Yanks Living Perilous-Lee

Cliff Lee delivers an all-time dominant performance to put Yankees on heels entering Game 4 of ALCS

By Mike Lupica
The Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Tuesday, October 19th 2010, 4:00 AM

The Texas Rangers have played three games against the biggest and baddest baseball team in this world, and now the Rangers are one nightmare inning away from having won all three. They jumped on the Yankees early in Game 1, jumped them early in Game 2, jumped them bad in the ninth inning Monday night. Cliff Lee dominated the Yankees for eight innings Monday night, he sure did, threw a Koufax game at the Yankees in Yankee Stadium. It just means Lee did to the Yankees what the Rangers have done an awful lot since Friday night.

For most of three games, the sides haven't looked even in the American League Championship Series. By the time the Rangers stopped circling the bases against David Robertson in the top of the ninth, the Rangers were ahead of the Yankees, 8-0, on their way to being ahead of them 2-1 in the ALCS. It was 5-1 Rangers before the sky fell Friday night, it ended up 7-2 Saturday, it ended ugly Monday night in Game 3.

So now, after all the winning during the regular season that Joe Girardi talked about in a testy postgame interview session, after starting the postseason with four straight wins and maybe thinking the Rangers were going to be the kind of pushovers that the Twins are, the New York Yankees need to win a game Tuesday night against the Rangers.

Or they show up at the Stadium Wednesday afternoon playing for their season.

In the end, even with the Yankees being the ones looking at a nightmare ending this time, six runs for the Rangers in the ninth, the night was about Lee, throwing as great an October game as anybody has ever thrown against the Yankees, certainly as great as we have seen since the beginning of the Joe Torre era. He struck out 13 Monday night, gave the Yankees just two hits in eight innings, dominated them from start to finish, became the first pitcher in history to strike out 10 or more batters in three straight games in the same postseason.

He twice dominated the Rays in the division series, dominated the Yankees Monday night, is scheduled to pitch Game 7. It means that if the Yankees want to go back to the World Series, maybe they need to win three games in a row now.

"I've felt good for a while," Lee said. "I've felt good every time."

The Yankees did not get a baserunner until Mark Teixeira walked in the fourth. They did not get their first hit until Jorge Posada blooped a single in the fifth. The only time they threatened against him, if you can call it that, is when Brett Gardner singled in the sixth, stole second, ended up on third with two outs. Teixeira grounded to short. Inning over. And maybe game over.

And maybe this game was over from the time Josh Hamilton flicked his wrists and hit a two-run homer off Andy Pettitte in the top of the first. Pettitte stayed in there against Lee and the Rangers like a champion after that, gave up just five hits on this night, three of them to Michael Young. Pettitte stayed in there for seven innings and 110 pitches and would have given his team a chance against anybody, even Roy Halladay. Just not Cliff Lee. Not now. Before this game Lee called Pettitte the best postseason pitcher of all time.

Just not this time. Not now.

Listen to Pettitte, who knows all about nights like this, who has gone up against John Smoltz at his best in October, who saw Josh Beckett close out the Yankees at the old Stadium with one of the spectacular Series performances of all time. Listen to what Pettitte said about the other guy when it was over.

"I haven't seen many games thrown like that," he said.

He meant at this time of year. He meant against the Yankees. He meant against the great Yankee teams he has played for, the one he won another World Series with a year ago. He compared it to the Beckett game. High praise indeed.

"This ballpark," Pettitte said. "To be able to do what he did ... Pretty impressive."

Then he talked about how he felt that if he could keep the game close, keep it at 2-0, that the Yankees would come back. "You keep thinking, if we can get a guy on, somebody can pop one out." Against anybody else, against somebody not pitching the way Lee is pitching this October, maybe. Just not against Lee, not Monday night. Maybe not this season.

When Ron Washington, the Rangers' manager, got to the interview room, the first question, of course, was about his starting pitcher. The guy asking the question wanting to know if he'd ever seen Lee better than he was Monday night at Yankee Stadium.

"What we saw tonight," Washington said, "is what we've been seeing."

It is what everybody has been seeing. He threw 122 pitches Monday night, and you know that if he had to throw more at the Yankees he could have done it and would have done it. And then it all became irrelevant against Boone Logan, David Robertson, Sergio Mitre in the top of the ninth, which suddenly turned into a jailbreak for the Rangers. Suddenly Hamilton's home run no longer looked as big as the monument to George Steinbrenner in the outfield.

Suddenly you didn't have to worry about what the kid closer for the Rangers, Neftali Feliz, might have to do in a 2-0 game. It wasn't 2-0 anymore. Now the Yankees are down 2-1 to the Rangers in the ALCS. Suddenly, the Yankees need to win a game Tuesday night. At the worst possible time, the middle of October, the Yankees are playing baseball the way they did in September.