Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon stole second base in the ninth inning Sunday night. Then, while he was feeling frisky, he decided to steal third base, too, on the same pitch.

That heads-up play fueled the Yankees 7-4 victory in Game 4 of the World Series. Damon’s alertness helped his team build a commanding 3-1 Series lead.

Damon caught the Phillies in their Mark Teixeira Shift, with third baseman Pedro Feliz playing shortstop and shortstop Jimmy Rollins playing on the wrong side of second base.

Feliz covered second base on Damon’s steal and took the throw. Nobody was covering third base. So after sliding into second base, Damon popped up, saw that Feliz was out of arm’s reach and took off.

Poor Pedro had no chance to catch him.

“You know how people always tell you that they’ve been in baseball for 40 years, 50 years, and things happen every game that they never saw?” Yankees coach Tony Pena asked ESPN.com. “Well, I’ve never seen that before. I never saw that before in my life.”

That was the game-breaking play, as SI.com’s Joe Posnanski wrote:

“Damon made it to third base. We’ll never know for sure if his play spooked Brad Lidge . . . I think it’s a fair guess to say that it did. Lidge promptly hit Mark Teixeira with a pitch. And then he threw two fastballs to A-Rod — one of the great fastball hitters in baseball history — and A-Rod ripped the second to left for a double. That scored Damon. Jorge Posada followed with a single that scored two more runs, and that was that.”

PACKERS FANS SEEING PURPLE

This can’t be a good day in Northern Wisconsin. Former hero Packers Brett Favre came back to Green Bay with his new team, the hated Vikings, and just tore it up.

This is what living legends do. A mere mortal like Aaron Rodgers couldn’t hope to keep up. The Cheeseheads sat helplessly at Lambeau Field and watched Favre exact revenge on his old organization.

FanHouse columnist Jay Mariotti piled on the Packers fans after the game:

‘Shame on them for booing him, mocking him, staging funerals for him, wearing flip-flops and eating waffle fries to ridicule him. The hostility toward Brett Favre was an embarrassment to a community that never looked smaller, an affront to the idea that the publicly owned Packers and their fans form a unique family bond amid the greed and sleaze of 21st-century sports. If the Cheeseheads truly had perspective, they would have stood and applauded the man whose swaggering presence defined a franchise and state for 16 years, and then they’d have rooted like hell for their boys to beat the old dude and the despised Minnesota Vikings.”

MYSTERIES OF THE UNIVERSE

Questions to ponder while wondering if Steven Jackson silenced the last of his critics Sunday:

• Did James Butler properly thank Jackson for taking him off the hook for that bizarre safety?
• Now that Marc Bulger has made a connection Billy Bajema, has the Rams offense finally turned the corner?
• Say, was that Chris Long officially recording a sack Sunday? Will that earn him a little slack from the skeptics?
• Will our old friend Kurt Warner bounce back from his six-turnover game? Or will the Arizona quarterback finally start looking his age on the field?

HAVING FUN WITH RAIDERS FANS

The Raiders visited San Diego Sunday, which prompted this ad on local TV:

Well played!

QUIPS ‘R US

Here is what some of America’s leading sports pundits have been writing:

Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.com:  “One more win. That’s all that separates the Yankees from their first world title since 2000 — an ice age for a franchise that has won 26 of those trophies. When you play for the Yankees, they ask for your Social Security number and your ring size. Nothing else matters but those rings.”

Mike Freeman, CBSSports.com: “Favre tossed four touchdowns against his old team and finished with a 128.6 passer rating. For the Packers organization, this was a gut-wrenching nightmare to lose to Favre, something they tried to prevent going back many months when Favre first retired (or un-retired or retired or whatever). Indeed, this moment may go down as one of the more embarrassing in the long and great history of this Packers franchise. To have Favre return and do this generates an historic talking point at Favre’s Hall of Fame induction speech and provides a serious kick to the gut. He didn’t play like a kid out there, he played like a bully out there. You didn’t need a Favre cam to fully see how he temporarily turned the stadium into a dumpster fire.”

