CC! CC! Ace Delivers Big on Bronx Stage

NEW YORK -- They could have tossed aside their mittens and shunned their wool coats, that's how blistering hot the cozy confines of the new Yankee Stadium felt now that CC Sabathia had everything under control. It's been quite awhile since this corner of the Bronx has rocked with so much confidence and rolled with such delightful expectations, but that's what happens when the ace doesn't sweat.

Up on their feet, banging whatever or whoever stood near, tens of thousands of Yankee fans rose as one and emptied their lungs in rapturous unison: CC! CC! CC! It wasn't just that Sabathia was blowing through Angel hitters with shocking ease; no, it was so much more. It was the eighth inning and he was still throwing ridiculous heat, his fastball kissing the inside corner of the plate, his slider hypnotizing the batters from Southern California until it looked as if they were swinging at the big lefty's stuff with greased-up surfboards.

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CC! CC! He got Erick Aybar on a comebacker, Chone Figgins on a groundout, Bobby Abreu to fly out to left. He made it look so simple, so sublime. The Angels certainly did their part in turning Game 1 of the American League Championship Series into a Sabathia pitching clinic, bumbling and fumbling away three errors. It was such uncharacteristically sloppy defense for a team known to master the fundamentals, leading to a 4-1 Yankee win Friday night that Joe Girardi pretty much scripted with an engineer's analysis, working inside-out.

The Yankee manager talked about it beforehand, how as a former catcher he manages the game backwards. He starts with taking stock of his bullpen, checking on who's available and healthy, calculates how many runs will be needed, and finishes with how many innings he can reasonably count on from his starter. Sabathia offered Girardi plenty of options, shrugging and saying it didn't much matter from where he stood. He could throw 100, 120, even 140 pitches. (Final number: 113.) It was only his third start in 20 days, on the tail end of a season in which the Yankees took care to rest his powerful arm.

Sabathia blew away pinch hitter Mike Napoli to end the seventh inning, on a strikeout that inspired roars reminiscent of the last time the Yankees reached the ALCS five long seasons ago. The pitcher passionately pumped his fist and headed to the dugout, another snapshot in the Yankee empire's flirtation with the kind of postseason the pinstripes dropped on the baseball world back in 1998. And really, haven't these Yankees shown they are stocked and primed for such a run? From Derek Jeter's cool overall clutchness to Alex Rodriguez's resurgence to a defense that doesn't make many mistakes to the incomparable Mariano Rivera and back to an ace who has been only brilliant in two postseason starts.

"That was a great feeling to have the stadium rocking and to be chanting my name and to be able to get a strikeout. I don't really show a lot of emotion a lot of times, but it came out of me there," said Sabathia, after allowing only four hits and one walk in eight innings while striking out seven.

There's a reason the Yankees all but gave Sabathia a bucket of gold bars to be their ace, and it's not just because he brought with him a killer array of pitches. He wouldn't know how to panic if he were locked in a room with an army of invaders pounding on the door. Some of the Yankees and almost all of the Angels came dressed for a trip to Mt. Everest, their faces wrapped in gauzy material and Elmer Fudd muffs covering their ears. The temperature stayed in the low 40s, the wind howled and a light drizzle coated the Stadium.

But Sabathia remained as cool as a Popsicle. Predicted rainstorms never materialized, though they're still expected to turn Saturday's Game 2 into a royal mess. The weather, like so much else this postseason, rallied on the side of the Yankees, because if Friday's game had been postponed, Girardi would have been forced to alter his plan to give Sabathia the ball in Game 4 and possibly Game 7. That's how much confidence the Yankees have in their $161 million stud. They can ask him to go eight innings against a team he hadn't had much luck with during the season -- Sabathia was 0-2, with a 6.08 ERA against Anaheim -- pat him on the back and count on him to do it again in California and perhaps one more time back at home should the series go the full extension.

There's a reason the Yankees all but gave Sabathia a bucket of gold bars to be their ace. ... He wouldn't know how to panic if he were locked in a room with an army of invaders pounding on the door.
Sabathia sailed through four 1-2-3 innings, going to three ball-counts only twice -- on old friend Abreu in the sixth and a walk to Kendry Morales in the seventh. The lone Angel run came in the fourth inning, when Morales slugged a two-out shot over the infield, scoring Vladimir Guerrero, who was on base with a double off the left-center wall that gave the Angels their first runner in scoring position. Sabathia retired 10 of the next 11 batters after the Angels scored their only run, aided by Johnny Damon's nifty sliding catch that robbed Abreu of a line drive in the sixth.

Figgins and his fleet teammates were expected to test and taunt Sabathia with their feet, but that was pretty tough to do considering the Angels were rarely on base. After Damon's play, Torii Hunter laid down a bunt that jammed in the third-base side's wet turf. But Sabathia, more agile than his nearly 300 pounds of flesh might suggest, grabbed the ball, spun and fired to first. Mark Teixeira, another reason why these Yankees look as dominant as the club from late 90s, stretched into the full splits, his foot appearing to graze the bag just as Hunter reached it.

First base umpire Laz Diaz called Hunter out, giving Yankee haters one more reason to mutter from their grassy knolls. Hunter fumed, Anaheim manager Mike Scioscia argued, but their annoyance should be channeled inward. Like the Twins before them, the Angels can't afford to stumble over their own mistakes and misfortunes. Not when they're flailing against a pitcher like Sabathia, on a night when even the fierce weather conditions can't make him flinch.

"Just typical of CC, he's out there throwing 97 mph under our chins late in the game," said Torii Hunter, Anaheim's Gold Glove center fielder, who went 1-for-3 and slipped as a single rolled past him. "CC's the real deal, man."

Oh, and that play where Sabathia nimbly scooped up Hunter's bunt and threw him out? As Hunter and Scioscia tried to convince Diaz he got the call wrong, as the Stadium crowd locked into another song of CC! CC! Sabathia stood on the mound, adjusted his cap, mugged playfully at A-Rod. And then he yawned. Yawned! He struck out Guerrero in the next at-bat, another chilly end to the visitor's inning.

"He's such a bulldog," Hunter said, of his nemesis/friend/sometimes dinner companion. "You never want to face him, but when he's like this?" Hunter shook his head, like a man trying to brush snowflakes out of his hair. It's been awhile since an October night in the Bronx has felt this brutal.