GETTING THE ACK'

Dustin fills in and steps up against Dickey

There are numerous ways to attack the knuckleball with one popular approach being to swing, miss and then cuss like a sailor on shore leave.

Then there is Dustin Ackley’s approach which has produced good numbers in a small sample against the likes of Toronto starter R.A. Dickey.

Ackley has filled a cameo role for the Yankees since they acquired him at the trading deadline, much of that because of a right lumbar strain that surfaced four days after he arrived. But on Sunday, manager Joe Girardi spared rookie Greg Bird the horrors of the knuckleball and inserted Ackley at first base. The move worked perfectly.

“The simpler the approach the better,” said Ackley who continued torturing Dickey by smacking a tworun homer, single and sacrifice fly as the Yankees captured the closest thing possible to a must win, averting a Toronto series sweep with a 50 victory at Yankee Stadium.

“A lot of times you’ve just got to go up there and the first one you see over the plate, just take a good swing on it,” Ackley said. “Today he was throwing a lot of knuckleballs into guys and kind of tying guys up. That’s how he has success.”

Didn’t work with Ackley who entered against Dickey with career numbers of 4for11 (.364) with a homer and five RBIs.

In the second inning, Ackley got the Yankees on the board with a sacrifice fly to center. In the fourth, Ackley slugged his first homer as a Yankee, seventh this season, to right. He also singled in the seventh.

“I’ve heard this a lot: Try to almost pull the ball off a knuckleball guy. If you try to let a knuckleball get deep and see what it’s doing, it’s too late to hit it. To me, it’s just getting out front and letting the barrel work,” said Ackley who also succeeded against knuckleballers such as the retired Tim Wakefield and Boston’s Steven Wright.

“He’d had some success off [Dickey] in the past. I talked to Greg Bird and he had seen one knuckleballer in his career in the minor leagues. We went with a hunch and it worked,” Girardi said.

So Sunday was big for Ackley, who joined the Yankees from Seattle on July 31 only to go on the disabled list from Aug. 4 to Sept. 1. He finally got to contribute. And Sunday was big for the Yankees who took three straight on the chin from Toronto, including a doubleheader sweep Saturday that contained extra innings and a rain delay, making it “probably the longest day I ever had in the major leagues,” Ackley said.

“Just to come back and be able to contribute, that’s the most important thing, just being back on the field healthy,” Ackley said. “I’m just happy to help out.”