The Yankee Years Part 12

Beside his penchant for pitching inside, Martinez irritated the Yankees with his bench jockeying, another old-school tactic that seemed out of place in the modern game. He would insult the Yankees from the Boston dugout. Catcher Jorge Posada was a favorite target. Martinez would question Posada's intelligence and call him "Dumbo," a reference to the catcher's prominent ears. It was a shrewd tactic, for Martinez knew that Posada was an emotional player, and the more Martinez riled Posada the more Posada became distracted. Posada was a career .191 hitter against his tormentor entering the 2003 ALCS.

In Game 3, however, the Yankees would not let Martinez have his way with them. Boston staked Pedro to a 2-0 first-inning lead off Clemens, but the Yankees, led by the fiery Posada, fought back with aggressive hitting against Martinez. Posada opened the second inning with a double and later scored on a single by journeyman outfielder Karim Garcia. Derek Jeter hit a home run in the third inning to tie the score. And by the fourth inning, the Yankees were so emboldened by their hacks against Pedro that they turned the tables and were razzing him from their dugout.

"You've got nothing!" they yelled at Martinez.

It was Posada who started another rally in the fourth, this time with a walk. Nick Johnson followed with a single off the Green Monster in left field, a shot that sent Posada to third. Hideki Matsui drove the next pitch into right field for a ringing double that bounced into the stands, scoring Posada. Now the Yankees, led by Posada, were all over Martinez with catcalls from the dugout.

Martinez was facing Garcia, a lefthanded batter, with first base open and a righthanded hitter on deck. His first pitch to Garcia was a fastball that whistled straight for Garcia's head. Garcia ducked, and the ball glanced off his left shoulder.

The Yankees were outraged. The way they saw it, Martinez threw at Garcia intentionally, having grown frustrated with their aggressive swings and mouthing off from the dugout.

"Was Pedro trying to make a point? I'm sure he was," later said one of Martinez's teammates, pitcher John Burkett. "Roger does it, Randy Johnson does it at times and Pedro does it. I don't think he was trying to hurt him. He was trying to send a message. It was, 'f.u.c.k this, I've got to put a scare into somebody.' And he did."

Martinez claimed the pitch carried no intentions. It simply got away from him.

"Why am I going to hit Karim Garcia?" he said. "Who is Karim Garcia? Karim Garcia is an out. He's not the out I want to let go."

The catcalls continued from the Yankee dugout. The next batter, Alfonso Soriano, hit a groundball to shortstop that the Red Sox turned into a double play, but not before the enraged Garcia slid hard into second baseman Todd Walker in an attempt to disrupt the pivot and to vent his anger at being hit. Garcia picked himself up off the dirt and glared angrily at Martinez as he jogged across the infield toward the third base dugout. Martinez rightfully interpreted Garcia's stare as a message that Garcia believed Martinez had purposefully tried to hit him.

"Why am I going to try to hit you?" Martinez yelled at Garcia. "You're my out!"

"Motherf.u.c.ker!" Garcia yelled back.

"You're the motherf.u.c.ker, you dirty b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Martinez shouted.

"When I said that," Martinez said, "Posada jumped up on the dugout steps and started screaming at me in Spanish. I could hear him yell at me and then he made a comment about my mother.

Posada is Latin. He should know if you don't want to f.u.c.k with someone you don't say anything about their mother.

"One thing in the Dominican culture you have to be very careful about is saying anything about someone's mother. You say something about someone's mother, you're picking a fight right away. If I even see someone raising his voice to his mother, you're going to get slapped in the mouth. Posada is from Puerto Rico. Being Latin, he should know that."

Martinez no longer cared about Garcia. He turned his attention to Posada in the dugout. Martinez raised his right index finger and pointed it to the right side of his head and yelled something in Spanish at him. Martinez said he yelled, "I'll remember what you said." Posada and the Yankees heard and interpreted something very different. They saw Martinez's actions as a clear threat that he was going to hit Posada in the head with a pitch the next time he batted.

