Skip to the bottom of the ninth. A.J. Burnett out-dueled Felix Hernandez for seven innings, passing a 2-1 lead to Phil Hughes, who mowed down the M’s in the eighth to hand that lead to Mariano Rivera in the ninth. Rivera had converted a career high 36 straight saves, the longest active streak in the majors and started the ninth by striking out Jack Hannahan and pinch-hitter Mike Carp.

Mariners manager Don Wakamatsu sends up veteran Mike Sweeney to bat for shortstop Josh Wilson. Rivera’s first pitch is at the knee, but over the plate, and the right-handed Sweeney crushes it into the opposite field gap. A home run in almost any other park, Sweeney’s blast hits the warning track just in front of the 385-foot sign in right-center, putting Sweeny, the potential tying run on second with one out and bringing Ichiro Suzuki to the plate as the potential winning run.

Suzuki was 3-for-4 on the night, but had been picked off first base twice by A.J. Burnett who both times caught the Seattle speedster leaning. The first pick-off came with none out in the third and was followed by a Franklin Gutierrez double that was subsequently plated by a Jose Lopez single for the only Mariner run of the game.

Now given a chance to make amends for those base-running blunders, Suzuki, like Sweeney, lights into Rivera’s first pitch, a cutter in off the plate but just below the belt. With his trademark bailing swing, Ichiro gets the sweet spot on the ball and deposits it four rows deep in the right field seats for a game-winning home run. The home run is just the fifth walk-off home run hit off Rivera in his career, and the first since Marco Scutaro’s shocker in Oakland in 2007. M’s win 3-2.

The Yankees scored their two runs on sac flies, both times with Johnny Damon doubles playing a key part in the inning, but failed to get Nick Swisher, who had doubled and moved up on a wild pitch, home from third with one out in the seventh when Jose Molina hit into a double-play. Other than that, there’s not much to reflect on here. Both starters and Hughes were excellent and Rivera had a lead with two-outs in the ninth. After the game, Rivera said he simply missed his location on both pitches. At least the Rangers lost, giving the Yankees a chance to clinch a playoff berth with CC Sabathia on the mound on Saturday with a win and another Rangers loss.

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The Yankees threw Sergio Mitre against Roy Halladay last night and the lost 10-4. No real shock there. The Yanks did well to take an early 2-0 lead on Halladay, touch him up for 11 hits, and bounce him after 112 pitches in six innings, his earliest exit in five starts against the Yankees this year, but it was of little use. Mitre gave up two home runs in both the third and fourth innings, including a pair of monster shots to rookie slugger Travis Snider, giving the Jays a 5-2 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.

The real news came came in the eighth inning. With two outs, the bases empty, and the Jays up 8-2, Mark Melacon hit Aaron Hill in the lower back with the first pitch he threw to him. Hill was 0-for-4 prior to that plate appearance and was 0-for-2 against Melcanon entering the game. It seems unlikely that Melancon, who has been wild in the majors, walking 5.4 per 9 innings and hitting three other batters in his first 15 innings, intended to hit Hill. Still, Hill is an important hitter in the Jays lineup, so when Jorge Posada came to bat in the bottom of the inning, Jesse Carlson threw behind him.

Carlson’s pitch went what seemed like ten feet behind Posada, but Jorge was unwilling to shrug it off. Instead he backed out of the batter’s box, took a few steps toward the mound and told Carlson, “Don’t do that again.” The benches cleared to calm Posada down, and Posada ultimately worked a walk and came around to score on a Brett Gardner double (Gardner, by the way, went 2-for-4 with a pair of RBI hits).

Carlson was drifting toward home plate to back it up as Posada crossed the dish and Jorge gave Jesse a solid brush with is left shoulder as he went by. Carlson spun around and fired some invective at Posada, who then returned to home plate and touched off a real benches-clearing brawl.

Posada, Carlson, Jays’ catcher Rod Barajas, home plate umpire Jim Joyce, and in-the-hole hitter Johnny Damon were in the initial scrum and soon joined by Joe Girardi, who failed to pull his 38-year-old catcher out of the fray and instead got sucked into the middle of the pack and emerged with a bit of a shiner on his left eye. As one might have expected, Shelley Duncan tore into the heart of the fracas like Michael Phelps going after olympic gold and ultimately had to be pulled off Barajas like Jeff Van Gundy on Alonzo Mourning’s leg as the melee petered out.

Carlson emerged with a nasty welt on his forehead, but he and Posada were the only ejections, and Carlson remained in the dugout, hiding behind his teammates and apparently continuing to plead his innocence. Meanwhile, third base umpire Derryl Cousins was hit in the knee by a full bottle of soda thrown by a fan in the stands determined to make the players look like dignified and civilized adults. Cousins wound up being the only “participant” to suffer an injury (as far as we know).

For proving unable to let his walk and run do the talking (or shoving) for him, Posada will surely incur a suspension. Otherwise it seems the Yankees got away lucky. To his immense credit, Joe Girardi held a closed-door meeting with his team afterwords, admonishing them for doing such a foolish and risky thing this close to a postseason berth.

The Yankees had hundreds of millions of dollars of players in the middle of that fight (Mark Teixeira tried to break things up but was quickly pulled out of the ruckus, on-deck-hitter Derek Jeter was right in the middle of things, and CC Sabathia was the man who finally pulled Posada out of the pack) just three weeks shy of the playoffs. The entire season could have gone the way of Bill Lee’s shoulder Tuesday night. The Yankees are damn lucky it didn’t.

No one expected the Orioles to blow into the Bronx and take the first two games of this weekend’s three-game set, handing the Yankees just their third series loss of the second half. The O’s have done not just that, but won those two games by a combined score of 17-7. It seems the Yankee bats are in a bit of a mini-slump, with the team averaging just 3.5 runs per game over it’s last four contests, and unlike the final two games of the Rays’ series, the Yankees haven’t gotten the pitching performances they needed to make those paltry seven runs stand up.

Nonetheless, the Yanks are still 12-5 (.706) on the season against the Orioles, and 40-15 (.727) in the second half, and they have CC Sabathia going in today’s finale looking to help avoid an embarrassing sweep at the hands of Jeremy Guthrie. CC is seven starts into a dominant late-season run (5-0, 1.75 ERA, 0.92 WHIP, 11.05 K/9, 5.73 K/BB, 7 1/3 IP/GS, all Yankee wins).

Guthrie has had a nice little run of his own over his last five starts (3-1, 1.33 ERA, 0.96 WHIP, 3.75 K/BB, 6 2/3+ IP/GS), his one loss in that stretch coming against Andy Pettitte and the Yankees in Baltimore on the final day of August.

Rain delayed the start of Friday night’s Yankees-Orioles schedule-filler by an hour and 27 minutes. Then during a pitching change with two outs in the seventh, the umpires called the tarp back out, leading to another hour-plus delay.

Things started off well for the Yankees during those first seven innings. Alex Rodriguez crushed a three-run homer into the second deck in left field in the first. Derek Jeter got his team-record 2,722nd hit, a single to right, leading off the third. His next time up he extended his new team record with another single to right, this one driving home Robinson Cano with a two-out run that pushed the Yankees’ lead to 4-1 after four.

Then the pitching fell apart. Andy Pettitte wasn’t sharp, needing 103 pitches to get through five innings. After giving up a second run with one out in the fifth, he loaded the bases, then made a great play on a chopper to the third base side for the second out. The ball tipped off Pettitte’s glove and headed toward the foul line, but Andy scrambled after it, picked it up with his bare hand and made a spinning, falling throw around the runner for the force at home. Unfortunately, Pettitte then hit Melvin Mora in the right elbow to force in the third Baltimore run.

Damaso Marte replaced Pettitte in the sixth and coughed up three more runs and the lead, plus a fourth which scored on a sac fly off Jonathan Albaladejo. In the seventh, Edwar Ramirez gave up three more, all with two outs, at which point the mid-game rain delay struck.

