This is a typical spring activity, but one would think that with modern information technology things would get easier.

One would be wrong.

I started out this morning trying to print out the rosters from MLB.com which was all well and good, but what about the non-roster players? Those are the guys you need to know the most. So I went next to SpringTraining.com and printed out lists of the non-roster players, too. But I couldn’t help but notice the Phillies hadn’t assigned numbers to them by the time they went to press… so the list could be of limited usefulness.

Things started out easy enough, since both the Yankees and Phillies began with most of their regular starters. Missing from the Yankees were Jeter, A-Rod, and Granderson, who had all taken the bus trip to Bradenton to play the Pirates in a split squad. But the Phillies had a very similar lineup to what we say in the World Series last year: Rollins, Polanco, Utley, Howard, Ibanez, Werth, Francisco, Mayberry, Ruiz (aka Chooch).

Things started out not so easy for Javier Vazquez, whose last pitch in a Yankees uniform (according to the Twitter feed of Sweeny Murti of WFAN) was a grand slam to Johnny Damon, and whose first pitch back was… a home run to Jimmy Rollins.

But after that Vazquez looked good, throwing some off-speed stuff and striking out four of the next six batters he faced.

Meanwhile, I was trying to find out who the pitcher for he Phillies was, which was not in any of the tweets from press members I looked at, and the MLB.com “At Bat” Lite application for iPhone spent an entire inning trying to load game data and then I gave up. It looked like he was wearing #38, and according to the SpringTraining.com roster that would make him Kyle Kendrick. He was a skinny right-hander. (The reason we weren’t sure what his number was has nothing to do with technology and entirely to do with the fact that all the people I sit with have worse eyesight than mine, and mine is spotty through the screen.)

The Phillies changed pitchers in the fourth. No. 52. A dark-skinned guy. I checked the roster… there was no #52 listed. I went back to MLB.com’s “At Bat” app. “At Bat” now loaded and told me that currently pitching for the Phillies was… Kyle Kendrick. NOT HELPFUL.

Well, the Yankees shelled the mystery pitcher, getting two runs off him in his first inning of work, and then another four in the next one. The mystery was solved after he left the game and I went back to check “At Bat,” which was running a whole inning behind, and saw that it was Jose Contreras. Aha.

Meanwhile, on the Yankees side of the ledger, Jonathan Albaladejo looked a bit better that Saturday (when it would have been difficult to look worse, allowing 8 of 9 batters to reach, including a 3 run homer…). David Robertson looked good, letting a ground ball single go through and then a double play to erase the runner, but he had two strikes on Werth and could have ended a tidy inning if he’d retired him. Instead, Werth walked, and Robertson ended up leaving after facing three more batters, retiring none and giving up two runs. Amaury Sanit then came on and put out the fire by striking out Rollins, and then getting out of the next inning without allowing a run.

Still don’t know much about Sanit, but it’s clear the Yankees are intrigued by him and want to see what he can do.

Meanwhile, word came from Bradenton that Alfredo Aceves had pitched to 12 batters, retired them all, and struck out three. Nice. And the Yankees were up 3-0 there.

My scorecard is a bit of a mess, because there were various times when the PA announcer didn’t know how a player was, either, and announced the wrong one. Like at one point #94 came in to play second base and was announced as Eduardo Nunez. However, later that player hit a home run, and we’re pretty sure it was actually David Adams, not Nunez. (Just checked the box score… yep, Adams.) The only Yankee who played the whole game was Kevin Russo, whom we speculate was playing to impress his family. At the very least, two rows in front of us were a group of people who cheered really loud when he was announced before the game, and who went nuts when he doubled to lead off the big rally in the fifth… Definitely family, or family friends.

That was most of the excitement. Nick Swisher had a nice day at the plate, with a double to the wall in right center, and a ground rule double to the wall in left center. Super-hitting prospect Jesus Montero struck out looking, not much to say there. Marcus Thames is back with the Yankees… he finished the day with three strikeouts. Shrug. The Yankees got another run in the seventh, and the Phils added a John Mayberry solo shot, such that going into the top of the ninth it was 7-4 Yankees.

Normally that would be Mariano time, but this is spring training. We were forced to guess that #70, who had pitched the bottom of the eighth, was Zack Segovia.