Clemens, of course, would not let such actions go unanswered. The question was not if he would respond with a militant pitch-just a little something "to move somebody's feet"-but when. A jam in the sixth inning of a close game, with one out, a 4-2 lead and the tying runs on base, did not appear to be the proper opening for retribution, but Manny Ramirez figured differently. The Yankees always discussed in their pregame scouting report meetings that Ramirez was uncomfortable with inside pitches. The reports said you could get Manny off his game by occasionally throwing b.a.l.l.s on his hands, off the plate. Such warning shots could make Ramirez less bold about diving into outside pitches. (The reports also included notations that such pitches typically had no effect whatsoever on David Ortiz, Boston's other big slugger and confirmed Yankee-killer. Ortiz would respond to any such pitches simply by spitting into his palms and resuming his customary, aggressive place practically on top of home plate. Unlike Ramirez, the Yankees regarded Ortiz as unable to be intimidated.) Clemens uncorked a high fastball that, while somewhat inside, did not come all that close to hitting Ramirez. Still, Ramirez, sensing as all of the Red Sox did that Clemens would not let the fourth-inning incident with Martinez go unchallenged, thought Clemens threw at him. Ramirez ducked and then, bat in hand, stormed toward the mound. The players and coaches from both dugouts immediately dashed toward the middle of the field-except for one 72-year-old Yankees coach who made a straight line toward the Boston dugout. Don Zimmer had seen and heard enough of Martinez. This incident, Zimmer figured, was caused by Martinez and his years of throwing at hitters and mouthing off at the Yankees. He saw Pedro in his red warmup jacket across the field and that's where he headed. Zimmer didn't know what he was going to do when he got there; he just knew he was fed up with Martinez.

"The only thing I remember," Torre said, "is when I was going out of the dugout Zimmer was on my left and maybe a step or two below me. I was going to say, 'Zim, you stay here,' but I knew it was fruitless. I mean, me stopping him, or anybody stopping him, it wasn't going to happen. It's the last I remember Zim. And then I was in the middle of the scrum with everybody else in the middle of the field, and I heard Zim or somebody yell something near their dugout, and I look over. He's already on the ground."

Zimmer had charged Martinez in the manner of a bull in a ring, and a stunned Martinez had responded in the manner of a matador. He sidestepped Zimmer and pushed Zimmer to the ground.

"He reached for my right arm," Martinez said. "I thought, Is he going to pull it? Is he trying to hurt me? I tossed him down."

The sight of this 72-year-old man tumbling to the ground, his bald pink head, capless, against the dark green gra.s.s in front of the Boston dugout, was so jarring as to effectively end what otherwise might have been a full-scale brawl. (Clemens said at first he thought the p.r.o.ne, round body might have been that of teammate David Wells.) Zimmer was unhurt, though the Yankees would insist he be strapped to a gurney and hauled away in an ambulance to a hospital. Zimmer was, however, deeply embarra.s.sed. He called a news conference the next day and, through tears, apologized for his actions. His contrition did not stop New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg from suggesting that Martinez would be arrested if he had acted that way in New York.

"Whatever kind of baseball they want to play, we're going to play, but we didn't start that," Clemens said after the game, barely containing his anger toward Martinez. "Sometimes when you get knocked around the ballpark, you get your ticket punched. I've had it many times. These guys have done it to me. If you don't have electric stuff and you're not on and guys are hitting b.a.l.l.s they shouldn't be hitting, you might stand somebody up. But just because you are getting whipped, you don't hit [somebody] behind somebody's neck . . .

"I wasn't a part of all that. I went in there and I was trying to strike Manny out, and bottom line is he started mouthing me and the ball wasn't near him. If I wanted it near him, he'd know it."

Torre pulled Clemens after he pitched out of that sixth inning by getting Ramirez to ground into a double play. Clemens might have lasted longer, but Torre figured Clemens had spent himself physically and emotionally in such fitful battle. He had noticed the veins bulging on Clemens' neck. The Yankees couldn't get through the game without one more fight, this one a b.l.o.o.d.y one in the New York bullpen between a Fenway Park security guard, pitcher Jeff Nelson and right fielder Garcia, who hopped the fence. The rivalry had become sheer madness, so when Torre needed order restored, he turned to the reliable coolness of Mariano Rivera. The closer took care of the final six outs of a 4-3 victory with no runs, no hits and no incidents, requiring just 19 pitches to do so.

