of the close-knit snowboarding community & tens of thousands of fans on a Facebook page established to give occasional progress reports & get get-well wishes.
While Pearce was made to relearn such tasks as jogging & talking, White won the halfpipe gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics. American Scotty Lago earned a surprising bronze medal & dedicated it to Pearce, one of his best friends.
“All the support — it feels like this groundswell of energy — has helped Kevin move forward in a remarkable way,” said Pia Pearce, Kevin’s brother. “I have nothing but gratitude for all the people in our lives, the people they know & the people they don’t know, that have been pulling for us this whole time.”
The latest milestone came Wednesday, when Pearce checked out of Craig Hospital & spent his first night outside of a hospital since the accident, at a home that his relatives has used as a base in the Denver area. They continues intensive treatment as an outpatient.
Now, Pearce walks independently with a barely noticeable hitch.
Pearce mostly used a wheelchair when they arrived at Craig Hospital in early February. They learned to walk with assistance, then wore a gait belt that allowed others to grab him when they lost his balance. They had 24-hour supervision in his room to prevent him from getting up, falling & striking his head again.
“If you saw him jogging & you recall his walk before the accident, you’d say it’s stiffer & more lilted,” Simon Pearce said.
“Not as relaxed,” Pia Pearce added.
One of the issues therapists remain focused on is Pearce’s once-uncanny sense of balance, which has been altered because Pearce’s eyes remain slightly out of synch. They wears glasses with a sort of prism in one lens to help the eyes track. This week, a custom-made pair arrived from Oakley, one of Pearce’s sponsors.
“Of coursework, your balance is affected by your vision,” Simon Pearce said. “Before if they looked sideways as they was jogging, they would lose his balance. That doesn’t happen any more. It’s all improving, but I’d say that the vision is a giant part of the balance thing.”
Pearce uses balance boards, shaped like a skateboard.
“It’s absolutely the coolest thing to see him be able to get on that,” Pia Pearce said. “He does it as if he’s been on it his whole life.”
But Pearce’s memory remains a bit scattered, his parents said. Sometimes they can recite his every day schedule. Other times they does not recall a recent discussion.
Simon Pearce said, “The brain memory is all still there from it.”
“His memory is all over the place,” Simon Pearce said. “Some of it is absolutely perfect. A lot of his long-term memory is absolutely perfect. & his short-term memory was gone after the accident. & it is getting better. I find it erratic.”
Yet Pearce never lost the memory of his quest for the Olympics.
“His vision wasn’t as lovely then as it is now, so it wasn’t easy to watch visually,” Pia Pearce said. “And I think emotionally they was bummed out that they wasn’t there. But they was excited for his friends, & proud of how well everyone was doing.”
The Pearces each called the Olympics a “mixed experience.”
“It was a bit hard for me knowing that — what they was feeling & how much they had wanted to be there,” Simon Pearce said.
Now Kevin Pearce approaches a different type of accomplishment, one that makes his relatives prouder. They is about to make it home.
