There have been more sighs than pies at Yankee Stadium this year, but that all changed last night.
The Yankees rallied from a three-run deficit to defeat the Blue Jays 5-4 on a walk-off single by Mark Teixeira in the ninth inning in front of 41,519 fans at the Stadium, giving them their sixth win in their last nine games.
It was just the second walk-off win for the Yankees this year, and rallies have been in short supply for the team that made a living off of them over the last two years. They now are just 2-18 this year when trailing after eight innings. The Yankees lost seven of their last nine home games before last night, making their home-field advantage look less formidable than it used to.
“We had a lot of come-from-behind wins in ‘09 and we played extremely well here last year,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “As I said, we need to get back to that. That’s a real good win for us.”
CC Sabathia (5-3) pitched the Yankees’ first complete game in two years, and kept his team within striking distance by retiring the final 16 batters of the game.
Blue Jays starter Ricky Romero held the Yankees to one run through seven innings, but they scored two in the eighth inning against the bullpen to cut the score to 4-3. That set up the dramatic ninth.
With closer Frank Francisco on the mound, Brett Gardner hit a hard groundball to first base for the first out. Girardi then brought Jorge Posada in to pinch hit for Eduardo Nunez. Posada, who has been benched against left-handed starters, drilled a shot to center field that Rajai Davis misplayed into a double.
Chris Dickerson pinch ran for Posada. Derek Jeter grounded out to short but Dickerson was running on the play and advanced to third, bringing red-hot Curtis Granderson to the plate with two outs. Granderson ripped a single past a diving Juan Rivera at first base to score Dickerson and tie the game.
Teixeira came up, Granderson stole second, then Teixeira sent the crowd home happy with his single into right field. A.J. Burnett then greeted Teixeira with a whipped cream pie, his first as a Yankee.
The Yankees are 16-13 at home this year, a far cry from the 109-53 record they put up in the first two years of the current Yankee Stadium’s existence.
“It was great to do that in front of our home crowd,” Teixeira said. “We haven’t done it too much this year. To come back and get a big win, especially for CC and the home fans, was nice for us.”
Sabathia gave up three runs in a fluky fourth inning, but then shut the Jays down. He got two inning-ending outs on major league home run leader Jose Bautista, who went 0-for-4.
“He deserved the win tonight,” Teixeira said. “That fourth inning was just a weird inning, some bloopers. It was just a tough inning for him. After that he really shut them down. He deserved for us to claw back and get that win for him.”
The Yankees had base runners against Romero, but could not string together many hits. They finally broke through in the eighth inning against the Blue Jays’ bullpen. Granderson got things going with a double to right field off Casey Janssen, and scored on a Cano double. Russell Martin knocked in his second run of the game with a single to center that scored Cano and brought the Yankees to within one run at 4-3.
“You hear a lot about we’re a home run team and we really don’t get hits when there are guys in scoring position,” Martin said. “It’s nice to put a nice little streak together.”
brian.costello@nypost.com