Nuñez, Peña come up big on their big day

There were 45,969 fans who paid their way into Yankee Stadium Wednesday night, and it's a good bet that the bulk of them were hoping to see Derek Jeter get his 3,000th career hit and maybe get an Alex Rodriguez home run in the bargain. If the game against Texas had been a Broadway show, some might have requested a refund when they found Eduardo Nuñez and Ramiro Peña penciled into the left side of the infield with Jeter on the DL and Rodriguez handling DH duties.

But on a night when the bottom of the Yankees' batting order -- Nuñez, Francisco Cervelli and Peña -- looked like easy pickings for the Rangers' pitchers, they were anything but. All three drove in a run, and Nuñez and Peña each had two hits, including their second career home runs to make a big contribution to the Yankees' 12-4 victory.

There were five homers by the Yankees, but getting two from such unexpected sources was cause for an air of giddiness in the postgame locker room. Nuñez led off the bottom of the fourth with a powerful drive to the leftfield seats that left no doubt it was going out to tie the score at 4, and the icing on the cake is that it came on his 24th birthday.

Asked if it made his birthday extra special, he said, "Oh yeah, yeah," he said. "I'm happy anyway. But if I hit a home run and the team wins, I'm so excited."

The switch-hitting Peña was batting from the left side of the plate when he hit an even more surprising shot solidly into the rightfield seats leading off the sixth to give the Yankees a 6-4 lead. It had been 166 at-bats since he last homered, not that Peña was counting.

"I hit it good, but I didn't see where it was," Peña said. "I said, 'Maybe it's a homer,' and that's it."

Asked if he recalled his only other homer, Peña said, "I didn't know how long ago it was, but I still remember."

For Peña, who was called up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre when Jeter was placed on the disabled list, his role is to serve as a temp. But Nuñez will be the everyday shortstop as long as Jeter is out. Joe Girardi is pleased with what he's seen.

"Those two guys were outstanding tonight and had good at-bats, hit the ball extremely hard," Girardi said of Nuñez and Peña. "The out that Nuñie made in the first inning -- a rocket."

Mark Teixeira, who hit two two-run homers, was happier for the new guys on the block than he was for himself. "For Nuñez and Peña to go deep like that, we're just so excited," Teixeira said. "Nuñez, it was his birthday, so happy birthdays all around. Then, once Peña hit his, we said, 'It's your birthday, too!' So it's everyone's birthday on the left side of the infield today."

So, how did Nuñez plan to celebrate? "I go to sleep," he said with a smile.

Day game Thursday.