The outrageousness of Game 3 established the animosity and compet.i.tiveness of the series that would build toward the seventh game. Starting with Game 3, the teams alternated wins over four games in which each one hung in the balance into the ninth inning. So it would come down to this: the Yankees and Red Sox playing each other for the 26th time that year-the most two teams had seen of one another in baseball history-and a Yankee Stadium reprise of the Martinez-Clemens pitching matchup. To add to the drama, the game stood a chance to be the last time Clemens pitched in the big leagues. He had announced his intention to retire after the season, an intention that actually took four years to consummate. But the expectation at the time was that this might be his last game.

Martinez did not sleep well before Game 7. For one reason, his body clock was askew from a weary travel schedule. In the previous 19 days he had flown from Boston to Tampa to Oakland to Boston to Oakland to New York to Boston to New York. For another reason, Martinez was anxious, even fearful, of the hostility he might find in New York after the incidents from Game 3. He read and heard comments that he should be thrown in jail for what he did to Zimmer, and that fans were going to come to Game 7 armed with rocks and batteries to throw at him in the bullpen. His brother, the former pitcher Ramon Martinez, wanted to watch his kid brother pitch with the pennant on the line at Yankee Stadium, but Pedro would not allow it.

"Stay in Boston," he told Ramon. "Anything can happen."

Martinez made certain not to leave his hotel room while in New York. On the day of Game 7 he ordered some Dominican food delivered to his room rather than venturing out for lunch. He took the team bus to the ballpark, rather than trust a New York cabbie to bring him safely to the ballpark. The Yankees never liked Martinez much, but now he felt the wrath of the citizens of the city for having flung an old, huggable man to the ground.

Burkett, knowing this was likely to be his final season, had toted a video camera throughout the playoffs. It was rolling in the clubhouse before Game 7. One of his favorite images, taken un.o.btrusively, is of Martinez, sitting alone, facing into his locker, his face taut with concentration and anxiousness.

Martinez embraced the challenge, clearly outpitching an ineffective Clemens in the early innings. Boston whacked Clemens for three runs in the third inning, while Martinez was giving the Yankees nothing. Kevin Millar ripped Clemens' first pitch of the fourth inning for a home run, and it was 4-0. The Red Sox didn't stop there. Trot Nixon walked and then Bill Mueller lashed a single to center field. The Yankees were on the cusp of getting blown out, already down four runs to a sharp Martinez with Boston runners at first and third and no outs. Torre had little choice but to pull Clemens from the wreckage before it grew even worse. Clemens walked off the field in that slow, ambling cowboy walk of his, but the Yankee Stadium crowd was in too foul of a mood to send him off to his retirement with polite applause.

When the bullpen door swung open, an accidental reliever walked out. It was Mussina. There he was making the first relief appearance of his professional life and having to do so by parachuting into the middle of an inning-exactly the scenario Stottlemyre had told him would not happen. Trouble was, Stottlemyre did not tell Torre he promised Mussina he would relieve only at the start of the inning. All Torre knew was that the game was on the line right now and it was time to break gla.s.s in case of emergency. Mussina was his best option.

Mussina first had to face Boston catcher Jason Varitek. He struck him out on three pitches. Next up was center fielder Johnny Damon. Mussina induced a groundball to Jeter, who turned it into an inning-ending double play. Just like that, with six pitches to two batters, Mussina had auth.o.r.ed his signature moment as a Yankee. Until then he had acquired the reputation of a nearly great pitcher. Reliable, yes, but always somehow short of real greatness. He had never won 20 games in a season, had come within one strike of throwing a perfect game against Boston in 2001, and had lost four straight postseason decisions for the Yankees, including two in the 2003 ALCS alone.

Mussina's relief work grew in stature as the game unfolded. The Yankees finally broke through against Martinez when Jason Giambi whacked his first pitch of the fifth inning for a home run. Meanwhile, Mussina tacked on two more shutout innings. He had thrown 33 pitches and kept the Yankees within range of Pedro when Torre decided to take him out after the sixth inning, turning to lefthanded reliever Felix Heredia to face Damon and Todd Walker, two lefthanded hitters due up for Boston.

