Yankees 4, Orioles 3

If the Yankees manage to hold off Baltimore and Tampa, and not subject CC or Kuroda to a one-game playoff with another Wild Card team, this will almost certainly be the game everyone points to. For now, call it the most important game to this point. The fulcrum. How important? By about the bottom of the sixth inning, you could hear the dread in Michael Kay's voice. He was watching a season slip away, one at-bat at a time. (Ken Singleton, an Oriole at heartm was, if not exactly enjoying himself, at least unperturbed.) The game was the most important, the seventh inning the season's most important inning. And Swisher's at-bat, concluding with the laser that Hardy 1) could not handle, 2) picked up, 3) dropped, 4) picked up, 5) dropped, 6) then finally picked up--"Put it in your pocket, son,"--was the season's most important at-bat. The only distressed Yankee fan was my dog, who ran under the coffee table to get away from my screams of "HE'S SAFE! HE'S SAFE! HE'S SAFE!", when Nunez scored.