Dogs can hear things that people cannot but at 4:15 this afternoon most Yankee fans, no matter where they were or what they were doing, tilted their head to the side and listened with a bemused look on their face, struck by the piercing, collective wail that came from any Yankee fan who happened to be watching TV when Scott Proctor entered a 4-4 game in the bottom of the ninth.  Nobody else could hear this sound, of course, but we all could. Some of us might have had the urge to scratch ourselves, some, no doubt,  started foaming at the mouth, while others still just shrugged and went back to sleep, or work, or whatever else they were doing.

Now, you can’t blame Proctor for being what he is–and after all, this is the same guy who burned his mitt after a bad outing a few years ago–but would you believe, he worked around two base runners and sent the game to extra innings. It’s the truth.

It had been a nutty game to that point so maybe it wasn’t such a surprise. It was  gritsey and gutterly or plain fuggin stupid, depending on who you were rooting for. Ivan Nova had an early 4-1 lead but then the Yankee offense did plenty of nothing while the O’s chipped away–they got on base while the Yankees made errors. They had two men thrown out at the plate (crash, boom, bang) but tied the score against Rafael Soriano. By this time, any self-respecting Yankee fan following along was irritable bordering on Bill Bixby furioso.

Kevin Gregg struck out four Yankee batters in a row–Andrew Jones, Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson and Mark Teixeira and on to the bottom of the tenth they went. Ol’ Proctor struck out Mark Reynolds and maybe got ahead of himself. Nolan Reimold reached on an infield single, Chris Davis walked and then some twerp named Robert Andino screwed the pooch for good, singling home the winning run.

You can’t blame Proctor. He is what he is. You can howl at the moon all you want. But it’s probably best to lick your privacy, curl up, and go back to sleep.

O’s swipe it, 5-4.