We Have Met the Emergency

We have met the emergency, and it is, for the moment, ours. Game 4 of the American League Division Series, at Progressive Field in Cleveland, was a must-win game.

We needed Gerrit Cole to pitch like in ace. Did he ever: 7 innings, 2 runs, 6 hits, 1 walk, 8 strikeouts. His 110th and last pitch was a 98-mile-an-hour fastball, right down the middle, that Guardians pinch-hitter Will Brennan completely missed. In 13 1/3rd innings in this series, he has an ERA of 2.03 and a WHIP of 0.900. He had let the Yankees down in last year's AL Wild Card Game against the Red Sox. This time, he has absolutely done his job.

Anthony Rizzo singled home Gleyber Torres in the 1st inning. Harrison Bader hit a 2-run home run in the 2nd. Giancarlo Stanton hit a sacrifice fly that got Aaron Judge home in the 6th. It wasn't a lot of runs, but it was all that Cole would need.

Clay Holmes -- not sore, like Aaron Boone said he was the night before -- pitched a scoreless 8th, and Wandy Peralta shook off the previous night's poor performance to pitch a perfect 9th. Yankees 4, Guardians 2.

8 wins to go -- but 1 win is, as it was last night, the immediate concern. Game 5 is tonight. The Yankees' backs are still to the wall. The "gutless wonders" tag, applicable to every team that Brian Cashman has assembled since he broke up the 2009 World Champions almost immediately thereafter, still hangs over this team. Winning tonight will push it back, though not completely away. There would, with a win, be another round and, hopefully, another.

Guardians manager Terry Francona, manager of the Red Sox teams that cheated their way past us to the 2004 and 2007 World Championships, said, "You know, if you would have told me back in, I don't know, March that we just signed up to play Game 5 in New York, to go to the ALCS, I would have jogged to New York. I mean, this is -- I'm excited."

Sure, he would be. The Cleveland franchise of the American League is in his blood. Not only has he managed this team, known as the Indians until 2021, since 2013, and played for them in 1988, but his father, John "Tito" Francona, played his best years for them, from 1959 to 1964. For Cleveland, which has only been 1 of the last 4 teams standing 20 times in their 1st 121 seasons, and just 5 times in the last 65 seasons, making the American League Championship Series is a big deal.

For the New York Yankees, it is not even an achievement. The Yankees don't hang Division title banners or ALCS berth banners, or even Pennants. The only championship notations at Yankee Stadium are World Series wins.

The rainout that pushed Game 2 back means that neither team can use their starting pitchers from those games. Which means that, barring injury in either case, the next time Nestor Cortés starts for the Yankees will either be Game 1 of the ALCS in Houston (I can live with that)... or the 2nd game of the 2023 regular season.

Instead, both teams will go with the dreaded "bullpen game." Jameson Taillon, so foolishly used by Boone in the 10th inning of Game 2, will start. He threw 18 pitches, and has since had 2 days' rest. How long can he go? Given the Yankees' bullpen, we could need it to be a while. Aaron Civale will start for the Guardians.

Yankee Stadium will be rocking. But will that rocking turn to booing? We shall see.