Told he was done for the night, Mussina turned to Torre in the dugout and said, "I thought you weren't going to bring me in in the middle of an inning."

Said Torre kiddingly, because he was unaware of what Stottlemyre had told him, "Well, I guess we lied to you."

Then Torre turned serious. He drew closer to his pitcher and told him, "All I can tell you is you pitched the game of your life here. If anybody ever questions how you handle pressure, you answered that right here. Don't you ever forget that."

"Thanks," Mussina said.

"Oh, and one more thing," Torre said. "Maybe when we come back next spring we'll take a look at you out of the bullpen."

"No, no. No, thanks," Mussina said.

Torre, of course, was kidding, but Mussina's clutch relief work had allowed some levity and hope in a game the Yankees still trailed by three against a determined, if somewhat weary, Martinez. The lack of sleep, the anxiety about the cauldron of New York, the three weeks of crossing times zones . . . all of it sapped a bit of energy from Martinez. Even though he cruised through the sixth inning, Martinez came off the field, sat next to a.s.sistant trainer Chris Correnti and offered something revealing: "Chris," he said, "I'm a little fatigued."

In the seventh, Martinez locked down the first two outs without apparent difficulty. But then Giambi hammered his second home run of the game to cut the lead to 4-2. Now Martinez only needed to dispatch Enrique Wilson to end the inning. Wilson normally would be the last guy you would want taking an at-bat when you were down to the last seven outs of your playoff life. Quite simply, Enrique Wilson was one of the worst hitters ever to play for the New York Yankees. He appeared in 264 games for the Yankees and batted .216. Only four men in the history of the franchise ever hit worse with that much time in pinstripes: Bill Robinson (.206, 196769), Jim Mason (.208, 197476), Lute Boone (.210, 191316) and Steve Balboni (.214, 198190). Moreover, Wilson was neither especially fleet nor adept in the field. His value essentially came down to one specific and unexplainable skill: he could hit Pedro Martinez. Wilson was a career .500 hitter against Martinez, with 10 hits in 20 at-bats, including a freakish 7-for-8 performance that year alone. Torre started Wilson at third base on those numbers alone, though his regular starting third baseman had given him no reason why he should stay in the lineup. Aaron Boone, looking overmatched, was. .h.i.tting .125 in the ALCS, with two hits in 16 at-bats. Naturally, Martinez could not get Wilson out. Wilson reached base with an infield single. Garcia, whom Martinez had treated as his plastic duck decoy for Game 3 target practice, smacked the next pitch for a single.

Martinez had so cruised through most of the game that he had thrown only 11 pitches out of the stretch position before Garcia's. .h.i.t. But now that the Yankees had the tying runs on base and Soriano at bat, Martinez had to tap whatever reserve tank of energy he possessed. Soriano fought Martinez through a grueling six-pitch at-bat. On the last pitch, Soriano swung and missed for strike three. It was Pedro's 100th pitch of the game. As Martinez walked off the mound he gave thanks to G.o.d by pointing to the sky. Red Sox Nation recognized the body language. It was Pedro's usual coda to a full night's work, his signature signoff. It was the look of a man who was done, who had delivered his team with 100 pitches to a 4-2 lead and within six outs of the World Series. Martinez's teammates recognized the look. As Martinez walked into the third-base end of the Boston dugout, shortstop Nomar Garciaparra threw his arms around Martinez in a hug, a gesture of appreciation for the game he pitched. At the other end of the dugout, nearest to home plate, Boston pitching coach Dave Wallace pulled his pitching log notebook and a pencil from his pocket and ran a line through Martinez's name. Pedro, to the coach's best a.s.sumpton, was done. Underneath Martinez's scratched-out name Wallace wrote "Embree." Alan Embree, a lefthanded pitcher, would start the eighth inning to match up against Nick Johnson, a lefthanded hitter and the first Yankee due up in the inning. Wallace and Correnti congratulated Martinez on his effort, a job well done.

"After the seventh," Martinez said, "Chris and Wallace told me that was pretty much it. They were going to talk to Grady."

