Major League Baseball

CATCH A WHIFF: YANKS IN PERIL - DESPERATION IN AIR AFTER CLIFF'S MASTERPIECE

Published Oct. 19, 2010 10:10 p.m. ET

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This was "Born to Run" living up to the covers of "Newsweek" and "Time." This was "Avatar" selling even more tickets than even James Cameron would've guessed. We already knew how good Cliff Lee is. We already knew how ridiculously tough he is in October.

And yet he was better than that.

So much better.

Across eight innings, Lee yielded only two hits and zero hope, and he took personal responsibility in backing the Yankees to the wall. The final score was 8-0, but the scoreboard was a liar - for each of Lee's 122 pitches last night, this was a game very much in the balance.

Except Lee wasn't going to let the Rangers lose. He struck out 13. He was, in a word, masterful.

Now, the mission is simple: the Yankees better hope they win the next three games of this series, or else the only way they will see the World Series is if they get through Lee in Game 7. And Lee now has a 0.75 ERA in these playoffs and a 1.12 ERA --literally, Gibsonesque - for his postseason lifetime.

The people had come to see a pitcher's duel, and that is precisely what they got. Andy Pettitte was nicked early, surrendering a two-run homer in the first inning to Josh Hamilton that looked like the Rangers' center fielder had barely tapped it, looked like he'd hit a tennis backhand. And that, for the most part, was that.

Besides Hamilton's blast, all Pettitte offered the Yankees were three singles by Michael Young. He retired eight straight Rangers and looked virtually unhittable.

The problem was, Lee really was unhittable, at least across the first 15 hitters he faced. Jorge Posada broke up the potential no-hitter with an opposite-field, broken-bat single with two outs in the fifth, the first time Yankee Stadium really sounded like a playoff game.

The first time the crowd didn't look completely defeated and resigned to a terrible fate finally arrived in the bottom of the sixth, when Brett Gardner got the first good swing the Yankees had managed all night, as well as the first well-struck ball.

Gardner singled stole second with Derek Jeter batting, and so for the first time the Yankees would get three shots at knocking in a run with a man - a very fast man - in scoring position. But Jeter struck out on high heat - Lee's 10th strikeout of the game - Nick Swisher grounded out to second and Mark Teixeira grounded out to short.

You could feel a large chunk of the life and energy slip out of the ballpark right there.

Lee's effort was historic, not unusual when you consider that Lee has, in two short seasons, become one of the greatest playoff pitchers in history. Last week he turned in only the seventh performance of 10 or more strikeouts and zero walks ever recorded in a postseason game; Lee is responsible for four of those seven.

A fourth-inning walk to Teixeira ended his quest for another, but he did fan double figures for the third straight time. He's the first to do that three times in one year, and only Bob Gibson (once in 1967, twice in 1968) has ever had three straight like that before.

And for those who thought last year that Lee's decision not to pitch on short rest was any indication of his being soft . . . well, he raced out of the dugout to start the eighth inning even with 109 pitches on his left arm, this after throwing a complete game in the AL Division Series clincher in St. Petersburg five days earlier.

But he finished with a flourish. He got two strikeouts and an easy grounder in the eighth, and as he jogged off the field he heard the best sound he could possibly hear: 49,840 people who sounded like their voiceboxes had been amputated.

The big question was whether manager Ron Washington would let Lee finish; his hitters made the point moot by piling on six runs in the top of the ninth. So Lee will be sitting there in a Game 7.

The Yankees better get cracking. Soon.

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