"There's no reason to be upset at Tito," Martinez insisted, even as he admitted with shocking and devastating bluntness that he feels incapable of beating the Yankees. ("What can I say? I just tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy.")
Martinez had turned his back on his manager when Francona finally came to retrieve him last night, the Yankees having tied the score on Hideki Matsui's home run on Martinez's second pitch of the eighth, then taking the lead on Bernie Williams's ground-rule double and Ruben Sierra's single on an 0-and-2 pitch, a blow as piercing to Martinez's soul as Jorge Posada's broken-bat blooper that KO'd Martinez last October.
Martinez did not look at Francona even as he handed him the ball, his back still turned, his eyes gazing aimlessly toward center field. Martinez insisted later he bore no rancor at Francona as he belatedly summoned Alan Embree to the mound.
"It was just frustrating for me not to do my job," he said. "How many times had my team given me the lead? I wanted to bury myself on that mound."
But with the kind of certainty the Nation showed when it stripped Little of his citizenship last October, the crowd of 35,022 aimed its wrath at Francona, who in many eyes showed an astonishing lack of understanding of what had befallen this team last season.
Surely, the one abiding lesson seared on the brainpans of Sox fans everywhere was that once Martinez was north of 100 pitches and the game was in the eighth, especially against the Yankees, it was time to turn over the job to someone else.
The Yankee starter, Mike Mussina, had departed after six innings, after a yield of three runs on five hits and three walks, having thrown 103 pitches.
