At least Francona knows he might have a confident Derek Lowe back after he pitched 6 2/3 innings of good baseball under pressure-packed circumstances. His pitching enabled the Sox to carry out the carryover.
The Sox at least weren't obliterated from the AL East race as they stand 7 1/2 games behind the Yankees and a half-game ahead of the White Sox and A's in the wild-card race.
Asked if he thought the Red Sox were back in the race, Yankees manager Joe Torre said, "Well, I think you're never out of the race. I'm not worried about them. We don't play them any more now for a while. We certainly need to pitch better than we have this series."
The Fenway crowd -- which included presidential candidate John Kerry -- was certainly electric. Prime Yankee villain Alex Rodriguez was booed every time he stepped to the plate.
While the Sox pounded Jose Contreras for six runs in the first two innings, Lowe, who overcame a 2-0 deficit to hold the Yankees scoreless before departing with two outs in the seventh, two runners on and a 9-2 lead.
Though he was charged with four runs, only two were earned as reliever Mike Timlin allowed a grand slam to Hideki Matsui in the seventh that made the game interesting. Lowe threw 119 pitches before giving way to Timlin, who surrendered the Matsui bomb after walking Jorge Posada.
The Sox escaped a major crisis in the eighth when the fans got a glimpse of new reliever Terry Adams, who started well by striking out Tony Clark but walked Enrique Wilson and allowed a double to Kenny Lofton. That forced Francona to use Keith Foulke to face Derek Jeter.
In the most bizarre play of the game, Jeter hit a liner off Foulke's body and catcher Doug Mirabelli threw to first and hit Jeter in the back. Home plate umpire Hunter Wendelstedt determined Jeter was running inside the baseline, ruled him out, and forced Wilson to return to third base. Foulke, examined by trainer Jim Rowe before resuming, got Gary Sheffield to line out to left to escape the jam.