When the tarp came back off around 12:45 am, there were just a few hundred fans left. Ronan Tynan, out to sing “God Bless America” for 9/11, sang it to almost no one on 9/12. Down by six runs, Joe Girardi wisely put his bench in the game to protect his starters for the playoffs, leaving only Melky Cabrera, Brett Gardner, and DH Hideki Matsui in the lineup.

Jeter’s hit was a nice moment. The stadium was packed in anticipation of it, and he delivered, bringing about a huge ovation. His teammates came out of the dugout to congratulate him, and he tipped his helmet to the crowd and signaled to his family in their suite. Unfortunately, it was buried in a miserable morass of a rain-soaked 10-4 loss to a bad team. If nothing else, it worked well as a metaphor for all of the hype the hit was buried in. I’m genuinely pleased and impressed by Jeter’s accomplishment, but the Yankee hype machine nearly killed those emotions. The Yankees are an easy team to root for, but they can be a hard organization to like.

Joba Chamberlain’s third start under the new spring-training-style Joba Rules didn’t start terribly well. Jason Bartlett led off by smacking a 2-1 pitch over the wall in left for a homer. (After the game Joba said it was the pitch he wanted to make and pointed out that Bartlett was having a great year; Joe Girardi said the pitch was “a mistake.”) Carl Crawford followed with a single, moved to second on a wild third-strike to Evan Longoria, stole third while Chamberlain was in the process of walking Ben Zobrist, then scored on a Pat Burrell single.

After that, the Yankee shortstop went to the mound and gave Chamberlain a quick verbal kick in the pants. Chamberlain struck out the next two batters on nine pitches and retired the side in order in the second and third innings. Because Chamberlain’s night ended there (due, I assume, to the 32 pitches he had thrown in the first), it’s difficult to say if that is likely to have been a meaningful turnaround in Joba’s performance going forward, but it was the most encouraging performance Chamberlain has had since his final start in July, which also came against the Rays.

Tampa Bay starter Jeff Niemann, a 6-foot-9 righty who bears a slight resemblance to the actor Jeff Daniels and is having a fine rookie season five years after being drafted fourth overall in the 2004 draft, made those two runs stand up for seven innings, stranding runners in every frame while striking out eight. Meanwhile, the Yankee bullpen matched Niemann by following Chamberlain with six hitless innings, including three from Alfredo Aceves and two from Jonathan Albaladejo.

Alex Rodriguez led off the bottom of the eighth by singling up the middle on Niemann’s 110th pitch, driving the tall 26-year-old from the game. Joe Maddon curiously chose righty Lance Cormier over lefty Brian Shouse to face Hideki Matsui. Matsui singled, sending Rodriguez to third, and Chris Richards threw Nick Swisher’s ensuing grounder into left field while attempting to start a 3-6-3 double play, sending Alex home and pinch-runner Jerry Hairston Jr. to third. Maddon then went to Shouse, who struck out Robinson Cano for the first out of the inning.

With one out, the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on first, Girardi sent Jorge Posada up to bat for Brett Gardner. Gardner made a spectacular, game-saving play in Monday’s day game, but has been struggling to rediscover his stroke since coming off the disabled list, going a combined 1-for-18 since starting his rehab assignment. Maddon countered with hard-throwing Aussie Grant Balfour, flipping Posada around to the left side. Posada worked the count full, fouling off the two strikes, then launched the next pitch into the seats in right for a game-changing three-run home run.

And that was that. Protecting a two-run lead, Brian Bruney typically walked the first man he faced in the ninth on four pitches, but got the next two out on three more tosses before yielding to Phil Coke, who got the final out and a cheap save. The 4-2 win was the 24th game the Yankees have won in their final at-bat this season, a total which leads the major leagues. On the season, the Yankees are averaging more than two runs scored per game in the final three innings and 1.2 runs score per game in extra innings, when one is usually enough to win it.

The win gave the Yankees an unexpected four-game sweep of the rival Rays, who are now a shocking 18.5 games out in the division, and ran the Yankees’ second-half record to 40-13, good for a .755 winning percentage. If they can keep that up through the final 20 games, it will stand as the third-best post-break mark since the All-Star Game began in 1933.

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Those of you who chose to do something other than watch the Yankees’ series finale in Toronto on a beautiful Labor Day weekend Sunday made the right choice as the Yankees lost perhaps the ugliest game they’ve played all year by a score of 14-8. The four errors in the Yankees’ line doesn’t even begin to capture how poorly they played. Sergio Mitre gave up 11 runs (nine earned) in 4 1/3 innings, but after the game, Joe Girardi said Mitre had really gotten 21 outs out there. He wasn’t far off.

After the Yankees stranded two in the top of the first, the very first batter Mitre faced hit a grounder to third, where Jerry Hairston Jr. was giving Alex Rodriguez a day off. Hairston let the ball play him, fielding it back on his heels and firing high to first base, inducing a collision between Mark Teixeira and the runner (neither was hurt). That set the tone.

Aaron Hill doubled home the run on the next pitch as the Jays went on to score three in the first. The first batter in the bottom of the second hit a soft grounder to Robinson Cano, but Cano dropped the ball on the transfer for the second Yankee error in as many innings. Amazingly, the Jays failed to score in that frame.

The Yankees tied the game in the third, then with one out in the bottom of the third, Nick Swisher lost a fly ball in the sun on a cloudless day in Toronto, turning an out into a double. Mark Teixeira then got eaten up by a grounder that scored the run on what was ruled an error. Mitre worked a 1-2-3 fourth, and the Yankees took a brief lead on a two-run Swisher homer in the fifth, but then everything fell apart.

With one on and one out in the bottom of the fifth, Mitre struck out Edwin Encarnacion on a nasty pitch that dove down and away from the righty, hit off Jose Molina’s glove, and ricocheted back the other way, allowing Encarnacion to reach base. That opened the door for an eight-run inning. After the next two batters singled, putting the Jays up 6-5 and leaving men on the corners with still just one out, Mitre induced a chopper to third, but Hairston couldn’t make up his mind whether to throw home or first and, after finally choosing first, threw too late to get the runner on what was ruled an infield hit (the run scored from third anyway). After another single, Mitre walked in a run and got the hook.

Mark Melancon came on and walked in another run on four pitches. After getting the second out, he then let two more in on an infield single and another walk, passing the ball to ex-Jay Josh Towers. Towers got ahead of Bronx native Randy Ruiz 0-2, then hit Ruiz in the face with a 90 mph fastball, bloodying his lip and forcing in another run. (Ruiz came out of the game, but suffered no serious injury.)

At this point it was 12-5, Jays, but the Yankees weren’t done. In the sixth, Ramiro Peña, in as a sub for Derek Jeter, bounced a throw past Mark Teixeira to let in another run in the sixth. Immediately following, Johnny Damon and Melky Cabrera collided while chasing a fly in left-center, though neither was hurt and Melky held on for the third out. The next inning, the Yankee infield consisted of Eric Hinske at third base, Hairston at shorstop, Peña at second, Molina at first, and Francisco Cervelli behind the plate, but that combination fielded it’s only two chances (a pop up to Peña and a grounder to Molina) cleanly.

So to wrap that all up: four errors (Hairston, Cano, Teixeira, Peña), two outs played into hits (Swisher & Hairston), two collisions (at first base and in left field), a bloodied opponent (Ruiz), a rally started by a strikeout, three runs forced in by walks (one by Mitre, two by Melancon), and another forced in by a hit-by-pitch (Towers).

As for Mitre, he officially recorded 13 outs, but if you give him credit for inducing outs on the three errors and two misplays behind him and the strikeout Molina couldn’t corral (ruled a wild pitch), he really got 19 outs, the equivalent of 6 1/3 innings. I’m not saying he pitched well, or that I think he should be a candidate for the postseason roster (he shouldn’t), but he didn’t pitch as poorly as his line suggests (note his five Ks, and that the walk that forced in a run and got him pulled was just his second of the game). Given all that went wrong and his tenuous hold on his job, Mitre did a good job of not showing up his teammates on the field or to the press afterwords.

