The Daily News
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Sunday, November 1st 2009, 4:00 AM
PHILADELPHIA - The Yankees got ahead in the World Series last night, got ahead because Alex Rodriguez changed another game with a home run, not in the late innings this time, but in the fourth inning of a game the Yankees were losing 3-0. The Yankees won Game3 and got ahead of the Phillies because Andy Pettitte got an RBI single and Johnny Damon hit a double up the gap and Hideki Matsui, pinch-hitting this time, hit another one over the wall. The Yankees got ahead in the Series, beat the Phillies, 8-5, and beat them up a little bit, because on this night their bullpen was more than just Mo Rivera.
Phillip/AP
Andy Pettitte's performance on the mound for the Yankees over six innings gives Bombers opportunity to grab the World Series lead.
The Yankees came from behind again, kept hitting home runs - they have now 18 for the postseason, more for a single postseason than any Yankee team in history - and scored so many runs that they were able to practically give Rivera the night off. Not two innings last night. Just the last two outs.
All good. None of it happens if Andy Pettitte doesn't stand in there against the Phillies, like a hitter standing in against the curve. There have been what feel like a hundred October nights when he had more fastball and more stuff than he showed you against the Phillies in Game 3, those three runs in the first two innings, two home runs by Jayson Werth, the second one a monster shot that went off the facing of the upper deck at Citizens Bank Park.
He pitched six innings, gave up five hits, struck out seven, gave up the two home runs. It does not look like a lot. It was. On this night, the night when the Yankees were trying to get ahead and then give the ball to CC Sabathia, Pettitte was as much a champion Yankee as he has ever been. He needed 17 minutes and 24 pitches to get out of the bottom of the first. He threw over to first eight times after Jimmy Rollins singled. He saw Rollins steal second without even drawing a throw from Jorge Posada. It is supposed to be easier stealing from an armored car.
"He struggled with his command early," Joe Girardi said.
By the time Werth took him out to left and Pedro Feliz nearly did the same to right and the Phillies had hung those three on him in the second, Pettitte seemed to be fighting the Phillies, the crowd, his own lack of command. He had given up as many runs in two innings as Sabathia and A.J. Burnett - combined - had given up in Games 1 and 2.
"You make a couple of mistakes during the course of a (World Series) game ... you may get hung with a loss, you know?" he'd said on Friday.
Oh, he knows, all right. He knows because this is his eighth World Series, seventh with the Yankees, and he knows all about games like this, nights like this. And from the third through the sixth last night, the only guy who got him was Werth. Sometimes you can be great on a night like this by being just good enough and tough enough. Pettitte was more a champion here than he was last Sunday night closing out the Angels. Because he wasn't at his best in Philadelphia. This was the kind of game that makes you wonder why he ever thought he needed performance-enhancing drugs for one day of his career.
Pettitte struck out Utley, looking, to end the second. Pitched a 1-2-3 third. Got through the fourth after Rodriguez began that inning with a throwing error on a routine ground ball that Feliz hit. So Pettitte was still in there when A-Rod's first hit of the World Series turned out to be a huge two-run homer after the umps looked at the replay and saw that the ball had hit off a camera above the right field wall.
"Looked like the ball struck the camera, from what I saw," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said.
Pettitte was still around to make about the biggest swing he has ever made in the postseason, an RBI single on the first pitch he saw from Cole Hamels in the top of the fifth, a dinker to center that fell in front of Shane Victorino, scoring Nick Swisher. Pettitte eventually came around to score on Johnny Damon's double and now he wasn't in a hole, he was ahead 5-3. Not looking at a loss anymore. Just looking at the 17th postseason victory of his career.
"What can you say?" said Derek Jeter, who almost caught Pettitte on the basepaths on Damon's two-run double. "He pitched, he hit. He did everything today."
"We put a three-spot on him and then (Pettitte) shut us down," Manuel said. "He closed down our lefthanded hitters completely."
There were stars all around for the Yankees. A-Rod again. Damon. Matsui. Nick Swisher got a couple of hits. Joba Chamberlain in the seventh.
Damaso Marte, of all people, in the eighth, giving them the sure outs they thought they were getting when they got him from Pittsburgh. But the Yankees don't get ahead of the Phillies two games to one if Pettitte doesn't pitch the way he does from the third through the sixth.
"It was a battle tonight," Pettitte said.
He sure did shut down the Phillies' lefthanded hitters. He does not have the arm he used to have, the kind of stuff he used to have. He still knows how to win a game like this. As much a champ last night as he's ever been.
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