Bronx, N.Y., June 30, 2011 – I would never have admitted it going in, but I really loved the Yankees’ chances for the three-game sweep of the visiting Brewers Thursday afternoon. And it wasn’t just that the Yanks had just beaten Milwaukee’s twin 7-2 (going in, 7-3 leaving) aces in the first two gamers of the series. Randy Wolf is a veteran southpaw, the kind of hurler that often has success in the ballparks in the Bronx, and the NL Central first-place Brewers must have been spoiling a for a fight off a bumbling loss in game 1, and a largely hitless one in the second contest.

No, nothing on the visiting squad had me pumped for a three-game sweep. Rather it was the fact that Yankee ace CC Sabathia would be toeing the mound for the home team. Three weeks into the 2011 season I wrote a column lamenting that Sabathia, who fell to third in the 2010 Cy Young voting despite leading the AL in wins, had no “Ws” to show yet for his pretty good 2011 body of work. Seven weeks later, four outs after he walked off the mound Thursday afternoon, he led the AL in wins with 11.

The opener was a statement inning for the Yankee lefty: He struck out the side swinging with heat (96 mph fast ball), craft (83 mph slider) and guile (88 mph change of pace). Sure, Ryan Braun reached him for a single, the first of his three hits on the day, and seven in the three-game series, but today wasn’t about no-hit stufff – no Jim Kaat “hit bats” way to winning baseball Thursday. CC was throwing darts and the Brewers started missing on the game’s sixth pitch, and didn’t stop until the big man exited in the eighth.

Wolf , who oddly wouldn’t issue another, helped by walking the first two Yanks, and a third before the bottom of the first was over. He largely pitched his way out of it around three stolen bases, but lefty hitter Robinson Cano presented him with a runs-due receipt with a double to the left-center field gap and the Yanks had a 2-0 lead. The 36-pitch ordeal might have slowed CC’s ardor, or blunted his focus, but following a six-pitch walk and a double play pill (he only threw one, but would have topped out at two in any case – the fourth frame would be the only other inning where the greedy K column didn’t grab at least two of the outs for itself), he was back on the beam with a four-pitch swinging whiff of first baseman Mat Gamel.

Two infield hits, the latter a ball Eduardo Nunez threw past first in his haste after a nice play, and a walk loaded the bases in the top of the third, but two swinging strike outs got CC free. The Brew Crew obviously didn’t consider Sabathia unhittable. They not only reached him for six hits; they kept flailing, swinging and missing at his pitches 4, 3, 3, 3, 3, 4, and 3 times for a total of 23 through the first seven frames. Things got a little less nervous when the Yanks added two runs in the third, the first on a leadoff home run, Mark Teixeira’s league-leading 25th, and the 300th of his fairly brief career. Cano, off his two-run double and Tex’s blast, paid for it when Wolf hit him with a 1-1 fast ball, but Randy was made to pay for his sins when Andruw Jones and Francisco Cervelli followed with singles that plated the Yankee second sacker. Five frames later, Cervelli used his third hit of the day to drive in the Yanks’ last run, but the eventual 5-0 final was hardly in doubt by then.

Once Sabathia escaped the sacks-full third, he retired 15 of 17 around Braun and Yuniesky Betancourt singles until Braun’s third single ended the big southpaw’s day two outs into the eighth inning. Boone Logan had yet another good outing, battling Prince Fielder to a six-pitch strike out to close the frame before Luis Ayala pitched a one-two-three, three-ground-out ninth. CC threw 19 of 30 first-pitch strikes and amassed a 77/41 strikes/balls, impressive but not as memorable as the 13 strikes outs, Sabathia’s most ever of any kind. But, most impressive of all, these were all, well, swinging.

Because Duke Ellington had it right 80 years ago, when he wrote the jazz standard,

It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.

BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!