Bronx, N.Y., August 24, 2011 – Perhaps the most convincing, and simultaneously bizarre, argument supporting Curtis Granderson as the 2011 American League Most Valuable Player is emerging in Yankee Stadium this week. If Curtis doesn’t hit, the Yankees don’t win. Team captain Derek Jeter has gone 6-for-8 over two nights, teammate Nick Swisher has homered three times for five runs, and Robinson Cano has extended the Yankees’ longest 2011 hitting streak to 15 games. Still the team has dropped back-to-back home games to the lowly A’s.

Much of the buzz among fans after the home-standing Bombers fell to light-hitting Oakland 6-5 Tuesday was that starter Bartolo Colon had struggled. But seeing as staff ace CC Sabathia limited the A’s to one lonely run over seven innings Wednesday before the team was finally vanquished 6-4 in 10 innings, the chickens have come to roost in an entirely different place: on a once again dysfunctional offense. This is a surprising view for a crew that has won at almost a .700 clip since the team lost cleanup hitter Alex Rodriguez to injury six weeks ago.

Tuesday night the team failed to score on five straight opportunities against starter Brandon McCarthy, including an inning that stared with a double, and one in which two of the first three batters reached. On Wednesday, the Yankees managed not to plate a run against Trevor Cahill in two separate innings in which a player led off withn a double. The nine left on base the night before were a source of irritation, and nobody enjoyed it when they duplicated that sorry figure Wednesday.

Sabathia, who seemed to be trying to rebuild his pitching arsenal without relying as much on his fastball Wednesday night, surrendered a home run to Coco Crisp to fall behind 1-0 in the first inning, but held the visitors right there for the next six frames while the Yanks scratched out a 2-1 lead. In addition to a singleton home run by Swisher, the team managed to score a small-ball run on Brett Gardner’s one-out infield single in the third, followed by a stolen base and Jeter’s rbi single.

The team failed to add to the lead on multiple opportunities, and the gritty A’s battled back in the eighth inning, bunching two hits around a sac bunt for the tying run against Sabathia, then going ahead on a walk and single against setup man David Robertson. The Yanks got a reprieve when Mark Teixeira homered for the equalizer in the bottom half, and when Mariano Rivera retired three straight in the ninth, the 47,000-plus developed a hankering for pie.

Young fireballing A’s righty Fautino de los Santos did not agree though, and he shut down the home team one-two-three. Underworked former Yankee setup man Rafael Soriano failed to do the same, allowing back-to-back singles with one down in the 10th. He rebounded to strike out Jemile Weeks, but Crisp blasted his next pitch to the second deck in right for his second homer, and third, fourth, and fifth rbi’s of the night. Swisher homered for a run with two down in the bottom half, but it was far from enough, and the Yanks fell, 6-4.

Tuesday, the East Coast “survived” their earthquake with only minor damage on the surface, more than 1,900 years minus one day after the anniversary of the volcano that buried Pompeii on August 24, in A.D. 79. On this day in the year 410, Visigoth raiders overran Rome, the until then center of the empire in the Western world. And the British sacked and burned Washington on August 24, 1814.

It’s anyone’s guess where the Yankee offense that has them rated very high in the league this year has been the last few days. Even though they did quite well while A-Rod was out, perhaps they are suffering a letdown now that he’s returned from the ranks of the injured, only to tweak his thumb so he cannot hold a bat.

Whatever the cause of the home-standing malaise, these frustrating losses and the underperforming offense have picked a day on which the Roman Empire was overrun in one millennium, and the seat of power in the United States was trashed in another, to show their worst side. The back-to-back losses to the A’s have me with my ear to the ground listening for distant rumblings. I’m listening for the

Bronx Quake

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!