Luckily, on a night when the Phillies were counting on him more than ever before, he didn't need to be. The Phillies' bats picked him up.

In every inning except for the first - in which he allowed an RBI double to Alex Rodriguez - Lee had at least a two-run lead in his back pocket when he took the mound.

"Basically, our backs were against the wall, a do-or-die situation," he said. "Fortunately, we scored a lot of runs to make things easier on me."

Lee said he didn't have the command or location that made him so lethal in his previous four postseason starts.

"It was a little off," he said. "It was a game where I had to battle a little bit . . . more than I've had to in the past few games."

Lee was behind batters early, throwing first-pitch balls to eight of the first 13 Yankee batters he faced.

But as the temperatures dipped inside Citizens Bank Park, Lee warmed up and looked like the Cliff Lee who had not surrendered an earned run in 18 1/3 consecutive innings, let alone a walk in 17. Both streaks were broken before he could get three outs last night.

Lee, in the zone with Carlos Ruiz, started to get ahead in the early count. He threw first-pitch strikes on nine of 12 batters in the fifth, sixth and seventh innings, mowing down the powerful Yankees' lineup with just a single and a base on balls in that three-inning stretch.

He didn't have a single at-bat that lasted more than six pitches all night.

"I was focused on throwing strikes and staying locked in with the catcher," Lee said.

Phillies manager Charlie Manuel put a quick end to the chatter about possibly not pitching Lee to the limit last night to enable him to return for Game 7. For Manuel, there was no saving Lee for another day - even though he had a fresh and healthy Chan Ho Park and Ryan Madson in the bullpen - with an 8-2 lead.

"It would have to get a little bit bigger," Manuel said about what size lead he would have needed to pull Lee early.

"I was watching him," Manuel said. "Was I thinking about taking him out? Somewhat. But actually I definitely hadn't - I wasn't ready to take him out. I definitely wanted him to go back out and I wanted him to throw some."

Manuel waited until Lee unraveled in the eighth to yank him.

"Once they started to get some hits on him," Manuel said, "I definitely thought it was time to go get him."

Johnny Damon, the fire starter in Game 4 on Sunday night, swatted that previously trusty four-seam fastball toward Jimmy Rollins at shortstop, but Rollins struggled with the transfer and failed to get Damon at first.

Mark Teixeira followed Damon with a double to leftfield that bounced off the webbing of a diving Raul Ibanez' outstretched glove. Ibanez missed saving Lee by just a fraction of an inch.

It didn't take long for A-Rod to solve Lee in the next at-bat. With no outs and Damon on third base and Teixeira on second, A-Rod thumped a similar four-seamer over Ibanez' head and brought home both.

That spelled the end of Lee's night. There was no juice left in the four-seam rocket.

In all, the Phillies' most consistent postseason hurler fired 112 pitches - 70 of them for strikes - and was charged with five runs on seven hits. Even for a man with a rubber arm, someone who has pitched two complete games this postseason, it's a lot to come back on short rest for a possible Game 7.

"The seventh game would be on his day to throw in the bullpen," Manuel said. "I'll see what goes on from there. I'll talk to him about what he thinks he can pitch, if he can pitch at all."

"As far as my availability, I'm available," Lee said. "I'll pitch whenever they want me to pitch. I'm ready whenever."

But those are questions for another time, another day. It wasn't picturesque, but thanks to Lee, they are questions that might need to be answered.

"I really couldn't care less how we won," Lee said. "I gave the team a chance. It was a group effort. I'm happy with winning. We're still fighting."