ST. PETERSBURG — Loud music blasted in the players’ area, and in Joe Girardi’s office. Brian Cashman cheered on his favorite Giants against the Cowboys as he watched the television. The Tropicana Field visitors’ clubhouse late last night felt like the most relaxed room in the state of Florida.
With just this one victory, 6-4 over the Rays at The Trop, the Yankees’ pressure meter went from DEFCON 1 to, let’s say, DEFCON 3. Having regained sole possession of the AL East penthouse by virtue of its victory and Baltimore’s 6-4 loss at Toronto, baseball’s most expensive team received permission to breathe again, with a critical four-game series against the Orioles starting tonight at Camden Yards.
“It’s sink-or-swim time,” Alex Rodriguez said. “In order for us to swim, we’re going to have to swim the right way.”
If they don’t swim away from the whirlpool that they created, then the Yankees will join a club they have been successful in avoiding throughout their history: Teams that held a 10-game (or more) lead in their league or division and finished out of first place.
In a pregame meeting of players, coaches, Girardi and Cashman that he convened, Rodriguez preached the gospel of small ball, a message that should please the Yankees’ large contingent of home run-hating fans.
Ironically, Girardi mocked the idea of his team bunting more — a notion floated by his hitting coach Kevin Long following the Yankees’ 5-2 loss on Tuesday night — during his pregame news conference yesterday.
In reality, the Yankees enjoyed one “small ball” moment last night. With the game tied at 4-4, Jayson Nix laid down a successful sacrifice bunt in the seventh inning, advancing Steve Pearce and Ichiro Suzuki to second and third with one out. That set up the game’s key moment, when Derek Jeter hit a ground ball right at Tampa Bay’s drawn-in second baseman Elliot Johnson — who proceeded to throw the ball away from Rays catcher Jose Lobaton, allowing both Suzuki and Pearce to come home.
So the Yankees’ turn in fortune could be attributed as much to good fortune as to any philosophical alteration. Besides, Russell Martin homered and contributed a two-run RBI double, and Rodriguez drove in a run with a double, and Jeter’s seventh-inning grab of Matt Joyce’s pop fly to short left field shouldn’t be overlooked, either.
But whatever. The Yankees aren’t above self-deception if it results in victories.
They held a 10-game AL East advantage on July 18, and after last night’s victory, they’re 20-25 since then. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, the 1942 and 1951 Dodgers, 1978 Red Sox, 1979 Astros, 1993 Giants and 1995 Angels all went up from up 10 to left out. The 2006 Tigers also reside on this list, although they can mock their fellow members — that Detroit team settled for the AL wild card and rebounded to make the World Series.
There are varying levels of culpability among the transgressors. For instance the ’93 Giants won 103 games but couldn’t match a remarkable, season-finishing run of 49-16 by the Braves. If the Yankees can’t wake up, they would rank among the guiltier parties.
Cashman, the architect of this team, said before the game, “It’s a bad stretch of baseball. But that’ll change.” He added, “I was more surprised, to be honest, that we pulled 10 games up,” because of the division’s quality of competition.
The Yankees built their lead largely on the backs of aging players who significantly exceeded expectations — a list that includes last night’s winning pitcher Hiroki Kuroda, Eric Chavez, Raul Ibanez, Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki. I asked Cashman if he was worried that this group of baseball geezers, having already provided so much, simply was out of gas.
“I don’t believe that. I don’t think they’re out of gas,” Cashman said. “I think you have ebbs and flows. …
“I believe in the players that we have regardless of what our age is. When the dust settles, I believe we’ll be where we need to be.”
If they aren’t, then they will join the Collapse Club. They will have their own room at baseball’s Heartbreak Hotel.
They will set exactly the kind of history that the Yankees never, ever would want to repeat. It’ll take more than one good night to lose the invitation to this bad company.
kdavidoff@nypost.com