Yankee Stadium opener far from awesome ... unless you're Swisher

NEW YORK -- The biggest cheers were for Nick Swisher.

The most enthusiastic chants were the ones calling for Swisher to pitch.

"We want Swisher!" they screamed. "We want Swisher!"

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It's not the way we thought we would be remembering the first game in the most expensive ballpark ever.

This is Yankee Stadium?

Maybe it's not as easy as they thought to move atmosphere across the street. Or maybe after charging up to $2,500 a ticket, the Yankees were asking for more if you actually wanted to make noise.

Something was wrong here, and we're not talking about the final score. Yes, it's true, the Yankees lost 10-2 to the Indians. But this was a quiet crowd when it was 1-1 in the sixth, and it didn't really become an excited crowd until the Indians scored nine times in the seventh and the fans got the idea that Swisher ought to pitch.

There was no roar when the Yankees took the field. There was little noise when CC Sabathia went to two strikes on a hitter, and not much more when Sabathia pitched out of trouble (which he did quite often).

"Unfortunately, we couldn't get the fans to get louder," Johnny Damon said, blaming the Yankees' performance.

Fine, but even in the pregame introductions, the fans seemed subdued. And even then, the one guy who seemed to get them excited was Swisher.

Not Sabathia, the $161 million ace. Not Mark Teixeira, the $180 million first baseman. Not even Derek Jeter.

Nick Swisher.

"Everybody loves Swish," Teixeira said.

Tell that to the people in Chicago.

So far, though, the Swisher story in New York is a good one. The Yankees traded for him to be their first baseman, then signed Teixeira. They asked Swisher to compete for the right-field job in spring training, then gave the job to Xavier Nady.

Now Nady is hurt, possibly out for the year with a bad elbow (although he's having more tests Friday morning). Now Swisher is hitting .406, doing so well that he was the Yankee cleanup hitter Thursday.

Yankee fans call for outfielder Nick Swisher to come to the pitching rescue. (Getty Images)

And yes, he pitched a scoreless inning Monday night, in a different Yankee blowout loss.

"It's a storybook, fellas," Swisher said Thursday morning. "Hopefully, the story has a wonderful ending."

The Yankee story Thursday had a bad ending -- and not that great a beginning, either.

Sabathia allowed one run in 5 2/3 innings, but he continued a recent trend of having lousy command in big games. In his past seven starts in the playoffs or on opening day, Sabathia has walked 33 in 28 2/3 innings.

He wasn't nearly as bad Thursday as he had been in the season opener in Baltimore, but he did walk five. He needed 122 pitches to get his 17 outs, and he forced manager Joe Girardi to go to the bullpen earlier than planned.

That didn't go well, and neither did Girardi's strategy of trying to match up with his relievers. Jose Veras faced three batters and gave up three runs, and Damaso Marte faced nine batters and gave up six runs.

And you wonder why the fans wanted Swisher to pitch?

"Yeah, I think everybody heard that," Swisher said. "I didn't know what to say."

He was more comfortable talking about the pregame reception.

"Talk about making you feel good," he said. "It was amazing. I almost felt like I was running on air when I went out there."

It's no wonder, then, that Swisher came away thinking this was a very special day.

"If you take away the outcome of the game, I have not been part of something that awesome before," he said.

If you take away the outcome of the game, and you take away the strange lack of atmosphere, and you don't think about the ridiculously high prices and the ridiculously high price tag for the stadium itself, well, then Thursday was pretty awesome.

Especially when the fans wanted Swisher to pitch.