So this is baseball, seen through the veil of a pandemic.
Swaths of empty seats, and a ghostly quiet in a cavernous ballpark, led to an almost post-apocalyptic feel to opening night for Major League Baseball, which hopes to carry this facsimile of our pastime through October. Still, it sure as hell beats the umpteenth broadcast of some "Yankeeography."
And if anything looked, sounded, or felt refreshing, it hit us right away. In the top of the first inning, Aaron Judge swatted a base hit. After Gleyber Torres failed to get on, Giancarlo Stanton strolled to the plate and crushed a fastball over the left-center field wall at Nationals Park. Stanton blasted the ball 459 feet, against Max Scherzer, arguably the best hurler in the world over the last seven seasons. And that blast, along with an RBI single in the fifth, capped off a near-perfect opener for Stanton, who went 2-for-3 with 3 RBI in the Yankees' 4-1 win over the Nationals that was shortened by biblical rain that turned the ballpark into a water park.
It's hard to overstate how big Stanton's night is. Sure, Gerrit Cole was fabulous, allowing only an Adam Eaton solo homer in his first win as Yankees ace, and fans also had to love seeing Judge drill dimples into the baseball. But as this corner of cyberspace said before this season, the Yankees will be almost unbeatable if Stanton awakens from his slumber.
Stanton was already drawing comparisons to Jacoby Ellsbury, as the former NL MVP has not played up to his All-Star standards since being traded to the Yanks, and many of his struggles were sparked by injuries. But when you make superstar money, you expect superstar performance, particularly in the Big Apple, which swallows the weak or overwhelmed pro athlete.
Maybe getting away from the Bronx helped Stanton. Indeed, he's clubbed 21 homers at the Nats’ park, more than any batter in baseball. Maybe he's finally ready to bust out of his injury bubble and become the home run-launching force the club expected when he got here. And to do it against Scherzer makes it even more impressive.
To give you an idea of how good Scherzer has been, consider he's finished in the Top 5 of the Cy Young vote each of the last seven seasons, and won it three times. Since 2012, Scherzer leads MLB in total strikeouts (2,097), swinging strikeouts (1,722), four-seam fastball strikeouts (956), 3-pitch strikeouts (444), and strikeouts on balls in the strike zone (1,057) and out of the strike zone (1,034). And after Stanton's home run, Scherzer fanned the next four batters with his unfair quiver of vicious pitches. But he found no soft spots inside this brick-hard Yankees lineup.
Aaron Boone made two curious moves before the game. He batted Brett Gardener fifth, ahead of more powerful hitters Gary Sanchez and Luke Voit, and he played Tyler Wade instead of Miguel Andujar, who was every bit as good as Gleyber Torres when they were voted 1-2 as the 2018 AL Rookie of the Year. But it's also frightening to see that the Yankees are so deep they can whip Max Scherzer without a healthy Andujar in the lineup.
The Nats had an even more daunting task. While the Yanks are loaded from the first batter through the eighth, the Nationals were without Anthony Rendon, who now plays for the Angels; Ryan Zimmerman, who opted out of the season; and breakout star outfielder Juan Soto, who tested positive for COVID-19. And they were facing Gerrit Cole, who doesn't have Scherzer's résumé, but was better than Mad Max in 2019, and better last night.
Still, it was Stanton's night. Those of us who pounded him over the last year should be just as quick to salute him if he plans to play like this. For all the oddities that coated last night's baseball game, and the continuing tableau of empty ballparks and synthetic noise around a sport that is trying to elbow its way through the coronavirus, it's simply heartwarming to see baseball again, to have just a fraction of normalcy in our fractured lives.
And if Giancarlo Stanton keeps clubbing the ball against top-notch pitching, there may not be much to stop the Yankees from reaching or winning the World Series.
Follow WFAN on Social MediaTwitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | Twitch