Last night was a tale of two ballgames. After three innings, Cole Hamels was working on a no-hitter and Andy Pettitte had given up three runs and looked like the Bad Andy from years ago who occasionally showed up in a big game and exploded. But then Andy found his groove, A-Rod homered, Nick Swisher decided to hit, Johnny Damon, Jorge Posada, Hideki Matsui (second game in a row with a homer for the club pro) and even Pettitte delivered big hits, and 
the Yankees won 8-5, one of those regular-season good-timey wins to which a lot of the team contributed. The only low point came from the continued subpar performance of Phil Hughes, who started the ninth and got one guy out before surrendering a home run and being removed. It must be such a difficult thing to try to work through a slump while trying to perfrom on the sport’s biggest stage. Thank goodness Joba Chamberlain, Damaso Marte and Mariano Rivera were perfect. Tonight Sabathia tries to put a death grip on the series. It would be nice: the Yankees were in this position as recently as 2003, and it fell apart. Nine down, two to go.
