With two on and out, with the top of the order up and the Yanks facing just a three-run deficit, we wanted to believe that the World Series would end on Monday night. But while the Yanks whittled away the Phillies’ six-run lead to just a two-run gap, they couldn’t overcome those final two runs.

And so as the World Series heads back to New York for a Game 6 match-up against two unannounced pitchers probably named Andy Pettitte and Pedro Martinez, let’s play the blame game.

A.J. Burnett
Staked to a 1-0 lead in the first, A.J. Burnett could not hold the Phillies. Pitching on short rest, he had no command early, and Bad A.J. reared his heard. He gave up a hit to Jimmy Rollins, and then he hit Shane Victorino with a fastball flush on the right index finger. The next pitch was a fastball, 94 miles per hour and right down the middle of the plate. The ultra-hot Chase Utley deposited it into the right field seats, and the Phillies had a 3-1 lead.

“It was supposed to be a sinker away,” Burnett later said of this key pitch, “but it ran right back over the middle.”

Not only did it not sink, but it wasn’t close to being outside of the strike zone. Burnett settled down for six outs, but in the third, he fell apart. Walk, walk, single, single. The Yanks found themselves down 5-1, and Burnett found himself on the bench. After just 53 pitches, Burnett’s Game 5 was over. Because he threw so few pitches, he could be available for bullpen work on Wednesday or Thursday. Whether the Yanks would go to him is another question altogether.

After the game, Burnett talked about the Yanks’ braintrust’s decision to start him on three days’ rest. The short rest, he said, had no bearing on his stuff. “I felt strong,” he said. “It’s just a matter of locating pitches. I didn’t throw strikes, there really isn’t much else to say.”

The results bore him out. His velocity was there; his break was there; the results were not. On a night when Cliff Lee didn’t have his best stuff, when the Yanks tagged him for five runs and ten baserunners, A.J. could not get the job done. Goat Number One.

Phil Coke
We didn’t know the Yanks would mount a last-gasp rally in the 8th and 9th. We didn’t know the Yanks would twice send the tying run to the plate in the 9th. And so, down by six runs, Joe Girardi did during Game 5 what he almost did during Game 4: He gave the ball to Phil Coke.

Coke was flat out awful. Chase Utley hit a 3-2 fastball — another 94-mph job right down the middle — over the fence in right-center field for his Reggie Jackson-tying fifth home run of the World Series. After retiring Ryan Howard and Jayson Werth, Coke faced Raul Ibañez. Although Ibañez hits lefties better than righties, although Joe Girardi manages by his ever-important Book, Coke stayed in the game. Ibañez, a non-factor so far this series, belted a 420-foot home run deep into the night. It was an 8-2 game, and Coke was gone.

Later, Coke would seemingly shake it off. “I want the ball again tomorrow,” he said. “That’s all I’m thinking about.”

He can have the ball tomorrow for the Yankees do not play tomorrow. On Wednesday, though, if the Yanks have a lead or are within striking distance of the Phillies, you can bet that Damaso Marte, Joba Chamberlain or the seemingly redeemed Phil Hughes will be handed that baseball.

We could argue the fallacy of the predetermined outcome all night long. If the Yanks mount their comeback and if Phil Coke gets the job done, then the Yankees tie the game on Derek Jeter’s ill-timed double play. Instead, Phil Coke struck back. Goat Number Two.

Derek Jeter
Dare I suggest that Derek Jeter deserves some criticism for his play tonight? Dare I throw the Captain under the Game 5 bus?

As a leadoff hitter, Jeter went 1 for 5 and saw just 16 pitches. With two on and no out in the top of the 9th, he was the tying run. He got ahead of Ryan Madson 2-0 and then took a pitch he should have shellacked. On the next ball, he bounced into a tailor-made 6-4-3 double play. Although a run would score, the Yanks could not overcome that failure. We saw “past a diving Jeter” twice on key plays, and we saw the captain, a former Mr. November, not come through when he was needed the most. While Mark Teixeira left four runners on and struck out as the tying run to end the game, Derek deflated us when we were at our highest. For that, he gets the Goat Number Three hat.

And so here we are. The Yankees come back home for one final home stand. They were the best team at home this year, and all they have to do is win one game. Let’s put this one behind us, sit out an off-day and go get ‘em on Wednesday.

Yanks hang three on Lidge in the 9th for 7-4 Game 4 win

Revised (1:49 a.m.) with an update on the injured Melky Cabrera: The Bridge to Mariano just needs to stay together for one more victory. As it stands now, that bridge is on shaky, shaky footing, and yet, the Yanks made it work tonight. In a game that resembled a roller coaster of emotions — looking something like this — the Yanks brought us up early, down late and then bashed around Brad Lidge for a key 7-4 win in Game 4. They are but one win away from their 27th World Series title.

