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Ivy-Covered Relief
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Back in the early days of the Mets, manager Casey Stengel greeted relief pitcher and Yale graduate Ken McKenzie on the mound thusly: "Make believe they're the Harvards."
It's just as well that Joe Torre didn't offer the same advice to Ross Ohlendorf when he waved the Princeton product into the game in the seventh inning of a lost cause against the Red Sox on Saturday. Ohlendorf lost both decisions to the Crimson during his Ivy League career.
But he won enough other games to convince the Arizona Diamondbacks and, more recently, the Yankees that he has the potential to pitch in the major leagues, which he did for the first time in Toronto and for the second time in the midst of a New York meltdown in the fiercest rivalry in baseball.
File it under the education of a rookie, a highly educated one. He visited Fenway Park twice before this series and had gotten a close-up look at the current Red Sox the previous night. But this was different.
Ohlendorf, who was added to the Yankees' roster a week ago, walked into a bases-loaded situation after Boston already had padded its lead to 8-1. He was the Yankees' fifth pitcher of the seventh inning and it marked his first significant test as a big-league reliever, which is what the organization projects for him after he overcame a hamstring injury and back trouble to perform at Tampa and Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.
For the full story from Newsday's Joe Gergen, please click here.
- A.S.
