BALTIMORE -- This place, the visiting clubhouse at Camden Yards, is where the Red Sox lingered after Game No. 162 last season. They showered with less fury than usual, lingering on leather couches to watch on TVs the final outs of a Twins game that would determine whether the Sox charter lifted off for a division series beginning in Anaheim or Minnesota.
Pedro Martinez, dressing along the far wall, looked up at the Twins telecast and defiantly questioned aloud, ''[Johan] Santana, and then who?"
Such was the swagger that accompanied a pitching staff with pocket aces, a Keith Foulke-led bullpen, and a nonpareil offense.
The current Sox arrived here this weekend with 10 games to play, behind the Yankees by a game in the East, inspiring far less confidence, if not in themselves then in their fans, who were calling yesterday for a 21-year-old (Craig Hansen) to begin closing games after the 39-year-old (Mike Timlin) faltered Wednesday in Tampa, when the division lead was lost.
''It was funny," Timlin said after last night's 6-3 Boston win, which he ended by fanning David Newhan, concluding a day that began with both Timlin and Terry Francona besieged with Hansen queries. ''Because I had to talk to you guys, and [Francona] talked to you guys. I went in and said, 'This is what I heard.' And he said, 'This is what I heard.' We had a laugh.
''He knows what I can do. He has confidence in what I do."
If confidence is to hatch anywhere, and grow, an ideal place figures to be the back end of the bullpen.
Yes, Miguel Tejada's fifth-inning error allowed three unearned Sox runs, turning a 3-1 deficit into a 4-3 lead. And yes, Manny Ramirez wrote an insurance policy with a two-run homer, his 40th of the year, in the seventh.
But it was the bullpen that restored calm both in the clubhouse and elsewhere, and kept the Sox within one game of the resurrected Yankees, who received leadoffs leadoff homers from Derek Jeter and Robinson Cano in the Bronx, led 4-0 after one inning, and never looked back, beating Toronto, 5-0, for their 10th victory in 11 games.
Bronson Arroyo, after initially stumbling (three runs on six hits in three innings, then no runs on one hit in four innings), held it together until the top of the eighth, when he issued a no-out walk and was lifted.
Mike Myers (six pitches, four strikes) popped up Jay Gibbons. Jonathan Papelbon (six pitches, five strikes) entered with as lively a fastball as he's had and fanned Javier Lopez on a 96 mile-per-hour fastball, then got B.J. Surhoff to fly out. Papelbon's only ball: a 96-m.p.h. heater to Lopez just off the plate, spotted where Jason Varitek wanted it.
''Papelbon, I think he's fallen into the primary setup role," Timlin said. ''Hansen, he's down there observing but has the capability to get guys out."