Without a clock looming over play, baseball teams get 27 outs to figure out a way to outscore their opponents. Tonight, the Yankees needed all but one of them to top the Phillies. After 26 outs, the Yanks were facing a tie game on the road. They had no one on, and Phil Coke warming up in the bullpen. But then Mystique and Aura arrived after getting stuck in traffic on the Benjamin Franklin bridge.

The rally started with Johnny Damon, playing perhaps his final few games as a Yankee. Ball 1. Strike 1. Strike 2. The 1-2 pitch was huge as Damon nicked a foul tip into the dirt and Carlos Ruiz could not hold on to it. Ball 2. Ball 3. Foul. Foul. And then, life! On the 9th pitch, Damon singled into left, and Brad Lidge’s armor showed a chink. “The key to that inning to me was the tenacious at-bat by Johnny Damon,” Alex Rodriguez, the eventual hero, said to both Mark Grace and Michael Kay after the game.

With Mark Teixeira batting, Damon hit the bases. He stole second on a pitch in the dirt and then noticed that, because Pedro Feliz was covering second due to the Mark Teixeira shift, third base was wide open. Damon won the race and found himself just 90 feet away from giving the Yanks a lead with Mariano Rivera looming.

For those of us watching at home, we had little idea what was happening. It first seemed as though Damon had thought the ball was behind Feliz, but then it dawned on all of us: Third base was unoccupied. Joba Chamberlain, though, summed up the fan reaction to this unique play. “I had a heart attack, a little one,” he said after the game. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

Damon did, though, and it paid off. The Yanks would plate Damon and more though. Teixeira was hit by a Brad Lidge fastball, and then A-Rod, with just one hit all World Series, lined an 0-1 double into the left field. Jorge Posada then lined a 2-2 pitch into the left-center field gap. Although Posada would be tagged out at second, Teixeira and Rodriguez scored.

The Yanks had a three-run lead with Mo in, and eight pitches later — one fewer than Johnny Damon’s entire AB against Lidge — the game was over. Matt Stairs grounded out to first; Jimmy Rollins popped out to first; and Shane Victorino grounded out to Mark Teixeira for the ball game. Over the last two days, Mariano Rivera has faced five batters. He has retired all five of them and has used just 13 pitches — thirteen! — to get those five outs. This is vintage Mariano for you. Appreciate it now because, as we saw just one inning earlier, that ability to control a game from the bullpen is rare indeed.

The Yanks, of course, almost didn’t need Mariano. Starting on three days’ rest, CC Sabathia wasn’t as sharp as he had been against the Angels, but he made it work. After 6.2 innings and 107 pitches, Sabathia would leave with a 4-3 lead. He allowed seven hits and three walks on six strike outs, but he wasn’t too sharp. He threw first-pitch strikes to just 17 of 30 batters faced and managed just two 1-2-3 innings.

Again, though, the real CC killer was Phillies’ second baseman Chase Utley. After homering twice against Sabathia in Game 1, Utley went 2-for-3 with a double and a home run. He drove in two games and drove CC from the game. On the series, Utley is 4 for 6 with 3 home runs and 4 RBI against Sabathia while the rest of the Phillies are just 7 for 45 with one run batted in.

With Sabathia out, Damaso Marte, enjoying a mid-contract Yankee revival, did the job. Pumping 94-mph fastballs past Ryan Howard, Marte got the Phillies’ feared first baseman to fly out to Damon. Enjoying a slim one-run lead, the Yanks handed the ball over to a new 8th Inning guy.

With Phil Hughes in the doghouse following some very rough outings, the Yanks gave Joba Chamberlain a chance to reclaim his old job, and it seemed as though Joba would deliver. He struck out Jayson Werth on a 97-mph fastball and blew away Raul Ibañez with another 97-mph fastball. But then, disaster! Ahead of Pedro Feliz 1-2, Chamberlain fell behind 3-2 and let a pitch stray. It was supposed to be a fastball on the outside corner. Instead, it was a 97-mph pitch on the fat part of the plate, and Feliz deposited it over the left field wall.

“He put on a good swing. There’s nothing you can say about it. He did what he had to do,” Chamberlain said after the game. On the mound and in the dugout, he was clearly distraught. Even after Carlos Ruiz struck out on a nasty 88-mph slider, the damage had been done, and the fans were momentarily heartbroken.

But the Comeback Kids rebounded. They scored their runs; they won the game; they stand but 27 outs away from a World Series title. The team, at least on camera, isn’t letting the weight of the moment get to them, and they know that Cliff Lee looms large on Monday night. “It’s important for us to stay focused,” A-Rod said in a post-game interview with Mark Grace.