At that moment, Martinez figured he was done for the night. Such a moment is all it takes to trigger the shutdown of a pitcher's compet.i.tive systems. Rebooting is never quick and easy.

"Your energy level drops," Martinez said of that mental shutdown. "As soon as you think you're out, even for 30 seconds, you get tired and out of focus."

Martinez, slipping on his warmup jacket, was getting ready to leave the dugout for the clubhouse. Suddenly Little approached him.

"I need you for one more [inning]," the manager said. "Can you give me one more?"

Martinez was stunned. First of all, he had already a.s.sumed that he was done. And second of all, how was he supposed to answer the question? Was he even permitted, in the unwritten macho code of the game, to refuse the manager's request and say he wanted to come out of a Game 7?

"I didn't know what to say," Martinez said later. "Do I come out after the sixth or seventh? If anything happens, everyone will say, 'Pedro wanted to come out.'

"I wasn't hurt. I was tired, yes. I never expressed anything about coming out. The only way I would say that is if I was physically hurt. The only way."

So Martinez told Little he would try to give him another inning. Little must have sensed the fatigue and the hesitation in Martinez, because he decided on a backup plan.

"I'll tell you what, Petey," Little told him. "Why don't you try to start the eighth. I might even send you out there just to warm up."

Embree would be throwing in the bullpen. He would be summoned at any sign of distress, even if it occurred as Martinez threw his warmup pitches.

"Help is on the way," Little told Martinez.

David Ortiz provided another kind of a.s.sistance when he popped a home run off David Wells in the top of the eighth inning, extending Martinez's lead to 5-2. Torre had used Heredia to face two lefthanded hitters and Jeff Nelson to face two righthanded hitters when he had called on Wells to neutralize Ortiz. It didn't work. Now Torre had used five pitchers, including Clemens, Mussina and Wells, who among them had won 709 games in the major leagues, and still found himself down three runs to Martinez with six outs left. Martinez marched out to the mound for the last of the eighth inning believing he would be removed as soon as the Yankees put anybody on base.

"At that point, I thought I was batter-by-batter," he said.

As Martinez threw his warmup pitches, Embree threw in the bullpen, ready to go. Righthanded relievers Mike Timlin and Scott Williamson were available, too. The three relievers had dominated New York throughout the series, allowing only one run in 11[image]innings and just five hits in 36 at-bats. Little would later tell club officials that as well as they had pitched, he did not trust them to keep their nerves under control in such a pressurized spot. He trusted no one more than Martinez, even a fatigued Martinez. Indeed, Little trusted Martinez so much that even though Martinez himself thought his place in the game was a batter-by-batter proposition, Little intended for him to pitch the entire inning, even if runners reached base.

"It's the way we've always done it," Little said. "Ninety percent of the time when we send Pedro back out there he completes the inning. He gets out of his own jams. I can hardly remember the times I had to go get him. I'd rather have a tired Pedro Martinez out there than anybody else. He's my best."

Until Game 5 of the AL Division Series against Oakland, Little had removed Martinez only seven times mid-inning in his 60 starts for the manager-four of those seven hooks came against the Yankees-and only once after the seventh inning. But in a subtle bit of foreshadowing, Martinez had been unable to get through the eighth inning of that clinching game in Oakland. Little pulled a weary Martinez after two hits in that inning, and then used four relievers to secure the final six outs to make possible the New YorkBoston steel-cage match.

Ten days later, Little faced the same predicament, only this time with a World Series berth on the line: a fatigued Martinez starting the eighth inning with a rested, reliable bullpen behind him. He would play this one differently than he had the game in Oakland, and it would cost him his job.

Martinez started that eighth inning well enough, getting Nick Johnson on a pop fly to shortstop. But Johnson had extended Martinez through another seven pitches in that at-bat. The last of those pitches was clocked at 93 miles per hour. The speed sounded impressive enough, but Martinez knew it was an inadequate gauge of how he was feeling.