Segovia got a little tight in the closing situation though, when Jimmy Parades, who had taken over third, made a blatant error to let the leadoff man on, and then with one out, Segovia let in back to back singles, scoring Kevin Nelson. That was enough for him, and so on came Kevin Whelan, who was at least printed on the roster. Whelan struck out Andy Tracy and then got a fly ball from Dominic Brown, which for half a second looked like it was going to put the Phillies on top… but no, it was hauled in for the final out. The game was over in a tidy 2 hours 46 minutes.

A shout-out to Dan McCourt of TakeHimDowntown. and one of the contributors to the YANKEES ANNUAL, who was at the game with some of our other pals from the Behind the Bombers bulletin board! (You guys! Email me the photo(s)! And enjoy the baseball and nice weather!)

The game got started off hot for the Yankees as Jeter singled and Damon doubled, and it looked like all the dire predictions made based on about how bad Blanton’s career numbers were against the Yankees were going to come true. Teixeira grounded out for an RBI for first blood, bringing A-Rod the the plate.

A-Rod took a fastball right in the back, incensing the Yankees bench. It was A-Rod’s third plunking in two days, and he said to the umpire “I think that was pretty obvious.” (Teixeira has now been hit twice, too… more on that later.) The umpires then warned both benches against retaliation, although Sabathia was told he could pitch inside and that the umpires “could tell” if he had intent to hit a batter. I’m not sure I believe that, but in any case, the plunking became a non-issue. Jorge Posada then hit a deep sac fly to bring in a second run, but Blanton had sent his message and settled down.

Blanton would retire the next ten men in a row while hardly seeming to break a sweat. He was helped by an oddly shifting strike zone that MLB.com’s Pitch f/x showed was skewed in his favor. Many of Blanton’s balls just off the strike zone were called strikes, while many of Sabathia’s strikes were called balls.

Sabathia got nicked in the first inning, too. With one out, Shane Victorino laced a double, bringing up Chase Utley, the man who had hit two homers off Sabathia in Game One. Utley once again got a hold of a Sabathia pitch, but it was a foot or two from being a home run, a double off the wall, scoring Victorino. Sabathia then settled down, too, striking out Ryan Howard and Raul Ibanez (on three pitches) around an intentional walk to Jayson Werth. He had a perfect second and third, but then gave up the tying run with two out in the fourth. Ryan Howard, determined not to set a new World Series strikeout record, hit a single, then stole second. Howard is not exactly a speedster. Before this season he had never gotten more than two steals in a whole year, but he’s apparently been working with a coach and this year he had 8 of 9 stolen. So there he was in scoring position. CC got two outs and was working on Pedro Feliz, trying to strand him there. But Feliz was hot and cashed Howard in with a base hit.

Blanton finally blinked again in the fifth. Nick Swisher, who finally broke out of his postseason slump last night with a homer and a double, regained his batting eye tonight and worked a leadoff walk. Walking the leadoff man was like putting raw sirloin into a shark tank. The Yankees began stirring around. Melky Cabrera followed with an infield hit. Sabathia then came to the plate, under orders to bunt, and ended up bunting foul on two strikes for a strikeout. I have to wonder if the weak attempts to bunt were CC secretly saying “Dammit, I’ve hit three career homers! Let me swing!” One unproductive out, but then came Jeter who cashed in Swisher with a hit, followed by Damon, who cashed in Melky. 4-2 Yanks.

But the lead didn’t quite last. Sabathia faced Utley with two outs in the seventh. Utley was definitely going to be his last batter no matter what. And he put Utley down 1-2 on two sharp called strikes and got a foul… but then Utley squared one up and sent a ball deep into the right field seats. That ended Sabathia’s night and cut the lead to a single run.

Marte finished the inning, getting Howard to pop up, and then Joba came on for the eighth. He looked like the Joba of old, striking out Werth on a sucker pitch (high fastball), and then getting Ibanez to swing and miss at the fastball away. He had Pedro Feliz, who was two for three and even the out had been hit hard, down 1-2 then. But he put a 97 mile per hour fastball on the inside half of the plate and Feliz raked it into the seats to tie the game. I don’t think that pitch was where Joba wanted it. He came back to strike out Chooch Ruiz, though, sending the game to the ninth with the score 4-4.

So on came Brad Lidge. Lidge whose struggles this season (11 blown saves) have been well documented and analyzed. But he has been three for three in save situations in the post.

This, however, was not a save situation. If anything, it was even more crucial than a save. Lidge needed to give his team a chance to swing their bats against the Yankees bullpen and not hand a lead to Mariano Rivera.

