Bronx, N.Y., May 26, 2005 — Yankee fans and all of baseball are surprised at his resurgence, I’m sure, but Kevin Brown evened his record at 4-4 in Thursday night’s 4-3 Yankee win, and the aging righty with the balky back turned in another quality start. He allowed the Tigers three runs on 10 hits over seven innings, but he didn’t walk anyone and he struck out four.

The veteran former Dodger (Ranger, Oriole, Marlin, and Padre) was matched against the Detroit ace, the hard-throwing Jeremy Bonderman, and both teams and the crowd expected that runs would be at a premium. It would have behooved Kevin to come out throwing fire, but third baseman Brandon Inge reached him for a single to left leading off the game on a 1-2 pitch. Detroit Manager Alan Trammell laid his cards out immediately, signaling that the Bengals would try for the early lead as Ramon Martinez sacrificed Inge to second. Brown foiled the plan by retiring the next two on a roller and a popup, both to Tino Martinez at first. But Ivan Rodriguez got the visitors off well again by singling a 3-2 pitch to left after four fouls to start the second.

A strike out sandwiched between a fly and a liner to second put out this fire, but when Inge doubled to right on a 2-2 pitch with one down in the third, it became apparent that Kevin did not have an effective two-strike pitch working for him early. Martinez scored Inge with a single up the middle on yet another two strike count, and fans screamed for Brown to do something different as lefty power hitter Dmitri Young strode to the plate. Be careful what you wish for, a wise man once said, and Young, Rondell White, and Ivan Rodriguez all promptly jumped on the first pitch they saw. Young doubled to left for a second run and advanced to third when Derek Jeter’s relay to the plate hit the scoring runner for an error. Then White’s high hopper down third rolled to a stop on the fair side of the chalk as Young held third, and I-Rod grounded hard into the shortstop hole. But off another highlight-reel play Wednesday night, Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter lunged, grabbed the ball, wheeled, and threw to second in one motion, Cano made a pretty turn, and when Tino corraled the throw, the Yanks had pulled off one of the better 6-4-3’s you’ll ever see.

The Yanks had taken a 1-0 lead in the second, cashing in an A-Rod walk when Martinez doubled down into the right field corner, and Posada grounded to first. Carlos Pena booted the ball and Jason Giambi was hit by a pitch, but the rally fizzled on a Cano douple-play grounder to second. But the two in the third gave the Tigers the early lead they craved. They actually should have relinquished it immediately, but back-to-back-to-back Womack, Sheffield, and Matsui third-inning singles failed to even the score because second base ump Chad Fairchild punched Womack out stealing second when every pair of eyes in the Stadium knew he was safe except for the only ones that counted.

The Tigers were swinging early and it was working. Monroe singled leading off the fourth, but he was easily out stealing as Pena struck out swinging. Jason Smith stroked Brown’s first pitch to the wall in right center for a triple on a ball that Matsui probably should have caught. Light-hitting Nook Logan swung and missed, but bounced the next pitch up the middle for a single and Detroit had a 3-1 lead. We all sensed that if the Yanks were to win this one, Brown would have to stop the bleeding right there. But this time we got what we wished for, as Kevin’s outing shifted into phase number three.

The two-strike base hits had netted the Bengals one and set up another; they plated two by pounding the ball early. Brown’s pitches sink hard, but through four he had coaxed only two ground balls. When Brownie strode out to the mound for the fifth, he finally brought his ground ball pitch with him. Starting with a soft one hopper to the box by Martinez, Brown retired nine of ten, with six of them succumbing to ground balls. It had cost him 61 pitches to get through four down 3-1. He zoomed through the next three frames on just 35 tosses more. Although the 10 hits were more than he would have wanted, the rest of Brown’s numbers were superb. He threw first-pitch strikes to 20 of 28, and his 67/29 strikes/balls ratio was impressive.

But he would have lost this one without some help, which he would get first from the Tigers defense, and then from the most likely of sources. The Yanks closed it to 3-2 in the fourth after Martinez and Posada got things started with lead-off singles to right. Giambi struck out on three pitches (with the second one caroming off my right hand in the Tier on the third-base side), and the crowd let Jason know about it. And then Cano bounced to short for what should have been his second double play. Smith tossed to Martinez, who dropped the ball pretty much the way Mets shortstop Jose Reyes did against the Yanks several days ago. Even then Smith could have turned two had he fielded Jeter’s following bouncer to short crisply, but the Tigers settled for one and Tino crossed with the Yanks’ second run.

Matsui grounded a hard single to right with one down in the fifth, and A-Rod looked Sheffield-like as he lined Bonderman’s next pitch hard but foul down the left field line. The Scoreboard stirred the crowd with a double trumpet blast, and as the sound of the “Charge” cheer was subsiding, Alex lifted the 0-1 pitch in a majestic arc just to the left of dead center. When Joe DiMaggio was smoothly gliding around center field in Yankee Stadium, the Monuments were in play and the fence was better than 450 feet away. Since those days the wall has been making a gradual drift back toward home plate. Rodriguez’s blast didn’t clear the old wall into the left field bleachers (something I’ve only seen happen once in 35 years of attending games), but it sailed over the first wall erected to shorten it, easily 440 feet from home.

With a 4-3 Yankee lead, the teams battled through four scoreless innings. Tom Gordon came out smoking in the eighth, striking out two, but he almost surrendered the lead when I-Rod hit one off the wall 408 feet from the plate. And Mariano Rivera closed it on three strike outs of his own, even if he wasn’t “Mo-sharp”; he fell behind in the count to the first three batters and surrendered a one -out single.

Any other week I might have complained about the conditions in Yankee Stadium, but after the last two nights, this evening had to be classified a beaut. There was plenty of cloud cover before dark obscured the skies, and I think I felt an intermittent drop or two while Rivera was closing the game out. But I shed my sweatshirt as I got to my seat, and a windbreaker was plenty to keep my mind on the action on the field rather than on the challenging conditions all game.

The quality of the baseball was good but mixed as well. May 26 has seen both the ridiculous and the sublime in baseball history. It was this day in 1959 that Harvey Haddix of the Pirates pitched a perfect game against the Braves for an incredible 12 innings, only to lose the game in 13. But on the other hand, in a highlight that had This Week in Baseball viewers smiling for a week, Texas outfielder Jose Canseco had Carlos Martinez’s long fly bounce off his head and into the stands for a home run in a 7-6 loss to Cleveland on May 26, 1993.

The Yanks’ 4-3 win for the sweep of the Tigers was a mixed bag too, as the teams chipped in with two errors apiece. Matsui had trouble tracking balls in center, slick-fielding Carlos Pena of the Tigers had a tough night at first with his leather, Ramon Martinez dropped a double-play ball, and the starting pitchers allowed 19 hits between them. And second-base ump Fairchild made as bad a call as you’re likely to see. But Rondell White made a terrific running catch on a Cano liner to the wall in left, the Tigers attacked Brown’s sinking fastballs aggressively, and the 6-4-3 the Yanks turned to escape the top of the third was genuinely a beautiful thing.

But “sublime”? After the damp and chill of two horrible nights, the weather felt wonderful, but the only thing that really earns that name is the home run/rbi streak Alex Rodriguez is riding. We’ve been told he’s the best there is for years. He’s certainly making a case for the title now.

BTW,TYW

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!