Yankee Fans Unite

Tonight could be a great night for all of us. I think we have a strong chance to win, since CC will be on the mound, while our hitters will be facing Joe Blanton, a hittable pitcher.

This is the lineup:

1- Jeter, SS
2- Damon, LF
3- Tex-man, 1B
4- Alex, 3B
5- Jorge, C
6- Canó, 2B
7- Swisher, RF
8- Melky, CF
9- CC, P

And it seems official. Joe Girardi has announced that Burnett will be game 5 starter.

woohoo! good start.

The offense seems to be peaking at the right time in this Series.

has ANYONE been hit besides Alex, yet he's been hit 3 times in the last 10 innings? hmmm.

3 times in 6 PAs, isn't it?

The umpires need to have the option of warning just one bench. Now, the inside of the plate has been taken away from CC. Not exactly fair, is it?

seriously, dude. what the hell?

Guess the batters wanted to get in the act after taking the first two games off.

Typical. A batter makes a desperation swing and it just happens to fall in for a single...that somehow turns into a double. And the umpire is not giving CC that outside corner early. If they've already taken away the inside corner, and CC can't get a call on the outside corner, then this is going to be a long night.

is there not an option to Utley than grooving a fastball?

By the way:

Gameday shows all three "balls" to Howard as being in the strike zone. The only one that isn't clearly a strike on Gameday is the 4th pitch, and it's touching the line at least.

Like I said, the team scoring first throughout the Yankee postseason has not usually finished with the lead.

Tough inning, but he gets out of it with limited damage. He had to throw 24 pitches to get through it, though. He is, at least, still pitching inside. Seems he is not letting the bench warning change the way that he is going to pitch for now.

On the other side, can you believe that Blanton threw just 11 pitches in that 1st inning? The only one who saw more than two pitches from him was Damon, who saw three. They certainly are not being very patient.

Utley now has 3 hits in the series, all off Sabathia. And all to the gap in right-center. I think maybe they need to change how they're pitching to the guy.

Make that 21 pitches for Blanton after Melky gives him an easy inning. Somebody needs to break a bat over that boy's head and knock some sense into him. Or at least knock him out so that Blanton will have to throw at least 3 pitches to get him out for a change.

The "no patience" offense really irritates me sometimes. I wonder if Tex would have done better than an RBI ground out in the first if he had taken a pitch.

CC is making this very difficult to watch.

There's Howard's AB. Notice the location of pitches 2-4.