Indians pummel Joba in seven-run seventh; Yankees fall, 13-11

The ugliest thing that occurred at Yankee Stadium Saturday was the horrific sight of Indians starter David Huff taking a line drive off the left side of his head in the third inning.

Huff, fortunately, was back in the clubhouse after the game - without even so much as concussion symptoms - after spending several hours at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

From a purely baseball perspective, what followed his injury wasn't all that pretty, either. Four relievers, Joba Chamberlain chief among them, gave up seven runs in the seventh inning to turn a five-run lead over one of the American League's worst teams into a two-run deficit.

And in a game that lasted 4:22 in which 402 pitches were thrown, the Yankees wound up with a 13-11 loss. They led 10-6 with two outs in the seventh, but Chamberlain allowed six runs to score before he could get the final out. "It's a bad loss, no doubt about it," Joe Girardi said.

CC Sabathia allowed at least five earned runs for the third time in four starts, but he was in line for the win when he exited after six innings.

The Yankees put together a six-run fourth, with Aaron Laffey walking three straight to force in a run, then hitting Mark Teixeira on an 0-and-2 pitch to force in another. After Alex Rodriguez struck out for the second out, Laffey allowed Robinson Cano's two-run double into the leftfield corner. Francisco Cervelli's two-run single made it 9-3.

Laffey entered the game an inning earlier after Rodriguez lined a shot off Huff's head that brought a hush over the 46,599 on hand. After the ball ricocheted into rightfield for an RBI double, A-Rod huddled near the mound with the entire Indians team as Huff lay motionless, face down, for several minutes before being placed on a stretcher.

"Your heart stops. You want so badly to take it back," A-Rod said through a team spokesman. "You think of a million places the ball could have gone rather than where it did. Why there?"

Rodriguez's two-out RBI single in the fifth made it 10-4 before the Indians started chipping away. Sabathia was fairly disgusted with his six innings - "I kept them in the game," he said - but it was the messy seventh that did the damage.

David Robertson hit Trevor Crowe with an 0-and-2 pitch and felt his lower back tighten. He stayed in to get an out and give up an RBI single but was lifted after one pitch to Jhonny Peralta. Sergio Mitre walked Peralta and Damaso Marte got Russell Branyan for the second out. Then Chamberlain allowed the two inherited runners and four of his own runners to score.

Mark Grudzielanek had an RBI single and Matt LaPorta walked to load the bases. Lou Marson's third double of the game drove in two runs to make it 10-9. Jason Donald doubled down the rightfield line to drive in two more and Crowe's RBI single made it 12-10.

After Branyan hit a two-out homer off Chad Gaudin in the eighth, Derek Jeter's two-out double in the ninth made it 13-11. But Kerry Wood struck out Nick Swisher to end it.

"We had the game where we wanted it," Girardi said. "We had our eighth-inning guy in there to get four outs. We just didn't get it done."