It is with glee--GLEE I tell you--that I have followed the New York Yankees over the past month. Anyone who tells you they don't enjoy come-from-behind wins is either lying, or nuts, and in my case, the come-from-behind ("CFB") is my favorite type of game.

Why do I like it so much? Does there have to be a reason? Well, all right, I will theorize.

First, it's always better to win than to lose--or almost always. There are the rare times when the Yankees have won a game but we, the fans, have felt crummy afterward. I'm thinking recently of the time when the Yankees won on Opening Day in Toronto, but Kent Huckaby fell on Derek Jeter's shoulder and at the time we didn't know if the injury would ruin Jeter's season, career, or good looks. I can joke about it now because it turned out to be none of the above, though Jeter was out of action for two months. I can only speculate about how the people who saw the Yankees on August 16, 1920, the day Carl Mays hit Ray Chapman in the head with a pitch. Chapman died some 12 hours later in the hospital. Although, now that I think about it, the Yankees lost that game, too, 4-3, so perhaps that has little bearing on the argument I am making. Anyway, there are the rare times when the team wins, but we feel down. Let's face it, everyone likes to win, and winning is the thing that validates and reinforces our feelings as fans.

Second, we, as fans, like to see our guys exercise their skills. Whether we win or not, we like to see our team play well. Last year, the Yankees went on a run where they were scoring early and often, putting up runs in the first inning like they expected every game to be called by rain in the sixth. After Jeter went down, they were pummelling other teams into submission, letting their starters cruise to some ridiculous number of wins in a row--20? 21? something like that until Jeff Weaver finally laid an egg, as I recall. It was nice, and fun, but I was actually on the verge of getting a little bit bored. (And if I was tired of it, imagine how Red Sox fans felt about it...)

Third, we crave excitement. If watching a ball game is going to be as predictable as a M*A*S*H re-run, then, well, we may as well just watch more recycled TV. We like suspense. And we like surprises. One of the wonders of baseball is how often you can see the darndest things happen, which you've never seen happen before. Suspense and surprise make the usual acts of scoring runs sweeter. Scoring runs is exciting, but scoring the tying run, and the go-ahead run, really gets the blood going.

Which brings me to a fourth thing about coming from behind. When you come from behind, even if you don't win, you show heart. You didn't lie down and die, you didn't fall short, you didn't get outplayed and you didn't give up. Now, rarely do teams actually "give up" when they are behind, at least, not in the major leagues where the players are making millions. But what a good feeling it gives the fans to see it proven, that we should never lose faith, never give up ourselves, because the team that has come from behind once, can do it again. It creates a feeling of confidence in the players that they are never "out of the running," and it does so for the fans, too.

Then there's the fact that when you come from behind, you don't just win, you BEAT the other team. You aren't just superior, you had to outplay them. You had to rise up and outdo what someone else did. It's competitiveness to the highest level. The CFB scenario points up most strongly that it is team versus team, not merely stats versus stats. Each team doesn't just rack up as many points as they can and in the end we count up to see who has the most--or at least it doesn't seem like it when one team has to fight to overcome the scoring of the other. CFB wins are satisfying because not only do they create excitement, they create the feeling (even if it is illusory) that winning can be an act of will. Oh, we need more runs? Okay, we'll get more runs....

And in baseball specifically, a CFB win often means that both your bullpen came through under pressure, and your offense was able to produce.

So really, what's NOT to like about a CFB win?

Today's game was just the latest in a long string (27, I believe, out of 40 total wins) of CFB wins. And today the Yankees had to come from behind not once, but twice.

Here is what happened in a nutshell. We had David Wells, former Yankee, still beloved in the Bronx, now pitching for his hometown San Diego Padres, facing one of the newest Yankees, Javier Vasquez, accquired from the Expos in the off-season. Wells and Vasquez, though they are a lefty and a righty, have many similarities. They both throw a lot of strikes, rarely walk a man, and tend to give up the long ball. They were both on their games, so through eight innings Vasquez had given up only two runs (one solo homer to Khalil Greene) and no walks, and Wells had given up no runs and no walks.

