Orioles Pound Sabathia, Yankees for 10-5 Victory in Season Opener

BALTIMORE, April 6 -- The ultimate Opening Day revenge fantasy of the Baltimore Orioles Everyfan was already playing out to delicious perfection Monday when light-hitting shortstop César Izturis lifted a deep fly ball into a darkening sky at Oriole Park at Camden Yards in the eighth inning.

The cursed Mark Teixeira? By that point, the $180 million centerpiece of the New York Yankees' gluttonous offseason was 0 for 4, striding to the plate five times with a total of six runners on base, accompanied by a chorus of boos each time, and driving home none of those runners.

The dastardly CC Sabathia? The $161 million ace, bought by the Yankees during the same December shopping spree, was knocked out in the fifth inning, outpitched by Orioles counterpart Jeremy Guthrie, he of the $650,000 salary.

If you're an Orioles fan, hardened by a dozen years of losing, you take that in a heartbeat, along with what was shaping up as a narrow victory, and head straight to Fells Point to relive the whole thing over beers.

But no, this fantasy needed one last twist -- something absurd, something symbolic, something over-the-top -- to cap it off. That's it: Jeffrey Maier in reverse!

And so, Izturis's fly ball to the wall in left, which was about to settle into Johnny Damon's outstretched glove, never made it that far. In an eerie, trading-places repeat of the infamous Maier play from the 1996 playoffs -- when the then-13-year-old kid stole a fly ball from the Orioles and helped the Yankees to a critical win -- a fan in the front row deflected the ball into the seats, giving Izturis a two-run homer and stretching a one-run lead to three.

"I had a chance to make a play," Damon said, "and the fan made a better play than I did."

For the Yankees, then, this 10-5 loss confirmed all their worst fears, along with, perhaps, some other things they didn't think they needed to fear.

Might their high-priced signees try too hard to justify those contracts and, in the process, facilitate their own self-destruction? Might their bullpen fail to develop a dependable bridge to closer Mariano Rivera? Might their offense struggle to produce runs until Alex Rodriguez's expected return in a few more weeks? Might small things like defensive range and base running prove to be fatal flaws?

"It was just one game," Manager Joe Girardi kept repeating.

True enough. But Sabathia's performance, in particular, was disconcerting for the Yankees, given his previous April struggles. A year ago, in Cleveland, for example, he started out 1-4 with a 7.88 ERA, helping send the Indians into an early-season tailspin that resulted in his being traded in July.

On Monday, battling faulty fastball command all day, he failed to record a single strikeout for the first time in nearly four years. He threw two wild pitches in an inning for the first time in his career. He needed 96 pitches -- only 50 of them for strikes -- to collect 13 outs.