Three. Now the World Series is officially on

As I mentioned in the previous post, there is "good" AJ and "bad" AJ, but I left out, "filthy" AJ, and that's the one we got last night.

Let's not gloss over the importance of last night's game, if the Yankees fell into a 2-0 hole against the defending champs, the chances of them winning their 27th championship would have been incredibly slim. Burnett made sure that didn't happen with his best start in a Yankee uniform.

It's really hard to argue with the performance of the starting pitching so far in the Series, CC and AJ have thrown 14 innings and have allowed only 3 runs while striking out 15. I can live with that.

As good as Burnett was tonight during his 7-inning, 9-strikeout performance, it would have been wasted if the Yankee bats didn't finally wake up in the middle innings.

Mark Teixeira (who SOME people apparently think is the baseball-playing equivalent of Raymond Babbit) finally decided to participate with a bomb of a home run off Pedro Martinez to tie the game in the 4th.

Two innings later, Hideki Matsui ended his streak of strikeouts and choppers to second with another solo shot off Pedro, and thanks to Burnett and Mariano Rivera, that was all the Yanks needed from the offense.

Much as I'd like to make a "who's your daddy?" joke about Pedro, the man pitched a damn good game, and reminded everyone how unhittable he used to be with 10 more MPH on his fastball. Still, the Yankees found a way to beat him like they usually do, and we've got a tied series heading to the cesspool known as Philadelphia for Game 3 on Saturday.

By the way, how much must it suck for Mets fans to see Pedro pitching this way in the playoffs after they watched him decompose during his career in Queens? This series just keeps getting worse for those poor bastards.

And of course, as I finished the complimentary paragraph about him, Pedro was at the podium complaining about a Yankee fan verbally harassing him as he walked off the mound, which I find amusing considering that he used to play in Boston, and currently plays in front of the mongrel idiots that live in Philly.

Yeah, Pedro, I'm sure nobody at Fenway or Citizens Bank park has ever cursed in front of a small child. On the bright side, it's nice to know the residents of the $1200 seats at the new Stadium have a little life.

Meanwhile, I have to give Joe Girardi some credit since I spend a lot of time pointing out his many managerial head-scratchers. The way he handled the 7th inning was excellent, I loved Melky's fake bunt followed by a hit-and-run on the 1-0 count to start the rally. Jorge's RBI single was a nice insurance run, and if Jeter hadn't made the unusual decision to bunt with two strikes, there could have been a big inning in the works.

Still, despite the win, there are some areas of concern. I don't think they can expect to go straight from the starting pitcher to Rivera three more times in this series, so they're going to have to find someone to bridge the 7th and 8th innings at some point if they hope to do that.

A-Rod seems lost at the plate, and under normal circumstances, his 0-for-8 with 6 strikeouts would be enough for an entire post, but the guy carried the Yankees offensively for the first 9 games of the playoffs, so I'll let it go for now. I actually like him to bust out against Cole Hamels on Saturday, provided we can get Kate Hudson to do whatever it is she did to turn him into a clutch-hitting terror against the Twins and Angels.

Finally, we come to the FOX broadcast pair of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, who don't even pretend to be impartial at this point. In the bottom of the 7th, the 1st base umpire blew a call that cost the Yankees when a ball that Ryan Howard trapped was ruled a catch, and resulted in a double-play to end the inning.

Joe and Tim gave the ump a break, saying it was a tough play to see and let him off easy.

In the next half-inning, Mo got Chase Utley to hit into a double-play to end a Phillies rally. As it turned out, Utley was safe at first by a matter of a few inches, and naturally Buck and McCarver (with help from the Coors Light Freeze Cam) decided to point out how dearly it cost the Phillies because Ryan Howard didn't get to come to the plate with two runners on.

Give me a break.

In any event, it's now a best-of-five series, and I'll take my chances with Andy Pettitte against Hamels in Game 3 any time.

Three to go.