Me, I spent the day at a local park with my wife, three-month-old daughter, and dog. We had a nice picnic and a walk, played some frisbee with the dog, and took a collective nap (dog and cat included) on the couch after we got home. I then zipped through the game on fast-forward on the DVR. I’m hoping most of you saw as little or less of it and have an equally pleasant Labour Day tomorrow.

The best game Andy Pettitte ever pitched in his life was Game 5 of the 1996 World Series. In that game, which began with the Yankees and Braves tied at two games a piece in the Series, Pettitte out-dueled John Smoltz for 8 1/3 shutout innings. Pettitte wasn’t perfect in that game. He only struck out four, walked three, two of whom then stole second on him, and gave up five hits, but while Smoltz allowed just one unearned run, Pettitte didn’t allow a runner to third base until the ninth inning and yielded to John Wetteland with one out in the ninth having thrown just 96 pitches. Wetteland got the last two outs to seal the 1-0 win and send the Yankees home for what would prove to be a triumphant Game 6.

Game 5 of the 1996 World Series stands as the pinnacle of my baseball fandom, and it remains the pinnacle of Andy Pettitte’s career, but for six-plus innings last night, Pettitte looked like he was about to reach a new peak.

Andy Pettitte had everything working last night. He was throwing in, out, up, down, using all of his pitches, locating perfectly, and dropping some devastating curveballs into the strike zone. While the Yankees eked out a pair of runs against Orioles starter Jeremy Guthrie on a Nick Swisher homer in the third and doubles by Robinson Cano and Swisher in the fifth, Pettitte was busy retiring the first 20 men he faced.

With one out in the sixth, Matt Wieters hit a slow chopper in on the grass toward third base. Jerry Hairston Jr., giving Alex Rodriguez a day off at third base, charged, barehanded, and fired to first in what was really the only difficult play that needed to be made behind Pettitte all night. Ty Wigginton hit a grounder directly to Derek Jeter on the next pitch for the third out. After six innings, Pettitte had thrown 66 pitches, struck out six, and not once gone to three balls on a batter.

Every so often a pitcher will take a no-hitter or perfect game into the middle innings despite not looking any sharper than usual. A.J. Burnett had a game like that earlier this year. Sergio Mitre had one just a few days ago. Monday night, Andy Pettitte looked like a pitcher throwing a perfect game. He looked like David Cone pitching to the Expos, but instead of Cone’s characteristic improvisation, Pettitte was methodical, precise, and seemingly effortless.

The first two batters of the seventh inning flew out to Swisher in right field on 2-2 counts. Swisher took a wrong step on one of the two flies, but recovered and struggled to contain his relieved grin as he threw the ball back into the infield. Adam Jones, who had just missed a home run foul down the left field line earlier in the game, took ball one from Pettitte, then hit a routine grounder directly at Hairston, the previous inning’s defensive hero.

Hairston booted it.

After the game Hairston’s teammates told him and the media that the ball took a funny hop, but Hairston was honest. It was a routine grounder and he just plain missed it. The ball hit off the heal of his glove and trickled through his legs for an error that erased Pettitte’s perfect game. It was the second time this season that I’ve seen a perfect game come to an end on an error. The first was Jose Uribe’s eighth-inning error in Jonathan Sanchez’s no-hitter against the Padres on July 10. Sanchez finished the game without a hit or a walk, the only blemish being Uribe’s error.

As difficult as it might be to swallow losing a perfect game to a fielding error, the most impressive thing Sanchez did in that game, particularly given his reputation for being over-excitable and folding after bad breaks, was to gather himself and complete the no-hitter. Monday night, Pettitte tried to do the same, but Nick Markakis put a good swing on a fastball up and away and lined it inside the left-field line for a single. That didn’t make Hairston feel better, but it made him less infamous.

With the Yankees still up just 2-0, Pettitte had lost a perfect game and a no-hitter in the course of four pitches and now had the tying runs on base. He then went to his first (and only) three-ball count of the night, going full on Nolan Reimold, but got another grounder right at Jeter to strand both runners.

With Guthrie out of the game in favor of veteran lefty Mark Hendrickson, and Pettitte’s balancing act off their minds, the Yankees put up three insurance runs in the top of the eighth. Pettitte gave up a lead-off homer to Melvin Mora in the bottom of the eighth, scuttling the shutout as well, but struck out the next two men and got one more groundout for good measure on his 104th pitch, leaving the ninth for the bullpen after eight innings, no walks, just two hits, and eight strikeouts.

Brian Bruney’s first three pitches were balls as he walked Brian Roberts to start the ninth. A one-out single followed, prompting Joe Girardi to bring Mariano Rivera in to finish the job, extending the major league record held by Rivera and Pettitte for most games saved by a single pitcher for a single teammate. Pettitte also moved past Lefty Gomez into sole possession of third place on the Yankees’ all-time wins list.

After the game, Pettitte found Hairston in the locker room with his head down and went over to cheer his teammate up. “You took the pressure off me,” he told Hairston. “Besides, if I hadn’t thrown one already, I wasn’t going to. I didn’t want to pitch nine innings anyway.”

Mark Buehlre and CC Sabathia entered last night’s game having had very different Augusts. Buehrle had posted a 6.21 ERA in six starts since his perfect game, while Sabathia had a 1.78 ERA over his previous four starts. In ten previous head-to-head meetings, Buehrle had never beaten Sabathia, who was 6-0 in those matchups. Early on it seemed those trends would continue. After CC worked a 1-2-3 first, Derek Jeter connected for a leadoff home run off Buehlre, who then gave up a pair of singles before getting Nick Swisher to ground out to strand both runners. CC then stranded a leadoff double in the second by striking out the side.

Johnny Damon doubled the Yankee lead by leading off the third with a solo shot, but for the second straight night, the Yankees couldn’t get the job done with runners on base, stranding two in the first, one in the second, two in scoring position in the third, erasing a lead-off single with a double play in a three-batter fourth. Robinson Cano ground out with two outs and the bases loaded in the fifth, then Buehrle worked his first legitimate 1-2-3 inning in the sixth.

CC Sabathia had struck out ten and still thrown just 88 pitches heading into the seventh, but was greeted by a Jermaine Dye double. He then issued his first walk of the game, a five-pitch pass to Carlos Quentin that drew Dave Eiland to the mound. Two pitches later, Alex Rios doubled home Dye to cut the Yankee lead in half and push the tying run to third. Alexei Ramirez got a hold of an 0-1 pitch, but put just enough of a hump in it to allow Cano to hop backwards and make the catch for the first out. Ramon Castro then hit a chopper toward third that Alex Rodriguez gloved and fired to Jose Molina, who tagged Quentin out at home. Jason Nix followed by hitting a hard hopper that stayed just fair over the bag and seemed headed for the left-field corner, but Rodriguez made a full-out stretch and gloved it, holding Nix to an infield single and lead-runner Rios at third. That loaded the bases for rookie Gordon Beckham. CC fell behind 3-1 before getting strike two with Beckham taking all the way. On the full count, Beckham laced a game-tying single to right, but with Castro running from second, Nick Swisher fired a strike to home in time for Molina to tag out his opposite number, ending the inning and keeping the score tied. (Tyler Kepner tweeted after the game that Swisher said he had been getting throwing tips from Dave Eiland and Phil Coke.)

That inning pushed CC to 113 pitches and ended his night. Buehrle was at 99, but Ozzie Guillen quit while he was ahead and went to the majors best set-up man in Matt Thornton in the seventh. Thornton set the top six men in the Yankee lineup down in order in the seventh and eighth, while Phil Hughes struck out Dye, Paul Konerko, and Jim Thome in between. Mariano Rivera then pitched in a perfect ninth, and Scott Linebrink worked around a one-out Jose Molina single in the bottom of the ninth to force extra innings.

