“Every kid playing whiffle ball in the backyard or playing Little League, you dream of being a Major League Baseball player”, Teixeira told a press conference before Friday’s game against the Cleveland Indians.
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New York Yankees’ Starlin Castro, right, and Cleveland Indians third baseman Jose Ramirez look to umpire Dan Iassogna as he calls Castro out at third base during the sixth inning of a baseball game at Yankee Stadium, Friday, Aug…
Teixeira got plenty emotional in his afternoon news conference, and during the game he got a taste of what the next two months could be like.
“Teixeiras are criers, by the way”, he said.
Mired in the worst slump of his career, New York Yankees first baseman Mark Teixeira is reportedly expected to announce his retirement from baseball Friday, effective at the end of the 2016 season. Teixeira, though, has no-trade protection, his family lives in CT, and he said he does not expect to go anywhere else in these final two months.
Teixeira once had those skills.
Teixeira, 36, is enduring a terrible season, due in part to a variety of ailments that have forced him to miss 31 games.
“It was special tonight”, Teixeira said.
“I think he did a pretty good job”, said Yankees manager Joe Girardi, a former big league catcher. As recently as spring training he talked about wanting to play five more years, but injuries to his neck and his knee this season, on top of so many others in recent years, left him feeling like a diminished player.
The impressive night by Teixeira raised his average to. He’s batting just. 198 with 10 home runs and 27 RBIs in an injury-plagued 2016. In the fifth, Gary Sanchez hit a RBI double.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) – Eddie Rosario had a pinch-hit two-run homer in the seventh inning, Miguel Sano homered and had three hits and Minnesota beat Tampa Bay.
He was always professional in his dealings with the media, but you rarely saw that type of emotion from him, except when he got plunked by a pitch. “I think the future is very bright for this team”, he said. “His exchange was quicker….”
Brian McCann hit an RBI double in the third and, with runners at second and third, Tomlin intentionally walked Chase Headley. Castro hit his first career grand slam two batters later to make it 6-0.
From 2004 to 2011, he had eight straight seasons of at least 30 home runs and 100 RBIs while he regularly played more than 150 games in season after season.
The Yankees capped off a big third inning with Castro’s grand slam off Cleveland starter Josh Tomlin, who was charged with seven runs.
That may well have been simply his mechanism for getting through 162 games, though, because as we saw Friday, Teixeira was holding in a lot of emotion all these years.
Even with the big lead, the Yankees didn’t use Alex Rodriguez, who has one start and seven at-bats since July 22. He averaged 35 homers a year for the Rangers until the Atlanta Braves acquired him for the stretch run in 2007.
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Francisco Mejia, a 20-year-old Indians catching prospect, doubled in the first inning for Class A Lynchburg, extending his hitting streak to 47 games. In 2005, the Chicago White Sox took a page out of the Red Sox’s playbook by winning their first World Series Championship since 1917, two years before the infamous “Black Sox” scandal rocked America in 1919. CC Sabathia faces off against Corey Kluber, both of who won Cy Young Awards pitching in Cleveland.
