GREAT OLD MEN: Mariano Rivera (inset), running out to the mound last night for the first time in a regular season game since tearing his ACL last year, and Andy Pettitte, who allowed one run in eight innings, teamed up to lead the Yankees past the Red Sox, 4-2, last night at Yankee Stadium. N.Y. (
)
The Yankees and their fans had a fever, to borrow from Christopher Walken in the classic “Saturday Night Live” sketch. And the only prescription?
Pettitte and Rivera.
Victory number one for these 2013 Yankees, a much-needed, 4-2 defeat of the Red Sox at a very chilly Yankee Stadium, came courtesy of their two oldest players. The two most tenured active employees in pinstripes.
While Derek Jeter slowly rehabilitates his left ankle down in Tampa, his fellow quintuple World Series champions restored some order to The Bronx before the Yankees, now 1-2, departed for Detroit. And you wonder, for about the 1,000th time in 19 years, where exactly the Yankees would be without the outstanding duo of 40-year-old Andy Pettitte and 43-year-old Mariano Rivera.
“I’m glad I could contribute, obviously, and give us a good outing,” Pettitte said, in a cheery Yankees clubhouse. “Obviously, I feel real, real good and secure about things whenever I see that guy running in from the bullpen in the ninth inning.”
“I always want to save the game. Not only for him, but for everybody else,” Rivera said. “But at the same time, it’s special when Andy goes there and does the kind of job he knows how to do and allows me to close the game for him.”
Pettitte did the heavy lifting, as starting pitchers usually do, throwing eight masterful innings in his first start of the season. He needed just 94 pitches to give the Yankees’ non-closers a night off in the bullpen, inducing the Red Sox to hit into three double plays. Masterful.
Then came the night’s top drama. For the first time since April 30 of last year, “Enter Sandman” filled up The Stadium, and Rivera kicked off his final campaign with a shaky, one-run save, the 609th of his career, concluding the game by getting rookie Jackie Bradley Jr. to look at an 89-mph cutter for strike three. Thus Rivera completed his comeback from the season-ending surgery on his right knee, from a torn ACL he suffered May 3 in Kansas City.
“It was wonderful,” Rivera said. “You wait for almost a year to be on the mound and get your job done. Especially here at home.”
It marked the 69th time in the regular season that Pettitte and Rivera teamed for a win and save, and their first such effort since July 8, 2010 over the Mariners in Seattle — five days before George Steinbrenner died. They subsequently teamed up to beat the Twins in Game 2 of the 2010 American League Division Series.
The Yankees entered the game teetering as much as a club can teeter two games into a baseball season. Their opener Monday and Game 2 Wednesday had been distinguished by bad offense, bad weather and bad luck against their historic rivals. With fan anxiety at DEFCON 2, the Stadium had emptied out precipitously by the final innings in both contests.
This time, Pettitte kept many of the 40,611 fans captivated, and they surely stuck around as it became increasingly clear they would bear witness to Rivera’s triumphant return, as well as the Red Sox’s first loss of the season.
Pettitte received a little help in the first inning from an overzealous Shane Victorino, who tried to score from second base on a Pettitte wild pitch when Pettitte neglected to cover home — Francisco Cervelli gathered his bearings in time to dive, block the plate and tag out Victorino — but after that, it was the classic left-hander.
With his fastball topping at a respectable 90 miles per hour, with his changeup and slider working well, he limited the Red Sox to no hits in their three at-bats with runners in scoring position.
Rivera admitted that he needed a batter to settle in. It’s very out of character for him to walk the leadoff batter, as he did Dustin Pedroia. Jonny Gomes’ one-out double led to Pedroia coming home on Middlebrooks’ grounder to the right side — Rivera covered first, easily — and then came the game-ending strikeout, and the brief celebration.
Rivera, usually reserved, admitted that he doubted, at times, whether he’d make it to this day.
“There were times because of the therapy and the pain and all of that stuff, I was wondering if it would be worth it to come back. You know what I mean?” he said. “But at the same time, the passion and drive that you have for the game motivated me to keep going.”
And that will keep both men moving forward, looking to restore calm wherever panic lurks.
“It’s not about old times,” Pettitte said. “It’s about us and these new guys and this team we’ve got right here, and this team pulling things together and trying to win another championship.”
kdavidoff@nypost.com