Rarely will a single play keep me awake half the night. But something like Damon’s double dash was just that very thing to keep me awake last night.

I still can’t believe it. I wasn’t alone, either:

“You know how people always tell you that they’ve been in baseball for 40 years, 50 years, and things happen every game that they never saw?” asked Yankees coach Tony Pena, after his Sunday night had turned into Monday morning and he was still trying to digest one of the most astonishing finishes to any game in his 35 seasons in baseball.

“Well, I’ve never seen that before,” said Tony Pena. “I never saw that before in my life.”

Ten years from now, 20 years from now, 50 years from now, we won’t be remembering Cliff Lee’s Game 1 masterpiece or Alex Rodriguez’s replay-aided home run off a TV camera. We’ll be remembering Johnny Damon’s excellent first-to-third adventure. And so will he.

The play obviously caught the Phillies flat-footed, but Damon’s ability to process a number of things in a millisecond was so impressive:

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Where to begin on this crazy, rollercoaster Game 4? How about with something you probably have never seen: Two SB on one play!

In bulletpoint format:

• Warnings to both benches in the Top of the 1st as ARod is plunked, yet again. Terrible way to start, umps. CC hasn’t even taken the hill and the umps already took away the inside half of the plate. As absurd a decision as been made so far. Bad calls are one thing; bad decisions are another.
• Blanton pitched a pretty darned good game, better than we expected. The end result wasn’t as good as he was, though.
• Strikezone was erratic, at best. Inconsistent.
• CC walked a tightrope all game, in and out of trouble, notably in the 5th when CC had Rollins on 2nd and Victorino on 1st with no one out. CC then retired Utley, Howard and Werth in order.
• Joba was looking great and then –BOOM–, not so great.
• Where’d THIS come from, Pedro Feliz?
• Damon steals second and deftly takes third as no one is covering due to the overshift against Teix. About as smart and heads-up a play as I have ever seen. I was legitimately trembling afterwards.
• Enter Sandman, three soft outs to Teix.

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Check out the strikezone after the top of the 3rd. Those green squares inside the zone? Balls that should have been called strikes (thrown by CC). The green triangles inside the zone (there’s only one) if they existed, would be the balls that should have been called strikes by Blanton.

Bottom line–the Yankees have been jobbed on four pitches so far, and the Phillies got hit with one.

Note: I believe this chart will updateover the course of the game automatically–so maybe things will even out. But at time of writing, the homeplate umping has been slanted significantly in the favor of the Phillies.

Update: after three and a half innings, the tally is 6 pitches in favor of the Phillies, 1 pitch in favor of the Yankees.

Update (9:38): now it’s 7 to 1, Phillies, and a blown call at home to allow Ryan Howard to score.

Charlie Manuel must have absolutely no faith that Cliff Lee can perform on three days rest. Because if he thought he’d get even the 90% version of what we saw on Wednesday (both tonight and in a possible game seven) it’d look a thousand times better than what he’s running out there instead. Simply put, Joe Blanton versus CC Sabathia is a mismatch.

• FIP is a fielding independent version of ERA.
• ERA+ is a version of ERA that measures how the pitcher did compared to league average (adjusted for both league and home park). 100 is league average.
• GB% shows how often the pitcher induces a ground ball (higher is better).
• Whiff% shows what percentage of pitches induce swinging strikes.
• BABIP measures the batting average of balls in play, which generally corellates with LD% (line drive percentage).
• LOB% shows what percentage of a pitcher’s baserunners were stranded (league average is 71.9% for the season).

The numbers are pretty clear, aren’t they? And to really make the comparison, we need to keep in mind that Blanton’s numbers come from the NL, and Sabathia’s come from the talent heavy AL East. Furthermore, looking at Blanton’s LOB%, which is significantly higher than average, we can see that he got straight up lucky this season–if 7% more of his runners score than did, his ERA+ would likely be below 100 (showing him to be a below average NL pitcher). That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have value, by the way–he pitched 195 innings this season, and that holds considerable value. It just means he shouldn’t be starting a postseason game, especially against CC Sabathia.

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The Yankees and Phillies got the third game of the 2009 World Series underway after a short rain delay last night. The Phillies got after Andy Pettitte early, threatening the Pinstripes with a very unhappy Halloween, but the Yankees battled back to do some scaring of their own. As October made way for November, the Bronx Bombers held on to capture the 8-5 victory and take the 2-1 lead in the World Series.

Andy struggled in the second inning, as Jayson Werth led off by reaching low to put a solo homer into the stands. Ibanez struck out swinging, but Pedro Feliz followed with a long fly ball that went off the top of the right field wall for a double. Pettitte gave up a walk to Carlos Ruiz, and Cole Hamels dropped a bunt along the third baseline that neither Pettitte or Jorge Posada picked up, loading the bases. Jimmy Rollins worked a RBI walk and Shane Victorino drove a sac fly to left field, giving the Phillies the 3-0 lead. Andy came back to strike out Chase Utley to end the inning.

In the top of the fourth, Mark Teixeira walked. Alex Rodriguez followed with a big hit deep to right field, which appeared to just clear the wall and hit a camera positioned above it. After review the umpires declared that the hit was in fact a home run and the Yankees had made the game close again with a score of 3-2. In the top of the fifth, Nick Swisher kept the Yankee bats going with a lead off double to left. Pettitte then did himself a favor, driving a single to shallow center, scoring Swisher and tying the game at 3. Derek Jeter followed with a single and Johnny Damon drove a double to center, scoring Pettitte and Jeter and giving the Bombers the 5-3 lead.

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A quick sob story:

Minutes before the first (rain-delayed) pitch last night, we lost power. We had the power flick on and off quickly twice earlier in the night but it was momentary. This time, it was out. My in-laws, who had just left, minutes before, called us to say that a road was blocked with ConEd trucks and a policeman told them it was an electrical fire and the local power was shut down as a result.

As a result, I saw not one inning, one pitch, one anything live from the game until this morning. I “watched” via ESPN Gamecast on my blackberry, sitting in the darkness. Some calls from my dad and emails from my brother were the closest I had to “live” TV. Power came on around 3:30am.

Thrilled the Yanks won, that ARod hit a contested HR, that Swisher got off the schneid, that Pettitte got an RBI and battled through, that Damon delivered, that Joba had a clean inning and that Mo only needed 5 pitches.

Bummed that I saw none of it.