Talk Bronx New York

For the Yankees to win the World Series, they need A.J. Burnett to perform nearly as well as ace CC Sabathia.

The weather cooperated to allow a baseball game on Saturday night in the Bronx. But son of a gun if it didn’t feel like a football game, with temperatures in the 40s, winds making it feel worse and two hardened teams going into overtime as the clock turned to Sunday.

Weather watch: It was 47 degrees at gametime on Saturday night, 2 degrees warmer than on Friday, but it was again blustery, with a 15 mph wind from the north-northeast and gusts up to 23 mph that made the ceremonial red-white-and-blue bunting flap.

Pretty, pretty, pretty amazing.

And then it was over, 5 hours, 10 minutes after it began, with Jerry Hairston Jr. racing home at 1:07 in the morning, Game 2 of the ALCS to the Yanks, 4-3 in 13 innings.

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In the end, all that mattered to the Red Sox [team stats] was that rookie right-hander Junichi Tazawa pitched his team to a 14-1 victory over the Yankees on a furnace-hot afternoon at Fenway.

The bonus, for connoisseurs of baseball, is that the kid happened also to provide an endless amount of entertainment, with Yankees batters hitting his best stuff so hard and so often that the whole thing began to look and sound and feel like one of those Rocky Balboa [trailer] fights.

There was, for instance, that shot off the Monster by Robinson Cano in the second inning. Alas for the Yankees, left fielder Jason Bay gunned down Cano trying to stretch it into a double.

There was that vicious line drive by the next batter, Eric Hinske. That was hit right smack into the glove of first baseman Victor Martinez.

The Yanks had two on and one out in the first . . . didn’t score a run. A walk and the Cano single in the second . . . no runs. Single by Nick Swisher in the third? Wasted. First and second, one down, in the fourth? No problem: Tazawa struck out Hinske and then got Melky Cabrera on a bouncer to first.

In the fifth, with two out, Mark Teixeira singled to center and Alex Rodriguez followed with a single to left. This brought up Hideki Matsui, who swung so hard and missed so hard at Tazawa first offering, screwing himself into the ground in the process, that the whole endeavor had Reggie Jackson stamped all over it. The showdown lasted six pitches, Matsui seemingly setting up Tazawa for a cannon shot somewhere, and then it ended, just like that, with a harmless pop fly to third.

“There was some pretty solid contact,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona said of Tazawa outing. “But he executed pitches, especially when they had runners on base, and had a way of dialing up that fastball a bit, locating it with a little extra on it.” Read more..

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CC Sabathia shows up at his hotel in preparation for Thursday’s unveiling

 c but it doesn’t look like the center fielder will be Bronx-bound in the coming days.

Talks between the Yankees and Brewers were put on hold, according to a source, as Yankees general manager Brian Cashman didn’t speak with Brewers GM Doug Melvin Monday.

The trade has centered around Cameron and Yankees outfielder Melky Cabrera, though the Bombers are also expected to dump Kei Igawa, and part of the $12 million he is owed, to Milwaukee in the deal. Although the two sides didn’t talk Monday, a Yankees official said the trade should still get done at some point.

“There’s no hurry,” the official said. “There are a lot of issues.”

The amount of money the Yankees will send to the Brewers seems to be the sticking point, though it’s possible that more players - such as Milwaukee third baseman/outfielder Bill Hall - might also become part of the deal.

Although it may take some time for Cameron to join the Yankees, his former Brewers teammate Sabathia is expected to take center stage in the Bronx on Thursday. Sabathia will undergo a physical and do some house-hunting today and tomorrow, then meet the press and slip into his XXL pinstriped jersey on Thursday. Read more..

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