With one daring baserunning play, abetted by the overshift his mate at the plate inspired Sunday night, Johnny Damon made it clear enough that these New York Yankees don't necessarily need to swing long-range bats all the time to put the Philadelphia Phillies on the brink of making Jimmy Rollins look like an inside-out prophet.
Even if the Phillies go to the bomb squad to tie up a game that almost made manager Charlie Manuel look like genius enough for saving Cliff Lee for a Game Five. Almost.
And if you should discover that the Phillies have begun wondering why on earth Manuel didn't shift the script, hold Joe Blanton a day, send Lee — whose offer to do precisely this was spurned by the skipper — out on three days' rest anyway, and wrap Rollins's big yap in duct tape, you shouldn't be surprised.
The Phillies in five? Now that they're in win-or-be-gone mode in their own playpen for Lee in Game 5 Monday night, they stand chance enough of making Rollins' prediction of a five-game Series come true in the Empire Emeritus's favor.
Damon had the stickiest fingers and the fattest hand of them all to do with that.
Those years of running into inanimate objects on behalf of hauling flies, shortening extra base hits in the outfield, and building runs have taken toll enough on Damon. But he doesn't behave like it with a World Series on the line. He didn't in helping the Boston Red Sox snap that 86-year title drought and he doesn't on behalf of the team he helped vanquish in the worst. pennant. collapse. ever. to get to that snap in the first place.
He may have found new life as a power hitter during the regular season, but Damon couldn't resist reverting to classic Idiot form after dumping a two-out, full-count quail off Phillies closer Brad Lidge that left fielder Raul Ibanez couldn't reach before it hit the grass. Spotting an opening when the Phillies shifted their defensive weight toward the first base half of the field, defensing Mark Teixiera, Damon watched a Lidge slider hit the deck and he hit the gas, stealing second on a low-deck throw up from catcher Carlos Ruiz.
Then he eluded scrambling third baseman Pedro Feliz, who took the throw up from home as part of that Teixiera shift and knew only too well third base was defenseless. As did Damon, who'd popped up like a jack-in-the-box from his slide into second, spotted the uncovered pad, and stole it unmolested before Lidge plunked Teixiera to set up the corners for Alex Rodriguez.
"I think what I had to see before I started running for third base," Damon told reporters after the Yankees had the 7-4 Game 4 win secured, "was how [Feliz] caught the [throw]. I knew it [pulled] him off [the base]. I'm just glad when I started running I still had some of my young legs behind me. It worked out, because being at third base it took away a tough slider in the dirt. Alex got two fastballs. It did work out for us."
Rodriguez's own first-inning plunk prodded the umpires to hand down the warnings to both sides in the first, never mind that not even the Yankees were going to accuse Blanton of anything even distantly related to a purpose pitch. Now, hitless on the night to this point with a pair of fly-outs to center and a pounding swishout from Phillies reliever Ryan Madson, A-Rod set himself for a one-strike Lidge service and took maybe the biggest swing of his postseason life to date.
He hammered it to the left field track, bouncing it off the W.A. Mason sign on the fence, sending Damon home with the tiebreaker and sending Teixiera to third. A-Rod had only been waiting his entire career to deliver what proved a game-winning World Series hit, and the best news of all was that it was merely the prelude to a Yankee kiss.
Because Jorge Posada, likewise hitless on the night, though it was his sacrifice fly in the first that sent home the second Yankee run before a single Phillie had seen a plate appearance, singled home Tex and the Rod. Guaranteeing the Yankees' gilt-edged last-inning insurance, for a ninth that should have seen a pinch hitter for Lidge followed by the real lineup meat: Rollins, Shane Victorino, Chase Utley at least, perhaps Howard and Jayson Werth at most.
Nobody needed FOX announcer Joe Buck and Tim McCarver to remind them The Mariano had never blown a three-run save in his entire formidable postseason career and wasn't about to start now, either. Not with Teixiera holding his coat, especially. The Yankee first baseman must have told The Mariano to relax and just let them hit it his way. He handled all three chances in the Philadelphia ninth, sandwiching a flaring Rollins popup with two unassisted ground outs.
That wasn't the result the Phillies thought possible when Chase Utley, who'd opened his side's scoring with a first-inning RBI double, drove C.C. Sabathia out of the game after a gutsy outing by driving a 1-2 slider some twelve rows up the right field bleachers in the bottom of the seventh.
Or, when Pedro Feliz — all 1-for-11 of him in the Series to that point — rudely interrupted Yankee reliever Joba Chamberlain's plans of striking out the side in the bottom of the eighth by wringing Chamberlain to a two-out full count before ringing the left field bleachers to tie it up at four.
Not that the Phillies needed Jayson Werth to go 0-for-3 with an intentional walk and two men stranded. Or Raul Ibanez to go 0-for-4 with three swishouts and three men stranded. Or Ruiz to go 0-for-3 with an intentional walk and a swishout. Did I mention Rollins going 1-for-5? Howard going 1-for-4 and doing nothing when he hit with men on?
Squaring off with an 8.18 lifetime ERA against the Empire Emeritus, Blanton did everything he could with what he had. If you didn't count the four runs the Yankees pried out of him in the first and the fifth innings, Blanton otherwise looked almost exactly the way the Phillies prayed he'd look if they were going to have to hit Game 4 without Lee on the bump. All he really needed was a way to keep Damon and Derek Jeter out of the batter's box.
The number one and two Yankee hitters had hand enough in all the Yankee scoring prior to the ninth inning showing of Damon Rides Again, going 4-for-7 with 2 runs scored and 2 driven in. Jeter opened the game with a base hit and scored on Teixiera's unassisted ground out to first baseman Howard, then singled home Nick Swisher (a leadoff walk) in the fifth; Damon doubled Jeter to third in the first, eventually scoring on Posada's sacrifice fly, then singled home Melky Cabrera (a base hit) in the fifth.
Blanton otherwise ended up striking out seven in six innings' work, including called third strikes on his first four punchouts, and outpacing Sabathia for first-pitch strikes, 18-13. He kept the Yankees to three full counts and ended two of them with strikeouts. Sabathia, for his part, otherwise looked mostly like his customary self, stranding seven Phillies before Utley made it 4-for-6 against the big left-hander, compared to 5-for-45 by the rest of the Phillies against him.
Lidge hadn't yet appeared in the Series and it showed. He needed a full count to swish Jeter with one out in the ninth, and once Damon had pulled his unprecedented one-man double theft Lidge was probably robbed of his best pitch, the slider that breaks sharply enough down to lure a hitter into futility while risking a wild pitch that allows fresh life to awakening giants.
Something needs to reawaken the Phillies' sleeping giants. Something not wearing a Yankee uniform with grand theft squared in its heart.
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