Teixeira, batting with men on base in all five of his plate appearances, went 0-for-4 with a walk. Cody Ransom, Alex Rodriguez's replacement at third base, went 0-for-3 with a strikeout and looked shaky defensively. Xavier Nady made a base-running mistake, getting caught off third base by Izturis.

The Yankees sure didn't look like a club that went 24-10 in spring training, but the season opener is merely the first of 162 games. Sabathia was 0-3 with a 13.50 ERA after four starts last season. Teixeira is a .259 career hitter in April, his lowest average of anymonth. Both will rebound, and so will the team.

Of course, things could get more interesting if fans throughout the American League take a cue from the generally docile Orioles crowd and seek to overthrow the Yankees by whatever means necessary.

An Orioles fan sitting in the left-field seats actually had the audacity to interfere with Yankees left fielder Johnny Damon on Izturis' two-run homer in the eighth, which gave the Orioles an 8-5 lead.

The umpires ruled that the ball "clearly was in the stands," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said, and opted not to use a replay. But Izturis needed all the help he could get to produce only his second homer since 2006. Damon thought the fan committed interference, saying that the ball would not have cleared the wall and that he felt "someone else's glove inside my mitt."

"I felt like I had the ball," Damon said. "Unfortunately, a fan came and felt like it was his ball. That's what home-field advantage is. The fan made a better play than I did."

The play, if marketed properly, could spark an anti-Yankees crusade, filling ballparks across America.

Economy got you down?

Take it out on the Yankees.