Another Yankee comeback
NEW YORK — The New York Yankees waited all season for that huge hit from Alex Rodriguez.
Boy, did he deliver just in time.
Rodriguez hit a tying double in the 12th inning, then Derek Jeter dashed home on Hideki Matsui’s sacrifice fly and the Yankees bailed out Mariano Rivera with another improbable postseason comeback, beating Minnesota 7-6 Wednesday night to even their series at a game apiece.
“Alex had a little trouble settling in here, but when you do this at Yankee Stadium in a postseason game, especially coming from behind, God only knows what it’s going to do for him,” New York manager Joe Torre said. “You couldn’t get a bigger hit.”
After falling behind in the 12th on Torii Hunter’s home run, the Yankees responded with a championship-caliber rally. No surprise, because New York set a major league record with 61 comeback wins during the regular season.
“We never doubted ourselves,” Gary Sheffield said. “We’ve done this all season. There’s no reason to think we couldn’t do it again.”
Corey Koskie keyed the Twins’ eighth-inning comeback with a tying double against Rivera, who blew a save in the postseason for only the third time in 33 chances.
Game 3 in the best-of-five A.L. series will be Friday night at the Metrodome.
Jeter, Rodriguez and Sheffield homered earlier in this game, and it went to extra innings tied at 5. It stayed that way until Hunter against Tanyon Sturtze, who had worked 2 2/3 hitless innings to that point.
But Joe Nathan was running out of gas, too. The Twins’ closer had made 43 straight appearances without going more than one inning, but manager Ron Gardenhire sent him out for a season-high third inning in hopes of finishing it.
“He was still throwing 94, 95, 96 mph,” Gardenhire said. “It’s a little disappointing. I probably left him out there too long. I didn’t like our options.”
After a strike, Nathan walked Miguel Cairo and Jeter on eight straight pitches with one out in the 12th, bringing up Rodriguez, who hit only .248 with runners in scoring position in his first season with the Yankees.
He’s making up for all that in October. A-Rod hit a ground-rule double to left-center on Nathan’s 49th pitch, tying the score at 6 with his fourth hit of the game. It gave him three RBIs, and made him 6 for 10 in the series.
“This team never gives up,” Rodriguez said. “When we fell behind in the 12th, we felt like there was a window of opportunity with Nathan going out for his third inning. If we can just get some guys on, we can tie it or win it.”
Sheffield was intentionally walked before J.C. Romero replaced Nathan.
With the outfield drawn-in, Matsui hit a liner directly at right fielder Jacque Jones that appeared to be too shallow to score Jeter from third.
But Jeter took off for the plate, and Jones’ throw didn’t have much on it. First baseman Matthew LeCroy, who entered as a pinch-hitter in the 10th, relayed the ball to the plate, but Jeter slid in safely.
“I didn’t care, I was going no matter what,” Jeter said.