By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com
Thursday, October 21st 2010, 4:00 AM
They got up again for CC Sabathia with two on and two out in the top of the sixth, got up on what could yet be the last night of baseball at the Stadium this season, got up big and loud and told Sabathia to get them one more out against the Rangers.After all the pitches Sabathia had thrown, they wanted him to throw the one that would get him out of the sixth with his 6-2 lead, win the fight he was having with Mitch Moreland, hand Game 5 to Kerry Wood, who would then hand it to Mo Rivera. On the night when the Yankees got back up against the Rangers the way champions are supposed to get up in moments like this, the Stadium didn't ask Sabathia to win the series here, or even the game. Just make them believe the Yankees were going to win the night.
Really the cheer said this:
Not here.
Sabathia hadn't shown you the best he had in Game 5. Just all he had. He had given the Rangers 11 hits, thrown 111 pitches already. There had been at least one baserunner in every inning, sometimes more than that. But in all the big moments of Game 5, the one the Yankees had to win to keep playing, Sabathia had found the pitch he needed.
"One thing about CC," Joe Girardi would say. "He's good at limiting damage."
Now he needed to do it again. He had gotten Josh Hamilton to end the Rangers' fifth by hitting into a double play. Get Moreland now. One run in, Ian Kinsler on third, Jeff Francoeur on second, Wood warmed up. Get Moreland, get to the dugout with the lead. The count was 2-2. Moreland had fouled off good pitches, hard stuff and breaking balls.
"Couldn't put him away," Sabathia said.
Moreland already had one hit in the game. If he got another, it was 6-4 and here came the Rangers again, maybe all the way back to win the pennant.
After all of the quiet moments of the past two nights, two endings when the Stadium looked as if there had been some kind of emergency evacuation by the ninth inning, this was the place rising up again to beg for the season to at least not end here. Maybe in Arlington Friday night, or on Saturday night against Cliff Lee if the Yankees could find a way to make the Rangers go the distance after being up three games to one.
Just not tonight and not here.
Somehow Moreland working the at-bat through seven pitches already just made them louder at the Stadium. Then Sabathia dropped a cutter on the inside corner and Moreland took it the way you take a good left hook. Inning over. Sabathia was done. So were the Rangers on this night. Sometimes you know.
"Threw him a cutter that ended up backing up enough that he didn't swing at it," CC Sabathia said.
"We had Sabathia bended," Texas manager Ron Washington said. "He didn't break."So the Yankees do not lose the last four games of the American League Championship Series. So the Yankees finally played the game with a big lead and Sabathia showed he knows how to pitch with that kind of lead. They all go to Arlington and try to find a way to come all the way back from 3-1 down the way only one Yankee team ever had, the '58 Yankees in the World Series against the Braves. And the Braves didn't beat up the '58 Yankees the way the Rangers beat them up over the first four games of this series.
"They're the champs," Washington said in the interview room. "We didn't expect them to lay down."
If they somehow get out of this, if they push it to Game 7 and then find a way to get a game off Lee the way he is pitching, has pitched in the playoffs, it will be the greatest comeback in the history of the Yankees, even if they did have to beat Warren Spahn and Lew Burdette in the last two games in '58.
This time the Yankees made their big hits pay off. This time Sabathia got Hamilton before he got the Yankees. The Yankees got three in the second and two in the third and it was the first time since the eighth inning of Game 1 that they got more than one run in an inning off the Rangers.
The season may not make it back to the Stadium for the World Series, may not make it past Lee if the Yankees make it that far. The Yankees still got up Wednesday. One knee. But they got up. They didn't let the Rangers win the pennant at the Stadium.
They are not in the clear, not by a long shot, still trying to climb out of the hole they dug for themselves over the first four games of the series. But the Yankees showed up after being outscored 25-5 in the last three games, after losing 8-0 to Lee, after watching the Rangers score the last eight runs of Game 4.
"We had not played particularly well in this series to say the least," Joe Girardi said.
They need two more games. One more to get to Lee. But Robinson Cano hit another one in Game 5, Jorge Posada showed why you never sit him down at this time of year, Nick Swisher finally made a swing. Four home runs for Cano in this series, four for Hamilton. It's like watching Kobe play LeBron.
The Yankees saved their season Wednesday. They try to save it again Friday night. CC Sabathia stood up Wednesday the way an ace is supposed to. The Yankees got up. Champs don't lay down. The Rangers may still win the pennant. Not here.
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