Girardi's Yankees are one step away

PHILADELPHIA

The Yankees and Phillies played one of those chilly, intense nerve- shredding games on Sunday night for which the World Series waits, breath held, from one season to the next. Please, give us one to remember, we ask.

And indeed they did in this Game 4, especially New York's Johnny Damon who, in a split second of instinctive base running in the ninth inning, stole two bases on one pitch. That instant of brilliance in a tie game, which seemed to unhinge Phillies reliever Brad Lidge, led to a trio of Yankee runs and a 7-4 win that probably swung the emotional pendulum of this series for the final time.

The Yankees, who'd seen a two-run lead erased by solo homers from Chase Utley in the seventh and Pedro Ruiz in the eighth, got their eventual game-winning hit on an RBI double leashed to left field by Alex Rodriguez, the goat of other October playoffs but now a hero in his first World Series.

"I've been hit by three pitches in this series," said Rodriguez, who has been drilled in the ribs twice and the thigh once by pitches that were either intentional or, at the least, relished by the Phillies who are determined to "pound him in" and if he gets drilled, too bad. But it is Rodriguez who, after six strikeouts in the first two hitless games, has now responded with a crucial two-run homer on Saturday and now a game-winner.

"I'm okay. The one yesterday kind of woke me up a little bit. I thought, 'Hey, this is the World Series, lets get going.' So it worked out," said Rodriguez, taking the low-key classy never-wake-up-a-great-hitter approach to being used as a piñata.

This was a night when the great proven Yanks of the past, and the exorbitantly rich but as yet unproven Yankees of the present, linked hands in a victory that brings them to the brink of their first World Series win in nine years -- an eternity in pinstripe regions.

Moments after A-Rod had delivered his blow off Lidge, whom many in Philly have begged Manager Charlie Manuel to demote, the Yanks' classy veteran catcher Jorge Posada, symbol of the four-time Bronx champs of '96-through-'00, smashed a two-run hit to left field to ice this frosty affair.

Amid all the twist of his taut game, one play will be remembered longest both for its importance and, to many of us, it's unique shock value. How do you steal two bases on one pitch? And how do you have the brass and bravado to do it in the top of the ninth inning of a 4-4 game in the World Series. Say hello to Damon, one of those wonderful you-never-know-what-they-ll-do "Idiots" who led the Red Sox to a title in '04.

When Damon came to bat against Lidge in the ninth, every iota of energy and momentum in Citizens Banks Park had swung to the Phillies. This was the game when Yankees Manager Joe Girardi had taken a huge gamble ¿ moving his whole rotation forward to work the rest of the series on short rest, starting with CC Sabathia, the key to the strategy, in this game. And it had failed.

Sabbathia, reduced to working out of jams with sliders and change-ups because he didn't trust a fastball that was several miles an hour slower, barely out-dueled journeyman Joe Blanton, leaving with a mere 4-3 lead after Utley's home run KO'd him in the seventh. When Feliz lit up Joba Chamberlain's 97 mph fastball in the eighth, sending it into the left field bleachers to tie the game, the crowd of 46,145 went appropriately nuts.

So, with the Yankees down to their last strike in the top of the ninth, a trademark Phils comeback win seemed imminent. Then, Damon fouled off pitch after pitch and finally poked a single. "Just an unbelievable at-bat by Johnny," said Girardi.