Last night they went back to work in the once-haunted, now-hallowed place where they slew the Steinbrenner dragon last fall . . . and it wasn't pretty.
On the most-hyped Opening Night in baseball history, the Yankees spanked the Sox, 9-2, on the strength of 15 hits, plus six innings of five-hit, six-strikeout (five looking) pitching by Hall-of-Fame-bound Randy Johnson, who may prove to be the most important acquisition of the winter of 2004-05.
''Pretty ugly out there," said Johnny Damon, who went 0 for 4 and committed one of the Sox' two errors. ''This is absolutely not the way we wanted to start, especially coming off the busy offseason we all had. It was good to get this first one under our belt. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out as well as we planned."
Sox newcomer David Wells, once the slovenly favorite of the Bronx fans, was roughed up for four runs on 10 hits, a walk and a balk in an inauspicious debut that lasted only 4 1/3 innings. Wells's flop put the Sox bullpen to work early and few Boston fans envisioned the sight of the immortal Blaine Neal toeing the slab for the Red Sox in the sixth inning of the ultra opener.
"I got a couple of pitches up in the zone and they're a good-hitting team," said Wells. "You want to go out and hit your spots and if you don't they make you pay."
The Sox were still clinging to 2004 during pregame preparation. There was new carpet in the visitor's clubhouse at Yankee Stadium and the self-named "idiots" were taking some credit for the re-decoration. Boston ballplayers drenched the rug in champagne after they last played here on Oct. 20, 2004.
"It still smells like champagne in here to me," said Sox first baseman Kevin Millar as he pawed the new blue carpet.
Boston owner Tom Werner, standing in the corridor outside the clubhouse with his date, NBC's Katie Couric, smiled and bragged about the Sox' role in the renovations, then said, "Somehow the ghosts have all evaporated here. It's like night and day. This is the place where we could never get past, but the memories of Game 7 will never be forgotten."
