It may have been the first time a World Series game turned on a television camera ricochet. Not to mention leaving Internet followers puzzled. How the hell could the Yankees hang up a two-spot when the play-by-play read, as it did for the first several minutes after the inning ended:
- * Johnny Damon flied out to center.
- * Mark Teixiera walked.
- * Alex Rodriguez doubled to right, Teixiera to third.
- * Jorge Posada grounded out to shortstop.
- * Robinson Cano fouled out to catcher.
- * End of inning. (2 runs, 1 hit, 0 errors.)
If that's the way the inning really went, everybody raving about Yankee power sure did know what they were talking about. Either Posada had nailed the most powerful groundout in World Series history, or Cano had hit the most powerful foul pop of all-time.
But there was A-Rod, trying to snap his way out of a World Series slump, with the Empire Emeritus down by three in the top of the fourth, standing proudly enough on second base and chatting amiably with Phillies first baseman Ryan Howard lingering near second, A-Rod was perhaps more than a little sympathetic to Howard's Series struggling. (The Phillies' bombardier has devolved from the National League Championship Series MVP to a 2-for-13, 9-punchout question mark.)
Only Yankee manager Joe Girardi saw something not quite right when A-Rod followed a swinging strike by driving a Cole Hamels service the other way, to the right field corner, where it looked as though it bounced above the fence and ricocheted back onto the field.
"I thought I saw it hit the camera," said Rodriguez after the Yankees nailed the 8-5 Game 3 win. "But I wasn't sure. I mean, that Plexiglass over there is kind of tough to see from home plate."
Girardi buttonholed right field ump Jeff Nelson (no relation to the one-time Yankee reliever), and provoked a conference among all six arbiters who ducked under the stands posthaste. Moments later they came back with the word. That clean enough double was actually a two-run bomb — the ball had hit a television camera off the right field fence.
It kind of figured — A-Rod's words, not mine — that the first instant-replay reversal in Series history was triggered by the guy who'd triggered the first anytime instant-replay reversal overall a year earlier. Whether the ball actually would have cleared the rail atop the fence had the camera lens not extended over it will probably prove a debating point.
And that two-run bomb began the unraveling of Hamels, who'd been pitching rather handily until he faced what began as second and third with one out and who actually shook off the unusual launch to turn Posada and Cano aside without breaking that much stride.
"I think the key for us was grind out at-bats, swing at strikes, and not beat ourselves," A-Rod said of Hamels. "Cole's a great competitor, And, you know, he had us going, and the home run got us going a little bit."
By the time the Yankees finished him off in the top of the fifth, Hamels looked nothing like the 2008 World Series MVP and everything like the suddenly shaky pitcher he'd been all postseason long. No wonder the Yankees could look and laugh knowingly when Andy Pettitte — of all people — became their first pitcher to land an RBI since future best-selling author Jim Bouton did it in the 1964 Series, and a game-tying one at that.
Pettitte lined a first-pitch single up the pipe to send home Nick Swisher, another Yankee trying to shove his way out of a postseason funk when he ripped a 2-2 service into the left field corner to open the inning. Derek Jeter followed up with a first-pitch single to push Pettitte to second, Damon looked at a strike before hammering home Pettitte and Jeter with a for-real double into the right field corner, and Teixiera went from being in the hole 1-2 to a walk, ending Hamels' evening on the last note the Philadelphia left-hander wanted to play.
For the first three innings, however, Hamels looked every inch the defending Series MVP, if you didn't count his leadoff, first-pitch plunk on A-Rod to open the top of the second. And Pettitte for the first two innings or so looked little enough like the man who now held the all-time record for postseason wins and stood a decent chance, assuming his retirement isn't imminent and the Yankees don't devolve into a mishmash from here, of becoming perhaps the first postseason 20-game winner ever.
Some including Pettitte himself thought the opening rain delay had something to say about that. "I've had a lot of rain delays, you know, this year already," he said with a shuddering chuckle after the game, "and I feel like I've been pitching in a lot of rain. It affected me a little bit today. I was heated up and ready to go, it felt like I was in a real good place mentally, and right as I was about to walk out the door and go to the bullpen they shut me down ... I wasn't quite as locked in (in the first two innings) ... It never really felt like it felt really good in places."
The Phillies knew better than to let the moment escape. Pettitte almost re-horsed himself after Jimmy Rollins swatted his first pitch of the game for a clean single to left — if there was any moment emblematic of the bulk of Pettitte's postseason life it was his bullish follow-up battle with Chase Utley after Shane Victorino popped out, fighting back from a 3-1 deficit to drop in a called strike, shake off two fouls, and then swish the Philadelphia second baseman and guiding force as if he'd known in advance he'd had Utley's bat drilled in the right spot on the barrel.
That was the first inning. An inning later, however, Pettitte looked as though he couldn't find a strike by a labor union — which, by the way, was what Philadelphia's (transit, that is) promised to shun until at least after the Series moves back to New York, assuming it does.
He got behind Jayson Werth 3-0 to open the Philadelphia second, dropped in a called strike, got a foul second strike, and then got struck but good when Werth hammered the full-count service about twelve rows up the left field bleachers. He got behind the next three Phillies and erased only the first of the trio, swishing Raul Ibanez on three straight after opening with ball one, while Pedro Feliz doubled to right and Carlos Ruiz walked.
Hamels didn't even wait for ball one: he bunted and, of all things, beat it out to load the pads for Rollins, who walked on a 3-1 count in which the strike didn't show up until after ball three. He got ahead of Shane Victorino on two fast strikes but even that wasn't good enough to keep Victorino from sending home the third Phillie run with a sacrifice fly close enough to the left field track.
But Pettitte managed to ease himself from slovenly to sure the longer the game went on. So did the Yankee bats. Swisher showed his fifth-inning opener was a mere warmup when he drove a 2-2 fastball over the left field fence with one out in the Yankee sixth, doubling their advantage. Pettitte even flicked off Jayson Werth's leadoff bomb in the bottom of the inning with a 2-2 swishout of Ibanez and a full-count swishout of Feliz, and worked pinch-hitter (for Phillies reliever J.A. Happ) Eric Bruntlett for a fly-out to right as though Ruiz's walk in the interim was a mere setup.
By the top of the seventh, the Yankees were stripping the Phillies' bullpen in earnest. Chad Durbin went from 1-2 on Damon to walking him, then striking out Teixiera while Damon stole second and plunking A-Rod before feeding Posada the wrong full-count pitch, Posada lining it to left for the RBI single. Brett Myers only thought he had it made when he got the first two Yankees (Swisher on a fly, Melky Cabrera on the swish) out in the eighth, but then came Hideki Matsui — pinch hitting for Joba Chamberlain, who'd worked a flawless Philadelphia seventh — to disabuse him with an inside-out launch two rows into the bleachers.
They weren't about to let the Phillies strip their pen, either. All it took was Ruiz sending Phil Hughes's one-out, 1-1 service into the bleachers and in came The Mariano. Three pitches, two outs, and 8-5 was the Yankee win.
This leaves Phillies manager Charlie Manuel with a possible decision to make. He'd already confounded observers by picking Joe Blanton to start Game 4, rather than Cliff Lee on slightly short rest. That may have assumed the Phillies getting fat and happy in their home yard. But that assumption may have disappeared with the Yankees taking the Series lead.
Almost in the blink of a camera's eye.
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