Though I would have preferred to have seen Hughes work an extra frame and Mo pitch the tenth, Joe Girardi kept the line moving, getting a 1-2-3 inning from Brian Bruney in the top of the tenth, after which, with Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez due up, Guillen turned to . . . minor league journeyman lefty Randy Williams?

To Williams’ credit, he struck out Tex, but Alex Rodriguez crushed the first pitch he saw to left center for . . . the first out.

It rained throughout the game, and the swirling winds stopped several would-be home runs short of the left field wall. Rodriguez absolutely crushed Williams’ pitch, but he hit it into the wind in death valley and it fell a step shy of the warning track to Alex’s obvious disbelief. Given a reprieve, Williams walked the next two hitters on eight pitches, bringing lefty Robinson Cano to the plate with two out and two on in the bottom of the tenth with the game tied 2-2. Fittingly, Cano ran the count to 2-2, then launched a no-doubter into the Yankee bullpen to win the game. Cano styled on the homer like fellow number-24 Manny Ramirez, watching it from home while Alfredo Aceves ran out into the rain to gather the ball like a kid in the empty wings of the old Stadium in the ’80s.

Helmet toss. Pie. Yankees win 5-2.

My good friend Steven Goldman called Tuesday night’s loss to the Rangers the most annoying game of the year due to Joba Chamberlain’s struggles with two outs and the botched Nick Swisher bunt that appeared to kill the ninth-inning rally. Having held off on assigning that title, I’ll slap it on Wednesday afternoon’s contest.

What do you imagine the final score would be of a game in which A.J. Burnett struck out a season-high 12 Rangers and allowed just two hits, and the Yankees put 14 men on base? Would you believe 7-2 Rangers?

The Yankees staked Burnett to an early 1-0 lead when Johnny Damon walked, stole second, and scored on a Mark Teixeira single in the bottom of the first. Burnett responded by retiring the first 11 men he faced. Then, suddenly, with two outs in the fourth, he walked Josh Hamilton and Nelson Cruz and gave up a three-run home run to Ian Kinsler on a first-pitch fastball.

That was the game. After Damon scored, Rangers starter Dustin Nippert walked six more men, but the Yankees stranded three in the first, one in the second, two in the third, two in the fourth, two in the seventh, and two in the ninth, scoring just one more run along the way.

All together, the Yankees went 2-for-12 with runners in scoring position, both hits coming off the bat of Mark Teixeira, who singled Jeter home in the fourth. The Yankees drew eight walks, but didn’t manage a single extra-base hit, and two of their six singles didn’t leave the infield. They also struck out ten times, three each against Nippert (in 3 2/3 innings), Jason Grilli (in 2 1/3), and lefty C.J. Wilson (in 2), and once against closer Frank Francisco in the ninth.

Burnett left after six innings and 105 pitches, yeilding a 3-2 deficit to Phil Coke. Coke’s first three batters doubled, bunted for a hit, and homered, boosting the Texas lead to 6-2. The home run, by lefty Chris Davis, was the sixth Coke has surrendered to a lefty this year. Coke has otherwise dominated southpaw batters (.196 average, .224 OBP), but the nine home runs he’s allowed this year to batters of all types have given him a Farnsworthy rate of 1.57 HR/9, moving him ahead of the broken Chien-Ming Wang as the most homer-prone pitcher to throw more than 40 innings for the Yankees this year.

The Rangers scored all seven of their runs on homers in this game, with Kinsler rubbing it in with a two-out, 1-2 solo homer off David Robertson in the eighth to set the final score. Meanwhile, over the final five innings, the Yankees managed just a walk and two singles, only one of which left the infield.

With that, the Yankees dropped a series at home for the first time since the Nationals were in town in mid-June. It was just the second series loss for the Yankees since the All-Star break. The other was to the White Sox, who come into town on Thursday having salvaged the final game of a four-game set against Boston on Wednesday to protect the Yankees six-game lead.

Andy Pettitte had his worst start of the second half on Friday night. Not that it mattered. By the time he got the hook with two on and none out in the bottom of the sixth, the Yankees had scored 15 runs and were well on their way to a 20-11 win. The Yankees scored six runs in four innings off Boston starter Brad Penny without the benefit of a home run, added six more in the fifth off Penny and just-recalled rookie Michael Bowden, and boasted a 12-1 lead before the Red Sox picked up their second hit of the game in the bottom of the fifth.

Pettitte struggled from there on out, giving up three in the fifth (all of which the Yanks got back off Bowden in the top of the sixth), and one more in the sixth before getting pulled with men on first and second and none out. Brian Bruney came on and walked in a run and let another in on a double-play before finally getting out of the inning. The Yankees got one of those runs back off Manny Delcarmen in the top of the seventh. Bruney worked into another jam in seventh, loading the bases on two walks and a hit batter, but Damaso Marte, fresh of the disabled list, emerged from the bullpen and got David Ortiz to fly out and struck out Mike Lowell, hitting 94 on the radar gun in the process. Marte started a string of eight straight outs that was snapped when the two teams combined for eight more runs in the ninth, with Ramon Ramirez and Sergio Mitre, who had pitched a perfect eighth, taking the beating.

The specifics of how the runs scored were unimportant. Nearly every Yankee starter got a hit and both scored and drove in at least one run. The exception was Johnny Damon, who struck out in his first at-bat after fouling a pitch off the inside of his right knee and never took the field in the bottom of the first due to the resulting bruise (it was nothing more). Erik Hinske took Damon’s place and in his first at-bat he hit an RBI ground rule double down the right field line, then came around to score. Hideki Matsui hit the only Yankee home runs, both of them three-run shots, contributing to his seven-RBI night, though one came with the Yanks leading 16-7 in the ninth inning.

So the Yankees finally won a game at Fenway this year, but hidden behind all the scoring was a poorly played game, even by the victors. Pettitte needed 105 pitches to get through five-plus innings and gave up seven runs on seven hits. Just five of those runs were earned because the sixth inning began with a throwing error by Robinson Cano that pulled Mark Teixeira off first base on a ground ball by Casey Kotchman. That wasn’t the worst play of the night however. In the third, Eric Hinske misplayed a ball off the Monster into a would-be triple, only to have Derek Jeter range out to shallow left and gun out Dustin Pedroia at third; Hinske never touched the ball. The “hit” that drove Pettitte from the game was a pop up to the triangle in shallow left center by David Ortiz that Melky Cabrera should have had, but let drop expecting Hinske to move in. That drove in a run. Bruney’s inning and a third was flat-out dreadful. He faced eight batters, walked three of them, hit a fourth, and gave up a single to a fifth. He threw 37 pitches to get four outs (two on a double play), and just 14 of those tosses were strikes. After a 1-2-3 eighth, Sergio Mitre got torched in the ninth, retiring just three of eight batters, hitting one and giving up a pair of homers and four runs, putting him even further behind Chad Guadin in the competition for the fifth spot in the rotation.

Still, it was a good time for Joe Girardi and Dave Eiland to get a look at the inconsistent Bruney, the newly activated Marte, and the relief version of Sergio Mitre. It also kept the Yankee boot on the Red Sox’s neck. The Yankees have now won the last five head-to-head meetings, hold a 7.5-game lead in the AL East, and have A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia starting the final two games of the series.

The A’s played a horrendously sloppy game Tuesday night, committing four errors, hitting two batters, setting up a run with a wild pitch, setting up another with a cross-up passed ball that hit the home plate ump, and generally booting away the game on their way to a 7-0 loss. That’s the story of the game, but lost in all that slop was a third-straight dominant performance from CC Sabathia.

Near the start of the game, MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch tweeted that prior to Sabathia’s last two starts, the last Yankee to win consecutive starts with a minimum of 7 2/3 innings pitched and a maximum of three hits in each was Dwight Gooden in May of 1996 (the second being his no-hitter). CC, who had allowed one run on five hits over 15 2/3 innings over his previous two starts, allowed a whopping five hits Tuesday night in the course of pitching another eight impressive innings. Over his last three starts, Sabathia has pitched 23 2/3 innings and allowed just three runs, all on solo homers.

