Tim Hill, Ryan Yarbrough dominance cruelly twists Yankees' World Series knife one more time

The New York Yankees looked unbeatable Sunday night against the Los Angeles Dodgers whenever one of their crafty lefties was on the mound.

In fact, the very second that confounding workhorse Ryan Yarbrough was pulled, ace reliever Jonathan Loaisiga immediately tightened the game with a pair of solo home runs. It was almost as if the universe was taunting Aaron Boone, begging him to take his foot off the gas (and, ironically, zoom full-throttle towards victory using the change of speeds as his engine.

Needing to salvage the finale to save a modicum of self-respect, Boone's Yankees sprinted out to a 6-1 lead over budding enemy Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and Yarbrough, in six innings, never even made the dissolution of that lead seem possible. It never got sweaty. It didn't come close.

But when Loaisiga got rocked twice, followed by Devin Williams being called upon to face Hyeseong Kim, Shohei Ohtani, and Teoscar Hernández, it didn't take Nostradamus to envision how a three-run lead might disappear.

Instead, the universe tilted in Boone's direction a few more times. After all, it had a lesson to teach him. After Williams, a Dodgers offseason target, buzzed through the meat of the order, and DJ LeMahieu added his fourth hit and the team's seventh run of the game, Boone called upon ... Tim Hill to face Freddie Freeman.

Hill, who fell behind 3-1, struck out Freeman on a foul tip that somehow, some way stayed in Austin Wells' glove. If you don't believe in divine intervention, or the reversal of a curse, just watch that funkified ball. It dipped like Nestor Cortes Jr.'s herky-jerkiest delivery.

And yet ... strike three.

Yankees' Tim Hill, Ryan Yarbrough silence Dodgers in World Series revenge (finally!)

They always say revenge is a dish best served in the third game of a three-game series, after everyone's gotten all of their screaming out.

Would Hill have retired Freeman in the dramatic conclusion to last October's Game 1 (and, let's face it, the Yankees' best hopes in the Fall Classic)? Impossible to say; Freeman was 3-for-11 entering tonight's at-bat, and looked quite comfortable, eliminated by a hair.

That said, it's 3-for-12 now, and the final two outs were very elementary after the Yankees broke the hex. A win feels great. Knowing that the Yankees now have two lefties under contract - and perhaps a third, if Brent Headrick's up for it - who could've probably handled the business Cortes couldn't last October is a bit of an ironic pill to swallow.

Goes down smoother after a victory, though.