All Sabathia: CC goes eight in 2-1 Yankees win

Playoff atmosphere, Manny Ramirez, Joe Torre and an A-Rod homerun - this was a blast to watch.

This may have been Sabathia's best start of the year: 8 ip, 1 r, 4 h, 7 k, 3 bb, 13 groundouts. He conceded a run in the first (on a Manny RBI single - who else?), but didn't allow anything after that. Mo struck out Manny, Matt Kemp and James Loney in order in the ninth, dropping his ERA to .99.

Speaking of CC, he's starting his usual mid-summer roll. In five starts this month, he's thrown 37 innings of 2.19 ERA baseball.

Outside of A-Rod's homer (and double), there wasn't much to see on the offensive side: Jeter had two hits, Cano had a single and a HBP and Posada had a RBI single. To his credit, Vicente Padilla pitched a helluva game. On most nights, that's good enough to win.

Play of the Game: No doubt about this one, A-Rod's mammoth shot in the sixth put the Yanks up one, a lead they would not relinquish (+19%).

Comment of the Game: Jedi Master A-Rod's excellent photoshop work. Kudos!

On the Dodgers postgame show, Steve 'Psycho' Lyons bitched about the ninth inning strikezone. Then, to my surprise, Joe Torre complained. To paraphrase: "Mo doesn't need any help, but those calls were terrible." Here is that zone -

Those three strikes in the lower left corner happen to be inside the strikezone. In fact, not one pitch outside the zone was called a strike.

One more thing: I can't ever remember hearing the "Yankees suck" chant so often in one game, especially when the opposing team was either tied or losing.