Sabathia pitched with runners on base in just two of his eight innings last night. In the latter case, he pitched around a harmless, two-out single by Ryan Sweeney in the seventh. His only real jam came in the fourth when Scott Hairston singled with one out and both he and Nomar Garciaparra capitalized on a Johnny Damon bobble on what was ruled a double for Garciaparra. After the hot-hitting Mark Ellis lined out to shallow right, holding Hairston at third, Joe Girardi had Sabathia intentionally walk righty Tommy Everidge to pitch to the lefty Sweeney, who grounded out to end the threat.

That intentional walk might have seemed like a bit of overmanaging, but Everidge, who looks like a right-handed Erik Hinske but even thicker, had homered off Sabathia in his previous at-bat and, with two-outs, the walk set up the force at every base. With some pitchers you wouldn’t want to walk the bases loaded for fear of a hit-by-pitch or unintentional walk driving in a run, but as River Avenue Blues pointed out after the game on twitter, Sabathia threw just 28 balls all night, four of them in the free pass to Everidge.

The other solo homer off Sabathia came in the bottom of the first. A’s starter Vin Mazzaro hit Alex Rodriguez in his tender left elbow in the top of the first, and Sabathia retaliated by throwing behind catcher Kurt Suzuki with two outs in the bottom of the first. Suzuki dodged the pitch, then hit the next one into the left field seats, thus earning the Bad-Ass of the Game award (not recognized by the YES Network). Both benches were warned, but despite the fact that Melky Cabrera was hit later in the game by a clearly wild Jay Marshall, there were no further incidents.

As for all of those Yankee runs, Derek Jeter plated a Cabrera double in the second by hitting a ball through Adam Kennedy’s legs for the A’s second error in as many innings. The first A’s error was a throwing error by Suzuki on a Johnny Damon steal, but Damon was stranded when Jorge Posada struck out with the bases loaded trying to check his swing on a curve ball that almost hit his back foot). Posada made up for that strikeout in the third by doubling home Alex Rodriguez, who had singled, moved to second on a wild pitch, and to third on a groundout.

That tied the game at 2-2, but the Yankees made Mazzaro throw 103 pitches in five innings, then jumped all over the A’s extremely shaky middle relievers in the sixth. If Joe Girardi had brought a sidearming lefty with a 6.43 ERA and four more walks than strikeouts in to face a lefty and two switch hitters in the sixth inning of a tie game the readers of this blog may well have burned the Bronx to the ground. Fellow former Yankee catcher Bob Geren did just that and got what he paid for.

After getting the lefty (Robinson Cano) to ground out, Marshall gave up a double to the wall in left center to Nick Swisher (a switch-hitter batting right), moved him to left by crossing up Suzuki immediately after a mound conference with a pitch that somehow hit the home plate umpire on the left elbow after hitting Suzuki’s glove, hit Cabrera, then gave up RBI hits to Derek Jeter (single) and Johnny Damon (double). With that, Geren handed the ball to righty Santiago Casilla, who walked Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez on eight pitches (the last to Teixeira intentional), forcing in another run, then gave up an RBI single to Hideki Matsui and a sac fly to Posada before Cano came back around to groundout and put the A’s out of their misery.

In the middle of that action came the absurd scene pictured to the right. When Marshall hit Melky in the rump, Melky jumped back to try to avoid the pitch, but Suzuki also shifted to his left to try to block the pitch, resulting in Cabrera tumbling over the A’s catcher, much to the delight of his Yankee teammates and coaches (Tony Peña was in hysterics and both Joba Chamberlain and Jorge Posada mimicked Cabrera’s duck-winged attempt to keep his balance). The ball, meanwhile, deflected off Melky and headed toward first base.

That was this game in a nutshell. Yanks win a laugher 7-2.

Despite not having Alex Rodriguez (elbow) or Jorge Posada (finger) in the lineup, everything went right for the Yankees Thursday night. The offense dropped some early runs on Ian Snell, ran up the score as the game progressed, and CC Sabathia held the M’s to three hits over eight innings, allowing just one run on a solo shot inside the left-field foul pole by replacement shortstop Josh Wilson, and striking out ten.

The Yanks got a pair of two-out runs off Snell in the top of the second, but the key sequence of the game came in the top of the third, when they added three more runs over the course of just five pitches. Derek Jeter, who showed no ill-effects of being hit in the right foot by a pitch on Wednesday night, led off with a first-pitch home run over the home bullpen in the left-center gap. Johnny Damon followed by doubling on a 1-0 pitch, and after Mark Teixeira pushed him to third on a first-pitch groundout, Hideki Matsui hit Snell’s next offering into the seats in right-center for a two-run jack, his first of two in the game.

With subs in for Jeter and Damon, Brian Bruney mopped up with a 1-2-3 ninth, sealing the 11-1 win for the Yanks.

The Yankees had a scary day on Wednesday. In an afternoon rubber game against the Blue Jays, Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, and Alex Rodriguez all got hit hard by baseballs, Jeter in the foot, Posada in the hand, and Rodriguez in the elbow. As fits how well things have been going for this team, however, the Yankees turned what what looked like a series of season-altering injuries into a pair of runs and yet another walk-off win.

Jeter got hit in the right foot by a 1-2 curveball from Jays lefty Ricky Romero leading off the bottom of the first. He crumpled to the ground like one of those old toys, but got back up, limped to first, hobbled to third on Johnny Damon’s ensuing double, made a slick baserunning play by drawing a throw home from Edwin Encarnacion on a potential inning-ending around-the-horn double play, then diving back to third ahead of catcher Raul Chavez’s throw, and finally scored on a Jorge Posada groundout.

Jeter didn’t get a fielding chance in the top of the second and in his next at-bat in the bottom of the inning, he ground to an inning-ending fielder’s choice and headed straight for the trainer’s room after hobbling to first. Fortunately, his x-rays were negative.

Randy Ruiz–a Bronx native, former Trenton Thunder teammate of Phil Hughes, and now a 31-year-old rookie with a career .304/.378/.531 line and 192 homers in the minor leagues–deposited an A.J. Burnett fastball in the visiting bullpen in the top of the second to tie the game at 1-1. Johnny Damon and Robinson Cano added solo shots in the third and fourth to give the Yankees a 3-1 lead.

Burnett gave that up in the top of the sixth when Ruiz and Encarnacion singled with one out and moved to second and third on a wild pitch. Chavez singled home Ruiz, then with two outs and a 2-2 count on Marco Scutaro, Burnett uncorked another wild pitch that bounced between Posada’s legs and brought Encarnacion home with the tying run. Burnett led the majors with 14 wild pitches entering the game, added three more to his total and also hit home plate umpire Joe West in the chest on the fly with a fastball that crossed up Posada, but refused to discuss his wildness after the game.

In addition to having to chase all of those wild pitches, Posada was hit in the throwing hand (specifically the knuckle of his middle finger) by a foul tip in the top of the eighth. He stayed in the game and said afterwords that his hand will be fine.

Meanwhile the game remained tied at 3-3. Romero left after a 1-2-3 sixth and 109 pitches. Brandon League followed by allowing just one baserunner in three scoreless innings. Burnett also left after coughing up the lead in the sixth, having thrown 107 pitches. Phil Coke, David Robertson, Phil Hughes, and Chad Gaudin, making his Yankee debut, combined for five scoreless frames in relief with Gaudin pitching around a single and a walk and striking out three in his two innings of work.

Gaudin, incidentally, looks like a converted position player, though he’s not. He’s short, but athletic in build, and effectively mixes a slider and changeup with low-90s fastballs. His stuff isn’t electric, but it’s legitimate, and the hitters will let us all know when it is and isn’t working. Perhaps because he’s spent most of the year starting, he worked from a full windup with the bases empty, something you rarely see from a relief pitcher these days.