He faced pinch hitter Hideki Matsui first–Matsui who hit a pinch homer last night. Lidge induced an easy pop-up to short. Then he faced the vaunted Mr. November, Derek Jeter, who had already been on base three out of four times tonight. Jeter guessed fastball and got the slider, looking silly, but he worked the count full before finally fanning. Two outs and it looked like Lidge was going to shut the door when he went 0-2 on Damon, who looked as silly as Jeter on the slider.

But Damon decided to sit on the slider, just fouling off the fastball to stay alive. Lidge kept throwing fastballs, and Damon worked the count full, and then on the ninth pitch of the at bat got another fastball and just managed to line it into left. The sharks began to circle in the Yankees dugout again. Mark Teixeira was up next. Damon wanted to get into scoring position so that he might score on a base hit, and he stole second, only to find when he made his pop-up slide that third base was free for the taking. The Phillies had the infield shift on for Teixeira, and as Jeter did when Jason Giambi was a Yankee, he took the opportunity to grab the extra base. Pedro Feliz took the throw from the catcher behind Damon, and Damon took off. In his postgame press conference, Damon described it as if his 25-year-old legs had suddenly come back. So there he was, perched on third, and a wild pitch or a bloop would make it Mariano Time.

Then Lidge lost Teixeira when he hit him with a pitch. (And was not ejected.)

So it was up to A-Rod. Lidge started him with a fastball on the inside corner, strike one. Then he came back with another fastball, but it was up from the inside corner, just like Joba’s was to Feliz, and Alex didn’t miss it. He ripped the pitch into left for an RBI double, plating Damon and sending Teixiera to third.

Lidge then had Jorge Posada down 0-2 before throwing two that weren’t even close to even the count. The fifth pitch wasn’t a bad one, painting the black on the outside corner, but Posada laced a two-run single, then was out at second trying to stretch it or draw the throw. 7-4 Yankees, and Mariano was coming in.

The FOX broadcasters has earlier shown Mariano huddling up with a heating pad on his ribs, but perhaps it had been just for warmth. It took him only eight pitches to sit the Phils down one-two-three and send the series up 3-1 in the Yankees favor.

The Yankees are hungry now to win tomorrow against Cliff Lee. Lee dominated them in Game 1, but A.J. Burnett dominated the Phillies in Game 2, so we could have a matchup for the ages as the two pitchers go head to head. Can’t wait. Can’t wait.

More Game Notes:

Ryan Howard has joined the ranks of World Series strikeout leaders. Willie Wilson holds the number one spot with 12 Ks in the 1980 series, and it took him 26 at bats to get there. Howard now has 10, and it took him only 14 ABs to do it. Here’s the rest of the list:

Rank Player            SO   PA   Series/Year
1.   Willie Wilson     12   30   1980 WS
2.   Wayne Garrett     11   36   1973 WS
     Eddie Mathews     11   31   1958 WS
     Luis Gonzalez     11   30   2001 WS
     Damon Berryhill   11   24   1992 WS
     Damian Miller     11   23   2001 WS
7.   Devon White       10   36   1997 WS
     George Kelly      10   33   1921 WS
     Vince Coleman     10   30   1987 WS
     Rich Gedman       10   30   1986 WS
     Del Crandall      10   29   1958 WS

Joba Chamberlain vultures the win after giving up the tying run. After the big rally in the ninth, several players were seen hugging the big kid. They really picked him up.

Mariano has thrown a total of 13 pitches in two days. I would say if the Yankees have a lead in the ninth inning tomorrow, he’s available.

Melky Cabrera strained his left hammy and left the game partway through. Hopefully Gardner and Hairston are ready to step up. Remember, Luis Sojo had the series-winning hit against the Mets in Game 5 in 2000. It isn’t always the big horses (or centaurs) that do it.

Thanks to Ed Price of Fanhouse & the Star-Ledger for this factoid: “Last player to battle for 9 or more pitches and get a hit in 9th inning or later of a tied WS game: Derek Jeter, Game 4 ’01, HR off B.Kim.” Myself, I was reminded of Paul O’Neill doing something similar, too. Follow Ed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ed_price.

And this one from Sweeny Murti of WFAN: “From the All-Star break thru Game 4 of the WS, CC Sabathia made 20 starts. The Yankees went 17-3 in those starts.”
Follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/YankeesWFAN.

Pete Caldera of the Bergen Record: “Into the Fall Classic lexicon, we nominate ‘Damon’s Dash.’”
Follow him at http://twitter.com/pcaldera.

