MLB

Yankees offer reminder in defeat: We never quit

This is how it starts, right? A walk to the ninth-place hitter with a four-run lead. A cheap infield hit. A run-scoring line drive. You know the melody because you’ve heard the song so often, whirring and grinding in your head. This is how it starts. This is what the Yankees do.

And you know something?

It doesn’t really matter that yesterday afternoon, eighth inning against the Angels, the Yankees didn’t actually pull off the comeback, that they didn’t entirely erase that 5-1 Angels lead, that they only scored two when it looked like they were heading for four or five, that they lost the game 5-3.

It really doesn’t matter that, with a run already in and the tying run already at the plate with the meat of the Yankees order coming up, that they would go ground-out, walk, ground-out, strikeout, that there would be no pies to anyone’s faces, that there would be no exhilarating celebration as another dumb-struck pitcher walked off the mound.

This is what matters:

It could’ve happened.

That was the thing the ’09 Yankees embodied as much as any other, and something yesterday recalled: They could score from anywhere on the field. They would slap a big inning on you out of nowhere. Yesterday, you could see the ’10 Yankees unburdening themselves after choking on Joel Pineiro’s sinkers for seven innings, getting after Scot Shields in the eighth like he was a piñata.

“Hey, it isn’t like anyone wanted to run to the bat rack just because Pineiro left the game, because they have a lot of good relievers, too,” Derek Jeter cautioned.

Maybe. But once Brett Gardner walked, once Jeter singled, once Nick Johnson knocked in Gardner, and once the crowd of 42,372 started engaging themselves in what was happening …

“I won’t lie,” Nick Swisher said. “I thought right there we were gonna win the game. I believed, because I always believe with this team.”

He believes because this was the Yankees’ DNA in 2009: break our kneecaps when you can, because if you don’t either we’ll find a way or you’ll find a way. Fifteen times the Yankees came back late, five times in the ninth inning alone. Sometimes they simply clobbered subpar relievers. Sometimes they were aided by unexpected wingmen, like Luis Castillo.

Always, they required you to record 27 outs. No cheapies. No freebies.

“Last year, it always seemed that somebody was able to step up and come through when we needed it most,” Mark Teixeira said. “I don’t think you can win as many games as we did without having the confidence that you can come back if you need to come back.”

Teixeira had the opportunity to be that guy yesterday, but he is embroiled in his annual April morass, something Yankees fans evidently are going to have to get used to. His 0-for-4 collar dropped his batting average to an unsightly .097 and further solidified his reputation as one of the slowest starters you’ll ever see.

Still … there he was in the eighth inning. A run already in. Two runners on base. It was Jeter who a few moments earlier said, “Yankees fans come to the park looking to cheer the Yankees. They are looking for good things to happen.” He offered that as an explanation for why they boo Javier Vazquez now, and what it’ll take to convert those catcalls to curtain calls.

But it applied here, too. The buzz told you that. The buzz told you that the folks still in the building believe in 4 o’clock lightning, believed that Teixeira was about to bust out of his slump in the best way possible. And if not him, Alex Rodriguez. And if not A-Rod, Robinson Cano. And if not him, Jorge Posada.

“I wish it worked out,” Teixeira said with a shake of his head.

It didn’t. But it could’ve. The Yankees know it, and so do the Angels, and every other out-of-town team who stare at out-of-town scoreboards and watch 4 o’clock lightning from a distance. If 2010 is anything like 2009, it’ll require the full 27 — and then some — to kill the Yankees every night. The Angels did that. This time.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com