NEW YORK - Andy Pettitte and another barrage of home runs at the new Yankee Stadium carried New York to a win that started what figures to be a challenging week.
Pettitte recovered from two wild outings, Johnny Damon hit a tiebreaking home run in the sixth inning and the Yankees defeated the Tampa Bay Rays, 5-3, last night.
Mark Teixeira, Nick Swisher, and Derek Jeter also homered for the Yankees, who got all their runs on longballs as Andy Sonnanstine allowed a career-high four. Tampa Bay's Gabe Kapler hit his first home run of the season.
There have been 105 homers in 29 games at the $1.5 billion bandbox, a sharp increase from the 160 last season at the original Yankee Stadium. It was the 10th five-homer game at the new ballpark.
Damon broke a 3-3 tie in the sixth with a drive to right off Sonnanstine (4-6), and Jeter chased him with a leadoff drive in the eighth.
Nine of Damon's 12 home runs this season and six of Jeter's eight have come at home.
The Yankees improved the AL's best record to 34-23.
Tampa Bay 000 300 000 – 3 5 0
New York 120 001 01x – 5 6 1
Tampa Bay AB R H BI Avg. New York AB R H BI Avg.
B.Upton cf 4 0 0 0 .216 Jeter ss 4 1 1 1 .306
Crawford lf 4 0 2 0 .326 Damon lf 4 1 1 1 .299
Longoria 3b 3 0 0 0 .316 Teixeira 1b 3 1 1 1 .286
C.Pena 1b 3 0 0 0 .220 A.Rodriguez 3b 3 0 0 0 .248
Zobrist 2b 2 1 1 0 .299 Cano 2b 3 1 1 0 .300
Dillon dh 4 0 0 0 .364 Posada c 3 0 0 0 .297
M.Hernandez c 4 1 1 1 .283 H.Matsui dh 2 0 0 0 .246
Kapler rf 4 1 1 2 .173 Swisher rf 3 1 2 2 .257
Brignac ss 3 0 0 0 .205 Gardner cf 0 0 0 0 .265
