With 2 outs in the 9th inning of World Series Game 4, tied at 4, Johnny Damon executed one of the grittiest, most professional, and headiest sequences you will ever see a ballplayer make at any level to help the Yankees extend their lead in the World Series to 3 games to 1.
With two outs and two strikes on him in the bottom of the 8th inning, Pedro Feliz had deposited a 97mph fasball from Yankee reliever Joba Chamberlain into the LF seats for a solo HR to tie World Series game 4 at 4 runs apiece.
In the Yankees half of the 9th inning they had Phil Coke warming up in the pen and were about to face the Phillies closer, Brad lights out Lidge. Lidge retired Matsui and Jeter to get two outs, 7 of the 11 pitches he threw were sliders, including the final one to Jeter resulting in a swinging strikeout. Up came Johnny Damon.
Damon took a fastball for a ball to start the at bat, and then fouled off three straight sliders. He wouldn't see another slider in the at bat. The count ran to 3-3, including 2 more battle fouls on 93 mph fastballs. It was a stubbornly relentless and resilient at bat, John Sterling might even call it, Damonic. I have seen Damon do this so so many times, moreso as an opponent, it just wears on you.
On the crucial nine-pitch at-bat, Damon Said Lidge "got ahead of me 0-2. I kept chasing that slider down, and I was able to force it to 3-2, and then I kept sitting on the slider, and he kept throwing the fastball.
"I felt his slider made me look silly on a couple of pitches, so I kept sitting on the slider and reacted to the fastball. Fortunately, I got enough of it to get it over the shortstop."
This is an experienced veteran going against the conventional wisdom, when a guy throws a 94mph fastball you can't really sit slider and react to his fastball, its just too much to catch up to - but Damon had his plan and stuck to it and it worked out.
Maybe Lidge or catcher Ruiz read Damon's swing and knew he was sitting slider? Lidge threw 5 fastballs in a row, Damon took the 5th one, a 94mph offering into left center field for a rope single.
With pull happy Mark Teixera now batting LH, the defense shifted to the right side. With a notoriously slow to the plate Lidge delivering his pitch, Damon's demon continued as he stole second base . But when Johnny got to 2nd the throw from Phillies catcher Ruiz was a bit offline towards 1B, apparently far enough offline that the previous inning's hero 3B Pedro Feliz didn't exercise excess diligence and put a glove on Damon. 99.9 percent of the time execution of this fundamental task isn't going to matter. The point being, you just put a glove on the runner in the event that maybe he drifts off the base, or gets careless - or - as Damon made painfully evident to capacity crowd at Citizen's Bank Park - you also do it so that the runner doesn't take off and outrun you to an open third base.
To be fair to Feliz, he only had a split second to react and dive over to hold a tag on Damon - but Damon didn't miss his split second opportunity, he grabbed it by the throat and with it took third base, thus basically eliminating the potentially wild-pitch slider as a weapon for Brad Lidge. It is the World Series, right, I mean, had Feliz been ultra-diligent maybe Damon doesn't have enough chance to attempt to take 3rd, let alone grab it as easily as he did.
Speaking of ultra-diligent and making a tag aggressively and quickly, do you remember how Jeter's tag on Carlos Gomez in the ALDS affected the game it occurred in?
Charlie Manuel would call it a miscommunication when asked why there wasn't anybody covering. Teixera would then be hit by a pitch from the seemingly rattled Lidge to give the Yankees 1st and 3rd with two outs.
Damon's grinder at bat, and his headiness and hustle afoot allowed Arod to get to the plate and face a Brad Lidge who would not be comfortable using his hardest slider. Even with the defensive stud Ruiz behind the plate the skittish Lidge would have to be mindful of throwing a wild pitch with his nasty slider. Lidge would later deny that Damon's presence at 3B forced him to eliminate the slider as an option, but conventional logic, and his own skittish nature begs to differ.
Arod took a low inside fastball for strike one and then Lidge brought the next fastball inside as well, but it was a few inches higher and Alex stroked it deep into left field bringing home a DAMONIC JOHNNY.
Arod is now 2 for 2 against Lidge this year, back on May 23 he tied a game in the bottom of the 9th with a HR off "on the Ledge" Lidge.
Joe Buck delivered the call on FOX, "RIPPED INTO LEFT FIELD ALEX RODRIGUEZ HAS DELIVERED FOR NEW YORK" . You bet your ass he has!, or as Mark Teixera said while bounding through the Yankee dugout after Arod's HR off Anaheim's Fuentes in ALCS G2, "HE DID IT AGAIN, HE DID IT AGAIN!"
Thats a 2 run HR in G3 to silence the crowd and juice up the Yanks closing the score to 3-2, and a 9th inning tie breaking double deep into LF off of another top closer. Thats prettyyy, prettyyy, prettyyy, pretty good.
Making the game winning RBI all the more sweet, the Phillies have tried to employ a very unique attack plan against Arod. Their well thought out and keen plan centered around pitchers throwing directly AT Alex and hitting him with the first pitch in certain at bats. Including the his first at bat of Game 4, AROD was HBP in 3 out of his previous 5 at bats, twice on the first pitch of the at bat. In the two at bats where Arod was allowed to swing he smoked a line drive to CF, and hit a crowd silencing 2 run HR off of a camera in RF.
After the Arod HBP in his first G4 at bat, the benches were warned to prevent further retaliations and fisticuffs. Arod implored the Home Plate umpire, "Thats 3 times, thats pretty obvious.." the umpire agreed accordingly and when Girardi came out to reason that Sabathia needed to be allowed to pitch inside the umpires told him to let CC know that the inside of the plate was there for the taking.
Nice try Phillies, desperation is so...well...desperate. Save the amatuerism for your simpleton sports talk shows.
Jorge Posada would then knock in Teixera and Arod with a line drive to the gap in left center, however the terrible and beyond stupid baserunner that Posada is, he would not run hard out of the box, and then get tagged out by 15 feet as he coasted toward second. Displaying the careless stupidity that is hidden when you have the ability to bring Mariano Rivera in to close out a game. Its not the first time Posada's utter stupidity and occasional laziness running the bases has bitten him.
The easy to figure out Mariano Rivera would throw 8 pitches in shutting the door on the Phillies in their half of the 9th. Down 1-2-3 for Stairs-Rollins-Victorino. The crowd had to be stunned upon seeing Jimmy Rollins, the genuis who claimed to have figured out how to beat Rivera, yet again retired by #42 on a deep fly ball to the pull side corner infielder.
Maybe Jimmy thinks that merely 'NOT striking out' against Rivera spells success?
It should be noted, that for all of his stupidity on the basepaths, Posada is Jeter's loud angry alter ego. Fox showed a great shot of Posada going over and hugging/reassuring Joba Chamberlain after the Yankees took the 7-4 lead. In the postgame Posada made sure to mention that Joba's Yankee teammates all perked him up after he surrendered the game tying HR to Feliz. "Everybody, I think the whole lineup was like, 'We'll pick you up. We'll pick you up,' " Jorge said.
Thanks to Damon and Arod, they did.
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