Cliff was on fire with his performance as he fanned ten Yanks down, nine of them out swinging. The Yankees were able to tack on one run, with each base runner very difficult to come by. This doesn't include his "Ho Hum" pop fly that basically just decided it would casually plop into his glove. This doesn't include the behind-the-back base hit stealer just a few pitches afterwards, which you will probably never see a duplicate in your lifetime (or our kids' lifetimes). He was purely lights out. But he wasn't lights out for everybody. Derek Jeter didn't seem to have a problem against him, as he was able to string together a couple of solid hits. The problem with that, is Lee, for the most part, wouldn't allow any more production after a hit was developed. And of the run that was made, it wasn't much off of Lee's skin, as he knew they were just a couple of seeing-eye bloopers that found their way to safe territory.But let's not give all the gusto to Lee. Other than the two solo homers from Utley, Sabathia kept the rest of the team 2 for 23. Any time a pitcher walks out of the ballgame ahead 4 for 25 (only 16% were hits), he's pitched a fantastic game. Good pitching beats good batting. Utley was the only player who really had Sabathia figured out, and he was the only runs they would actually need. The main problem for Sabathia was the 3-2 counts that he continuously had to face. The Phillies are fastball hitters and they were able to foul off tough pitches until a fastball came.
One particular play was a great lesson for any ball player who watched it: Rollins had caught a ball very low to the ground in a double play attempt. Instead of making the obvious move straight to first for the double play, Rollins acted as if the play was a short hop into his glove. He then stepped on second knowing that Matsui would think he was forced out, and insuring the double play as Matsui would then stop and dwi
ndle on back to the dugout instead of trying to turn around and tag first base. It worked beautifully. It seems as though only Rollins and the second base umpire knew what happened. Had Matsui payed attention to the second base umpire, he would have seen him call the play out before Rollins stepped on the bag.To my surprise, this game was one-sided, as Cliff Lee dominated the opposition. As mentioned before, Sabathia was still well above satisfactory and made some key pitches. It's unfortunate when one pitcher does as well as Sabathia did, but it is just a vapor compared to the hype brought on by the opposing pitcher. I didn't expect much more than three or four total runs in the whole game with one team beating the other by one run. I surely didn't expect a 6-1 complete game.
So what does game two have in store for us? That will be in my next entry.
