 
Yankees 8 Red Sox 6 - None of you haters can bring me down today. Give it a try, you'll see. Last night's game was amazing. The Yanks are now only 1.5 games out of first and might find themselves back on TFC (top o' the food chain) by weekend's end.
Of course, it had to come down to Curt Schilling against Alex Rodriguez. There was no other way the defining moment of the latest Yankees-Red Sox skirmish was going to play out without the Red Sox' new closer battling the Yankee the Bosox love to hate.
From the moment Schilling started getting loose in the bullpen in the eighth, you knew he was going to face A-Rod with the game on the line in the ninth.
And he did. After Gary Sheffield punished a splitter for a leadoff double, Rodriguez crushed a first-pitch splitter for a two-run homer that collided with the back wall of the center-field bleachers to carry the Yankees to a pulsating 8-6 win in front of a sold-out Fenway Park gathering of 35,232.
As A-Rod circled the bases, memories drifted back to last year's ALCS, when Schilling said Rodriguez' chop on Bronson Arroyo in Game 6 was a "bush-league play," a "junior high move" and that A-Rod wasn't a "real Yankee."
Armed with a two-run lead, Mariano Rivera fanned the side in the ninth to post his 21st straight save after opening the season by blowing his first two opportunities against the Red Sox.
|
