Yanks did what they needed to do to survive

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The final out came at 12:22 a.m. local time, which is probably long after you went to bed, long after most of the folks who had populated Kauffman Stadium five hours earlier had headed home. Chasen Shreve delivered and Salvador Perez hammered one right at Jacoby Ellsbury, and loaded bases were soon left stranded and Yankees players were soon left delighted.

The Yankees had to earn this one, every ounce of it. They saw the Royals come back at them once, from 4-0 down, and then again in the bottom of the 10th after they had slipped back to a 5-4 lead. Nobody figures out how to win games like this more than Kansas City, and the Yankees were asking Ben Heller and Shreve to get that done. And the funny thing? They got it done. Heller struck out the hard-to-kill Lorenzo Cain. Shreve did the same with Kendrys Morales on a wicked splitter, then induced Perez.

“Baptism by fire,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. Suddenly … well, look: the Yankees clinched nothing at game’s end, besides adding a win, proving they could stare a team of ultimate grinders in the eye. The Royals have won so many games just like this one for three years, and they needed this one every bit as much as the Yankees did to keep their chins above water in the muddled, muddied playoff picture.

But they didn’t get this one. The Yankees did. As an old Yankee observer might have put it: How about that.

Of course Girardi had felt the ominous winds blowing in the fifth, when the rains started to batter Kauffman and the tarp arrived. He had seen this movie before. Two weeks ago, the Yankees were up 6-0 on the Blue Jays at Yankee Stadium. They had beaten the Jays the night before. Michael Pineda, for one of the few times all year, looked utterly unhittable.

Then the rains came. Pineda departed. And 12 unanswered runs later the Yankees had absorbed one of the worst losses of the year, one of the worst losses you can suffer in

any year. Now, another feel-good night, another splendid pitching per- formance, this time by Masahiro Tanaka, staked to a 4-0 lead, still up 4-2 after five. Then the rains came, again. And the pitcher departed, again. And in about 10 seconds, the Royals had a run in and a man on second and the people that remained in Kauffman Stadium after the hour-long rain delay were all on their feet. This is what the Royals do. It’s what they have done, humorlessly grinding away, refusing to lose. Soon they had first and third, one out, Sal Perez at the plate, who has collected as many huge hits as any other Royal during their renaissance. Tyler Clippard was on the mound. The inning was his, which meant the game — and maybe the Yankees’ very presence as a legit contender — was in his hands, along with the baseball. He delivered a high changeup. Perez smacked it hard …

And the ball landed, on a short hop, in Chase Headley’s glove at third. And what followed was the most satisfying sound in a baseball stadium in the closing hours of summer: silence. Perez runs like Bizarro Usain Bolt. Once the ball worked its way around the horn for a 5-4-3, the Yankees still had the lead.

Once that ball worked its way into Dellin Betances’ hand in the eighth inning, there was already a runner on, and that runner reached third, and the game was soon tied 4-4, and if you have seen what the Royals have done, what they do, that couldn’t feel comfortable.

Yet back they came. Ellsbury got a lucky bounce on a comebacker in the 10th, the Yankees held on for dear life, and live to fight another day.

Plenty of other teams in the Yankees stratosphere won last night, too — the Orioles, the Tigers, the Astros. Such is the rugged road map stretched out before them. The Yankees will need plenty of help, plenty of kindness from strangers.

But they also need to be kind to themselves. They need to pile wins. And they needed this one most of all, already having dropped the first game of the series Monday night, having their ace on the mound Tuesday (even in a truncated effort). They got it, somehow. Survive and advance. It’s that time of year now.