Damon, though, the YES Network’s Chevy Player of the Game, spoke some calming words. “We’re going to try to win,” he said. Here’s to hoping.

Melky Cabrera unlikely for Game 5
Lost in the brouhaha over the Yanks’ victory was the news about Melky Cabrera. While trying to run out a ground ball in the sixth inning last night, the Yanks’ center fielder strained his left hamstring. The Yankees are calling it a minor strain, but as Mark Feinsand reported, the team does not expect Cabrera to play in Game 5. I would guess that he won’t be available for Games 6 or 7 either.

At this point, the Yankees have a few choices. They can put Brett Gardner in center field, but Joe Girardi said after the game that Jerry Hairston, Jr., remains a distinct option for the start. Girardi prefers to deploy Gardner as a late-inning pinch running. If Melky is truly hurt, I believe the Yanks can activate another player — probably either Freddy Guzman or Francisco Cervelli. For the Series, Melky was just 2 for 13 before leaving with the injury but had played a solid center field throughout the playoffs.

I watched tonight’s 8-5 from Blondie’s on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Surrounded by Yankee fans, we were dejected when the Yanks fell behind early, elated with the three-run 5th inning and generally clapped for every two-strike count and sang along with Frank Sinatra after Mariano Rivera induced a weak pop-up off the bat of Jimmy Rollins for out number 27. With that win tonight, the Yanks grabbed a 2-1 World Series win and become the first team to win two games against the Phillies in a playoff series since the 2007 NLDS.

For the Yanks, this one got off to a slow start. Cole Hamels seemed to have his fastball, change-up and control working. The Yanks went down in order in the first, and their only baserunners through three innings came through an A-Rod hit-by-pitch and a Jorge Posada fielder’s choice. Andy Pettitte meanwhile had his problems. He needed 51 pitches to get through three innings and found himself on the wrong end of a 3-0 game.

For Pettitte, the righties tonight were the problem. The lefties couldn’t touch him, but he had his fair share of problems getting the Phillies’ right-handed hitters out. Jayson Werth belted two no-doubters, and Pettitte walked Jimmy Rollins with the bases loaded to force in a run in that awful third. But Pettitte settled down, and the Yanks’ bat showed up.

The first sign of life from the Yanks’ offense came from A-Rod in the fourth. Suffering through an 0-for-8 World Series spell, A-Rod hit a screamer down the right field line. The ball stayed fair and hit off of a camera absurdly placed above the wall in fair territory. After an instant replay review, A-Rod’s shot was ruled a home run, and the Yanks had cut the Phils’ lead to just a run.

An inning later, after Pettitte pitched around an A-Rod error, the bats showed up. Nick Swisher, coming off of a mental vacation in Game 2, doubled to left, and although Melky Cabrera struck out on a nasty pitch, Andy Pettitte hit a looper to center. Swisher was running with the hit and scored the tying run. Derek Jeter singled, and then Johnny Damon lined a two-run double into right-center field. The Yanks had a lead, and they wouldn’t give it back. After a Mark Teixeira walk, Cole Hamels would exit the game. Afterward, he would say that he “can’t wait until [2009] is over. It’s been mentally draining.”

Over the next few innings, Andy persevered. He wasn’t at his best, but he made it work. He retired the Phillies in order in the 5th, and Nick Swisher homered in the 6th. Although Jayson Werth answered with his own home run in the 6th, Andy K’d Raul Ibañez and Pedro Felix. Eric Bruntlett, batting for the first time in nearly a month, flew out to end the inning.

Over the next few innings, the Yanks would add a pair. Jorge Posada blooped a single to drive home the Yanks’ 7th run. In the 7th, Joba Chamberlain looked great retiring the top third of the Phillies’ order, and Hideki Matsui launched a pinch hit home run to give the Yanks a four-run lead. In the 8th, the real Damaso Marte showed up. He fanned Howard on a 95-mph fastball, struck out Werth and retired Ibañez on a line out.

After a quick 9th, Phil Hughes came in with a four-run lead. Pedro Felix grounded out, but Hughes threw two high fastballs to Carlos Ruiz. Chooch is a high fastball hitter, and the second fastball ended up on the wrong side of the left field wall. The Phillies had cut the lead, but the Yanks brought in Mariano. It wasn’t a save, but five pitches later, the game was over. Matt Stairs grounded out, and Jimmy Rollins, the man who predicted the Phillies would win in five games, popped out to A-Rod.

With that out, the Yanks grabbed a 2-1 lead, and they guaranteed that, at worst, the World Series will return to the Bronx. CC Sabathia will face Joe Blanton tonight at 8:20 p.m., and the Yankees are feeling pretty good right now. On Halloween, I went as a Yankee fan watching Game 3 of the World Series, and I was not disappointed.