The New York Yankees and the Baltimore Orioles have been in a season long boxing match this year, lasting 22 rounds of tough, gritty and close baseball. That's how may games the two teams have played, with each winning 11.
The two teams scored nearly the same amount of runs, with the Yankees outscoring the Orioles 106-102.
It's fitting then that the 23rd game would decide who would advance to the American League Championship Series. The two teams had been battling for the American League East throughout September, with the Orioles never overtaking the Yankees for first place.
They had another chance to do so on Friday night, but yet again they failed to overtake the Yankees, losing 3-1 in Game 5 to lose the American League Championship Series to send New York to the next round.
C.C. Sabathia pitched like the ace he is and Ichiro Suzuki came through with a clutch hit to send the Yankees to the ALCS for the 15th time, including the second in the past three years.
"It is still a long way to go," Sabathia said. "I still got hopefully three or four more starts. So the job is not done yet."
The Yankees will face the Detroit Tigers, who won on Thursday night against the Oakland Athletics to advance. The Tigers will travel to New York, who has home field advantage for the American League playoffs.
Mark Teixeira made one of the most crucial plays of the game to help give the Yankees the lead, stealing second base after collecting the first Yankee hit with a single in the fifth inning. Raul Ibanez, the hero of Game 3, followed him with a clutch single that was just out of reach
The most controversial call of the game came in the top of the sixth inning with the Orioles trailing 1-0. Nate McLouth hit a rocket-hard fly ball to right field that went foul by the slimmest of margins.
"I saw it go to the right of the pole," right field umpire Fieldin Culbreth said. "There is netting there and it didn't touch the netting. It did not change direction," saying he did not think the ball grazed the pole.
The replay showed that the ball was just on the foul side of the pole and the umpires confirmed the call after a replay review.
"I couldn't tell. It was real close," manager Buck Showalter said.
"It started off fair and it was just hooking a little bit. I thought it was foul just in game speed," McLouth said. "A couple of people mentioned it might've ticked the pole, but he was way closer than I was and I was satisfied after they went down and looked at the replay that it was foul."
The following inning Suzuki hit a deep double to right center field following a Derek Jeter single, bring the run around to score for a 2-0 lead.
In the seventh Curtis Granderson, who had been slumping all series, hit a solo home run to the second deck of the stands in right field to give New York a 3-0 advantage. It was all they would need for Sabathia.
The Orioles threatened in the eighth inning, loading the bases on Sabathia, but he was able to get out of it with allowing just one run.
Following a single by catcher Matt Wieters, Sabathia walked Manny Machado and gave up an RBI single to Jim Thome. A run scored on a grounder by Robert Andino, but Sabathia pitched out of by striking out Mark Reynolds and Lew Ford and then getting J.J. Hardy to groundout to shortstop.
Sabathia has been stellar in his postseason starts with the Yankees and pitched his first career complete game on Friday night. According to ESPN.com, it was the first complete game in the postseason for a Yankees pitcher since Roger Clemens did it in 2000.
He had eight strikeouts and two walks and did not even allow an extra base hit.
"He's our go-to guy," Jeter said. "He's been our go-to guy since he's been here."
Alex Rodriguez was benched for the first time in his career and his replacement, Eric Chavez, didn't fare much better than he has all series, going 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
The Yankees didn't need Rodriguez on this night; it was Sabathia who was most important.
The Orioles head home after one of the best seasons in recent franchise history. The team made the playoffs for the first time since 1997 and played close with the New York Yankees for the entire season.
"It's been about as much fun as I have had in the big leagues watching how they play the game every day, the standard they held themselves to and the way they raised the bar in Baltimore with each other," said Showalter.
Showalter should easily win the Manager of the Year award and the team will return a crop of great young players, including outfielder Adam Jones, third baseman Manny Machado and rookie pitcher Wei-Yin Chen. The team should be a force in the American League East for the near future.
"They are a very good club and they are a very resilient club," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "You have a bunch of young kids over there that just play the game the right way and play hard. And you think about it, we played 23 games, and there were four runs that separated us. It's an accomplishment for both clubs because they never went away. People thought they were going to go away, they never went away."
Andy Pettitte will start Game 1 against the Detroit Tigers on Saturday night against Doug Fister.
