More than meets the eye to Angels-Yankees nailbiter

	A typical heads-up play Derek Jeter helped the Yankees upend the Angels in Game 4. AP
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NEW YORK -- The Yankees came back on the Angels' bullpen in Game 4 of their division series on Sunday night and won 3-2, forcing a decisive Game 5. But you know that.

But one-run games in October, especially at Yankee Stadium, are teeming with microscopic life, like a handful of seawater in a tidal pool. Put it under a microscope and suddenly you see all that activity going on in there that you didn't see at first glance.

Game 4 of the ALDS may not have been the classic that the epic Game 4 of the Astros-Braves series was, but it was one of those hidden gems, one of the best arguments why the game can be at its absolute peak even without a home run being hit. Do you think anybody left the park complaining about a lack of longballs in this one? So here are the important parts of Game 4 in New York that you didn't see:

• Angels third baseman Chone Figgins moves back with two strikes on Derek Jeter with Jorge Posada as the go-ahead run at third base in the seventh. When asked if he rushed his throw, a great imitation of a Jason Giambi shot-put special, Figgins said, "I had to. The guy was going on contact and I was back."

With Posada running, Figgins had enough time to set himself to make a more certain throw. Bottom line is he should have made the play. Said one Yankee, "He wasn't that far back. He just rushed it.''

• Ruben Sierra took off on a green-light steal attempt on the pitch to Jeter. When Jeter saw Sierra break, he thought to himself, "They can't turn a double play now. A grounder scores the run.'' So he swung at the pitch and hit the chopper to Figgins. Great quick thinking in the heat of battle by Jeter.

• Posada, one of the Yankees' slowest runners, made the run possible by hustling from first to third on a single to rightfielder Vladimir Guerrero. Yes, Posada will trade getting thrown out at third for making sure the tying run crosses the plate on the play, but it's still a heads-up, hustling play to get to third with one out.

• Angels manager Mike Scioscia went to his bullpen early. Too early? It's a legitimate question. Starter John Lackey was ticked off that Scioscia yanked him two outs into the sixth after the Yankees had hit exactly two hard balls off him the whole night. "I felt like I pitched well enough to decide that game for us,'' Lackey said.

He's right. But Scioscia has so much confidence in his relievers -- perhaps too much confidence -- that he couldn't wait to get them in the game. The problem with that thinking is he keeps giving the Yankees more and more looks at Scot Shields and Kelvim Escobar. They are not specialists. They pitch to lefties and righties and stick around to throw pitch after pitch after pitch. The more they pitch, the more the Yankees are apt to decode patterns, release points and pitch movements. Shields, perhaps aware of the Yankees becoming too familiar with his stuff, looked more tentative.

• Giambi struck out with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh. No big deal, right? The Yankees won the game anyway. Wrong. Yankees manager Joe Torre got Tom Gordon up in the bullpen as Giambi came to the plate. If Giambi manages a two-run single, Gordon is in the game and Torre can hold off on using Rivera for the ninth -- assuming the jittery Gordon can pitch through the eighth.

Instead, holding one run, Torre must drop Rivera into the game in the eighth. Rivera does throw two perfect innings, but the Angels extend him to 36 pitches. Will the extra inning Rivera threw matter in Game 5? Who knows. We'll see.

• The Angels almost pulled off the near-impossible: winning a postseason game against the Yankees at the Stadium by one run. The Yankees have played 57 postseason games at Yankee Stadium. They have lost exactly one of them by one run. They have won 12 of them by that margin.

So what happens in Game 5? The Angels didn't use Bartolo Colon in Game 4 in part because he was said to need the extra rest because of general soreness and fatigue. New York starter Mike Mussina is an uncertainty himself, despite his nasty breaking stuff in Game 1, because of second-half elbow issues. So who knows? Whatever happens, look closely. Look very closely.