I’m just trying to find the bridge. Has anybody seen the bridge?*

by Hank Waddles

Chad Gaudin made his debut start for the Yanks on Wednesday night and held the Athletics to no runs and a hit over four and a third innings, which sounds a lot better than it was. The problem was that he also walked five batters and hit another, which led to a series of uncomfortable innings and eventually cost him a shot at his first Yankee win. Gaudin’s stuff was good enough, as evidenced by his five strikeouts, but his demise came in the fifth inning when he followed a dubious Robby Canó error with his fifth walk, loading the bases and bringing Girardi out to ask for the ball. Gaudin left with a three nothing lead but two outs shy of the necessary five innings. Alfredo Aceves came in and induced Kurt Suzuki to bounce back to the mound for a snappy 1-2-3 double play, and the threat was over.

All three Yankee runs came courtesy of Mark Teixeira. He brought Jeter in with a ground ball to third in the first and then hit a monstrous two-run blast to left off A’s rookie Brett Anderson in the fourth. But as Cliff has been telling us, the Yankees’ true MVP candidate is Jeter. He picked up two more singles on the night, and has been raking at an insane .550 clip (22 for 40) over the past ten games. An interesting thing to watch in the Boston series will be whether or not he’ll pick up any free passes. The Captain hasn’t seen ball four since July 28th, a span of close to a hundred at bats.

But back to Aceves. After putting out Gaudin’s fire in the fourth, Ace struggled for the second straight outing. He gave up one run in the sixth on a Jake Cust homerun that floated over the wall in left center, then gave up three straight singles in the seventh for another as the A’s narrowed the margin to 3-2. From there it was about finding the bridge to Mariano, as Bob Lorenz is so fond of telling us. Phil Coke got the last out in the seventh, Phil Hughes took care of the eighth, and Rivera locked down his career-best 32nd straight save with just seven pitches in the ninth. Ball game.

With that the Yankees took the series, their ninth series win of ten since the all-star break, which isn’t bad. And if we go all the way back to that fateful night in Atlanta when Girardi got tossed and Cashman paid them a visit, the Bombers have won 38 of their last 51 games, good for a .745 winning percentage. Again, not bad.

Now all they need to do is keep the motor running as they head into Boston. Even though the objects in the mirror are larger than they appear, this is a team that’s picking up speed at just the right time.

* Eh, I’m not wild about that tuneski. How ’bout this instead?