Almost...

            "Do you remember what you said to me that night in the garden Charlie?  You said 'it's not your night kid.'  Not your night?!  On my night I could have taken Wilson apart!!  Instead he gets a shot at the title and what do I get?  A one-way ticket to palooka-ville..."

                        - Marlon Brando as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront  

            When I finally flipped the game on I figured it would be in the sixth or so.  It was well after 10pm.  But when I got to the basement I flipped on the TV, Baseball Tonight was on ESPN, as it had been when I turned the TV off last night.  And lucky enough, the Yankee highlights were on at that exact moment.  I can see in the graphic that it's 3-0 Yanks, but Orestes Destrade had a different take.  "This was just a bad, bad break for the Yankees," he said.  'What now,' I was thinking...  "They finally got a really solid outing from Hughes," he continued, "And they're continuing the momentum with the bats, and then the rains come."  Aha, I thought.  They're in a rain delay.  Too bad that they couldn't get this thing in with Hughes on the mound.  The kid is a solid pitcher.  He's bound to bust out of this little funk he's in.  Maybe this was the night.  But again, the rains. 

            So they were right.  This was a bad break for the Yanks.  But it was evident right from the start that this was not their night.  First of all, it's not realistic to expect that you're going to go into Chicago and sweep the White Sox.  The Yankees had gotten some breaks to take the first two.  And with Boston losing their second in a row this afternoon, the Yanks were playing with house money tonight.  But even with all of that said, they still got out of the gate on fire.  They scored some runs, got huge two-out hits, and Hughes was money.  On the last point, it's definitely worth noting that home-plate umpire Paul Emmel had a very wide strike zone.  For the first time, Hughes wasn't getting squeezed out there, and you could see his game elevate because of it.  But that was when Karma got them.  The rains came, and things immediately went south.  First of all, Girardi didn't take any chances.  He did not let Hughes go back out after the rain delay.  This had big implications, not just because you're going to have to try and patch the game together with the bullpen, but because the bullpen was already thin.  And this was very likely to put a lot of pressure on Andy Pettitte to lug a ton of innings tomorrow, as the bullpen was bound to be laid bare.  So they went to Ohlendorf, and things didn't go well.  There were some hard hit balls, there were some bloops, there were some bad plays, and there was some luck.  By the time the smoke cleared, the Sox had scored 5 runs.  For what it's worth, I had no issue with Ensberg throwing home to try and cut down a run.  I liked the play.  A good, hard, aggressive play.  Unfortunately the throw was wide, or he would have had him.  Paul O'Neill astutely made the point that because Bruney wasn't available and the bullpen had been all over this series already, Ohlendorf was left out there longer than he ordinarily would have been.  As I was watching the game, I turned to the missus and said out loud, "This game is over."  

            But amazingly, it wasn't.  The Yankees continued to pluck away with the two-out clutch base hits.  Finally Morgan Ensberg tied it up with a phenomenal at-bat, battling with two strikes to poke one through the middle to score Abreu.

            So there are the Yankees in the top of the ninth trying to scratch a run across.  Jenks goes 2-0 to Posada.  And the third pitch was way off the plate for ball three.  Whoops.  Strike.  How many times are we going to see this?  A cowardly ump running away from what he's supposed to be doing, calling balls and strikes, and instead continually evens the counts out so that there are more opportunities for a ball to be hit into play.  I'm not him, of course, but it again looks like a guy who is afraid of being blamed for calling a walk and loading the bases with one out.  Which is basically where Posada should have been.  That third pitch was quite clearly a ball, and the count should have been 3-0, with Jenks one pitch away from loading the bases with one out.  But instead, not only does the ump level the count a bit, but now he's set a strike zone for balls out of the hitting zone.  So what did Jenks do?  He threw the exact same pitch to the exact same location.  And why not?  He had Paul Emmel trapped.  So what did Posada do?  He swung, predictably, as he knew a strike call was coming, and hit into a double play.  End of inning.  Thanks Paul.  

            Enter Joba.  Two things about his outing.  First, he couldn't get his fastball over, so he threw breaking ball after breaking ball.  With two strikes, both Quentin and Crede were waiting for the breaking ball and they both got it.  Interestingly, both pitches were great pitches, and the two of those guys probably both got lucky, as they both just stuck their bats out and happened to poke those balls to where the fielders weren't. 

            So that's the breaks.  Just wasn't our night.  I hate to leave on a sour note, but I would hate even more to end this brutal road stretch on a sour note.  So here's hoping we can take game one in Cleveland.