Shawn Camp replaced league and pitched a 1-2-3 tenth, but he fell behind 2-0 on all three hitters, throwing just six of 14 pitches for strikes. In the eleventh, he threw ball one to Hideki Matsui but rallied to strike him out looking. He then got ahead of Alex Rodriguez 0-2 before hitting Rodriguez flush on the left elbow. Rodriguez wears a pad on that elbow, but he, too, crumpled to the ground, then walked into the grass toward the visiting on-deck circle, and knelt down in pain, holding his arm. He was behaving as if his arm was broken, but as Paul O’Neill explained on the YEScast, he was most likely just hit in the funnybone, which when it’s done by a major league pitch (in this case an 89 mph fastball), can render a hitter’s arm completely numb.

Rodriguez eventually took his base, but looked like he was going to hurl from the pain. Fortunately, he didn’t get the opportunity. In the space of the next three pitches, Posada singled him to second and Robinson Cano shot a gapper to the wall in right-center that brought Rodriguez home with the winning run.

Yankees win, 4-3 in eleven innings, thanks in part to the feeble Blue Jay offense leaving 14 men on base.

So now the walking wounded head out to Seattle. Jeter and Posada are both questionable for Thursday’s game. Rodriguez was going to get the day off anyway. Meanwhile, Gaudin will start on Sunday allowing the Yankees to push Joba Chamberlain back to Wednesday to keep his innings down. Word from Brian Cashman is that Joba will remain in the rotation throughout the regular and postseasons. These large gaps between starts are their plan for keeping his innings down, and his limit is now said to be higher than the 150 we’ve been assuming all season.

Oh, and Mariano Rivera was unavailable on Wednesday because of a “cranky” shoulder and the 25 pitches he threw Tuesday night, but should be available on Thursday as well. The Yanks just went 6-1 on a homestand that included a four-game sweep of the Red Sox, are 8-1 over their last nine games, all against division rivals, and are 9-1 over their last ten including wins in games started by Mark Buehrle, Roy Halladay, Josh Beckett, Jon Lester, and Rookie of the Year candidate Ricky Romero, and four of their last five wins were either extra-inning walkoffs or late-game comebacks. They’re feeling no pain right now.

Friday night, the Yankees and Red Sox did something they’d never done before: open a game with 14 1/2 scoreless innings. Jacoby Ellsbury led off the game with a bloop hit of A.J. Burnett that fell between Melky Cabrera and Nick Swisher in shallow right center. The next Boston hit came with two outs in the top of the ninth inning when David Ortiz singled off Mariano Rivera. Burnett walked six men in between those two hits, and another man reached base on catchers interference, but none of those runners got past second base. The only Boston runner to get to third base in the entire 15-inning game was Ellsbury in the top of the first, who stole second and moved to third on a 4-6-3 double-play only to be stranded there.

The Yankees fared no better against Josh Beckett. Robinson Cano doubled to lead off the third and was followed by a Nick Swisher walk, but like the Sox in the top of the first, a double play and a groundout stranded Cano at third. In the fifth, the Yankees loaded the bases on singles by Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada and a two-out walk to Melky Cabrera, but Derek Jeter grounded to third on the first pitch he saw to end the threat. The only other baserunner off Beckett came on a leadoff Hideki Matsui single in the seventh, but he was erased when a one-out hit-and-run turned into a strike-em-out/throw-em-out double play.

Both bullpens came into play in the eighth. After Burnett walked Jacoby Ellsbury on four pitches, the last his 118th of the night, Joe Girardi brought in Phil Hughes to get the last out of the top of the eighth. With Beckett already at 115 pitches, Terry Francona went straight to his pen and Hideki Okajima in the bottom of the inning.

Hughes, Rivera, Alfredo Aceves, Brian Bruney, and Phil Coke combined to keep the Red Sox from scoring for 7 1/3 innings after Burnett left the game. Comined, they allowed just three singles and two walks while striking out eight. Aceves did the bulk of the work, striking out three in three scoreless innings and throwing 73 percent of his 37 pitches for strikes.

The Boston pen was nearly as good. Okajima, Daniel Bard, Ramon Ramirez, Jonathan Papelbon, Manny Delcarmen, and Takashi Saito combined for six scoreless innings allowing just one hit, but walking five against just four strikeouts. In the bottom of the 14th, Francona turned to the last man in his pen, 23-year-old Japanese rookie Junichi Tazawa, who thus made his major league debut. The Yankees sandwiched singles by Jorge Posada and Cano between a pair of hard outs, but Tazawa won an eight-pitch battle with Cabrera (which included a ball that was roughly an inch foul down the right-field line) to strikeout Melky swinging and push the game into the 15th.

After Coke’s ten-pitch top of the 15th, Tazawa returned to the mound and was greeted by another single, this one by Jeter. Johnny Damon failed to bunt Jeter over, fouling out to Victor Martinez on his second attempt, and Mark Teixeira struck out on four pitches. That brought Alex Rodriguez to the plate with two outs. Rodriguez had already come to the plate thrice in the game with two outs and a chance to end the game on one swing. The first time he reached on an infield single and stole second, but was stranded. The next time he struck out. The last he flied out to left. Facing Tazawa, Rodriguez took three pitches to get ahead 2-1 then broke his not-quite-career-long homerless streak by crushing the 2-1 pitch into the visiting bullpen, ending five and a half hours of scoreless baseball.

Welcome to the big leagues, kid. Yankees win, 2-0.

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Boxing metaphors are easy to come by when the Yanks play the Sox and I had boxing on the brain today for a couple of reasons: the writer Budd Schulberg died, and Muhammad Ali was honored before the game at Yankee Stadium.

My grandfather the head of public relations at the Anti-Defamantion League from 1946-71 (the year I was born), and helped prepare Schulberg’s statement before HUAC during the communist witch hunt after World War II–he also helped the actor John Garfield with his statement.

I remember seeing a worn copy of Schulberg’s The Disenchanted on my grandfather’s bookshelf; I think my aunt has his signed copy of Waterfront, the book that was the basis of On The Waterfront. Schulberg’s most enduring work is What Makes Sammy Run? a cynical novel about show biz.

Over at  The Sweet Science, George Kimball remembers Schulberg:

He straddled the worlds of literature and pugilism throughout his life, but unlike some of his more boastful contemporaries he was not a dilettante when it came to either. He sparred regularly with Mushy Callahan well beyond middle age. The night of the Frazier-Ali fight of the century Budd started to the arena in Muhammad Ali’s limousine, and then when the traffic got heavy, got out and walked to Madison Square Garden with Ali. A year before Jose Torres died, Budd and Betsy flew to Puerto Rico and spent several days with Jose and Ramona at their home in Ponce. Art Aragon was the best man at his wedding. And when push came to shove, he put on the gloves with both Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer and kicked both of their asses, though not, as some would now claim, on the same night.

And from an interview with Schulberg earlier this year in The Independent:

No writer has ever been closer to Muhammad Ali. Schulberg travelled in Ali’s car on the way to fights, sat in his dressing-room even after defeats, and was at the epicentre of some of the bizarre social situations the Louisville fighter liked to engineer. He was at the Hotel Concord in upstate New York when Ali was training for his third fight against Ken Norton. Schulberg was with his third wife, the actress Geraldine Brooks. “Ali,” Schulberg recalls, “asked Geraldine for an acting lesson. She improvised a scene in which he’d be provoked into anger.” After two unconvincing attempts, “She whispered in his ear, with utter conviction: ‘I hate to tell you this, but everybody here except you appears to know that your wife is having an affair with one of your sparring partners.’ I watched Ali’s eyes. Rage.”

Then, he recalls, Ali had another idea. “‘Let’s go to the middle of the hotel lobby. You turn on me and, in a loud voice, call me ‘nigger’.” Once in the foyer, crowded with Ali’s entourage, “Gerry dropped it on him. ‘You know what you are? You’re just a goddamn lying nigger.’ Schulberg recalls how Ali waited, restraining his advancing minders at the very last minute; a characteristic sense of timing that allowed his white guests, if only for a moment, to experience the emotions generated by the prospect of imminent lynching, yet live to tell the story.

