Chase Utley, who takes pride in playing each game as if it were his last, hit two historic home runs on Monday to ensure defending World Series champion Philadelphia had more games to play.
Utley smacked a three-run homer in the first inning and a solo round-tripper in the seventh to power the Phillies past the New York Yankees 8-6 on Monday and lift them to 3-2 in Major League Baseball’s best-of-seven finals series.
“It was a do-or-die game but I try to prepare the same way no matter when I’m playing,” Utley said. “You go out and play every game as hard as you can. You play every game like it’s your last.”
PHOTO: AFP
Utley’s five homers in the 105th World Series matched Yankee legend Reggie Jackson’s 1977 total for the most in any Series and lifted Philadelphia into a sixth game today at New York, where game seven would be tomorrow if needed.
“Obviously it’s great company. At some point, not right now, I will look back on it and see what kind of special moment it is. But right now our goal is to win two more games,” he said.
The Yankees are trying to win a 27th World Series title, the greatest run of championship success in US sport. The Yankees, whose US$201 million payroll is baseball’s highest, have not won the World Series since 2000.
Only six of 40 Series teams trailing 3-1 have ever rallied to win the crown, but no Yankees foe in that situation has even forced a seventh game.
Utley and Raul Ibanez smashed homers in the seventh to build an 8-2 edge for the Phillies, who knocked out short-rested Yankee starter A.J. Burnett early in the third inning.
“If we had pitched, we probably would have won. That’s the bottom line. A.J. struggled,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “I don’t think there was any [short rest] correlation. He just wasn’t able to get it going.”
Southpaw Andy Pettitte, New York’s game-three winner, will pitch game six on short rest if he is able, Girardi said. The Phillies will start Pedro Martinez, the former Boston pitcher and game two loser whom Yankee fans loathe.
Phillies southpaw Cliff Lee, who won the Series opener, contained baseball’s highest-scoring lineup for seven innings before faltering in the eighth, but South Korean Park Chan-ho and Ryan Madson snuffed out a Yankee rally bid.
Utley, who pounded a pair of homers to support Lee’s game-one victory, joined Kansas City’s Willie Aikens from 1980 as the only players with two multi-homer games in the same World Series since the event’s 1903 debut.
“He’s a very dangerous hitter and he puts up great numbers,” Girardi said. “You don’t see him chasing a lot of bad pitches either.”
Alex Rodriguez, heckled by “You Took Steroids” chants for a pre-season confession of doping while with Texas from 2001-2003, gave New York a 1-0 lead with a run-scoring double in the first inning.
The Phillies answered in the first as Jimmy Rollins singled, Shane Victorino took first after being struck on his right hand by a throw from Burnett, whose next offering was a fastball that Utley pounded over the right-field wall.
“Scoring runs early takes a lot of pressure off everybody,” Utley said.
Jayson Werth and Ibanez hit run-scoring singles in the third and Carlos Werth brought in another run on a ground out to give the Phillies a 6-1 edge, but New York added a run in the fifth on Johnny Damon’s run-scoring ground out.
The Yankees, baseball’s best come-from-behind team in the regular season and comeback winners in seven of 10 playoff games, rallied from 8-2 down to threaten late.
Damon singled to open the eighth, took third on a double by Mark Teixeira that snapped his 0-for-11 Series slump, and both scored on a Rodriguez double.
“A-Rod” later scored on a Robinson Cano fly out to pull New York within 8-5. Rodriguez, the boyfriend of actress Kate Hudson, has set a Yankee record by knocking in 18 playoff runs, his two in the eighth sending Lee to the showers.
Park pitched the Phillies out of the eighth and Madson entered in the ninth, promptly giving up a Jorge Posada double and Hideki Matsui single.
Derek Jeter grounded into a double play, although Posada scored from third base, and after a Damon single, Madson struck out Teixeira to finally end it.
Slumping Philadelphia slugger Ryan Howard struck out for a 12th time in the Series, tying a futility mark set in 1980 by Kansas City’s Willie Wilson.
Yankees outfielder Melky Cabrera, who suffered a hamstring strain in game four, was replaced in the starting lineup by Brett Gardner.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier