Last night, Wakefield was not only facing the New York Yankees for the first time since Boone took him over the left-field wall in the 11th inning of Game 7 last October in the Bronx, he was pitching in Fenway Park for the first time since that tear-stained night. The cheers he heard may not have matched the volume of boos directed at the newest pinstriped villain, Alex Rodriguez, but they were further affirmation that he had been given a reprieve instead of a blindfold and cigarette.
"That really meant a lot," Wakefield said, after last night's 6-2 Sox win over the Bombers, in which he was staked to a 4-0 lead and made it stand up through seven innings in which he allowed just one earned run on four hits. "The reception I got was tremendous.
"I wanted to give the best performance I could for those fans. They've opened their arms and embraced me like a second son."
Wakefield required just eight pitches and three minutes to breeze through the first three hitters in the Yankees' order, with the assist of a sparkling play by shortstop Pokey Reese, who glided to the middle of the diamond to take a hit away from the first batter, Kenny Lofton.
By the time Wakefield returned to the mound, the Sox had four runs on the board against Javier Vazquez, the gifted righthander who received a rough baptism into the Sox-Yankee rivalry, two Yankee errors and two Sox home runs, by Bill Mueller and Manny Ramirez, putting him at an immediate disadvantage.
Wakefield gave up a bases-empty home run to Jorge Posada in the second, but struck out A-Rod on a curveball in the fourth, when he also coaxed another Yankee newcomer, Gary Sheffield, to roll into a rally-killing double play. He gave up a run in the fifth but stranded a runner on second, benefited from a base-running gamble by A-Rod that backfired in the sixth, when he was cut down attempting to steal third by catcher Doug Mirabelli, and was still resilient in the seventh, when he struck out pinch hitter Tony Clark and induced Lofton to tap into a force to strand two more runners.