The stars were out at the Stadium to see Ali and the Yanks: Bruce Willis, Paul Simon, Kate Hudson, and Hall of Famer, Eddie Murray. Ali was wearing a powder blue shirt and dark sunglasses; he slumped forward, a hulking man, surrounded by young, fit athletes and middle-aged executives. The moon was yellow and almost full. The stands were packed (49,005, the biggest crowd all year) as this was the most talked-about game to date in the new park.

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Kenny Rogers started three games for the Yankees in the 1996 postseason and lasted just seven innings total while allowing 11 runs, but the Yankees won all three of those games on their way to the championship. Sergio Mitre hasn’t been nearly as bad in his four Yankees starts as Rogers was in the ’96 postseason, but given his 7.50 ERA, it’s amazing that the Yankees have gone 3-1 in games Mitre has started.

Mitre got off to a good start Wednesday night, striking out the first two men he faced, but he hung a pitch to Adam Lind which, fortunately, resulted in a mere single. Lyle Overbay and Vernon Wells then delivered ground-ball singles that plated Lind and Alex Rios dropped a broken-bat single into shallow center to plate Overbay and give the Blue Jays a 2-0 lead.

The Yanks got that back in the third when Jerry Hairston Jr., starting at third base for DH Alex Rodriguez, led off with a walk and scored on singles by Derek Jeter and Johnny Damon. Jeter took third on the throw home, just beating out Overbay’s cut-off throw, the scored when Edwin Encarnacion double-clutched on a would-be double-play ball from Mark Teixeira, allowing Tex to beat the pivot throw to first.

Mitre and Jays rookie Marc Rzepczynski (pronounced zep-CHIN-ski, as it turns out) held the 2-2 tie in place until the bottom of the fifth, when Adam Lind crushalated a Mitre changeup to right field to make it 3-2 Jays.  After Overbay followed with a single, Joe Girardi popped out of the dugout and took the ball from Mitre, who gave up three runs on eight hits and a pair of walks in 4 1/3 innings.

That’s how Joe Torre’s ’96 Yankees won those Kenny Rogers games. Torre got Rogers out quickly and let his bullpen and offense do their jobs. Wednesday night, Alfred Aceves relieved Mitre and retired the first five men he faced setting up a four-run top of the seventh by the Yankee offense.

Nick Swisher led off that frame with a game-tying home run into the Toronto bullpen. Robinson Cano followed with a double to the wall in right-center that bounced Rzepczynski in favor of deadline acquisition Josh Roenicke. After failing to get a bunt down on Roenicke’s high-90s fastball, Melky Cabrera got a curve and pulled it to second base to move Cano to third on an out. Hideki Matsui then hit for Hairston and chopped a single in front of Joe Inglett in left field to plate Cano with the go-ahead run. Roenicke then walked Jose Molina and Matsui and Molina scored on ensuing singles by Damon and Teixeira, thanks in part to Jays catcher Rod Barajas bobbling the throw home on Damon’s hit and allowing Molina to go to third.

Up 6-3, Aceves gave up a solo shot to Marco Scutaro in the seventh, then yielded to Phil Coke, who got the last two outs of the inning. After the Yankees plated another Cano double via a pair of fly balls to right (by Melky and pinch-hitter Eric Hinske), Phil Hughes worked a scoreless eighth. Johnny Damon then hit a leadoff homer off Brian Tallett in the top of the ninth, expanding the lead to four runs and giving the ninth inning to David Robertson, who pitched around a Scutaro single to nail down the 8-4 win.

With that the Yankees swept the Blue Jays, finished with a winning record on the road trip, and gained a game over Boston and enter this weekend’s four-game death match with a 2.5-game lead in the East and an active three-game winning streak. But don’t count your money when you’re sitting at the table. There’ll be time enough for counting when the dealing’s done.

Tough night for the Yankees. After an hour-long rain delay, Gavin Floyd and Andy Pettitte come out and start mowin’ ’em down. Home plate ump Ted Barrett’s generous strike zone helps. There’s just one walk in the game (by Floyd to Johnny Damon in the top of the first), and 23 strikeouts, ten of them looking. Forty-six percent of Floyd’s strikes are called as opposed to swinging.

The Chisox eke out a run first when Chris Getz singles to lead off the third and scores on a two-out double into the left field corner by hot-shot rookie Gordon Beckham. Floyd and Pettitte retire the next 12 batters until the Yankees answer in the sixth when Jose Molina leads off with a double and Damon gets him home with a well-placed single toward the line in right (well placed to allow Molina to score from second, that is, it was a well-struck hit).

Entering the bottom of the sixth there have been just seven hits–three by the Yanks, four by the Sox–and the game is tied 1-1. Jim Thome leads off and hits an accidental blooper up the first base line. Pettitte hustles over to grab the ball and tag Thome out, but as he gets into his crouch, his right foot slips on the wet turf, sending him onto his backside and putting Thome on first base. After Pettitte strikes out Paul Konerko, A.J. Pierzynski hits a skipper to Alex Rodriguez’s left that the Yankee third baseman flubs for an infield single putting men on first and second with one out.

With Pettitte at 101 pitches and righty Carlos Quentin coming up, Joe Girardi pops out of the bullpen and calls on the dominant Phil Hughes. Hughes gets Quentin to hit a hard grounder to third, which Rodriguez fields and fires to Robinson Cano at second to start a would-be inning-ending double play, but Pierzynski comes with a hard, late slide at second and Cano jerks his throw up the line. Mark Teixeira comes of the bag and knocks it down, but it rolls just far enough away to allow Thome to score with the go-ahead run.

In the top of the eighth, Derek Jeter drives Floyd from the game with a single on his 103rd pitch of the night. Damon then greets lefty fireballer Matt Thornton with a single pushing the tying run into scoring position, but Thornton hits his stride from there striking out Mark Teixeira to end the inning and Alex Rodriguez and Hideki Matsui to start the top of the ninth on a combined ten pitches. Thornton’s first pitch to Nick Swisher is another called strike. His second is blasted into the left-field seats for a game-tying home run.

Swisher said after the game that he was trying to do too much against his former team in his first few at-bats, but with Thornton dominating he was just trying to get the bat on the ball. Mission accomplished.

Thornton then struck out Robinson Cano on three pitches.

Bottom of the ninth, Hughes still on having thrown just 24 pitches over the previous inning and a third. Hughes gets Jermaine Dye to foul out, but with Jim Thome up, Robinson Cano shifts into shallow right and Thome hits Hughes’ 0-1 pitch through Cano’s vacated position (why Jeter wasn’t pulled over for a full shift, I couldn’t tell you). With Scott Podsednik in to run, Konerko dumps Hughes’ next pitch into left to put the winning run on second base. Girardi then calls on Phil Coke to pitch to lefties Pierzynski and defensive replacement Dewayne Wise. Coke gets A.J. to fly out to shallow left center, holding the runners. He then works back from 2-0 to go even on Wise only to have Wise line the 2-2 back through the box. The ball ticks off Coke’s glove, but doesn’t change direction, heading straight into center for a game-winning single. Sox win, 3-2.

Missed it by that much.

Here’s what I wrote prior to Joba Chamberlain’s last start of the first half:

Joba Chamberlain . . . got an ego check his last time out when he allowed eight runs in 3 2/3 innings. Joba’s been a bit obstinate about his performances thus far this season, often giving too much credit to the opposing lineup as well as to his own ability to make good pitches, when in reality he’s been inefficient, nibbly, and his velocity has lacked consistency. He’s still been valuable, but his lack of progress is becoming disturbing. Part of me almost wants him to get his ass handed to him tonight so he has to ugly outings staring him in the face through the All-Star break. The hope being that might put a crack in some of his delusions.

