One and done

Just after 8 last night, about a half-hour after the Red Sox-Yankees game was washed into mid-August, the 42-year-old former Yankee with the corner locker in the home clubhouse was waxing on several topics. One of them: the comments Joe Torre made a night earlier. The New York manager said he was ''disappointed in the reactions by the fans" to Johnny Damon. ''Evidently," Torre said, ''wearing a Yankee uniform overrides winning a World Series and busting your tail for four years."

''Awww, poor Joe," David Wells said. ''I don't feel bad for him. For Joe? No. For Johnny? He knows what it's like. When you put the 'B' on and you're in New York, they're going to hate you. It happened to me. I went in as a Padre and got a standing ovation. I come in as a Red Sox and I'm the Antichrist. That's fine. Joe's been around a long time. If he's going to have remarks for that, I guess he's getting a little too sensitive."

There will be no time for sensitivity come Friday, Aug. 18. That is the day the Sox are tentatively scheduled to make up last night's rainout, as a 1:05 p.m. game, a nice warmup for the previously scheduled 7:05 p.m. game in what will be a split-admission doubleheader. Tickets for last night will be honored for the 1:05 game.

What was to be a four-game series will now become the rare and tantalizing five-game set spanning Aug. 18-21. The teams will play the third game of the series Saturday, Aug. 19, at 1:05 p.m. That's three Sox-Yankees games in a 24-hour span.

What will it be like?

''Crazy, crazy, it's always crazy," Wells said. ''It's good for baseball. Good for the fans, depending on who gets their ass kicked. We saw a couple fights [Monday] night outside the stadium, got to watch them from upstairs.

''That's what you're going to get, a lot of drunk people. Let them go at it. It's fun to watch. Better them than us, right?"

So the Yankees lifted off for a series in Tampa after just one of 19 scheduled games between these teams, with the lone decision going to the Sox (''I've never played in a one-game sweep before," Mike Lowell noted). The rainout postponed Josh Beckett's Sox debut vs. the Yankees (he was scheduled to face Shawn Chacon last night) but allowed the Sox to favorably juggle the rotation.

Instead of Matt Clement facing Toronto ace Roy Halladay (3-1, 2.84 ERA) tonight and Lenny DiNardo facing Josh Towers (0-5, 10.45 ERA) tomorrow, Beckett will face Halladay tonight in a marquee matchup, while Clement will oppose Towers.

DiNardo will be pushed back to Sunday against the Orioles on seven days' rest. Didn't seem to make much difference to him.

''All they told me is I'm starting Sunday," he said.

His reaction?

''OK, cool, I'll pitch again."

By tinkering with the rotation, the Sox will be able to pitch Beckett against the Yankees in the series opener Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium, where he hasn't pitched since Game 6 of the 2003 World Series. In the three-game set, the Sox will pitch Beckett, Clement, and Curt Schilling.

The Yankees should pitch Jaret Wright, Randy Johnson, and Mike Mussina, though the club is off Monday, which might lead Torre to skip Wright. In that case Chacon presumably would pitch the third game of the series.

As early as yesterday afternoon, manager Terry Francona said the Sox would not play unless they knew they could get the whole game in.

''What I was afraid of was playing three innings and losing Beckett," he said. ''That was the big concern."

That was why the Sox, at about 6:30 p.m., postponed the start until at least 8, even though the rain did not come down heavily until about 7:25. ''I think that was a good decision, not to start and use [Beckett] for three innings and burn him," Lowell said. ''Everything was done right."

And so tonight you get Beckett-Halladay, to be followed Tuesday by either Beckett-Wright or Beckett-Johnson. Not a bad seven days.