NEW YORK - By the end of the [ ] rsquo; 11-4 victory over the struggling last night in the Bronx, millions of Japanese baseball fans who watched the game on television must have been saying, ldquo;Those crazy Americans get all worked up over this? rdquo; They tuned in for a long-awaited showdown of Japanese megastars, Red Sox right-hander vs. Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui, with the hope that, later in the game, they rsquo;d see Sox reliever Hideki Okajima get a shot at Matsui.
The game itself? Sorry, good baseball fans from Japan, but this was no Red Sox-Yankees game. Following a weekend of comebacks and fast-paced drama at
[ ], the teams played a bow-wow last night at the Stadium, the game so snail-paced that it came within four minutes of reaching the dreaded four-hour mark.
How bad was it? Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded en route to giving up four runs in the fourth, and two Yankees pitchers, starter Andy Pettitte and reliever Mike Myers, issued bases-loaded walks. The Sox committed a couple of errors.
Legendary reliever Mariano Rivera couldn rsquo;t get out of the ninth inning. A total of 17 walks were issued. Pettitte wild-pitched a run home.
It was this bad: The Sox had
[ ] warming up to close out the game, but, instead, after padding their lead with a four-run ninth, they pulled a switcheroo and placed the game in the capable hands of Joel Pineiro.
But nobody with Red Sox allegiances will complain about the Yankees rsquo; woes. As shortstop
[ ] put it so well, ldquo;We have to get as many wins as we can against them now, because when those guys get hot and they get their guys back from the DL they rsquo;re going to be a tough team.
And we don rsquo;t want to play them when they rsquo;re hot. rdquo;
A lot is going to be made of the fact that Matsuzaka has now defeated the Yankees in back-to-back starts. It rsquo;s an easy story line.
Only don rsquo;t fall for it. Hey, another Red Sox rookie beat the Yankees in consecutive starts in 1999. It was Brian Rose, who won a total of 15 games in his career.
And in 1967, rookie Billy Rohr won back-to-back starts against the Yankees. He won a total of three games.
Nobody rsquo;s suggesting Matsuzaka is headed down the road to Rohr or Rose.
It rsquo;s just that consecutive wins over the Yankees, especially these Yankees, is not, by itself, anything to get excited about.
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