Joba did indeed get smacked around in that start against the Angels, allowing five runs on nine hits in just 4 1/3 innings while using up 94 pitches, and it seems those two starts did indeed give him something to think about during the break. Since play has resumed, Chamberlain has been the pitcher those of us who argued for his restoration to the rotation envisioned. He’s an ace, a dominating horse who is only getting better each time out. Dig these three lines:

6 1/3 IP, 3 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 8 K, 107 pitches
7 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 3 BB, 6 K, 100 pitches
8 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 5 K, 101 pitches

Two runs on six hits in 21 1/3 innings? That’s sick, and surely a little bit lucky, but there’s no denying that Joba Chamberlain has finally arrived.

That last line is what he did to the third-best offense in the league in Wednesday night’s rubber game against the Rays. Joba was quite simply mowing them down. With his new no-nonsense approach, he was getting the ball and getting set on the mound so quickly that even Jorge Posada was trying to slow him down. He retired the first eight men he faced, and after Posada threw out Jason Bartlett with two outs in the third (thanks to a great jump, catch, and tag by Robinson Cano) he faced the minimum through 4 1/3. He walked two in the fifth, but stranded them both and didn’t walk another batter in the entire game. The only hits he allowed were a pair of singles to Bartlett and an infield single off his own glove in the sixth. He had his fastball clocking in around 94 miles per hour and great movement on his slider and curve. It doesn’t get much better than that.

The Yankees, meanwhile, picked away at Matt Garza. Derek Jeter led off the game with a triple on a ball misplayed in the right-field corner by Gabe Gross then scored when Mark Teixeira singled through three drawn-in infielders on the right-side. In the fourth, Alex Rodriguez singled, moved to third on a Hideki Matsui double, and scored on a Robinson Cano groundout. Cano then blasted a homer in the sixth after fouling a ball off his shin. With sidearming lefty Brian Shouse on in the eighth, Bartlett threw away a grounder by Matsui, putting Hideki on second, from where Posada was able to drive in pinch-runner Cody Ransom with a single to make it 4-0. Melky Cabrera and Mark Teixeira then added solo homers off Dan Wheeler in the ninth.

The Yankees nearly needed all of those runs as Brian Bruney, in to finish off a 6-0 game, gave up a triple and a homer to his first two batters (Carl Crawford and Evan Longoria). After getting Ben Zobrist to pop out, he then gave up a double to Carlos Peña. Before Bruney could pitch for the cycle, Joe Girardi brough in Mariano Rivera to lock down the series against a division rival. Rivera walked Gabe Gross, but struck out Pat Burrell and Michel Hernandez around him to secure the 6-2 win and the 3-2 series victory. With the win, the Yankees gained a game over the Red Sox, who lost to the A’s, and tied Joe Torre’s Dodgers for the best record in baseball.

Bruney’s showing was the one sour note on the night. If Bruney can’t step up, it’s going to be that much harder for the Yankees to feel comfortable moving Phil Hughes back into the rotation, if they’re even considering such a move at all. Meanwhile, Joba’s next start lines up with the Yankees’ off-day on Monday. Given the fact that his longer outings have him racing toward his innings limit, would the Yankees consider skipping him in Toronto? He’ll get to pitch in the weekend series against the Red Sox either way. If so, they could skip him again on August 24 in lieu of starting him against the Rangers at home on the 25th.

This was the game I thought the Yanks were going to have on Monday. A night where nothing goes right. Instead it happened tonight. For every sloppy play the Yankees made the Rays countered with a slick one. Moving to his right, Carl Crawford closed quickly on a line drive robbing Alex Rodriguez of an RBI base hit. Later, BJ Upton glided back and nabbed a shot hit by Jorge Posada. (They are a wonderful contrast in styles–Crawford, powerful and aggresive but not graceful; Upton, smooth like butta.)  Jason Bartlett also made a couple of nifty plays at short.

Meanwhile, Derek Jeter and Rodriguez had throwing errors (Rodriguez’s mistake led to a run), Mark Teixeira mistimed a jump on a line drive allowing another run to come in, and Nick Swisher had two adventurous plays that he’d soon like to forget (the first one included an ill-advised and unnecessary dive). Hideki Matsui drove in the Yankees’ first run and then got picked off after misreading the throw from right fielder Gabe Gross.

Nobody helped CC Sabathia, who was far from terrific anyhow–he gave up some shot to Evan Longoria. Scott Kazmir, on the other hand, was excllent, allowing one run over 7.1 innings as the Rays cruised, 6-2.

And so the Yanks went kerplunk. Sometimes things just don’t go your way. Just ask Buster.*

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Heading into Sunday’s finale against the A’s, Yankee manager Joe Girardi figured he had a well-rested bullpen (Phil Hughes last pitched on Thursday night, Mariano Rivera hadn’t pitched since Wednesday) and his fifth starter on the mound making just his second major league start since 2007, so he devised a plan that required his starter to go no more than six innings.

As it turned out, Sergio Mitre only needed 72 pitches to get through the first five frames. Still, nursing a one-run lead heading into the sixth, Girardi had lefty Phil Coke warm and waiting. Kurt Suzuki led off with a single off Mitre, and with four of five hitters behind Suzuki being left-handed, Girardi put his plan into effect right there and then.

Since Girardi didn’t appraise me of his plan before the game, I had no idea what the hell he was doing. Mitre had given up three runs on nine hits, but he hadn’t walked anybody and was getting a ton of ground balls. After a rough first in which he allowed two runs on a double and three singles, two of the latter well-placed bouncers up the middle, Mitre had pitched effectively and economically. After pitching around a two-out single for a scoreless second, Mitre worked a four-pitch third, hitting Scott Hairston with a curveball with his first pitch, then getting a 1-6-3 double play from Jack Cust on his next offering and getting Suzuki to groundout on an 0-1 pitch. A pair of singles set up a Mark Ells sac fly in the fourth, but Mitre survived his own throwing error on a would-be double play by getting a successful 6-4-3 DP on the next pitch thanks to some great glovework by Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano (Jeter ranged into the hole, turned and fired a strike to Cano without making a leap; Cano caught the ball with his back to first then spun and made one of his signature all-wrist throws, hard and on the money to Mark Teixeira to beat Adam Kennedy at first). In the fifth, Mitre again induced a 6-4-3, then struck out Cust on four pitches.

Mitre had thrown 91 pitches in his last start, so there was no good reason to take Mitre out. It smacked of overmanaging, particularly after Coke gave up a two-out, two-run homer to righty-swinging Mark Ellis that gave the A’s a 5-4 lead.

Fortunately, the Yankee offense was having none of that. After Mitre gave up two runs in the top of the first, the Yankees answered back with four in the bottom of the first, the key hit being a three-run bases-loaded double by Robinson Cano (who went to third on the throw home, but overslid the bag and was tagged out for the third out). After Ellis’s two-run jack gave the A’s their second lead of the game, the Yankees stormed right back with three in the bottom of the sixth when Melky Cabrera drew a one-out walk, Cody Ransom doubled him to third, Derek Jeter singled them both home, then Damon doubled and scored on a Mark Teixeira single. (Jeter didn’t score in that sequence because he was picked off first by A’s starter Dallas Braden, who has a sick move. Jeter was roughly two steps off the bag when Braden quickly stepped off the rubber and fired the ball right at Jeter’s bellybutton. The ball got there almost before Jeter could react and all first baseman Daric Barton had to do was put his glove on Jeter’s stomach and catch the ball.)

With Phil Coke thus having successfully vultured the win, Girardi went to Phil Hughes, who worked a 1-2-3 seventh striking out Hairston and Cust and then Suzuki to start the eighth. Hughes then lost a eight-pitch battle with Ryan Sweeney, walking him, and gave up a double to Daric Barton to put runners on the corners and put his scoreless streak in jeopardy. Girardi promptly brought in Brian Bruney, who struck out Mark Ellis on four pitches, then brought in Mariano Rivera for the four-pitch save. A pair of groundouts and a pair of strikeouts later, the Yankees had taken the series with a 7-5 win, wrapping up their second-half-opening home stand with a 9-1 record.

I love it when a plan comes together.

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