The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Wednesday, October 21st 2009, 4:00 AM
Simmons/News
CC Sabathia enjoys laugher as he continues to earn every dime of contract. The Yankees beat the Angels 10-1 to come within one win of the World Series.
ANAHEIM - This continues to be the October of Alex Rodriguez, who hits the ball so hard and so often that he makes the way he can play baseball the lead paragraph of his own story again, his baseball back to being played ahead of steroids and strip clubs and all the scoring opportunities he wasted in all his other Yankee Octobers. He hit another home run Tuesday night, got three more hits and scored three more runs and the Yankees kept their manager in the dugout and are one win away from their first World Series in six years now.
But CC Sabathia gives you more October than anybody on the team. Sabathia went out Tuesday night on three days' rest at Angel Stadium and went to 3-0 for the postseason, with a 1.19 earned-run average, and continued to be the kind of star ace pitcher in games such as these that he was hired to be, that he was paid a fortune to be. And clearly relishes being. Even on a night when the Yankees scored all those runs, turned the thing into a jailbreak in the late innings, the big man put them on his back again. This is how you accept the responsibility of New York, and all the money.
"For me every game is a big game at this point," Sabathia said in the interview room later, in a white T-shirt that looked roomy enough to serve as a hospitality tent. "Whether we came into this game ahead three games to none or two games to one, it was a big game for me."
He is as much an ace at this time of year as the Yankees have had in what feels like about a hundred Octobers. He wants the ball, he wants this stage, he wants to make things right for himself after he could not pitch the Indians into the World Series two years ago.
"I had an opportunity and unfortunately didn't get it done," Sabathia said.
He gets it done now. Last Friday night, in a fierce cold at Yankee Stadium, he gave Joe Girardi eight innings. Last night, a night when the Yankees needed a big game from him to make Game 3 and the way it ended the day before go away, he pitched eight more innings, gave the Angels five hits and just one run, a home run by Kendry Morales.
There will always be more glamour for home run guys such as A-Rod, especially when the home runs and RBI come from him after years of postseason failures. This has been a stunning reversal of fortune for him, after the years when he became the poster boy for all those Yankee first-round losses. Now, three years after Joe Torre put A-Rod eighth in the order in a playoff game against the Tigers, the crowd goes wild at Angel Stadium when the Angels get him out once in a game.
A-Rod helped carry the offense again. Sabathia does even more to carry the Yankees right now. Joe Girardi had made 14 pitching changes in the last 18 innings before the start of Game 4. Then he gave Sabathia the ball, and that ended that, everybody stayed in the bullpen until Chad Gaudin entered the 10-1game in the ninth. Sabathia didn't throw his 100th pitch until the eighth inning of Game 1 against the Angels, didn't throw No.100 last night until he faced Torii Hunter in the eighth. No. 101 was a ground ball to second, and his work here was done.
Before the game Tuesday, he was in the lounge in the visitors clubhouse, eating Doritos - of course - and watching a replay of Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series, Yankees against the Red Sox, the Aaron Boone game, the last time the Yankees played themselves into the World Series.
Mo Rivera was with him.
"How many innings did you pitch in that game?" Sabathia said.
"Just three," Rivera said.
He knew and Rivera knew and the Yankees knew Sabathia would be expected to pitch more than three innings last night. And he did. He sure did. The Yankees would give him a lot more stick than he needed in the baseball home of those annoying thundersticks. Sabathia didn't pitch as if he were working on short rest, he pitched the way he did for most of the second half of the season, the way he has pitched every time he has gotten the ball in this postseason. Try to remember the last time you trusted a Yankee ace starter such as this at this time of year.
"He was tremendous," Rivera said when it was over, 10-1 for the Yankees.
"He does what the ace is supposed to do," Jose Molina said. "He gives confidence to a whole team."
The Angels got two runners on after Morales' home run. Sabathia got out of it. They got their first two runners on in the sixth. Sabathia got a double play. He got the last eight guys he faced. Cliff Lee, his old teammate, has been something to see for the Phillies. Nobody throws better, has more stuff, than Sabathia right now in baseball.
The spotlight will always find A-Rod, found him in bad times, finds him now when they can't get him out in the playoffs. Down the freeway from Hollywood, he tries to write a Hollywood ending to a season that began with steroids. Gives you all this October. Almost as much as Sabathia.
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