Yankees unite to force Game 4

NEW YORK - The crowd rose in unison to welcome the in-season savior. He came up lame. It rose again to greet the manager on the ledge. He still might have a decision to make: jump or get pushed. It even rose to greet the third baseman on the edge. He awoke from whatever slumber/stupor he had been in.

So, too, did the rest of the New York Yankees.

On a night highlighted by the plays of ex-Red Sox, the Yankees lost Roger Clemens, found Johnny Damon, and got a big, albeit unintentional, lift from Trot Nixon and climbed back into the American League Division Series against the Indians, taking an 8-4 decision. The Indians still lead the series, 2-1, but the Yankees, for the first time in days, showed what made them so feared coming into the postseason. They actually hit.

Manager Joe Torre, under a win-or-else command from George Steinbrenner - and everyone knew what the "or else" was - predicted his heretofore comatose team would respond. It needed some time, but when it did, it put a quick end to competition for the evening.

"The only thing I try to do is allow my players to roll the dice and play," Torre said after his club pounded out 11 hits, including a pair of singles by the previously hitless Alex Rodriguez. "Every time we go to the postseason, there's nothing that's going to satisfy anybody [read: Steinbrenner] unless you win the World Series. And that's very difficult. This is a very uncomfortable time of year. It's also an exciting time of year. You understand there's no safety net."

New York entrusted its fleeting hopes to Clemens, who hadn't pitched since Sept. 16. He had said he was fine. He was wrong. Despite a sign begging him to "Save Us, Roger," the 45-year-old couldn't make it out of the third inning. The Yankees pulled him, trailing, 2-0, saying he strained his left hamstring. It would soon be a 3-0 game, temporarily quieting the capacity crowd of 56,358.

"Roger's got a lot of guts. He always has. He was trying to tough it out and I think he took it about as far as he could," said Indians manager Eric Wedge.

Once Clemens departed, things turned in a New York minute. The Yankees squandered early scoring chances against Jake Westbrook, who was bailed out by three double plays, two courtesy of the usually clutch Derek Jeter. It was a 3-1 game with one out in the fifth when the bottom of the Yankee order got things rolling.

Successive opposite-field hits by Hideki Matsui, Robinson Cano, and Melky Cabrera made it a 3-2 game. Then it was Damon's turn. He knocked in New York's first run with a third-inning single and, this time, he jumped on a 2-and-0 Westbrook offering and sent it into the right-field stands.

The blast was Damon's second of the series - he homered leading off Game 1 - and gave New York a 5-3 lead. Damon, who was hitless in Game 2 and was 1 for 9 in the first two games, took the obligatory curtain call. His homer was the Yankees' eighth hit of the game, matching their total from the first two games in Cleveland. Of the seven homers Damon has hit in the playoffs, five have given his team the lead.

"We know our backs are against the wall," Damon said. "We know there's a lot on the line. We're playing for a manager we love. We're playing for fans that we love. So we'd like to prolong the season as long as we can. We've battled adversity all season and right now's another time."

If Damon was the No. 1 star, then Clemens's replacement, rookie Phil Hughes, was 1A. He played the "stop-the-bleeding" role to perfection, bringing back memories of Mike Mussina's brilliant relief stint in Game 7 of the 2003 AL Championship Series against the Red Sox.

He gave up two hits, both to Jhonny Peralta, before turning things over to a bug-free and much more effective Joba Chamberlain and, subsequently, Mariano Rivera.

Hughes's work allowed the Yankees to get back into the game. They did that in the fifth with Damon's homer capping a four-run inning. Then, they put things away in the sixth.

The beleaguered Rodriguez, unable to get the ball out of the infield in the first two games, started things by beating out a grounder to the hole in short. Jorge Posada then came through with his first hit of the series, a single to left to greet reliever Aaron Fultz. Doug Mientkiewicz pinch-hit for Jason Giambi and sacrificed both runners. The Indians then walked Matsui intentionally.

Cano followed with a bases-loaded single past a drawn-in infield, which quickly turned into a bases-clearing single when right fielder Nixon, who had taken Clemens deep in the second, allowed the ball to skip past him. The three runs expanded the lead to 8-3. Nixon did atone somewhat with an RBI double in the eighth off Chamberlain, the final run of the game.

The Yankees avoided the fate of the three other first-round losers, all of whom were swept. That had to make the folks at Turner Sports happy; they were looking at four dark nights before the opening of the NLCS Thursday. And the Red Sox may benefit as well, especially if the series is extended to a fifth game.

But the Yankees will happily return to the Bronx tonight for a Game 4, confident they have gained some momentum.

"We just wanted everybody to give themselves a chance to succeed," Torre said. "That's all."

For one night, anyway, it worked.

Peter May can be reached at p_may@globe.com.