Pavano Returns to Bronx, Controversy Inevitably Follows

NEW YORK -- This wasn't Carl Pavano's fault. Pavano was rightfully blamed for most every bizarre happening that occurred when he was a New York Yankee, but he returned to the Stadium Sunday and pitched exactly like he was expected to pitch when the Yankees were paying him gazillions of dollars, and still he failed to leave with the W.

"Stuff happens," Pavano said with a shrug, the scars of the Yankees' controversial 7-3 win over the Cleveland Indians still fresh. "Nothing I can do about it."

For once, Pavano's blasé attitude made perfect sense. For once, he didn't deserve to be affiliated with a messy aftermath shaped by controversy. Pavano had pitched a perfectly fine six innings for the Indians, allowing just one run while extricating himself nicely from the sort of jams that used to confound him when he wore the pinstripes.

And then came mystique, aura and plain old Yankee luck, floating in on the wind patterns that all weekend long kept pushing balls over the fences of the cozy new Stadium. With Pavano out of the game and feeling quite good about thumbing his nose at the thunderous boos generated by fans who consider him too soft to ever make it in New York (they weren't entirely wrong), the Yankees got one of those gifts that make the rest of the baseball world stand up and stomp its feet.

With one out and a runner on base and the Indians up, 3-2, Jorge Posada, pinch-hitting for Jose Molina, slapped a 1-1 pitch off reliever Jensen Lewis that gained steam as it headed for the right-field fence. Indians outfielder Trevor Crowe leaped for the ball, but not before a fan in the first row of seats leaned forward and tried to make his own catch. The ball looked like it kissed the top of the fence and bounced back, or maybe it hit Crowe's glove before caroming toward the field.

Either way, cue the flashbacks of young Yankee fan Jeffrey Maier appearing in right field and assisting on a Derek Jeter home run in the 1996 playoffs.

Only this time, with instant replay available for borderline calls, fan-initiated storms are meant to be quickly squashed. The umpires huddled for close to nine minutes and when they finally ruled the fan first touched the ball beyond the plane of the wall, Posada had a two-run dinger, the Yankees had their first lead in two days and the Indians had reason to gripe.

"They said the ball hit the fan first beyond the fence. I thought Trevor got up and touched it on top of the wall and that's where the fan's hand was," Cleveland manager Eric Wedge said.

"It was a pop fly," said Lewis, after being tagged with a loss for the second time in three games because of a homer to right field. He knows the dimensions are exactly the same as they were in the Stadium across the street, but Lewis swears there is something funky about the way the ball travels on this side of River Avenue.

"In any other ballpark in the country, it's an out. When it gets up in that jet stream, it just blows out," Lewis said. "I'm definitely ready to leave here."

Pavano probably had the same urge, considering the ignominious four seasons he spent with the Yankees. Playing for the Yankees is too misleading, for Pavano spent most of his time out of pinstripes and in the trainer's room with injuries that were either quite real or oddly phantom-like, depending on who's doing the telling. His litany of troubles -- shoulder, back, buttocks, elbow -- were the punch lines to clubhouse jokes, with his own teammates mocking him by papering his locker with back pages of the New York tabloids.

They questioned Pavano's competitiveness in private and on the record, their criticism of him reaching a crescendo when he injured his ribs in a car accident in Florida yet failed to tell the team. Posada once said of Pavano, "He needs to take it upon himself to really want it." Fellow pitcher Mike Mussina once said of Pavano, "Was everything just a coincidence? Over and over again? I don't know."



Joe Torre, Pavano's manager when he was a Yankee, used to say Pavano's "stuff was electric" when he threw in the bullpen. The Yankees wasted $39 million on those electric bullpen sessions. When it was clear he'd never make it in New York, Pavano revealed he didn't like being under the spotlight, an odd admission from a player who grew up in Connecticut, in a family that adored the Yankees. Yet he didn't know New York ate its young?

Whatever his issues with the Big City, Pavano still urged buddy A.J. Burnett to sign with the Yankees, and Burnett was burned only twice Sunday, both on home runs in the little bandbox of a Stadium. It thus far has been Burnett's lot as a Yankee to clean up the messes from the pitcher who precedes him, Chien-Ming Wang. One day earlier, Wang lasted just 1 1/3 innings in a woeful 22-4 loss to the Indians -- an inning that was merely the worst inning ever in the Yankees' 106-year history.

Staked Sunday to a 3-0 lead off blasts by Shin-Soo Choo and Ryan Garko, Pavano sneered at the crowd (New York critics can never be silenced) and left after a gutsy sixth inning in which he got Jeter to hit into a double play and made Nick Swisher look foolish swinging at a breaking ball. With the bases loaded and the Yankees down by two runs, Swisher struck out on Pavano's 89th pitch. His manager figured Pavano couldn't leave on a finer note.

"I thought he pitched great, especially in this environment. He proved that he had thick skin and demonstrated some good focus out there," Wedge said.

Pavano restrained from doing a happy dance, at least until reporters had left the clubhouse. Maybe he didn't want to risk another injury while on Yankee property. He kept saying it wasn't about defying the critics or rectifying the past. "It's about winning ballgames. It was about the Indians," Pavano said.

Except the Indian relievers couldn't hold the lead or fight Yankee luck. If it wasn't Posada's hit being ruled a legitimate home run, it was Cody Ransom dropping a two-out double in the eighth inning down the left field line in front of Choo, who lost the ball in the sun. The bases cleared, three runs scored, Choo rubbed his eyes, Pavano's excellent work flipped into a sidebar and somewhere, Jeffrey Maier wondered why he had goose bumps.

"If no one is out there, I catch the ball," Crowe said of the disputed home run that won the game. "My glove was over the wall and above it and under the fan that was there."

There is no truth to the rumor the fan was related to Carl Pavano.