ST . PETERSBURG, Fla. — At the crack of the bat, David Robertson knew he was in trouble. Big trouble. There were runners at the corners, two outs, a full count to Rays second baseman Brandon Lowe. And Lowe hit a screaming missile to center field. The ball had trouble tattooed on it from contact.
“He crushed it,” Robertson said later.
But at that same moment of contact, Brett Garner was already running to a spot. In the Yankees’ master blueprint Monday night, the only thing Gardner should have been running toward at that moment was the water cooler, or the bucket filled with Dubble Bubble, or maybe a sleeve of sunflower seeds.