"Even when I'm fatigued, I can still throw hard," Martinez said. "My arm speed may be there, but location is where I suffer and that's because my arm angle drops. I throw three-quarters, yes, but it's three-quarters steady. If I start to get tired, my arm drops a little more and that causes the ball to stay flat over the plate. My velocity doesn't change, but I can't spot the ball as well when I'm tired. That's what happened."

Five outs away. The Red Sox were just five outs away from going to the World Series and from smashing their inferior status to the hated Yankees. Of course, the Boston paradox at the time, typically referred to as the Curse of the Bambino, is that each out brings the club as close to infamy as it does fulfillment. Each step offers the horror of a trapdoor.

"As Game 7 was going on the drama kept building," Burkett said. "You have people on our team thinking, 'I don't want to be the one to make the mistake.' You know, the Bill Buckner thing. I'm sure it entered people's minds."

After getting Johnson, Martinez jumped ahead of Derek Jeter with two fastb.a.l.l.s for strikes. If Babe Ruth, and his 1918 trade from Boston to the Yankees, is the root of all things evil for the Red Sox franchise, Jeter is the talisman of the Yankees' modern dynasty. So many of the team's signature moments and improbable rallies featured Jeter: *He started the 12th inning rally, and scored the winning run, in Game 2 of the 1996 AL Division Series against Texas, the pivotal win that saved the Yankees from going down two games to none in the best-of-five series and was the springboard victory to their dynasty.*He hit the disputed home run (the Jeffrey Maier home run, courtesy of fan interference) to rescue the Yankees in Game 1 of the 1996 AL Championship Series, just when they were five outs away from losing to Baltimore.*With the Yankees down 6-0 in the sixth inning of 1996World Series Game 4-the Braves seemed a lock to extend their series lead to three games to one-Jeter started the epic comeback with a single.*After the Yankees lost Game 3 of the 2000World Series to the Mets, Jeter restored equilibrium to the series by ripping the first pitch of Game 4 for a home run off Bobby Jones.*With the Yankees facing elimination in Oakland, he saved Game 3 of the 2001 AL Division Series by appearing from seemingly nowhere to fetch an errant relay throw and improvising a flip throw to the plate to cut down the would-be tying run.*He hit a walkoff home run in the tenth inning to win Game 4 of the 2001World Series against Arizona.

Jeter was still only 29 years old, but already owned several lifetimes worth of huge postseason moments. He had grown so comfortable in big spots, especially at Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees sometimes seemed to be paranormally good, and every break seemed to go their way, that he would tell first-year Yankee third baseman Aaron Boone, "Don't worry. The ghosts will come out eventually."

Against Martinez in Game 7, Jeter would provide yet another signature moment. Boston catcher Jason Varitek called for another fastball at 0-and-2, wanting this one so far out of the strike zone that he practically was standing when he gave a target for Martinez. Pedro did throw to the spot, very much up and very much away, but Jeter swatted at it anyway, lining it hard into right field. Trot Nixon, the Boston right fielder, took a poor path to the ball, running more shallow to his right than the hard-hit ball required. By the time Nixon corrected his mistake it was too late. The ball sailed over his head and bounced off the padded blue wall as Jeter dashed into second with a double.

The hit was largely forgotten amid the madness that was still to come, but it was one of those subtleties of execution that can drive baseball men mad. Yankees fans saw the clutch hitting of Jeter, while inside the Red Sox dugout they saw the possible second out of the eighth inning squandered by an outfielder's path to the baseball. In the immediate aftermath of the game, one of the Red Sox would grab a reporter and ask, "Tell me, was Jeter's ball catchable?" Told that it was, crestfallen, he sighed, "I thought so."

Martinez, who figured he would be done as soon as a runner reached based, glanced toward his dugout, but no one came. Bernie Williams, a switch-hitter who hit 24 points worse against left-handed pitchers that year, was due to bat next with Hideki Matsui, a lefthanded hitter, behind him. Fox a.n.a.lyst Tim McCarver said on air at that time, "You get the feeling [Embree] will be the pitcher for Matsui one way or the other."

Once again Martinez brought the hitter to the brink of expiration with another two-strike count, this time 2-and-2 to Williams. And once again, Martinez could not finish the job. He threw a 95-mph fastball that caught too much of the plate. Williams pounded it for a hard single that sent Jeter dashing home to cut the deficit to 5-3.

