Summing up after the Yankees’ two runs in the seventh at the Stadium
last night, and their thrilling go-ahead four in the eighth against the
visiting Houston Astros, my across-the-hall neighbor Ethan said, “I’ve
been waiting for this for fifteen years.” I entirely agreed, since the
Yankees’ eventual 6–4 victory was their second in a row at home and
brought them even with the Astros, at two games apiece, in this A.L.
Championship Series. Ethan, a six-feet-two, redheaded high-school first
baseman, is eighteen years old, and only when I was going to bed did it
come to me that he had somehow overlooked a Yankees World Championship
in 2009, but this is what the game does to us. The sudden swing of
things, the unexpected noise of base hits and the rush of runners and
runs, eclipses all our waiting, wipes out what’s happened before, and
even, for the moment, what happened long ago. I also forgave Ethan’s failure
to mention Aaron Boone’s game-winning eleventh-inning homer against the
Red Sox, in 2003, since it almost certainly came after his bedtime.

The Yanks have now won four games in a row while facing post-season
elimination. They will still be standing after tonight’s game, against
the Astros’ Dallas Keuchel, the best pitcher in the league, no matter
what the outcome, but I’m not sure that I will be.

Let’s go back, for a moment, to the restorative 8–1 Yankee win the night
before, and give some attention to C. C. Sabathia, the Yankees’ starter.
The Yanks had lost the first two games by identical 2–1 scores down in
Houston, but Sabathia’s three-hit, six-inning shut-out was the tenth
straight time he had engineered a Yankee win after a previous team
loss—a record last matched by Whitey Ford, in 1961. C. C. will become a
free agent this year, and it’s not a certainty that the Yankees will
come through with an expensive new contract. He’s a different pitcher
these days from what he was when he arrived, in 2009, as a high-strikeout star from
the Brewers, and now thrives on angles and corners and a commanding
elder presence. He went 14–5 in the regular season, but, like others, I
most want to hold onto the look of him out there: the tent-like uni top,
the billowing pajama pants. His cap sits askew on his bald head, just
above his oddly folded ears. Most of all, at six-six and three hundred
pounds, he is enormous, but this Monadnock, set in motion, becomes
curved and flowing, and the departing and instantly arriving pitch
completes the line and the portrait. His eyes gleam with appreciation as
well as attention: he is sharing our fun.

Both of last night’s starters, the ’Stros’ Lance McCullers and the
Yankees’ Sonny Gray, deserved better outcomes. Gray, removed after a
pair of walks in the top of the sixth, had given up one lone hit, in a
still scoreless game. Arriving well heralded from the Oakland A’s in a
midseason trade, he had not quite lived up to expectations, largely
because the Yankee batters had produced not a single run in support over
his last thirty-seven innings.

Three Astro runs eventually came in that sixth, on Yuli Gurriel’s
double, and the visitors tacked on another in the seventh. McCullers was
even better than Gray, but the Houston manager, A. J. Hinch, removed him
abruptly, after Judge’s leadoff home run in the seventh, which was only
the Yanks’ second hit. The next batter, Didi Gregorius, hit a triple off the
reliever Chris Devenski—the first key market indicator of the evening’s
outcome. He scored on a Gary Sanchez sac fly. The other sure sign, in
the bottom of the eighth, was the pinch-hitter Chase Headley’s embarrassing
sprawl on the basepath between first and second, when he stumbled over
first base while running out a seemingly assured double with a teammate,
Todd Frazier, aboard; he got up, embarrassed, and scrambled toward
second while the shortstop Correa’s throw went behind him to first, and he
beat the relay by a fingertip. This had become a Yankee evening.

Brett Gardner’s sacrifice, struck to the proper right side of the
infield, scored Frazier. Judge’s double brought in Headley’s
pinch-runner, Jacoby Ellsbury; Didi’s single and Sanchez’s way-away
two-run double topped off the scoring, before Aroldis Chapman’s wrap-up,
two-K ninth.

Judge’s performance in the past two games, in which he delivered two
homers, a double, and two walks, encourages us to believe that he is in
another recovery period, after those floods of strikeouts, but we should
perhaps feel even better about that Sanchez double. Sanchez’s catching
troubles behind the plate while handling low pitches had almost
distracted attention from his miserable 0-for-18 stretch at bat. But he
had also delivered the Yankees’ second run on a sacrifice fly, and his
exultations on the field after the double may have even touched some of
the older players on the other team. We can now cautiously resume our
long speculation as to whether he or Aaron Judge will be the great
Yankee slugger of this era.

I have no clue about tonight’s game, when Masahiro Tanaka takes on
Keuchel again, but if the Astros and their fans find surcease in the
return of their ace and in the waiting Verlander on Friday, let them
also ponder their team’s four hits on Friday and measly three last
night. We’re all hanging on by our teeth here.