"Yankees haters love games like yesterday's, in which the club's biggest stars lit up a muggy Bronx afternoon.

CC Sabathia, Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez each played huge roles in a 9-3 victory that completed a sweep of the Blue Jays in front of 47,464 at Yankee Stadium. Immediately, you could hear the howling cut through the thick air.

The detractors don't need the Yankees to lose. They simply point to the money the Yankees are paying their stars and insist they should win. And when the trio performs like they did, it's almost impossible for the Yankees to lose.

Jeter slugged a three-run homer in the third inning and added a two-run single in the eighth to tie a career-high with five RBIs. Rodriguez hit a solo blast in the sixth, and Sabathia went 7 1/3 innings and improved to 19-7.

Are they worth a combined $69 million this season? That's a debate for the haves and the have-nots and the true test looms on the October horizon. But for one day, a very popular mantra in sports was on display: Talent wins.

"We have a lot of big names and those are big runs in the eighth," Girardi said of Jeter's two-run single that followed Nick Swisher's two-run homer. "We were able to get Mo [Mariano Rivera] a day off. He had pitched in four of six [games].""