As expected, with the lefthanded Embree ready to face the lefthanded Matsui, Little left the dugout and walked to the mound. But then something very much unexpected happened: Little walked back to the dugout without Martinez. Writers in the press box howled, "What is he doing?" Said McCarver on the air, "This is the most blatant situation for a second guess in this series, whether to bring Embree in to pitch to Matsui or not. If you're not going to bring him in against Matsui, when are you going to make that move?"

Martinez had thrown 115 pitches. He was fatigued. He had taken the mound in the eighth inning thinking one runner might bring about his removal, and here two of them had reached base by hitting the ball hard and he was still still in the game. Once again Little had put much of the decision-making process in the hands of a proud pitcher who did not want to say no. in the game. Once again Little had put much of the decision-making process in the hands of a proud pitcher who did not want to say no.

"Can you pitch to Matsui?" Little had asked Martinez on the mound.

"Yeah, of course," Martinez had replied. "Let me try to get him."

Little's question regarding Matsui left Martinez thinking this would be the last batter he would face.

"He didn't ask me about anybody else," Martinez said. "Just Matsui."

For a third consecutive batter, Martinez obtained two strikes, this time with another 0-and-2 count after Matsui looked at a fastball and curveball. And for a third consecutive batter, Martinez could not execute a pitch to finish off the at-bat. Varitek called for a fastball up and in.

"We've probably thrown Matsui 80 pitches up and in," Martinez said, "and he's never hit that pitch."

Again Martinez missed slightly with his location. The pitch wasn't far enough inside. Matsui blasted a line drive down the line that bounced into the stands for a ground rule double. Martinez had given up only two extra-base hits all year on 0-and-2 counts. Now he had done so twice in a span of three batters with the American League pennant only five outs away.

The Yankees had runners at second and third. Now Martinez thought for certain he was out of the game. Little had asked him only about Matsui, and Martinez had failed to retire him. He had thrown 118 pitches and no longer had the strength to finish off hitters. But Little didn't move from the dugout. The howls from the press box grew louder. The next batter was Posada. One more duel among the archenemies.

"I was actually shocked I stayed out there that long," Martinez said of the eighth inning. "But I'm paid to do that. I belong to Boston. If they want to blow my arm out, it's their responsibility. I'm not going to go to the manager and say, 'Take me out of the game.' I'm not going to blame Grady for leaving me out there."

By now, Yankees closer Mariano Rivera was throwing in the bullpen. The crowd, with a shark's intuition for the vulnerability of its prey, was gleefully frenetic. Once again, Martinez forged a two-strike count. He missed with a cut fastball before throwing three straight curveb.a.l.l.s, getting a called strike on the first, missing with the second and getting a swinging strike with the third. Varitek called for a fastball at 2-and-2. And for the fourth consecutive time, the Yankees jumped on a two-strike fastball for a hit. Posada did not hit it well-the 95-mph pitch jammed him-but he did hit it fortuitously. His little pop fly plopped onto the gra.s.s in shallow center field.

Williams scored, with Matsui following him home with the tying run. None of the Red Sox, as if stunned by what was happening, bothered to cover second base, so Posada easily chugged into the bag for a double. A tremendous wall of sound rose up, the kind of roar that comes not just from the throat but also from the soul. Down three runs to Pedro Martinez and down to their final five outs, the Yankees had tied the game with four straight two-strike hits.

"That," Posada said, "was the loudest I have ever heard Yankee Stadium."

Suddenly, Rivera ran off the bullpen mound. The Yankees' bullpen was a two-tiered arrangement. The throwing area is at field level, behind the left-center-field wall, and above that, up a short flight of stairs, is a sort of staging area, with a small dugout and bathroom. Without a word of explanation, Rivera climbed the steps, ran into the bathroom, closed the door behind him and, with the joyous music and noise shaking the concrete walls of the stadium, starting crying.

"I started crying because it was just too much," Rivera said. "I needed to be pitching, yes, but that's how awesome the moment was. I didn't want anyone to see me. I didn't want people to see me standing there with tears coming out of my eyes."

