BOSTON — Not long ago The Rivalry was about Manny and Papi. Jeter and Mo. It was about bloody socks, Pedro tossing Zimmer and everyone hating A-Rod on both sides of the field.
Now the symbol of Yankees-Red Sox is Nick Johnson looking at pitches.
There was always patience in this series, but also loads of passion and poignancy. Now it is simply a game of attrition: How many pitches can our guys make your guys throw before someone breaks?
For example both starters last night threw exactly 94 pitches. That was enough for A.J. Burnett and Jon Lester to last all of five innings. It took 333 pitches to play another Yankees-Red Sox game. And here is the scary fact: umpire Angel Hernandez had a far larger strike zone last night than Joe West did in Sunday’s season opener in which 326 pitches were thrown in 8 1/2 innings.
Johnson saw five pitches in his final at-bat. That is all he did. He never swung. In the current condition of The Rivalry that made him a hero. He walked against Hideki Okajima with the bases loaded in the eighth inning. The tie-breaking run scored.
“He is doing what we anticipated he would do,” Joe Girardi said of Johnson after a 6-4 Yankees triumph. Translation: Get on base.
The Yankees specifically reunited with Johnson because of his keen eye; it is about the only body part that has not been sprained, strained or fractured. He is hitless in five at-bats this season, albeit with three of the outs being hard-hit balls. But he has four walks and a hit by pitch in 10 plate appearances. So he has a .000 batting average and a .500 on-base percentage.
“That’s why we got this guy,” Girardi said. “He is on base all the time.”
They certainly did not get him for his sturdiness or wordiness. Johnson’s career is going to be known for four letters: DL and BB. And Johnson’s at-bats last far longer than his sentences. He expounded on his philosophy with the bases loaded by saying, “swing at strikes.” For Johnson, that is expounding. But he is a savant at being able to decipher balls from strikes.
So even though he is followed in the lineup by two of the premier RBI men of the generation — Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez — Johnson poses potentially a more troubling matchup with the bases loaded.
“You can say you are going to expand the strike zone in that situation,” hitting coach Kevin Long said. “But Nick doesn’t expand.”
No, Nick makes you throw strikes. That is what makes him attractive. Once the Yankees decided to turn away from Johnny Damon, they turned to Johnson seeing him as the next best option on the free-agent market to bat second in their lineup. He lacked speed, but he saw all of those pitches and hit lefties, something that disqualified Curtis Granderson from assuming the spot between Derek Jeter and Teixeira.
Johnson is slow, making him a big-time double-play candidate and also a likely base clogger. But the Yanks were willing to have him clog the bases because they figured he would be on the bases so often, which would be a bonanza for Teixeira, A-Rodriguez and Robinson Cano. Only the reigning MVPs — Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols — had a higher on-base percentage than Johnson’s .426 last year. And try like the Yankees may, Mauer and Pujols were not available.
Johnson was. He fit the style the Yankees want to play, the style that now defines the Chinese Water Torture aspect of The Rivalry.
Johnson’s walk gave the Yanks the lead, Cano homered in the ninth, and Alfredo Aceves, Joba Chamberlain and Mariano Rivera delivered strong relief. So there is a rubber match tonight in this season-opening series. The over-under already has been established at 300 pitches, bring some Red Bull.
The Rivalry is now Nick Johnson. Walk don’t run.
joel.sherman@nypost.com