ON Jason Giambi’s final swing of batting practice yesterday, he drove the ball 11 rows deep into Yankee Stadium’s upper deck.
Forget about aura and mystique. That is the kind of October magic the Yankees need tonight in Game 2 of the ALDS against the Twins.
As if on cue – yesterday was Oct. 1 – Mr. October Reggie Jackson was working with and pumping up Giambi and other Yankees hitters, including Nick Johnson and Derek Jeter.
Nobody does it like Reggie. No one gets New York and no one gets his message across with more gusto.
“I’m like a double-espresso,” Jackson said with a smile. “I’m there for the guys.”
Don’t forget Reggie came to the Yankees via the A’s pipeline, too (through Baltimore). The dollar signs were much different. The pressure was the same.
“He’s great,” said Giambi, who must shake off his dreadful 0-for-4 performance in the 3-1 loss to the Twins in Game 1, where the Yankees were 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, never hitting the ball out of the infield. “Reggie’s played in pressure games, he’s a communicative guy, he’s been there. That’s always a plus. He’s been in your shoes, he knows what it’s like being the big gun in the lineup.”
And Reggie did it with style. That is something Giambi, bad knee or not, needs to do now. Giambi has two home runs in 49 lifetime postseason at-bats.
The wolves are at the door. The Yankees have lost six of their previous seven postseason games. Opponents no longer fear them. Giambi has lost seven of his previous eight postseason games and has yet to escape the first round.
The slugger can shut down the critics quickly. As Reggie said, it can change in one night, with one thunderbolt.
“You are not going to be at ease, you are going to be on edge, you are going to have butterflies,” Jackson said of postseason pressure of playing for the Yankees.
The key, Mr. October noted, is to get those butterflies in flying formation. As for dealing with king bee George Steinbrenner?
“George is George,” Jackson said. “George is going to have heat on you all the time. That’s the way he does it. It ain’t comfortable, but it works . . . It certainly weighs on your mind. How much? I don’t know. But it weighed on my mind.
“I’m sure [Giambi] feels that,” Jackson said of the Pinstripe pressure of Steinbrenner, fans and media. “You know [Giambi] is sensitive to it and aware of it. Those are good things. You worry about the guy who ignores that . . . I think it’s in him to rise to the occasion. There are other players who have been in the position.
“Look what they did to [Barry] Bonds about, ‘Gosh, you haven’t performed under pressure,’ and here’s a guy now who is recognized as the most feared hitter in the history of baseball,” Jackson said.
If you can’t deal with it?
“Then you’ve got to find another address,” Jackson said.
Giambi has to get back to being Jason Giambi, the wild-haired frat boy he was with the A’s. Let it all hang out. Reggie knows the importance of role-playing.
“Part of my shtick was all the bull bleep I had,” Jackson said. “I remember in 1981 and we had lost two in a row to Milwaukee and I actually said, ‘We’re going to see if all that Mr. October bleep works tomorrow.’ And I had a good day. You’ve got to have some braggadocio.”
In that deciding Game 5 victory, Jackson blasted a two-run upper-deck homer to set the 7-3 win in motion.
Can Giambi rise to this occasion? “No doubt,” Jackson said. “He’s hit some big home runs for us, and when he does we’re a different ballclub, the swagger’s back for the whole club . . . when the big man is swinging the timber.
“It can be turned in a day.”
Or in one crisp October night.