It looked as if Jason Giambi wouldn’t notch his 300th career homer in 2005, considering he needed 14 when July began.
In fact, he only hit five longballs before Independence Day.
But with the most prolific month by a Yankee since Mickey Mantle’s epic July 1961, Giambi reached the career milestone yesterday with a two-bomb game in the Yankees’ 8-7, 11th-inning victory over the Angels.
“The things that were said about Jason, for him to come out of it in this fashion puts an exclamation point on it,” Alex Rodriguez said.
Consider this: Giambi hit more homers in 26 games in July (14) than he produced in 80 games last season (12), when he was beset by injuries and illness.
So it’s no surprise he called it by far the most satisfying month in his career.
Giambi’s seventh-inning solo shot off reliever Esteban Yan curled just inside the right-field foul pole, drawing a raucous standing ovation from 53,653 when his career feat was announced on the center-field scoreboard.
It was his 14th homer of July, his best ever in a month and the most since Mantle hit the same number 44 years earlier. He answered the curtain call with a tip of his helmet.
“That’s the exciting part about being a Yankee,” Giambi said. “Any time you do anything special here, you’re always among Ruth or DiMaggio or Mantle.
“It’s one of the reasons I came here. There’s a long history of great players. It’s a lot of hard work that’s paying off.”
The lefty slugger has hit 113 of his 300 homers as a Yankee. He exchanged the baseball for an autographed bat.
He also went yard in the second off Angels righty Chris Bootcheck, depositing an 82 mph slider just over the fence in the right-field corner.
Amazingly, Giambi has now posted three multi-homer games within the last two weeks. He managed two-homer games on July 20 in Texas and July 21 in Anaheim.
Giambi praised his teammates, saying, “I think they’re more excited than I am. It’s very rare in professional sports to have guys care about somebody as much as themselves. It’s special for me.”