Little Things

Little things won a big game for the Yankees yesterday.

Jason Giambi scored with a slick slide to the outside of the plate on a Melky Cabrera hit in the second inning. Then Brett Gardner drove in the winning run with a sacrifice fly in the sixth.

There were also great plays by Robinson Cano and great pitching by Mike Mussina and Jose Veras and Kyle Farnsworth.

Then Mariano Rivera had to wiggle out of a bases-loaded jam in the ninth.

“You can’t have doubts,” Rivera explained to reporters. “You have to make pitches. If you have doubts, a lot of things can happen. You just have to face it, one by one.”

That’s how a great pitcher cuts the big things down to little things and gets the job done.