Bronx, N.Y., May 20, 2008 — Anyone picking up Wednesday’s newspaper and seeing that the reeling, last-place Yankees were crushed by the middling Baltimore Orioles 12-2 in the Stadium Tuesday night might assume that starter Mike Mussina just didn’t have it. And they wouldn’t be all wrong.

It took Moose 41 pitches to get two outs and allow seven runs, even if six of them were unearned. He allowed five hits and two walks, including one to lead off the game and a four-pitch beaut to drive in the inning’s second run. But this was one game where the tag “unearned” should have been typeset in 100-point bold type and plastered all over the ugly Birds’ onslaught.

Mussina was hardly blameless. He took the mound with spotty control of both his fastball and a once again killer curve, but couldn’t consistently find the strike zone with anything but his cutter. Mussina has thrived in recent weeks while the rest of the starting staff suffers loss after loss due to a struggling offense. He knew going in better than most that a leadoff walk was to be avoided at all costs. But he missed with two straight to Brian Roberts at 2-2, and the trouble began.

Mike battled second batter Melvin Mora gamely, but the Orioles guessed right, sending Roberts at 2-2, and he cruised into scoring position as Alex Rodriguez pegged Mora out. Mussina had his best moment striking out the tough but struggling Nick Markakis, but DH Aubrey Huff singled over the leaping Jason Giambi at first and the O’s had a 1-0 lead. Only too resigned to the recent two-runs-a-game Yankee approach, many in the crowd winced that the O’s were already halfway there.

Moose jumped ahead of veteran first baseman Kevin Millar, whom local fans just can’t stop themselves from booing since his part in the 2004 Red Sox triumph over the Yanks. He is not having a good year, but he always seems to rise to the provocation the fans give him several years and one team removed from his best days. He singled to left center, the first of three straight times he would reach safely. It’s been four years, Yankee fans. Can we forget about Millar and let his career continue what appears to be a natural fade?

Mussina pumped two quick strikes around a ball to right fielder Luke Scott with two down and two on, and got the routine ground ball toward the middle to escape down 1-0 on his 25th pitch. Derek Jeter corraled the ball and prepared to scoop it to partner Robbie Cano at second for the force, but Cano was a no-show. The Yankee Captain hurriedly redirected his throw toward first, pretty much online, but too high for Jason Giambi to catch without leaping up to snare it. Scott reached, the bases-loaded walk followed, and double-single-triple later, Moose was gone and the Yanks were down 7-0.

The game was over, and the big crowd that braved wet and cool weather to get to the ballpark knew it. Johnny Damon singled leading off the bottom half, but Jeter bounced into a 6-4-3, and one out later, the Orioles were back at it. Ross Ohlendorf had replaced Moose and got Mora on a second 5-3 to close the first, but not until after falling behind in the count 3-0. He coaxed two quick outs in the second, but issued a walk to Millar (who else?), and Johnny Damon played Scott’s bloop to short left into a two-base error with Millar scoring. Damon had missed a costly attempt at the triple that closed the first-inning scoring, with the ball getting past him and rolling toward the corner. Now a second walk and single plated one more for a 9-0 lead, and it was no consolation at all to the paying customers that Scott was officially 0-for-2 and that just one of the nine runs was earned.

Alex Rodriguez, back after 17 days lost to an injured quad, reached on an error in the home second, and Giambi blooped a single to short left after a Hideki Matsui fielder’s choice. Cano struck out swinging on five pitches, however, beginning a cycle where Baltimore righty Daniel Cabrera and his bullpen would retire the bottom three in the Yankee order nine times in nine tries.

Ohlendorf handed the ball off to Latroy Hawlins after four with the Yanks down one more at 10-0 on a Millar (yes, him again) leadoff homer to left in the fourth. Cabrera, meanwhile, retired nine of 10 Yanks after the second around a nasty-sounding hit by pitch on Jeter’s left hand in the third. It’s possible that Joe Girardi just decided to get Derek out of this hopeless debacle early, but there was some concern when he was immediately removed for pinch runner Alberto Gonzalez.

The Yanks mounted their only effective counterattack in the sixth, once Bobby Abreu reached on a two-out infield single toward short. Rodriguez gave the paying crowd what they hoped to see, with a no-doubt-about-it bomb to almost straightaway center, but 10-2 was as close as the Yanks would get.

Hawkins retired five straight Orioles hitters, but he probably scored more points with his team (and certainly with the crowd) when he subsequently backed Scott off with first-pitch heat with two down in the sixth. The next pitch sailed right over Scott’s head, and home plate ump Chuck Meriwether ejected Hawkins immediately. In my mind Don Baylor’s phone began to ring. Typical. The Yanks had one ballplayer being X-rayed after being hit by a pitch, the O’s none, but I can feel the New York suspension a-coming.

Nothing of import happened thereafter, though Scott, curiously not tossed in the battling sixth despite an attempt to charge the mound, made Yankee reliever Jose Veras pay for past indignities with a long bomb to right in the eighth to forge the final 12-2 score. Apparently not averse to the work after a day off, Mariano Rivera gave the few fans remaining a thrill by finishing the Birds off in the top of the ninth. The Yanks managed Abreu and Matsui singles in the home ninth, but Morgan Ensberg ended it at 10:04 with a dp grounder to second base.

Tuesday would have been the 100th birthday of beloved screen personality Jimmy Stewart. A consummate professional, Stewart not only seemed a nice guy, it’s hard to think of the star of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Harvey, and It’s a Wonderful Life without viewing him, or the characters he played, as men who had an innate sense of what was important and worthy of preserving, and what was not. The Yanks have until recently done an impressive job of paying respects to their soon-to-be-gone Baseball Cathedral, honoring it with a day-by-day countdown of regular-season games remaining carried out on DiamondVision by a list of baseball’s and sports’ best. George Steinbrenner himself got the ball rolling, followed by Hall of Famer Yogi Berra, stars of football and hockey, and Yankee favorites including Paul O’Neill, Bobby Murcer, Tino Martinez, David Cone, and Bucky Dent. But the list has slipped of late, with a relatively unknown fan from Rochester pushing the lever Sunday and MetLife Executive VP Ruth A. Fattori Tuesday. Kudos to MetLife for sponsoring the Yankee pitcher of the Month Award that correctly went to Rivera, but does that make them worthy to be one of 81 to honor The House That Ruth Built in this, its last year?

And what are we talking here, really? We are talking about the timeless, the things that outlast the trends, the qualities that transend the latest blip on the popularity screen. It is the same milieu, really, in which we discuss quality baseball in this, the most important year yet in venerable old Yankee Stadium. The locals lost Tuesday night’s contest because one player was not where he needed to be at a pivotal point in just one game out of 162.

In 10 days it will be May 30, the day that two stars of one of the most endearing films of all time time passed away. Dooley Wilson played Sam in Casbalanca, with the role of Captain Louis Renault being handled by Claude Rains. Both passed away on May 30, Wilson in 1953 and Rains in 1967. Young Robbie Cano, a surefire star of the future, came up short at a pivotal moment in this game. Let Dooley and Claude, aka Sam and Louis, tell Cano just how to proceed:

You must remember this…
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by.

Cover second base, Robbie.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!