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Yankees 14, Rangers 13
Posada Ends a Long Night With a Long Ball
On a frenzied night in the Bronx, Jorge Posada took one devastating hit and delivered another. The result matched the greatest comeback in Yankees history.
Knocked to the dirt in a collision with the Texas Rangers' Mark Teixeira in the sixth inning, Posada held onto the ball to save a run. Three innings later, with the Yankees down to their last out, Posada crunched a two-run game-ending homer, the final blow in a 14-13 Yankees victory.
"I was just hoping it was out of the park so we wouldn't have to keep playing," Posada said. "I didn't want to play anymore. As soon as I hit it, I knew it was gone."
Posada's homer, on a 3-1 fastball from closer Akinori Otsuka, sailed into the right-field bleachers and scored Johnny Damon, who had led off with a bad-hop single over Teixeira at first base. Posada hopped in the batter's box after connecting, thrusting his fist in the air as he rounded first base.
The Yankees won despite trailing, 9-0, in the second inning, matching the biggest deficit they have overcome. They have done it three other times, in 1950, 1953 and 1987.
Posada, who was batting cleanup in the Yankees' injury-ravaged lineup, drove in five runs. His performance made up for the pitching of Shawn Chacon, who lasted only an inning and a third, matching the shortest start of his career.
"I'll be the first to admit, I didn't think it would happen," Chacon said of the comeback. "But these guys surprise me."
The Yankees took an 11-10 lead in the sixth on a two-run single by Miguel Cairo. Scott Proctor lost the lead in the seventh on a four-pitch walk and a homer by Brad Wilkerson, but Posada's sacrifice fly tied it in the bottom of the inning.
Called on in the ninth to keep the score tied, Mariano Rivera allowed a run on two broken-bat hits. Kevin Mench led off with a blooper to center, and after a sacrifice bunt and a walk, Rod Barajas grounded a double down the third-base line to score the pinch-runner Adrian Brown.
From there, Rivera recovered. Robinson Canó made a nifty stop at second base with a drawn-in infield for the second out, and Michael Young grounded to Canó for the last out, with Rivera covering the bag. Before the bottom of the ninth, Manager Joe Torre gave the players a message in the dugout. "This game is yours," Posada said Torre told them. "You've fought too hard to lose it."
Then Posada mentioned the way the rally started, on Damon's bad-hop single. It was a sign the Yankees were fated to win, Posada said, but Teixeira might argue the point.
"This field gets very choppy," Teixeira said. "Damon's last two at-bats, both balls took bad hops. The last one almost hit me in the hand. I just kind of got my hand up there to block it."
As punishing hits go, though, it was nothing compared with the play at the plate in the sixth. The Yankees trailed, 10-5, with Teixeira on first and two outs. Hank Blalock doubled to the left-field corner, where Melky Cabrera made a typically adventurous pursuit, bobbling the ball at the wall.
But Cabrera recovered quickly, firing a strike to the cutoff man, Derek Jeter, who threw to the plate on two hops.
Posada gathered the ball and took a brutal hit from Teixeira, absorbing his 215-pound body crashing into his left shoulder. Posada hurtled backward, bumping the plate umpire and rolling onto his back, clutching the ball in his bare hand.
The inning was over, and after a moment or two alone on the dirt, dazed, Posada joined his teammates in the dugout.
"It was pretty tough," said Posada, a 12-year veteran. "That was probably the hardest I've ever been hit."
Teixeira said he knew the only way to score was to knock the ball loose. Despite the impact of his hit, he said he was not surprised Posada held on.
"It's a tough play for a catcher, obviously, but he's one of the best," Teixeira said. "He made a very nice play. I'm out if I just slide. Because of the timing of it, if I could have hit him to knock the ball loose, that was my only option to be safe."
The play ended the third scoreless inning in a row for the Yankees. On a wild night, that was an achievement. Torre admitted he was not even thinking about a victory until Aaron Small, who relieved Chacon for four and a third innings, could calm the Rangers down.
"When we were down 9-0, 10-1, I'm just trying to keep from using my whole bullpen," Torre said. "That's what my thought process is. I can't really be thinking about winning a game until we can stop them from scoring."
Small entered the game in the second, after Chacon threw a curveball in the dirt for ball one to Blalock. The Rangers were already winning by 6-0, taking advantage of two walks and a hit batsman early in the inning.
Blalock hammered Small's second pitch to right-center for a three-run homer, with two of the runs charged to Chacon.
Chacon gave up eight runs (seven earned) on six hits and two walks, swelling his earned run average to 5.21 from 3.68.
"There's no way he should have been pitching tonight, if you saw his leg," Damon said, referring to the welt on Chacon's left shin, which came from a comebacker by Boston's Mark Loretta last week. "But he wanted the ball."
Chacon made no excuses; he was more interested in talking about the comeback, anyway. A three-run homer by Jeter cut the Rangers' lead to 10-8 in the sixth, and a Bernie Williams double scored another run before Cairo's two-out, two-run single.
The Yankees had scored only 12 runs in the five games since Hideki Matsui's injury last Thursday. By the time this game ended, they had exceeded that total in one night. If their lineup looks weaker, the Rangers do not believe it.
"This team can hit, even with the guys they have missing," Teixeira said. "This team can still put up a lot of runs, and they did."
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