"We've Already Said Goodbye"

The effective end of Sonny Gray's Yankees career came in the third inning last night, when Didi Gregorius made a terrific, flat-out stab to keep a hard groundball from Xander Bogarts going through the infield. Didi rolled over to a sitting position, saw he had no play, and sort of sighed and flipped the ball back in his glove.

It was the closest you'll ever see Didi come to a shrug on a ballfield, and you could almost read his thought process. Wow, six more innings of this shit?

The score was already 6-0, Boston, and the next hitter up was Rafael Devers, who had merely a grand slam on the night so far. Devers stroked another single to left, and in their dugout some of the Red Sox—who, incidentally, have for a longtime now been some of the most grandstanding, preening and posturing frontrunners in all of sports—began to do little dances.

One batter later, Sonny was out while the sun was still out, sent off like a recalcitrant schoolboy banished to his bedroom for misbehaving on a still brilliant summer evening. For all the booing, the fans seemed less vitriolic than bewildered, still settling into their seats though the game was over.

In the old days, the punishment for a pitcher showing up so obviously unready to pitch a big game as Sonny Gray was last night would be to leave him in for many innings to come, on the assumption that he was most likely hungover. But this is a kinder, gentler game of baseball now, and besides everybody knew that Sonny's problems were not due to hooch or the pursuit of wicked women.

Since you've got to go
Oh, you'd better go now—

Once he was gone the statistics began to pour in. Sonny had allowed a grand slam to the youngest player ever to hit one in the 2,183 games ever played between the Yankees and the Red Sox. He had allowed the first, first-inning grand slam in the rivalry since the great Clyde Vollmer had done it against Allie Reynolds, on July 7, 1951, in a 10-4 loss in Fenway—a contest that put the Sox in first place over the Yanks by a game.

Of course, things worked out pretty well for the Yanks and Reynolds that season. The team clinched its third-straight pennant when Reynolds pitched his second no-hitter of the season against the Red Sox in Yankee Stadium, famously getting no less than Ted Williams to foul out—twice—for the final out, after AL MVP Yogi Berra dropped the first foul pop, then caught the second.

The catch ended an 8-0 shellacking of Boston in the first game of a doubleheader. The Yanks went on to win the second game, too, 11-3.  Berra caught that game as well, and Joe DiMaggio played all of both games in centerfield, hitting a three-run homer in the nightcap.

Somehow, it's difficult to see Sonny Gray tossing a no-hitter against the Red Sox in September, then leaping into the arms of Gary Sanchez.

Go now. Go now. Go now.
Before you see me cry—

It's tempting to say something about how men were men in those days, but the Yanks in 1951 weren't blessed with any innate moral or physical superiority. They were just a collection of hard-nosed young brigands, eager to snatch up whatever extra money they could get before their time ran out.

It's tempting to say, too, that Sonny Gray must be hurt, but everything else about his record inveighs against it. On the road, he is 3-3, with a 3.28 ERA, and just 40 hits allowed and 48 strikeouts, in 46 2/3 innings.

At home, well, statistically he is thus far, we are told, the worst Yankees starter ever to pitch for the Bombers, in their 116-year team history.

We have seen similar malfunctions, by the likes of Steve Trout and Ed Whitson, for instance, in the 1980s. But those were the days when the Mad King still ruled, and pumped up the pressure to unbearable levels for many players.

We've seen it in all the Kevin Browns and the Carl Pavanos and Javier Vazquezs of the 2000s. But those were players who really did manage to get themselves hurt, at least a little.

Not Sonny Gray.

I don't want you to tell me
Just what you intend to do now—

Tonight, the Yanks were coming off one of their best games in a week.  Everyone feeling good, knowing they had a top pitcher to try to contend with. But just thinking that if their own starter could only grind it a little, keep them close...

Nope. No getting out of the first inning without a grand slam by a 21-year-old. No nothing. Just a lesson in how quickly a mentally unequipped pitcher can take a team out of a game and kill all its momentum.

I don't want to see you go
But darling
You'd better go now.

(With apologies to the Moody Blues)