Bronx, N.Y., April 21, 2006 — An attempt to pick the Yanks’ unlucky number via a quick glance at Friday night’s line score would probably come up with three, as that is the amount of runs the Orioles posted each time they managed to send runners across the plate. The visitors prevailed 6-5 in a tight game on a cold night in front of 50,000-plus in Yankee Stadium.

I would argue that if any number will haunt the Yankee brass and players come Saturday, it would be two. The O’s scored three runs TWO times, and they did so TWO innings apart. They came from behind TWO times, and the Yanks lost the game because they could not do the same.

But the TWO I’m talking about is a little more specific. TWO talented and strong young Yankee hurlers posted the first 23 outs, most of them in fine fashion. But each made the same fatal mistake: They walked the number one and TWO guys in the Baltimore order with TWO outs, setting up the first three-run rampage, and crowning the second. Yankee pitching allowed just these four free passes, and they paid for it with a loss.

Aside from both being hard throwers and young, Chien-Ming Wang and Scott Proctor couldn’t be more different. Wang relies on pinpoint control, and even when he has his [lately] characteristic bad inning. more often than not his pitches are finding bats, and those wands are smacking balls “where they ain’t.” When throwing well, he coaxes ground balls like delicious picnic spreads attract ants, and Friday was no exception. In his four effective innings (first, second, fourth, fifth), he not only retired 12 of 13 batters on a strike out, one fly, and 10 grounders, he did it with only 33 pitches, just nine of them off the plate.

How does one explain the third then, when with two down and ex-Red Sox first baseman Kevin Millar on second via a double with two outs, he walked Brian Roberts and Nick Markakis on 10 pitches? Roberts had a career year before getting hurt in 2005, and showed some surprising power numbers, but he’s mostly been a singles hitter in his career. And Markakis has yet to show that he can hit in the bigs. But Wang not only walked both, he then fell to 3-0 on Melvin Mora. He recovered with three strikes, two called and one that resulted in a slow roller toward the shortstop hole. Derek Jeter charged and made the off balance flip to first as all three runners were off with the pitch. Andy Phillips corralled the throw with a leap and came down on the bag with a step to spare, but first base ump Jerry Crawford called Mora safe, and the Birds plated two. Miguel Tejada lined a 1-0 single for a third tally, and just like that the Yanks were down 3-1. Just as quickly as Wang lost the plate, he found it: He threw just five out of the zone while garnering ground outs from five of the next seven.

Scott Proctor’s troubles were at least easier to understand, if no easier to watch. Wang had a bad break when Tejada’s bouncer up the middle leading off the top of the sixth glanced off him and toward the second base hole for an infield single, and hard one-base hits by Jay Gibbons and Ramon Hernandez loaded the bases with nobody out. Chien-Ming got the first grounder he needed, a Javy Lopez bouncer to the box for a force at the plate. But Kevin Millar, who answered cascading boos all evening by repeatedly hurting the Yanks with his bat, lifted a single over first for two runs.

The Yanks had forged a 1-0, first-inning lead on a Derek Jeter triple and a Gary Sheffield single, but their rally was blunted when A-Rod’s sharp bid for a base hit up the middle glanced off Orioles starter Kris Benson to short for a 1-6-4-3 double play. Then they replied to the O’s third with a two-out, two-run, game-tying Robinson Cano home run in the fourth, and took the lead when Rodriguez’s clutch two-out single delivered Damon from third in the fifth. But the O’s leap-frogged to a 5-4 lead on Millar’s single, and Joe Torre brought in Proctor.

Scott is a strike out/fly ball pitcher, and he struck out center fielder Corey Patterson on three pitches for the second out. But whereas Wang is a control freak, who threw 46 of 73 pitches for strikes, Proctor struggles with his control. By the time his night ended six outs later, his strikes/balls ratio wasn’t nearly as good (23 /19). He followed the three-pitch punch-out by repeating Wang’s cardinal sin, and walked Roberts and Markakis on six pitches each. The first reloaded the bases, and the second plated the sixth, and eventually deciding, run.

The Yanks threatened right away with a Jeter lead-off seventh-inning single, but Sheffield bounced into a twin killing and Tejada made a fine grab on an A-Rod hard liner to his left. Back-to-back, one-out, eighth-inning doubles from Hideki Matsui and Jorge Posada closed the gap to one, and the Yanks were at it again in the ninth. After Damon’s soft liner to second (I swear ALL of these fell for hits when he was playing for another team), Jeter worked a walk and Sheffield stroked his third single of the night. His two-out rbi single from four innings earlier forgotten, A-Rod strode to the dugout among a smattering of boos once he struck out against fireballing reliever Chris Ray, who hit 96 or 97 mph on the scoreboard gun every time he threw a fastball.

Giambi walked on four pitches, and an appreciative and expectant crowd stood and cheered as one as Matsui strode to the plate, having reached safely four straight times. For once it seemed the number TWO would smile on the Yanks as Hideki’s half swing with TWO stikes was ruled “no swing.” But it was just a tease as home plate ump Phil Cuzzi punched him out on a 3-2 fastball that seemed a bit outside and high.

So the Yanks returned to New York weary from six weeks in Florida and another three on the road, having finally won a close game in Toronto Wednesday. They’ll have to try to re-start that streak on Saturday afternoon.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!