Kapler will remember -- to forget

Gabe Kapler had his mind in the game in the early going of the Red Sox' 5-4 win over the New York Yankees yesterday. The problem was, it was the wrong game.

There are games within the game of baseball, and Kapler apparently was concentrating on one of those as he continually held his ground after his two-out single scored Jason Varitek with Boston's first run of the game in the second inning. Kapler hesitantly moved to second on a single by Pokey Reese. Then he stayed between second and third as Johnny Damon flied to center, still unaware there were two outs.

"If Pokey didn't tell me running by me I would still think there was one out," Kapler said. "Sometimes there are so many things clicking and running through your mind. I was thinking about the break I was trying to get off [Kevin] Brown. I was focusing on him and I wasn't thinking of anything else. I never figured out there were two outs. I got to the dugout and Tito [Francona] said it was going to take eight hits to score me. And he was probably right."

Kapler compensated, though, by singling in David McCarty with the tiebreaking run with two outs in the eighth.

Of forgetting the number of outs, Kapler said, "Those things weigh on you. Forgetting about it is difficult. You don't want that to happen again and it's fresh in my mind. I take pride in my base running and I don't like to have something like that happen to me.

"It was great to get the big hit in a big situation, but the flip side is it's never about making up for a screwup. Then you get in the situation of thinking about it and wanting to do something faster, stronger, better, and you do something else that doesn't make sense."

Kapler likely will continue to receive reminders about the out situation. Spectators were prompting him the next time he reached base. "The fans were reminding me," he said.

"I'm not the type of guy who shuts anything out," he added. "There are certain players, like Manny Ramirez, everything rolls off him. Or Nomar Garciaparra. I am in the latter category. I take everything personally and really, really serious. I remember everything. I won't put it out of my mind for a long time and I don't want to. It's that inkling, that freshness that makes you remember it and not let it happen [again]." Francona is unconcerned about a recurrence.

"He tries so hard to do the right thing all the time and when he doesn't he is so hard on himself," the manager said. "Harder than we ever could be."

By his final at-bat, Kapler was focused on the task at hand -- getting a hit off reliever Tom Gordon.

"I was looking at the scouting report and it said that everything is hard, he is a firm thrower, even his breaking stuff is hard. He has tremendous velocity. It's a challenge against a reliever, and I just wanted to get my bat on the ball."