For a while it looked like Pettitte might not even last long enough to get an at bat. Through two innings he had thrown 52 pitches and struggled with his control.

When Pettitte has his stuff, he induced a lot of ground ball outs. He ended the night with 7 strikeouts and 8 in the air, only 3 real ground ball outs. In the second inning he labored, and the Phillies scored three starting with a Jayson Werth solo homer to lead off the inning. With two on and one out, Phils pitcher Cole Hamels then laid down a perfect bunt for a base hit to load the bases. Pettitte then walked in a run, and gave up an RBI sac fly to Shane Victorino. Getting out of the inning having given up only three runs seemed like a great escape at the time, and indeed as the game went on Andy’s performance only cemented that impression. Other than another solo homer to Werth in the sixth, he was largely untouchable after that, finishing six innings with 104 pitches, four earned runs. After the second, everyone was predicting we would findlly see Chad Gaudin, while Cole Hamels seemed to have found his control and was shutting the Yankees down. But when Pettitte left after six, Hamels was already gone, replaced by J.A. Happ, and Pettitte left with the lead.

Yes, the lead. The Yankees had their hitting shoes on, as Teixeira walked in the fourth, followed by a dinger off the bat of Alex Rodriguez that at first was ruled a double, but upon umpire replay was ruled a homer. The ball had actually hit the lens of a TV camera that was hanging over the right field wall. As one of the baseball writers whose Twitter feed I was following during the game wrote, “It’s Halloween and Jeffrey Maier came dressed as a camera.” (Thanks, Joel Sherman, @nyp_joelsherman) Thanks to the two-run shot (the only multi-run homer hit so far in the World Series; the other 8 shots have been singletons.) it was then 3-2 Phillies.

But not for long. In the next inning, the fifth, Nick Swisher busted out, as he had confidently predicted he would in a FOX rain delay interview prior to the game. He led off the inning with a double, and then scored the tying run when Andy Pettitte, of all people, drove him in with an RBI hit. Jeter followed with another hit and then Johnny Damon stroked a two-run double, scoring Pettitte and Jeter and putting the Yankees up 5-3. Hamels then walked Teixeira for the second time on the night and his night was done.

The Yankees would keep tacking on runs, one each in the next three innings, with a Swisher solo shot, a pinch solo shot from Hideki Matsui, and after walking in the seventh, Johnny Damon stole a base and scored on a Jorge Posada RBI hit. Every Phillies reliever except for Ryan Madson was nicked for an earned run. What had been a rowdy, loud Philly crowd was quieted enough that the “Let’s Go Yankees” chant was easily audible on the FOX tv broadcast.

Meanwhile, Nick Swisher wasn’t the only struggling Yankee to find a bit of redemption in the game. Joba Chamberlain pitched a perfect inning, and then Damaso Marte followed suit. Phil Hughes then came on to start the ninth with an 8-4 lead, and went right after the first hitter, Pedro Feliz. He induced a ground out and then attacked Chooch Ruiz. Yes, it was good to see Hughes be aggressive, but he got a little too aggressive, giving Ruiz one down the middle and up, which left the ballpark in a hurry.

With the score 8-5, Joe Girardi didn’t hesitate to pull Hughes and put in Mariano Rivera. Five pitches later, Game 3 was in the books, an 8-5 Yankee win.

More Notes:
Pettitte’s performance ensured that every Yankee starter so far this postseason has gone at least 6 innings. It also gives him his 17th postseason win, two better than the next closest man, John Smoltz.

A-Rod now has 6 homers this postseason, tying him with Bernie Williams for the franchise lead.

Alex was the first person in the regular season to hit a contested home run reviewed by instant replay, and he is now the first to hit one in the postseason, too.

From Sweeny Murti of WFAN: “Before tonight Yanks had won 22 World Series games since 1996. Rivera had appeared in all but 4 of them.”

I decided to start my night off right, which meant getting a good luck hug from Mickey Rivers outside Stan’s Sports World, where he was autographing. I don’t think he actually remembers me from one year to the next, although I’ve interviewed him many times in Spring Training. But he’s a sweetheart, no other way to describe him.

I also ran into Seth Everett, now of XM Radio, formerly of MLB.com. Seth recognizes me, but I think can never quite remember who I am either. I probably look quite different when I am pinstriped-up in my fan gear than when I am in my professional writer get-up. (For those who don’t know, the spring training uniform of the baseball writer is a polo shirt in a neutral color with bermuda shorts with pockets to hold your voice recorder and notebook. If you wear a hat to keep the sun off your face, it’s always a neutral non-team affiliated hat. I usually wear one I got from ESPN, even though I don’t write for them. Anyway, hi Seth if you’re reading this! You know me as the editor of Yankees Annual and we met in either Tampa or Clearwater, or maybe it was Lakeland? Probably all three, now that I think about it.)