As such, it was 2-0 Padres going into the bottom of the ninth. With two outs, Hideki Matsui came to the dish facing Mr. "Hell's Bells" himself, Trevor Hoffman, an elite closer who has, nonetheless, suffered some damage at the hands of the Yankees in the past, giving up a home run to Scott Brosius in the 1998 World Series. (What elite closer in the game HASN'T been bitten by the Yankees at least once?) Hoffman has battled injury, but had just reeled off a string of fourteen straight saves in fourteen chances. He got into a hitter's count with Matsui (2-0) and with a two run cushion, gave him a fastball hoping he would "hit it at somebody." (MLB.com)

Matsui did--at the guy in the sixth row in the #55 jersey.

So then it was 2-1, and Joe Torre sent Kenny Lofton in to pinch hit. Lofton has been on the disabled list for two weeks, but he was the best option to put a high on-base-percentage guy in, who could score the tying run from first on an extra base hit... Hoffman didn't think of Lofton as a home run threat. "He's not a guy you think about taking you deep," he told reporters after the game. He laid one in there, and Lofton laid it out, all the way out, a home run that tied the game. "It was right down the middle. Put it on a tee and you probably couldn't do any better."

That was all the Yankee would get in the ninth, so the game went to extra innings. Broadcasters John Sterling and Charlie Steiner on WCBS radio, giddy with the CFB heroics, giggled through a few more innings until, oops, the Padres scored three in the top of the 12th innings as the latest bullpen darling for the Yankees, Bret Prinz, was jinxed by all the media hype he received before the game thanks to his heroics of the PREVIOUS night (when the Yankees had been down, Prinz came in with men on the corners and no one out, and shut the door without giving up a run, and the Yankees came back to win 3-2). Prinz was followed by Felix Heredia, who has also struggled. As the Padres tacked on runs, Sterling and Steiner's balloon deflated a little. One remarked to the other "I don't think we can count on them doing it again" as the yankees came to bat. "No, I wouldn't count on it," replied the other, but they were both still chuckling. They know, and the fans who had stuck around on a Sunday afternoon knew, that miracles can happen, and often do in the late inning at Yankee Stadium.

This time the Yankees would be facing Rod Beck, who had saved 20 out of 20 ballgames last year. First he walked Bernie Williams, and then Jeter followed with a double, putting men on second and third. A-rod grounded out, bringing Bernie in, and narrowing the score to 5-3. Sheffield followed with a single, moving Jeter to third, and bringing Jason Giambi to the plate.

Giambi has been at the plate in extra innings at Yankee Stadium before following the opponent scoring three runs. Like that time, as this time, he came to the plate as the winning run. That time it was bases loaded and pouring rain in the wee hours of the morning and he hit a grand slam--a moment that will grow in importance and memory if Giambi builds a legacy as one of the great Yankees. This time he did as Torre has been preaching, "don't try to do to much," and he singled, bringing in Jeter. Bye bye Beck.

So with two on, and one out, Jay Witasick came in to pitch. Yankees fans began licking their chops. Witasick could have pitched scoreless ball for three straight years for all we care--all we know is that when he was a Yankee, he wasn't that great, and that makes him vulnerable in our eyes. Posada, who used to catch him, hit a ground rule double, scoring Sheffield and moving Giambi, the winning run, to third base. Witasick then intentionally walked Matsui to get to Enrique Wilson.

Except it wasn't Wilson. You could almost hear the gears turning in Joe Torre's mind: hmm, if I replace Wilson, then Cairo will have to move to second base and then who will play first? I could move Giambi and lose the DH, or maybe Sierra can play first... oh who cares, Sierra will hit a fly ball for sure and no one will have to play anywhere because we'll win the game...

Torre is a baseball sage, but just about every fan there, and listening/watching at home was thinking that same thing. Sierra hit a fly ball. Giambi scored. And the Yankees won.

The only way it could have been more exciting would have been if it were the World Series. But of course, we've seen it happen then, too, two nights in a row, in fact, in October 2001. So on the scale of all-things-Yankee, today's CFB was not even at the top of the scale of improbable events.

That doesn't make it any less fun. The win insures the Yankees will be at least 3-and-a-half games up on the Red Sox at the end of the day. Sterling and Steiner are not the only ones giddy. I am positively delirious.