Juan Soto stepped out of the batter’s box after Spencer Arrighetti, the Houston Astros’ 24-year-old soul pitcher, threw a 3-1 pitch in the second inning on Wednesday night.
He popped one shoulder forward, then the other, like a peacock in a bodybuilding competition. He stepped back in. The bases were loaded with two outs.
Strike two has arrived. Soto virtually jumped backward, for reasons only he knew. He took a timeout. He inhaled deeply, giving the audience time to erupt in a tremendous cheer.
Then he sliced a ball to the right side of the infield, sprinted down the line, and reached the base a millisecond before Arrighetti. He called for the umpire: Safe! You can image how the crowd sounded back then.
“It’s a show,” manager Aaron Boone remarked about seeing Soto play. “You can feel the enthusiasm of the audience. When he gets up there and takes ball one, it’s “Ooh, strike one.” 1-2 now. How will the at-bat unfold? “Every pitch is theater.”
New Yorkers can be forgiven for obsessing over what is going on in The Garden right now. Even the press box at Yankee Stadium was less crowded than normal on Wednesday night; many of your favorite columnists and sidebar writers were presumably preoccupied with the Knicks or informed that there simply wasn’t enough space for baseball in their newspapers today. Others will be with the Rangers on Thursday.
But when summer hits and you’ve had enough of Jalen Bruson and Igor Shesterkin, you can head to the Bronx. Soto, Aaron Judge, and — could it be? — Giancarlo Stanton will be waiting for you with leading roles in the swaggiest, most powerful show the Yankees have produced in years.
On Wednesday, Soto’s run-scoring hit was far from his most captivating moment in the Yankees’ 9-4 victory over Houston, the team’s fifth in a row and sixth consecutive victory over their old rivals this season.
Remember when the Astros were a brick wall that the Yankees couldn’t break through or summit? When every regular season in Texas felt like a march to an October spanking? That was before Soto arrived into town.
By the time he legged out an infield hit in the third, he had already blasted a 440-foot home run off the back of the visitors’ bullpen with no outs in the first and Anthony Volpe on first base.
Judge led off the third inning with a home run on a center-cut fastball, a pitch he has been crushing for years and has been fouling back for much of this season.
“There’s days where he’s really locked in, and he’s in the zone forever, and on time,” Boone stated. “He’s getting to that point where we’re seeing that a lot more consistently.”
Then Stanton, weirdo that he is (Boone’s word, not ours), hit a ball so hard and far past the left field foul pole that his teammates on the bench gaped and yelped like small kids.
He kept his cool, dropping the bat and scowling as he saw the ball go past the field, over two barriers, and into the seats.
The shot landed in the second deck, 447 feet from home plate, and traveled at 119.9 mph, making it the hardest-hit ball in Major League Baseball this season. People rarely hit baseballs at 120 mph.
“G is being weird again,” Boone said.
Boy was the place buzzing then, professional ballplayers and fans alike. On the concourse during Soto’s fourth-inning at-bat, folks stopped behind every section behind home plate, standing still and making sure not to miss a single pitch — or the shuffling, strutting, nodding and breathing that happens in between. As Soto walked to the plate, the Yankees screened a video of him on a pair of adjacent scoreboards, and the people waited to see what would happen next. So did Judge, a fan standing in the on-deck circle. “[I’m] watching what they’re throwing to him because they’ve gotta throw him every single pitch to try to get him out,” Judge said. “I definitely enjoy having a front row seat right there, watching him do his thing.”
Soto did not come through that time, but Judge followed and banged a double. He finished the game with three extra-base hits, two doubles and the home run. Judge is getting hot. So is the weather. So is the energy at the stadium. Imagine what it could yet grow into when the town is fully ready to notice.
Leave a Reply