Bronx, N.Y., August 23, 2011 – The oft-injured A’s righty Brandon McCarthy put on such a mesmerising clinic on throwing strikes in the A’s 6-5 win in Yankee Stadium Monday night that for all intents and purposes it appeared the Yankee offense took the first seven innings off. Of course they did not. In fact, as my scorecard incredulously tells me, McCarthy had just one solitary one-two-three inning through seven-plus (although a base hit, double play grounder also got him through the home fourth facing just three batters as well).

Bartolo Colon was throwing lots of strikes too, 70 in 106 pitches, but that put him about 10 strikes behind his opponent out of about the same number of throws. Colon had just one one-two-three frame as well, and also another three-batter inning via a twin killing. But there the two outings diverge onto vastly different paths.

The A’s and their fans don’t share the “burden” the Yanks and their fans have: how to settle on a final-month and then a postseason rotation. Colon has pretty much held the No. 2 spot in the Yankee rotation much of the year, a spot he earned in the spring and early summer on the unpredictability of the break on his fastball. He increased his bizarre season called-strike-outs/swinging-strike-outs ratio to 58/50 in the second inning by getting Cliff Pennington looking, but the next three whiffs were swinging, and that was not the only thing about his game that changed.

Bartolo’s a fly ball pitcher, so the solo homers from Brandon Allen and Eric Sigard that put him behind 2-0 by the third weren’t that much of a concern (even if the former was just the second ball to reach the new Stadium’s upper deck in three years). Fly balls accounted for nine of the 14 guys he retired who put the ball in play too. Perhaps had the Yanks managed to break through against McCarthy things would have been different, because Bartolo held the A’s right there until the sixth when a Coco Crisp leadoff double and Josh Willingham sac fly upped the lead to 3-0.

But the Yanks were doing no scoring. They wasted a leadoff double, two leadoff singles, a one-out single after a leadoff walk, and another one-out single in five of the seven innings McCarthy finished. But even without the late break on his fastball that characterized much of Colon’s season, he kept the game close on a surprisingly high number of sliders into the seventh. He opened that frame with his second called third strike, but the next two batters battled back from 0-2 to reach safely. With runners on second and third, Joe Girardi called on Boone Logan to face lefty Sogard. But the pinch-hitting Scott Sizemore’s knuckling hump-back liner wrong-footed Mark Teixeira with the infield in, rolling into short right as the score stretched to 5-0. And Allen greeted Hector Noesi with his second bomb of the night, a first-pitch, two-out homer to almost the same spot in right field, although 20 or 30 feet shorter. Even though Hector struck out the side in the eighth, the Yanks came to bat in the bottom half down 6-0.

It would be easy to credit the marvelous cool evening with the fact that the crowd largely hung around for the end, but that wouldn’t be fair. This new Stadium assemblage can drive you crazy by seemingly not paying attention for much of the game, and they are entirely too over-the-top crazy about the Wave. But they do believe in this team, so even if many of them could not have told you how the score got so bad or about their team’s wasted chances, they weren’t going anywhere.

And their heroes almost gave them pie for their efforts. The 3-for-3 Captain Derek Jeter (with a walk and a sacrifice) opened the home eighth with a single. Curtis Granderson walked, but two line outs followed, and another chance looked to be wasted. Nick Swisher, however, finally drove McCarthy from the game with a homer into the Yankee bullpen, and the place came alive.

The ninth inning, against A’s closer Andrew Bailey, started even bettter. DH Jorge Posada, bidding to have his name in the hat when they make postseason roster decisions, and whose fifth-inning double was the only Yankee extra base hit until Swish’s homer, blasted a home run to right to make the score 6-4. Russell Martin doubled to left center, and the speedy Gardner rushed Sizemore into an error at third. Jeter bunted the tying runs over and Granderson walked again. Teixeira popped out, but Robinson Cano worked the count full, then walked to make it 6-5.

Bailey fell behind Swisher 1-0, then 2-0. And Nick hit the third pitch just as hard, and just as far, as his three-run blast in the eighth. A delirious crowd sprung to their feet as the ball headed deep toward the wall. But this ball was not pulled as much as the earlier one, and it came down a foot or two short of the center field end of the Yankee bullpen.

No one has found a better way to say it than the ancient – by modern sports standards – ABC Wild World of Sports TV show:

“The Agony of Defeat.”

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!