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Chris Resop has fond memories of Yankee Stadium.
Even if he wasn’t so happy the last time he walked off that near-sacred pitching mound.
“Gave up a home run to A-Rod,” said Resop, the Barron Collier grad who was sold from the Braves to Japan’s Hanshin Tigers last week. “You’re too mad to be thinking about it (possibly) being your last time there. Many more home runs were hit in that stadium, though.”
The game was July 8, 2007, the last of Resop’s three career appearances in the Bronx, and the memory stings for a lot more than Alex Rodriguez’s solo homer in the Bombers’ 12-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels.
Resop “felt a pop” in his elbow pitching to the next hitter, Hideki Matsui, and ultimately missed the rest of 2007 after having surgery to shave a bone spur.
“I’ll never forget that’s where I got hurt,” said Resop, who will join his new team in Nippon Professional Baseball when his deal is finalized, likely next week. “I can’t even say it’s a bad memory, though. It kind of turned me around. The surgery was obviously for the better, and it got me to where I am today.”
Otherwise, it was a pretty good stop for Resop.
For the second time in three career trips to play the Yankees, the 25-year-old was in town the weekend of the annual Old Timer’s Day game.
Not that Resop needed to see the living legends to be reminded of them.
“The first time you sit in the bullpen, it’s like, ‘Wow, this is Yankee Stadium,’ ” said Resop, who was 3-3 with a 5.61 ERA in 61 innings for the Marlins, Angels and Braves since 2005. “Just knowing the people that have been through that visiting clubhouse, you start to wonder, ‘Who else has used this locker?’ The first time I got on that mound, I was in awe.”
Resop toed that fabled rubber three times over two seasons, allowing that one run with two hits and a couple of walks in 3 1/3 innings at Yankee Stadium.
With the last game (regular season, anyway) at the site of tonight’s All-Star Game set for Sept. 21, Resop can forever claim that he’s the only Collier County product to take the same field as Ruth, Mantle and the like.
“Every stadium gives you goosebumps because it’s the major leagues, but that one especially,” he said. “It’s your old, original-style stadium, with the straight outfield fence as opposed to the dimensions and the crap stadiums are doing now. Then seeing the monuments out there, you feel like you’re in the Hall of Fame just being there. You’re a part of it.”
Resop hasn’t made it to Fenway Park or Wrigley Field.
In fact, the next most “historic” yard he got to pitch in was Shea Stadium, and it’s farewell season is but an afterthought to the season-long farewells across town.
He’s hoping to return to the majors when his contract expires in Japan, but whatever happens, he said he considers himself fortunate to have stood under maybe the game’s most famous lights.
“I haven’t felt the way I felt there in any other stadium,” he said. “You’re a little overwhelmed there, and there’s just the aura of facing the New York Yankees. It’s a monument, part of baseball’s history, and of course you’re jittery. Somehow you’ve just gotta convince yourself you’re on a regular mound again.”





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