Good-looking win? No dice

After Daisuke Matsuzaka's evening had come to a conclusion following a single to right field by Alex Rodriguez in the eighth inning last night, he doffed his cap to a standing ovation -- one he should have received for resilience alone in surviving his baptism under fire in his first game in the Red Sox-Yankee rivalry.

You have to give him this: On a night the Japanese pitcher didn't throw that well, he still battled.

Matsuzaka has had better stuff. He was the losing pitcher in 3-1 and 2-1 games before this, but last night he won a 7-6 showdown with the Yankees before a national and international audience.

He's had a better idea of where his pitches were going many other times in his career.

"About 65 percent of his performance tonight was average and about 35 percent was above average," said one scout at the ballpark. "He made some really good pitches to Alex Rodriguez, but for the most part [it was] a pretty mixed performance. He struggled early, as he's been wont to do. But he does battle you."

He knew the Yankee lineup wasn't going to be easy. Nor was it easy for Curt Schilling (5 earned runs) and Josh Beckett (4 earned runs) in the two previous games of this April sweep.

In August or September, when the Yankees finally have a full pitching staff and Scott Proctor hasn't worked in his fourth straight game, maybe an effort like last night's would have netted Matsuzaka a loss. But in this first month of the season, when the Yankees are helpless except for their offense, give Matsuzaka credit for at least keeping the bleeding at six runs.

That was enough for Boston to claim a 7-6 win on a historic night at the plate, with the Sox clubbing four consecutive homers in the third inning, and Mike Lowell adding a three-run blast in the seventh (his second homer of the game) that overturned the 5-4 Yankees lead.

"There's no way I could be satisfied after initially allowing three runs and then my teammates, through those four consecutive home runs, taking the lead," said Matsuzaka. "What I wanted most of all was to hold that lead. When I get a chance to pitch again in New York next week I will do my best not to repeat the problems I had today."

Legendary Sox broadcaster Ned Martin would have loved this game. We would have heard his climactic "Mercy!" Matsuzaka, the 26-year-old former Seibu Lion, never had seen anything like this.

One could see the disappointment, if not concern, in his eyes with the shaky start. He was not happy with himself.

He said he barely could contain himself when he saw home run after home run. He didn't seem overly sympathetic to the plight of Chase Wright, who allowed the four straight dingers. He said, "I think that home runs are, or some are, preventable, and in that sense it is something that I want to be personally careful of." Something might have been lost in translation.

Dice-K cheered the great diving catch Dustin Pedroia made of a low sinking liner in the eighth, the tiny second baseman timing his dive perfectly to snare the drive off the bat of pinch hitter Josh Phelps, which had it gotten through would have tied the game.

He hit two Yankee batters -- one them Rodriguez in the first inning, off the left elbow. ESPN immediately showed a clip of Julian Tavarez gesturing how A-Rod tends to lean over the plate and extend his elbow. Interesting.

Matsuzaka said in watching the first two games of the series he noticed he needed to get the ball inside to Rodriguez. "I was very conscious of pitching inside," he said. But he said hitting A-Rod was an accident.

In the third he plunked Derek Jeter, though Jeter got him back with a solo homer to lead off the fifth.

One of the early criticisms of Matsuzaka in spring training was that he didn't pitch inside enough. He rectified that last night.

While he retired the first two batters he faced in the first, he then encountered the patient Bobby Abreu, who walked. He hit Rodriguez before Jason Giambi, who normally hits the ball from right-center to right, doubled to left-center, scoring both runs.

Matsuzaka didn't crumble, and got the Yankees in order in the second.

He did have his two-out issues.

In the third inning, for example, he surrendered a single and hit Jeter with a pitch, but then he stormed back to strike out Abreu and A-Rod. But Giambi was able to lift a base hit over Pedroia to score the third run of the game for the Yanks.

Matsuzaka flashed a few 96-mile-per-hour fastballs. The movement was there, as usual, but there were too many pitches he left out over the plate.

Jeter hit the homer to tie it, then in the sixth back-to-back singles by Robinson Cano and Doug Mientkiewicz led to the go-ahead run when Cabrera knocked into a double play as Cano scored.

"I thought there were times tonight that he rushed a little bit and maybe it affected his command at times, but again, he gets us into the eighth inning with a lead, we'll take it," said Sox manager Terry Francona.

Matsuzaka said "even though my command wasn't great on a lot of pitches, very few batters in that lineup will go easy on you if you throw a soft pitch in a risky area and I felt that throughout the entire lineup."

Matsuzaka said he wanted badly to record his first win at Fenway Park. "The opponents being the Yankees and the fact that my teammates had already defeated them twice, made me want to win even more," he said, "and overall facing this game, all I can say is that I wanted to win."

He won. It wasn't with style points, or the domination that perhaps Red Sox Nation had dreamed about. But it was a win that evened his record at 2-2 (though his ERA jumped from 2.70 to 4.00). He survived the Yankees. He beat the Yankees. That part felt good. Felt good to everyone.

Nick Cafardo can be reached at cafardo@globe.com.