Saturday, September 15th 2007, 4:00 AM
The last four months was rolled into five hours last night. And yes, the race in the AL East is still on.
BOSTON - The best inning the Yankees have had this year, the best they have had as they have been coming at the Red Sox for months, began with what looked like two garbage-time home runs from Jason Giambi and Robinson Cano. Then Hideki Okajima walked Melky Cabrera and Johnny Damon doubled off Okajima and Derek Jeter hit a bloop single against Jonathan Papelbon. Then came another double, this one from Bobby Abreu, a monster shot to dead center. And when Alex Rodriguez singled home Abreu, it wasn't 7-2 Red Sox anymore at old Fenway, and the race in the American League East wasn't over.
In one of the longest nine-inning games ever played, this was the whole long Yankee comeback from 14-1/2 behind Boston rolled into one comeback at Fenway Park.
One comeback this time, one inning.
"A remarkable game," Joe Torre said in the visiting manager's office at Fenway, one that is the size of a shoebox. "Especially at this time of year."
Daisuke Matsuzaka had thrown everything he had at the Yankees last night, thrown 120pitches into the top of the sixth, gotten out of huge jams in the first and the fourth. Giambi had had a terrible night in the field, and Andy Pettitte, big-game Andy, had nothing. And after the Red Sox tacked on two more runs after Giambi's dropped throw - Abreu had Papi Ortiz doubled off first in the bottom of the sixth - the Red Sox seemed to have finished the Yankees on this night, knocked them 6-1/2 games back with 14 to play for Boston and 15 for New York.
Then came the eighth, against the two best relievers Boston has, Okajima and Papelbon. The Yankees had lit up Okajima the last time the two teams had played, at Yankee Stadium. They had never gotten Papelbon like this. Single, double, single, and just like that the life had been sucked out of Fenway and the Yankees were on their way to the best win they have had this season, even better than the one they had here on that Sunday night at the end of May when they kept coming back and coming back, against Papelbon and everybody else.
The way the Yankees picked themselves up that night, and then big after the All-Star break, that's what they had done now in Boston, on a night when they seemed to have gotten themselves too far behind this time, too late in the season. By the time they had batted all the way around in the eighth and Papelbon had struck out Giambi to finally get the Red Sox to the dugout, Boston's young closer was screaming into his glove, and Fenway was suddenly as quiet as ballparks get when a baseball night has gone wrong, gotten itself sideways for the home team, like this.
Two solo home runs. Walk to Cabrera. Double for Damon. Single for Jeter, who had left the bases loaded when he struck out against Mike Timlin to end the Yankee sixth. Big, rousing double for Bobby Abreu. Single for A-Rod. Suddenly, on this ridiculously long night, a nine-inning game trying to get near five hours, suddenly between 11 and 11:30, there was all this life to the Yankees, all this hope still in them.
"I think it makes us feel better than it makes them feel bad," Torre said, and we'll start to see if he's right about that this afternoon.
Last night had been dragging on and dragging on and changed that quickly, because baseball can, between the Yankees and Red Sox and everybody else. Seven to two for Boston, a game that it had been winning for hours. Then 8-7 for the Yankees, just like that. Four-and-a-half games now for the Red Sox, four in the loss column, Josh Beckett against Chien-Ming Wang this afternoon.
The Yankees had taken an awfully good shot from the Red Sox. They were facing the best the Red Sox had out of a bullpen that is one of the reasons Boston still has the best record in the AL East and all of baseball. And in the top of the eighth at Fenway, the Yankees just laid the Sox out. The Yankees had stopped hitting at the end of the Toronto series, they had wasted seven one-hit innings from Ian Kennedy the night before, they had gotten to Boston in the middle of the night.
And when up against it, they came at the Red Sox with the best inning of the season on offense. No runs against Papelbon in the last 16-2/3 innings he had pitched. He had been unhittable for a couple of weeks. No matter. Single against him, double, single. His worst game, at the worst time.
Matsuzaka had gotten out of bases loaded, one out, in the very first inning. Matsuzaka had gotten out of bases loaded, one out, in the fourth, getting Cabrera to hit into a double play. He left to a huge ovation. The Red Sox got those two runs to make it 7-2. Game was theirs, night was theirs, then it wasn't. No clock to run out, although if you ever wanted to put a clock on a ballgame, it was last night at Fenway, the bottom of the ninth starting four hours and 35 minutes after the game had begun at 7:11.
Time was supposed to have run out on the Yankees when they were way behind last night. It did not. Mo Rivera closed the Red Sox in the ninth when, as Torre said, "the managing is over."
The AL East is not. The Yankees have been coming back for awhile, sometimes in fits and starts. They came back last night. This was the last four months, rolled into nearly five amazing hours at Fenway Park.
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