Anyway, back to tonight when I was out to express my rooting interest and hopefully see the team I love get off the mat.

The weather was brisk, the wind having reversed from last night, blowing a little bit in and from right to left. It was cold, but much nicer than last night. Also, mysteriously, it always feels warmer at the stadium when the Yankees score runs.

A. J. Burnett had his stuff. In fact, he seemed to have stuff we hadn’t seen from him before. In the first inning, he established strike one quickly. The Phillies drew first blood, scratching a run with two outs, after Ibanez doubled and then a ground ball got through the infield off the bat of Matt Stairs. AJ did not pitch scared. He attacked the strike zone and got ahead of hitters. He threw a lot of pitches, but so did Pedro. In fact, both pitchers racked up high pitch counts early. Pedro had 61 pitches after three innings and AJ had 59 pitches.

Kudos to Jose Molina for the big pickoff of Jayson Werth in the fourth. Werth had led off the inning with a base hit and the crowd was worried that it might be the spark that started a brush fire of the Phillies offense. The Panda snuffed that with a heads-up throw to Teixeira.

Teixeira. When he came to bat in the bottom of the inning, I was in a crowded ladies room. They play the radio play by play in the bathrooms in the new stadium, so I was washing my hands when I heard John Sterling go into his patented home run call. Every stall was full at that point, with women in line. The screams of joy were deafening.

I returned to my seat to find the party in full swing. You would have thought he had hit a grand slam to put the Yankees way head, not just tied the game, but somehow there was a feeling of confidence that returned to the fans. If Tex, who had been struggling, could get going like that, surely that meant we were going to be OK?

The feeling was only fueled even more by how great Burnett continued to pitch. Pedro and he continued to duel. Pedro was always wily, but he was even wilier than ever. I knew he had taken the place of Jamie Moyer in the Phillies rotation, but I didn’t know he had taken over the role of Thrower of a Dizzying Array of Off-Speed Junk. His curve ball ranged from 69 mph to 79 mph, and his fastball(s) ranged from 84 to 91. The scoreboard guy didn’t even label half the pitches since he couldn’t figure out what they were. The pitch that Pedro threw to Tex that left the park came in at 75 miles per hour. According to FOX tv, it left the bat at 106.

Burnett threw 22 out of 25 first pitch strikes. That is phenomenal.

Just listened to Pedro on the postgame show. I’m typing this in the car on the way home, of course. Pedro says Tex hit a good pitch, whereas the one that Matsui hit, he said he might have thrown something different if he’d thought about it a bit more. Matsui hit a solo shot in the sixth, to put the Yankees up 2-1.

After six innings he had thrown 96 pitches, and then he came out to pitch the seventh. The crowd was going nuts, supporting him all the way. And he got two called strike outs, and then Feliz grounded out. The party was rocking.

I was predicting at that point that if the Yankees didn’t score five runs, Girardi would go to Mariano for a six-out save. As it turned out, the Yankees managed a small rally, one run on three hits, including a nice pinch single from Posada. They might have had more if not for a strange double play where everyone on the field seemed to see something different. The official call was that the liner to first was caught in the air and then Posada was doubled off first, but some thought it was short-hopped. In any case, they did get an insurance run, and on came Mo for a six out save.

Getting the job done required a nifty double play to end the eighth, but when Mo needed it, he got it. With two outs in the ninth, including the Golden Sombrero for Ryan Howard, Raul Ibanez doubled, but Matt Stairs struck out to seal the deal.

The two games were so similar in some ways, being such close pitcher’s duels. And I’ll point out that the two big boppers, Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Howard, have both been shut down. A-Rod is 0-for-8 with 6 strikeouts, while Howard is 2-for-9 with 6 strikeouts. I worry that A-Rod is psyched out, but perhaps he will bust out in the homer haven of Philly, especially if Hamels doesn’t have it.

Looking forward to the day off tomorrow to rest and recuperate. Tonight was my last game at the stadium this year no matter what happens in the series, since if it goes to a game 6 or 7 I will be on my way to South Carolina for a convention at that point. So it is sports bars for me this weekend and then XM radio. Seth Everett, I’m listening to you.