BOSTON – The inning was a microcosm for the season. It was six months shrink-wrapped into one remarkable frame that tells you all about where the Yankees – and the Red Sox – have been, and screams ever louder where the Yankees – and the Red Sox – may be headed.
They will remember this inning: the Yankees, the Red Sox, New York City, New England. They will remember what happened in the top of the eighth at Fenway Park this morning, next week, next month. If things happen the way it looks like they may well happen from here on in, they will remember this inning 50 years from now. Every detail. Every minute. Every second.
The Red Sox had a five-run lead walking into the eighth inning. They had a 141/2-game lead once, as they were about to walk into June. The Yankees had been beyond brutal for seven innings, same as they were beyond dreadful for the season’s first seven-plus weeks.
“We knew it was ugly,” Joe Torre said, “but there’s not a hell of a lot you can do about that.”
He remains the baseball figure with the largest target on his back, still, after almost 12 full years and four World Series championships, after nine straight division titles and what is now at least a fighting chance to make it an even 10. As May was about to bleed into June, as it looked like the Yankees were about to be lapped by the Sox, Torre refused to betray his even, steady ways.
Last night, as the seventh inning gave way to the eighth, as Yankees killer Hideki Okajima – a large reason the Red Sox had built that huge springtime cushion – began to throw his warm-up pitches, Torre reminded the Yankees of who they are and what they are.
“We’ve all seen some crazy things in this ballpark,” the manager of the Yankees told his team, even if it was trailing 7-2 and looking like its chief sponsor should have been Chico’s Bail Bonds, even as Fenway Park began to dance and celebrate what was surely soon to be a 61/2-game bulge in the division, even as the Tigers, who’d already won in Minnesota, were surely giving thanks for what was surely soon to be a 21/2-game deficit in the wild card.
Jason Giambi homered. Robinson Cano homered. It all happened in an eyeblink, and it seemed as if it didn’t even register with the people inside Fenway. It took seeing the new numbers on the scoreboard – 7-4 all of a sudden – for The Buzz to begin. We hadn’t heard The Buzz around here in a while, not since 2004, The Buzz that used to be a certain harbinger for bad, bad things.
Melky Cabrera walked. Johnny Damon doubled. Now there were two runners sitting in scoring position, and now Okajima, a Yankees killer only in the past tense, looked like he’d swallowed a stale spicy tuna roll. Fenway was funereal.
“We went through a big mess early in the season,” Damon said, recalling Torre’s pep talk before the inning and the general feeling of exhilaration that built the longer the inning lasted. “But we brushed it off.”
They were about to do it again. In from the bullpen strode Jonathan Papelbon, unscored upon in his last 162/3 innings, the man around whom so much Red Sox faith has been built. The Sox had hoped they might not need Papelbon at all this night. They certainly hadn’t thought they’d need to ask him to deliver what only Mariano Rivera among closers is able to deliver as regularly as the mail – a six-out save.
“Suddenly,” Damon said, “it felt like they were the ones on their heels.”
Because they were. Because Derek Jeter stroked Papelbon’s first pitch for a single over second base, drawing the Yankees to within 7-5. Because Bobby Abreu, after taking a strike, clubbed a soaring rocket over Jacoby Ellsbury’s head in center field, tying the score, moving to third on an errant throw. Because Alex Rodriguez, in the most inevitable at-bat of the year so far, drove Abreu home with a single.
It had taken exactly 18 pitches to turn 7-2 down into 8-7 up, in the same way it has taken just over 3½ months to turn 14½ down in the division into 4½ down, and counting, with the Red Sox suddenly the ones on their heels and the Yankees suddenly the ones dancing on stars.