BOSTON – Just when the Red Sox thought they had the Yankees, they didn’t.
The Red Sox finally got a big start from a man they paid $82.5 to and still found themselves deadlocked after nine innings.
New Yankee Curtis Granderson would make his case for earning his stripes, turning on a Jonathan Papelbon fastball, crushing it to the right field seats to unlock the tie, paving the way to a series winning 3-1 victory in front a stunned 38,828 at Fenway Park.
After two games that bordered on the exceedingly tedious, both the Yankees and Red Sox easily played their best game of the series, featuring tremendous starting pitching.
Starters Andy Pettitte and John Lackey hooked up in a classic pitcher’s duel. The game was scoreless over the first two and a half frames before Boston struck for the first run of the night.
Dustin led off the bottom of the third with a double. Pettitte battled to retire Victor Martinez and Kevin Youkilis, before surrendering an RBI single to David Ortiz to give the Red Sox a 1-0 lead.
This appeared to enough for Lackey as he completely shut the Yankees down. No man reached past second base for the first six innings thanks to the help of his curveball dancing and diving away from hitters.
Umpires issued warnings to both teams in the sixth inning after Lackey drilled Derek Jeter with a fastball inside leading off with no men on. This was in response to Youkilis taking a Pettitte fastball off the top of his helmet.
Lackey pitched out of trouble when Alex Rodriguez grounded into a double play to end the Yankees half of the frame. For the night, he threw six scoreless innings, yielding only three hits in 99 pitches.
Pettitte held his own with Lackey, but still trailed on the scoreboard as his night ended after battling through six innings, giving up six hits and three walks, striking out four in 94 pitches.
Scott Schoenweis began the seventh for Boston and gave up a double to Jorge Posada in between strikeouts of Robinson Cano and Curtis Granderson. Hard-throwing Daniel Bard entered to pitch to Nick Swisher and on a 2-2 pitch, grounded a single into right field that scored Posada from third to tie the game.
Posada is not the fastest runner around the bases, but as JD Drew came up throwing, he failed initially to touch the plate before eventually reaching the bag to score the tying run.
After giving up three runs and blowing a two-run Yankee lead in the seventh inning, Joe Girardi gave the ball to Chan Ho Park as a means to redeem himself.
Park quickly went through the meat of the Boston lineup six up, six down. Papelbon pitched a 1-2-3 ninth, and going into the bottom half Girardi elected to stick with Park based on the way he threw the previous two innings.
The reward was another scoreless inning, but had to endure several long fly outs to the warning track by Adrian Beltre and Mike Cameron.
To start the tenth, Granderson would jump on a 0-1 fastball from Papelbon and crushed it over the wall in right for a homerun to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead.
After Nick Swisher struck out, both Brett Gardner and Derek Jeter worked walks to chase the Red Sox closer from the game as his pitch count went over his limit.
Scott Atchison came on and loaded the bases by walking Nick Johnson. Mark Teixeira grounded into a fielder’s choice, scoring Gardner to increase the margin to two.
For the second straight game, Mariano Rivera came in and pitched a quiet 1-2-3 to give the Yankees the series win.
It was a great turn of events for the world champions after dropping the season opener. The game showed that while they may possess baseball most potent offense, they could win a battle of pitching even against the team that has changed their philosophy to that of run prevention and strong pitching.
Problem with that game plan is that a team that can hit can negate that.
With an off day scheduled for Thursday, the Yankees will resume action on Friday night in St. Petersburg against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Javier Vazquez makes his first start for the Yankees since 2004, opposed by young David Price.
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