Contreras defective since arriving in rivalry

NEW YORK -- Reggie Jackson walked through the cluster of reporters gathered around Alex Rodriguez and stuck the black fedora he was wearing on A-Rod's head.

"Somewhere between style and outlaw," the Yankee Hall of Famer said, as he took it back and pulled it down over his own forehead at a jaunty tilt.

"You wear that today?" Rodriguez asked. "You're a bad boy."

Judging by the reaction of the 55,001 who mostly suffered through the 11-2 beating the Red Sox laid on the Yankees, there weren't too many good guys in pinstripes last night. In losing four out of their first five meetings with the Sox, the Yankees have been somewhere between unimpressive and downright embarrassing, a condition that neither their fans nor their absentee owner are inclined to tolerate.

George Steinbrenner, still back in Tampa, has not yet been heard from, though surely that's just a matter of time. The paying customers, however, held little back last night. They hooted Jose Contreras, the Cuban defector who failed to make it out of the fourth inning, when the Sox took a 6-0 lead and put three balls in the seats, the last a three-run home run by Bill Mueller on the third pitch thrown by reliever Donovan Osborne. They cringed when right fielder Gary Sheffield, distracted by second baseman Enrique Wilson, muffed Jason Varitek's routine fly, and covered their eyes when center fielder Bubba Crosby slipped on the wet turf and allowed Pokey Reese's fly ball to fall in front of him for a two-run double.

And they booed A-Rod, according him the same treatment they've inflicted on other expensive imports who haven't instantly performed up to their big reputations.

"That's fine," Rodriguez said calmly on a night his two hits raised his average to .224, which is 64 percentage points north of where it was when he left Boston last Monday after the Sox had taken three of four from the Bombers in the Fens. "I like it. Maybe it's a little wake-up call. I think we're all sharing the same frustration right now. If you want them to cheer, you've got to do well."

With a week left in the season's first month, the Yankees are in an unaccustomed position. They're under .500 (8-9) after 17 games for the first time since 1997, when they were 7-10. The Cleveland Indians went to the World Series that year. They've had winning records for the last dozen Aprils, tying a major league record set by an earlier Yankee juggernaut (1941-52). That streak is in some jeopardy, judging by the uneven way in which they've gone about their business to date.

"We haven't played well," said the captain, Derek Jeter. "Offensively, with the exception of Jorge [Posada], who didn't play tonight, and probably [Hideki] Matsui [who hit a two-run home run off Derek Lowe], nobody has been consistent. We haven't played that well. Hopefully, we can get a rhythm going."

It would not appear to be in the Yankees' best interests to let the Sox get accustomed to the notion that they can have their way with the Bombers, especially on a night Yankees manager Joe Torre had described beforehand as the team's first real test, how they responded to the lost weekend in Boston.

"The division is not only us and Boston," Jeter said. "There are other teams. You can't think it's a completely different game when you play the Red Sox."

Try telling that to Contreras, who has been splendid against everybody else (7-2) and positively wretched against the Sox (0-3, 18.00 ERA), the team that considered it a calamity when the Yankees outbid them for Contreras after his defection. The Yankees tried a variety of means to break Contreras of his Boston habit. They suggested the Sox were hitting him because he was tipping his pitches. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre altered Contreras's delivery between his starts, and said he'd never felt more confident about Contreras.

The era of good feelings lasted all of one inning. Contreras looked scary in the first, then faltered as soon as the Sox put anyone on base. In one stretch in the second and third innings, he went to a three-ball count on six successive hitters. He escaped with only one run against him until the fourth, when Kevin Millar and Mark Bellhorn hit back-to-back home runs, which he followed by giving up a hit to Pokey Reese and walking Johnny Damon, who both scored on Mueller's home run off Osborne.

"I'm very upset with myself," said Contreras, who couldn't get out of the third inning last Sunday even after being given a six-run lead.

Torre, who already is coping with an ace, Mike Mussina, who is just 1-4, can't afford for Contreras to stumble.

"We've got to get him to have a good feel," Torre said. "He has too good stuff to give up on him. I'm not even close to doing that.

"You're trying to get him to breathe a little bit out there, relax. A lot of our hitters may be in the same boat. You just have to breathe."

But in a place as unforgiving as this, oxygen can be in short supply.

"It's a compliment to our fans," Rodriguez said. "People in New York, they want to win now. They want to win more badly than other places."