For most of the day, Chien-Ming Wang grounded the Toronto Blue Jays. Then, a little trickler turned the whole game.

Wang could only watch when Vernon Wells’s tapper rolled to a stop and the Blue Jays suddenly broke loose, rallying for three runs in the seventh inning to beat the Yankees 3–2 yesterday and end the Yankees’ five-game winning streak.

“This is one of those games when you wish the result was different, but there isn’t much you could’ve done differently,” the Yankees’ manager, Joe Torre, said.

Not when a 45-foot single that nestles in the grass near the line becomes the key play.

“The difference was we got the big hit. We picked up each other up, even though one of the hits wasn’t much,” Toronto’s Lyle Overbay said.

With Wang holding an early lead, the Yankees appeared poised to complete a four-game sweep of the Blue Jays for the first time since 1995.

Instead, Dustin McGowan (6–5) and Toronto had other ideas. McGowan steadied himself from a tough start and kept the Blue Jays close, and it soon was their turn to come back.

“It’s huge. It’s huge for us to get out of here, especially with that kind of win,” the Blue Jays’ manager, John Gibbons, said.

Toronto trailed 2–0 when Matt Stairs led off the seventh with a long fly for a double. That was a change for the Blue Jays — by the fourth inning, all but two of their batters had grounded out against Wang’s sinker.

In fact, some fans in the sellout crowd of 53,857 hung signs from the upper deck counting Wang’s groundball outs, the way “K” placards are posted for strikeouts.

Wang, who had won seven straight decisions, jammed Wells and the powerful no. 3 hitter managed just a slow tapper up the third-base line. It did plenty of damage, though, as Wang had no play.