He's playing, downplaying
Those who object to the Red Sox playing the Yankees so many times this early in the season -- seven times in a 10-day span ending next Sunday -- might want to reconsider their position after the last two days. Better to catch the Yankees now, when they are the weakest-hitting team in the American League, than to face them when they come out of their funk, which is likely to be sooner than later. Good teams find a way to beat you even when they're not hitting, but the Yankees are having trouble catching the ball, too. Their two errors yesterday -- including the second in two days by captain Derek Jeter -- gave them 11 in 11 games, a total unmatched by any AL team at the start of the day.
Among Red Sox regulars, only Pokey Reese, who was taking some extra swings in the center field batting cages long after yesterday's 5-2 win, has a more feeble average (.167) than the .206 average the Yankees have through their first 11 games, despite the presence of eight All-Stars in yesterday's starting lineup, not including pitcher Mike Mussina.
Three batting champions (Bernie Williams, Alex Rodriguez, Gary Sheffield), a home run king (Rodriguez), two MVPs (Rodriguez and Jason Giambi), and a World Series MVP (Jeter) have combined for four hits among them in this series, a double and three singles. Rodriguez is hitless and has gotten the ball out of the infield once in eight at-bats; yesterday he whiffed twice and rolled into a rally-killing double play. Sheffield is hitless in six trips and has one ball out of the infield. Jeter struck out three times yesterday. Giambi has walked three times but has yet to have a hit in front of a Fenway Park crowd that serenaded him with rounds of "You Use" (pause) "Steroids."
Perhaps that's why Curt Schilling, who in the 2001 World Series memorably dismissed Yankee "mystique" and "aura" as a couple of nightclub dancers, chose to downplay the significance of his first win over the Bombers since enlisting in this rivalry. Schilling had runners in all but the first inning, but with runners in scoring position held the Yankees hitless (0 for 4), twice escaping jams with strikeouts (including A-Rod on three pitches in the third, the last a 95-mile-an-hour fastball on the outside black).
Former Red Sox first baseman Tony Clark accounted for the Yankees' only run off Schilling with a home run into Conig's Corner to open the fifth.
If Schilling was energized by the roar that accompanied his consecutive whiffs of Jeter and Williams to open the game, or the presence of his wife, Shonda, in a private box usually occupied by Sox executives, he wasn't letting on.
"It's a win," Schilling said, limiting his most provocative remarks to the T-shirt he wore in the clubhouse afterward, a paean to the Marines ("The Lord does the forgiving. It's our job to arrange the meeting."). "Anything else is pretty much meaningless, other than the result."
He was at his most evocative in the seventh when, after catching Jeter looking at a third-strike fastball, he feigned first surprise, then indignation, when manager Terry Francona emerged from the dugout. At that point, he'd thrown 121 pitches to register 19 outs; time, Francona decided, to let someone else finish the job.
Had Schilling been given the opportunity to debate the point, he would have pleaded with Francona to ignore the pitch count.
"I would like to think it's a lot less relevant for me than for some other guys," Schilling said. "I work to be able to throw 130, 135 pitches if I need to. Coming out of the seventh inning is not what they're paying me for. They're paying me for a lot of innings, and I felt good."
Schilling, who averaged 257 innings in consecutive seasons before injuries cut into his workload last season, will get his innings. But even his pitches get counted. In 2002, he threw more than 121 pitches just three times in 35 starts; the year before, the number was five times in 35 starts.
"He can go more than that," Francona said of his hook. "He has. He probably will. I know him. I have a longer history than a lot of these guys. I look at him reaching back in innings. He had to do that a couple of times today. I take that into consideration a lot with him."
To be sure, Schilling and Friday's starter, Tim Wakefield, have done their part in extending the Yanks' slump.
"He's a blue-collar guy," said Yankees manager Joe Torre of Schilling. "He goes at you. He grinds at you. He's going to throw a lot of pitches. He's going to try and beat you every which way he can, and he did that today."
While the Sox wore down Yankees starter Mike Mussina, who walked four batters and hit another in a rare display of wildness, Schilling also walked four, a high number for him, but had no quarrels with Mark Wegner's strike zone. So far,
"I would love to tell you four walks were due to a bad strike zone, but they weren't," Schilling said. "The guys that I walked, I walked. I thought Mark was consistent. That's what you ask for from an umpire -- big or little [strike zone], I want consistency. I don't want ball one to be strike three, or vice versa. I thought he missed a couple, but he gave me a couple, too."
Schilling said he plans on spending the next two days as the "rah-rah guy." Every game the Sox win while they're minus stars Nomar Garciaparra and Trot Nixon are big wins. But he reiterated the obvious when he opined that the Yankees lineup, regardless of how out of synch it may have looked the last two days, is trouble waiting to happen.
"I've never seen a lineup like this, as deep as this one," Schilling said. "They're going to make you work. They're going to make you make your pitches. All things aside, we won. We've taken the first two games of the series against a good team. And that's a good thing."
