BOSTON – The first few innocent raindrops splashed off the bill of Jonathan Papelbon’s blue cap as he hurried to get his arm loose in the bullpen in the top of the eighth inning. He shook them off, tried to ignore them; there were urgent matters at hand, after all. Then a few more fell. Harder.
Papelbon looked to the sky.
“It’s getting ugly,” he thought to himself.
On the field, too. The Red Sox are still protective enough of their prized closer that they try to do everything possible to limit his saves to the three-out variety, especially in April. But the calendar doesn’t pay attention to when the Yankees are in town, and Hideki Okajima had found some two-out trouble, walking Melky Cabrera, surrendering a single to Bobby Abreu, nudging the tying run into scoring position.
With Alex Rodriguez striding purposefully to the plate.
“We didn’t want to do it,” Red Sox manager Terry Francona would say of summoning Papelbon for a four-out save. “But we couldn’t wait any longer.”
Francona waved his right hand. Papelbon came jogging in from the pen. The crowd of 37,461 started to froth, as they always do during his portion of the baseball game. Papelbon versus Rodriguez, by itself, is worth the price printed on the face of any ticket. Fenway was stoked.
It was also soaked. The sky opened. The rain started falling in sheets, steadily, then heavily, never torrentially. But enough for Jerry Crawford, the crew chief, to wave at the Red Sox ground’s crew, ignoring the boos tumbling out of the grandstand. It was 6:22, and the game hung in the precipice, and now it was as if God had pressed a pause button to tend to other pressing matters.
Doesn’t He know about TiVo?
“I felt like I was at the free-throw line,” Rodriguez would quip later, “and they were trying to freeze me out.”
Of course, A-Rod isn’t the one with the potentially nine-figure arm; Papelbon is. He went back to the Red Sox clubhouse, went straight for the stationary bike, started pedaling to keep loose, pedaling to stay warm. The rain stopped for a bit, the tarp came off. The pitcher started thinking about throwing again. Then the rain started up again, the tarp went down again. Papelbon went back to the bike.
“Nothing you can do about it,” Papelbon said. “It’s all part of the game.”
“It’s no fun,” Rodriguez would say, “sitting around for two hours.”
Two hours and 11 minutes, to be precise. In one of the few Yankee-Sox game played in this century ticketed to be played in under three hours, it followed that there should be something of an extended intermission, especially at this juncture.
Before sending him out to the mound, Francona stared Papelbon in the eye.
“Don’t forget, it’s a long season,” the manager said. “I mean that.”
“I understand,” Papelbon said. And at 8:33, he was back on the mound, and Rodriguez was back in the batter’s box, and Cabrera was back on second and Abreu was back on first. Maybe only half of Fenway Park was back in their seats, most figuring the confrontation would look just as good in the safe, dry asylum of the Cask ‘n’ Flagon.
Papelbon came right after Rodriguez with a fastball, 95 miles an hour. A-Rod fouled it off. Next up: a splitter, 10 miles an hour slower, diving toward the dirt. A-Rod missed it by two feet. Oh-and-two. Fenway was teetering. A-Rod was tottering. No fun sitting around for two hours, waiting for this.
“I wasn’t going to fool around with him,” Papelbon said.
Ninety-six miles an hour is no joke. It was past A-Rod in an eyeblink, exploding into Jason Varitek’s mitt. Three pitches, three strikes, one more electric than the one before.
“Eye-popping,” Varitek described them.
“No excuses,” Rodriguez said. “He got the better of me.”
He got the better of Jason Giambi, Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano, too, blitzing through the ninth inning, preserving this 4-3 win.
It took 2 hours and 11 minutes to wait for the big moment of this game, then 2 minutes and 11 seconds to watch it play out. Only in Yankees-Red Sox, kids. Only in Yankees-Red Sox.