At that moment, Little was walking to the mound. At last, he signaled for Embree to replace Martinez. In Boston, where more people were watching than saw the Patriots win the Super Bowl eight months earlier, those that did not weep cursed. There had been 1,053 postseason games played in the history of baseball. In only 13 of them did a team lose after leading by three or more runs with no more than five outs to go. And only twice did a team blow a lead that big and that late without using the bullpen. Those two historic postseason meltdowns occurred just three nights apart: first when Cubs manager Dusty Baker lost Game 6 of the NLCS with Mark Prior on the mound against Florida, and then when Little lost ALCS Game 7 with Martinez unable to stop the Yankees. Two losses, three days apart, with matching DNA. Two out of 1,053. A one-tenth of one percent match.

"That eighth inning rally was what we were all about," Torre said. "Never giving up and just finding a way. What we were able to do against Pedro was what we always tried to do: just making Pedro pitch and work until you can get to a point in the game where he is vulnerable. Whether he is in the game or not, and you can question the decision either way, what makes that inning possible is all the at-bats before then that made him vulnerable."

Embree, of course, and then Timlin proceeded to navigate the rest of the inning without another run scoring. With Martinez out of the game, Torre lifted the now-useless Wilson to have Ruben Sierra pinch-hit against Timlin. The Red Sox intentionally walked Sierra, upon which Torre put his erstwhile starting third baseman into the game to pinch run: Aaron Boone.

Torre then turned to Rivera to preserve the tie. Rivera did so in the ninth, the tenth and the eleventh innings. It was his longest outing in seven years. Torre had only Gabe White and Jose Contreras, the Game 6 losing pitcher, as his next options behind Rivera.

"Every inning we thought that was it for him," Burkett said, "and every inning we were like, 'Oh, s.h.i.t, he's still pitching.' "

The Boston bullpen didn't blink, either. The Yankees were 0-for-8 against Embree, Timlin and knuckleball pitcher Tim Wake-field, who had entered the game in the tenth inning. Boone, with his two hits in sixteen at-bats in the series, was the first batter of the eleventh for the Yankees.

"Boone," Torre said, "was just a mess. He was a good kid. He just couldn't keep his feet on the ground. He was just too excited. He just kept swinging at fastb.a.l.l.s all the time. It didn't matter who was throwing it or where it was."

Boone did not have to worry about chasing fastb.a.l.l.s against Wakefield. He was going to see knuckleb.a.l.l.s. Torre called over Boone as Boone grabbed his bat from the dugout rack.

"Listen," Torre said. "Just when you go up there, try to hit a single up the middle or right field. It doesn't mean you won't hit a home run to left."

Boone nodded and walked to the plate. It was sixteen minutes past midnight on what was now Friday morning. The series and the rivalry hardly could have been more tied. The game was tied at five runs each. The series was tied at three wins each. Each team had scored exactly 29 runs. If you took it back further, back to when the Red Sox were sold and Henry, Werner, Lucchino and Epstein began to run a smarter, more efficient ballclub that wasn't afraid to poke a stick in the Yankees' eye, New York and Boston had played each other 44 times. The difference between the two of them over 44 skirmishes was only two wins and five runs, each slight edge held by the Yankees.

Wakefield threw his first pitch to Boone, a knuckleball, slightly inside and up. Boone swung and connected with it, so solidly that he knew in an instant it would be a home run. The baseball flew, as Torre had imagined, toward the left-field seats.

Inside the Yankees clubhouse, Clemens, who for seven innings had contemplated the possible end to his career, heard the sound of history, like a freight train rumbling through a concrete tunnel. Clemens was sitting in a small side room off the main clubhouse, across a narrow hallway from Torre's office, when he recognized that sound. The sound came above him-the Yankees' clubhouse was tucked under the first-base stands-and he knew it was the sound of thousands of those blue plastic seat bottoms snapping upright almost simultaneously as the fans jump to their feet. The baseball was still in the air as Clemens dashed out of the room toward the clubhouse door and the narrow ramp leading to the dugout.

There was bedlam, and there was relief-relief at having somehow held back this strengthening force that the Red Sox had become.