Afternoon Baseball

That's what today's Yankee game came down to: one-strike counts. In the seventh, after Johnny Damon's two-run hit, Derek Jeter had a great pitch to hit with one strike, and fouled it off, somewhat weakly. He then struck out.
In the 8th, A-Rod missed out on a wheelhouse one-strike pitch, and Melky Cabrera was tentative and defensive on all the pitches, but especially a worthy pitch with one strike against him.
Not that those pitches defined the game, but they surely made the difference between a winnable game and a game winnable only by hopes and dreams -- and absorbing an appearance by Scott Erickson.