CC Takes Yanks Fate in His Hands

Bengie Molina and Rangers put Yankees in 3-1 ALCS hole, and it's up to CC Sabathia to dig them out

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Wednesday, October 20th 2010, 4:00 AM

So it has come to this for the Yankees, after the Texas Rangers threw them down another flight of stairs, trying to throw them all the way out to 161st St., all the way into next season. It has come to CC Sabathia trying to keep them away from next season this afternoon. It was 10-3 for the Rangers in Game 4, after 8-0 in Game 3, after 7-2 in Game 2. That makes it 25-5 over the last three games, Yankees down 1-3 now, trying to somehow find the character to begin the greatest comeback in the history of the team Wednesday. Big guy pitching Wednesday. Go big or go home.

"Just win a game," Joe Girardi said when it was over.

Another Molina - Bengie this time - made a big swing against a New York team in a league championship series. Josh Hamilton continues to look like the best player in the world. The Yankee pitching was a horror. Stop me if you've heard this one.

And when they had one last chance in the eighth - a chance to make it the kind of eighth inning they had in Game 1 in Arlington - they couldn't get a run home after bases loaded and one out. Nick Swisher popped to Hamilton. Lance Berkman grounded to third. The Yankees could have gone home then. With their fans.

The Yankees had a chance to put this game away in the middle innings. Didn't. Then the Rangers put them away, helped mightily by a lefthanded reliever named Derek Holland, who pitched 3-2/3 innings of brilliant one-hit ball when his team needed that from him.

The Yankees try not to lose the last four games of their season Wednesday. Try not to lose their season. Try not to watch the Rangers celebrate a pennant at this Stadium the way the Red Sox did at the old one six years ago. The way the Marlins, another young team, celebrated at the old Stadium after Game 6 of the World Series the year before that.

The Yankees have not just been beaten three straight, they have been embarrassed. A rich-slapping in their case. They have looked nothing at all like the champions of the world. The Twins put up a better fight in the three games of the division series than the Yankees have put up against the Rangers over these last three games.

Do the math again. The Yankees got beat, 8-0, on Monday night. After the Rangers got behind 3-2 Tuesday night, they went 8-0 again on the Yankees. Did that again to them again at Yankee Stadium.

Oh man, did Josh Hamilton continue to take batting practice against the Yankees, all the way to poor Sergio Mitre in the ninth. But even with that, even with the swings Hamilton makes against anybody the Yankees throw at him, the swing that changed everything for the Rangers was Bengie Molina's three-run shot off A.J. Burnett in the top of the sixth.

Another Molina, another October.

It was 3-2 for the Yankees, even though it seemed like it should have been so much more than that. Way more than that. Somehow in a nearly 26-minute bottom of the fourth, the Yankees came away with only one run. The Yankees would have first and second, nobody out, in the bottom of the fifth and come away with nothing. In between, Molina took Burnett around the left-field foul pole and now Yankee Stadium was as quiet as Shea was the night four years ago to the day that his brother did it to the Mets in Game 7 of '06.

"We liked the way A.J. was throwing the ball," Girardi would say in the interview room.

Girardi was asked about walking David Murphy to pitch to Bengie Molina, two on, two out.

"We liked the matchup," Girardi said. "Unfortunately it didn't work out."

Nothing has worked out for him in this series. The only thing that has worked out for him is the top of the eighth in Arlington last Friday night or the Yankee season is over already. Sabathia got hit, Phil Hughes got hit, Burnett was scratching out a decent start until Molina hit him. David Robertson gets hit, Joba Chamberlain gets hit, Boone Logan gets hit, Mitre got hit hard - real hard - by Hamilton and Nelson Cruz in the ninth.

By then, before the game even went past four hours during the Yankees' last ups early this morning, the Stadium looked as empty as it could ever be in the ninth inning of a postseason game. It was almost as empty this way at the end of Game 3. The Rangers try to win the pennant Wednesday. The Yankees? The $200 million, defending world champion Yankees? They try to get their 100th win of this season and make it back to Texas.

Afterward Molina talked about what it is like, brothers hitting home runs like this at this time of year in New York.

"Very happy for both of us," he said.

They asked him about Murphy being walked so that Burnett could face him. Molina smiled, said, "I don't think it was a bad move."

But a Yankee pitcher threw one more bad pitch, this time to somebody not named Hamilton. Molina knew what to do with it. For all the doubts about the Texas bullpen, after the way the Yankees dropped a safe on that bullpen last Friday night, Derek Holland was as much a star of this night as Molina and Hamilton.

"I was definitely a little nervous coming into Yankee Stadium," Holland said. "But you've gotta have fun with it."

The Rangers are having all the fun in the world. Still have one more game to win. The game the Yankees never got off the Red Sox after being up 3-0 in '04. Yankees down 3-1 now. Trying to start the greatest comeback in Yankee history. Go big or go home.