Yankee Talk: World Series Edition – Phill-ed up

Lee outduels Sabathia as Phils win Game 1

NEW YORK – CC Sabathia was one of the most dominant pitchers so far in the postseason.

The other was Cliff Lee.

He was going to have to continue his dominance and hope the Yankees could scrape out a few runs against Philadelphia’s most dominant weapon.
It did not happen.

Yes, Sabathia pitched very good ballgame in his own right. Unfortunately, it was not good enough on this night.

Lee was sensational. Add the help of two Chase Utley homeruns and the ability to tack on against the suddenly weak Yankees bullpen, helped the defending world champion Phillies en route to a 6-1 victory in Game 1 of the 2009 World Series, taking a 1-0 lead in the best-of-seven.

The Yankee Stadium crowd of 50,207, who had not witnessed a World Series game since Game 6 of the 2003 Fall Classic when Josh Beckett pitched a complete game shutout to help the Florida Marlins win it all, created an electric atmosphere at the start as the Yankees began the quest for their 27th championship.

Both Sabathia and Lee threw scoreless frames over the first two innings before with two outs and a full count in the third, Chase Utley jumped on a hanging fastball and sent it down the right field line over the wall for a homerun to give the Phillies a 1-0 advantage.

Utley worked a deep count before drawing a walk in the first inning. Working the count again, Sabathia attempted to paint the pitch on the outside corner that instead found the middle of the plate.

As it turned out, it was just enough. Lee struck out seven through the first four innings. No Yankee reached past second base and never had more than one man on base.

Philadelphia would gain a decisive margin in the sixth inning when Utley hit his second homerun of the night into the right field bleachers for a 2-0 lead.

Sabathia retired the previous eight batters before Utley, but once again left a fastball over the middle of the plate that Utley crushed.

Sabathia finished the night going seven innings, yielding only those two runs, four hits, walking three and striking out six over 113 pitches.

The Phillies tacked on runs in the eighth inning when Raul Ibanez singled home two runs to increase the margin to 4-0.

Phil Hughes started the inning and walked both Jimmy Rollins and Shane Victorino. Damaso Marte relieved Hughes and struck out Utley looking and got Ryan Howard to fly out for the second out.

David Robertson would come and walked Jayson Werth to load the bases before Ibanez would hit a two-strike curveball on the ground in between first and second that found its way into right field for a base hit.

A 4-0 score may as well have been 40-0 the way Lee was dominating. Stifling Yankee bats with his array of pitches, Yankee hitters were back to the dugout with their heads down.

An illustration of the kind of night Lee had came in the bottom of the eighth when Robinson Cano hit a ball hard ticketed for center field. Instead, Lee was able to field the ball behind his back, turning it into a routine play at first.

The Phillies added two more runs in the ninth off Brian Bruney and Phil Coke for a 6-0 margin. Lee stayed in the game despite the margin to pitch the ninth when the Yankees scored an unearned run, but struck out Alex Rodriguez and Jorge Posada to end the game.

Lee’s final pitch accounted for his 10th strikeout. In his 122 pitches, he gave up six hits and no earned runs without walking a batter. He is now 4-0 this postseason with an ERA of 0.54.

The defending world champions will leave New York with the split and can take a two game lead back to Philadelphia in Game 2 when Pedro Martinez returns to pitch against the Yankees for the first time in over four years.

AJ Burnett starts for the Yankees.