Giambi Gives Yanks Jolts They Needed

[Woodmonkey]

With one flick of his thick wrists, Jason Giambi walloped a baseball into the upper deck, providing the Yankees with a grand slam that was worth much more than four runs. One swing seemed to energize them.

Sidney Ponson lost the lead when he gave up a pair of two-run homers in the span of nine pitches. He was done for the night, but not Giambi, whose two-run double in the seventh inning boosted the Yankees over Texas, 18-7, Wednesday night at the Stadium.

“I’m just glad I could contribute tonight, and pick up the ball club a little bit,” Giambi said in a bit of an understatement.

Giambi helped the Yankees snap a lethargic four-game stretch in which they scored a measly seven runs. In an interview with The Associated Press earlier Wednesday, the Yankees’ co-chairman Hank Steinbrenner said the funk was “getting ridiculous.”

Steinbrenner’s remarks from Tampa, Fla., found their way to the Bronx in about a millisecond. Manager Joe Girardi said before the game that his players knew they had to start hitting, but he said later that Steinbrenner might have roused them.

“Hank was right,” Girardi said. “We weren’t swinging the bats, and there was no doubt about it.”

The Yankees look much more robust as they head into a four-game series against the Boston Red Sox, which begins Thursday. Giambi’s double off reliever Warner Madrigal touched off a nine-run seventh inning for the Yankees, a season high.

The Yankees sent 12 batters to the plate in the inning. With two outs, Alex Rodriguez belted a three-run, line-drive home run into the right-field seats. It was his 535th homer, one fewer than Mickey Mantle, who is 13th on the all-time list.

The inning started with a broken-bat double by Bobby Abreu that caromed off the glove of left fielder Brandon Boggs and bounced into the seats. After Madrigal walked Rodriguez, Giambi roped a line drive to the left-field fence.

“It’s going to be a tough series,” Abreu said of playing the Red Sox, “but I feel like it started tonight, and this will be good for the team.”

Giambi, who hit the 13th grand slam of his career in the third, finished with six runs batted in. He had two hits in four at-bats, boosting his average to .268. Giambi is batting .325 since his average bottomed out at .150 on May 4.

Brett Gardner, replacing the slumping Melky Cabrera in center field, got his first major-league hit and his first run batted in with a single to right in the seventh, and he scored his first run on a single by Johnny Damon.

“I knew it was a matter of time,” Gardner said.

He was talking about himself, but he could have been talking about the Yankees, a team he joined Monday. Even if Steinbrenner had said nothing about the team’s malaise, the Yankees knew what they had to start doing.

“It’s O.K. if he comes out and says it,” Damon said before the game. “We know there’s no secret about the struggles of this team. It’s falling on the hitters.”

Damon led off the third inning with a sharp single to right field, but it appeared as if Derek Jeter would end the threat soon after it began by tapping a ground ball to second baseman Ian Kinsler.

It looked like a sure double-play ball — until the ball took a bigger hop than Kinsler expected. Kinsler fumbled the ball, which skittered away from him, and Damon and Jeter were safe. It was Kinsler’s 16th error, tops among major league second basemen.

“There are times when you get extra outs that you have to make the other team pay for them,” Girardi said.

Damon raced to third base when Abreu flied out to right field, but Rangers starter Luis Mendoza, pitching very carefully, threw four balls to Rodriguez after getting him to look at a first-pitch strike. The bases were loaded for Giambi.

Mendoza threw two pitches in the dirt, nearly upending him with the second. Giambi hit a foul ball, then walloped a flat pitch on the outside part of the plate into the first row of the upper deck.

Giambi said he thought Mendoza would throw him a sinker. “I kind of guessed right,” he said. “I just put all my cards on the table.”

It was Giambi’s 18th home run of the season and his 13th since May 4, the point at which he turned around his season. He has 39 of his 52 R.B.I. since then. Giambi also snapped a streak of 40 at-bats without a home run.

The Rangers grabbed the lead when Milton Bradley and Chris Davis hit two-run homers off Ponson, who was booed by the crowd as he walked to the dugout. But Giambi came up an inning later, and he made the fans forget all about Ponson.

“I’m going to make sure my mechanics get where I want them to be,” said Ponson, whom Girardi said will get another start. “It’s frustrating, but in the end, we won the game. And that’s the most important thing — to get wins.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the given name of a reliever for Texas. He is Warner Madrigal, not Warren.

The Source