Steve Rosenbloom, ChicagoTribune.com: “Tom Ricketts and his two brothers and sister went 4-for-5 in their introductory news conference at the new owners-slash-operators-slash-first-fans of the Cubs. Starting with Tom and followed by Laura, Todd and Pete, the Ricketts kids, Cubs fans for at least 20 years as they stated their bleacher cred, came across as excited, which you’d expect, and they came across as reasonable, which you’re never sure of in baseball ownership. They said the right things, which is different from actually doing them. Tom admitted as much. It’s easy to say the right things on the first day. But if you’re a Cubs fan, you have to like the future because the team is now run by Cubs fans, not a building on Michigan Avenue.”

MEGAPHONE

“Packer fans cheer for the Packers first. I know that. But I hope that everyone in the stadium watching tonight said, ‘I sure hate those jokers on the other side, but he does play the way he’s always played.”’

Favre, after beating his old team.

INBOX

From our electronic mail bin:

“The numbers don’t lie about Eric Brewer. His lifetime minus-92 rating is third worst among active NHL defensemen (and the other two, Pavel Kubina and Paul Mara are tougher (as reflected in PIM) and have significantly better offense numbers across the board.

“Worse yet, he’s -62 in just 220 games for the Blues, a terrible record. He has scored a paltry 62 points in those games.

“Plus-minus numbers don’t tell the whole story, but winning does: Eric Brewer has been a big-minutes player for most of 10 NHL seasons and has played in a grand total of two playoff series (both first-round exits) and only 12 playoff games!

“At $4,500,000 per year, he arguably has the worst contract in Blues’ history (admittedly inherited by current owners). I’d hate to think the investment is why he gets such an unjustified amount of playing time, but it’s hard to come up with a better explanation.

“Even to a non-expert, it is PLAINLY VISIBLE to regular fans that Brewer is the opposite of a shut-down defender. He’s slow, mistake-prone and plays much smaller than his frame (the opposite of Mike Weaver, in that way).

“He may a fine person, but he’s not a winning NHL defenseman, and if Murray gives him big minutes, the Blues have little hope of making the playoffs — which they’ve never done in his career here with the exception of last year, when they took off when he went down.

“As a season-ticket holder, this is hard to take. Jeff, I know it’s not Brewer’s fault that he was part of a horrible trade, and I have no expectation of him making us forget Chris Pronger. But how bad a record must you have before people stop defining how good you are in terms of what NFL draftniks term ‘measurables?’ I’m sure Brewer has the physical tools to play well potentially,
but it hasn’t translated to the ice since he was in the WHL 12 years ago.

“Can you ask the coach to explain why Brewer’s numbers — so much worse than almost all NHL defensemen — should be so easily discarded?”

Ray Hartmann

First of all, it’s great to hear from Ray. Having survived four years of the Jeff Gluck Experience down at Mizzou in the late 70s, Tipsheet has always felt a connection with Mr. Hartmann.

Brewer logged big minutes when the Blues were terrible, playing against top lines and killing penalties. He took the brunt of the punishment when the Note was mismatched. Then, as the team got better, he was playing with debilitating back pain.

Will he ever regain his old All-Star/Olympic/World Cup/World Championship form? We’ll see. For that he will need to regain his full mobility and his old confidence. I would have sent him to Peoria to get his timing back, but that wasn’t my call. His rust showed in his first game back.

With Barret Jackman and Carlo Colaiacovo coming back – and with Alex Pietrangelo trying to stick – it will get interesting on defense.

BTW, Jay McKee’s four-year, $16 million contract was the worst in franchise history.

Elsewhere on STLToday.com

Our post-game live chat was more cheerful than usual, but there was still plenty to complain about.

During today’s chat, we will expand the discussion to the Blues, the Hot Stove League, Mizzou and anything else on your mind.

Now that the Rams have won a game, they have an opportunity to escape the NFL cellar.

Hockey Guy wondered when the top Blues scorers will finally heat up.