I guess all you jackass Yankee fans who spent the day before Game 5 saying asinine things like, "gee I really want the Yankees to win it at home" are happy, because you get a chance to get your moronic wish.

There's just no reasoning with people like that, who apparently think winning the fourth game of a series is a foregone conclusion that can be planned into their vision of a perfect celebration.

Here's my list of wishes for the 2009 season:

1) Win World Series

As I said yesterday, I don't care where that is accomplished as long as it is done as quickly and with as little drama as possible. Real Yankee fans understand this, which is why I get texts that say things like, "How awesome would it be to rub it in their faces and win on their turf?"

This is an example of a person who gets it.

Read my blog, it won't kill you.  New York Sports Jerk

But hey, some of you clowns like drama and apparently want me to need a quadruple bypass (and liver transplant) by the end of this thing, so let's bring it back to the Bronx, just for your amusement.

Remember the A.J. Burnett we saw in Game 2? Yeah, that isn't the one we got last night. We got the guy who started Game 5 of the Angels series and let four runs score before recording an out. I hate that guy. In his defense, maybe he heard the desperate pleas for the series to return to New York, and wanted to oblige those "fans" by making sure it happened.

A run in the first off Cliff Lee was exactly what the Yanks needed to get off on the right foot. What they didn't need was Burnett letting the first two hitters reach base before grooving a fastball to Chase Utley.

Speaking to my father after the game, he asked the rhetorical question: "what is the scouting report they have for Chase Utley?"

Apparently, it's to throw him nothing but thigh-high fastballs down the middle of the plate that end up in the rightfield seats. That's now happened five times in this series. Maybe move him off the plate some?

So congrats, Philly fans, your team managed to avoid being swept at home. Quite an accomplishment there.

Down 8-2 heading to the 8th thanks to the stellar relief work of Phil Coke - who allowed Utley's second homer and a Raul Ibanez rocket that landed in the Delaware River - the Yanks did manage to make a game of it with three runs to get to the 9th down by only three runs.

At that point, I was hoping for Brad Lidge, but it seems the Phillies have no faith whatsoever in their "closer" and went to Ryan Madson, who promptly allowed the first two runners to reach to bring the tying run to get to the plate in the form of Derek Jeter.

Captain Clutch then grounded into a rally-killing double play that nobody will talk about because he's Derek Jeter. If his name was something like, say, Alex Rodriguez, there would be four columns in the NY Post today about how he choked. I'll tell you this, Jeter clutched the hell out of the tailor-made 6-4-3 groundball.

In any event, another great at bat by Johnny Damon got the tying run to the plate once again, giving Mark Teixeira a chance to prove that he's not a total waste of a human life. Of course he swung at two changeups in the dirt and struck out to end the game, leaving A-Rod standing on deck.

It's funny, I found myself thinking before and during the 9th inning, "if only we can get A-Rod to the plate, we're going to win this game". As John Sterling would say, "isn't baseball amazing?" Two months ago nobody would have had such a thought. Now, 18 postseason RBI later, he's the man we want at the plate. Weird.

The highlight of the game from a viewing perspective was the two female Philly fans sitting in the middle of my favorite Upper East Side game-watching bar. As you might imagine, given the gene pool of the greater-Philadelphia area, they were "women" only in the most literal definition of the word.

Throughout the game, they would cheer every time a Phillie made contact or fielded a ball, regardless of the end result of the play. Several routine flyballs were applauded, as was a grounder that Jimmy Rollins fielded but made no throw.

At the conclusion of the game, as these two were whooping it up, a comment came from a table behind us that summed up the situation so perfectly, I wish I had been the one to make it.

A gentleman, apparently auditioning for the role of my new best friend, waited for the noise to subside just enough for everyone to hear him, before matter-of-factly unleashing this nugget:

"You're still ugly."

I love New York.