MOOSIC, Pa. –– If there had been no player injuries, the 2,407 fans who ignored the start of the pro football season to come to PNC Field yesterday would never have been treated to a pitching matchup such as the one that extended the final game of the PawSox season into extra innings.

The bullpens and Shelley Duncan’s game-winning home run with one out in the bottom of the 10th eventually decided the game, the series and the fate of the PawSox season. But the 2-0 Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees’ 2-0 victory was highlighted by a classic pitching duel.

Bartolo Colon of the PawSox and Phil Hughes of the Yankees were busy for most of eight innings stacking up evidence that they were again fit to pitch in the majors.

“The only problem in the game for us was that Mr. Hughes was every bit as good as Colon,” PawSox manager Ron Johnson said. “We knew if he was on, we would have our work cut out for us.”

The Yankees used a combined five-hitter by Hughes and Scott Strickland to win the International League semifinal series, three games to one, and advance to the Governors’ Cup final against the Durham Bulls.

Colon retired the last 16 batters he faced, letting only two balls out of the infield in the process. He matched, but could not beat, Hughes in his longest outing of an injury-plagued season.

That these two guys would be involved in the I.L. playoffs would have been hard to predict before the season.

Colon, 35, a winner of 150 major-league games, was the winning pitcher in the 1998 All-Star Game and won the A.L. Cy Young for the Angels in 2005. After shoulder and elbow problems set Colon back the previous two years, he has been slowed by a lower-back strain since midseason. He completed a 30-day rehabilitation assignment with the PawSox this week and was optioned back to Boston yesterday.

Hughes, 22, made it to the Yankees early in 2007 and went 5-3 while splitting the year between New York and the minors. He started this season in New York, but missed three months after suffering a rib injury April 29. Yesterday was the first time he has made it through the seventh inning since.

Colon threw 57 of 84 pitches for strikes and left after 7 2/3 innings with a two-hitter. He struck out three.

“He had a different look in his eye,” Johnson said. “He told (pitching coach Rich) Sauveur before the game that he was going eight innings. “If he wasn’t on an 85-pitch limit, he finishes that game.”

Neither team issued a walk in a game that featured just nine hits total.Yankees

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