"Kind of a miserable night," said Sox manager Terry Francona.
And his team won the game.
"In the two games here, the weather was bad and there weren't a lot of fans in those seats behind our dugout," said Dustin Pedroia. "I don't know why."
Might have been the car-wash rains. Might have been the home team's performance. Might have been a demonstration against overpriced seats in an economic recession.
The Sox did their best not to gloat. It is only May. And they do play these guys 13 more times.
"It would be good to be 5-0 against them," reasoned Theo Epstein before the finale. "We all remember August of '06 when we went 0-5 against them."
Ah yes, August of '06. That was the first time Manny RamÃrez quit on the Sox. That was the five-game massacre at Fenway that put the Sox into a freefall from which they never recovered. The 2006 season is the only one of Theo's six as GM in which the Sox did not qualify for the postseason.
Like twin brothers, the Sox and Yanks measure success by how they fare against one another. And in 150 games (including postseason) since this Red Sox ownership took over in 2002, the tally is now 75-75. How's that for eight seasons of parity?
One hundred and 50 games is almost a full major league season. When you figure that the rivals routinely play 3 1/2-hour ballgames (a sloppy 3:47 last night), it amounts to approximately 525 hours of baseball over parts of eight seaons.
"That's a lot of time I've spent in Boston," said Derek Jeter.
Boston's sparkling start against the Yanks this spring is particularly satisfying in the wake of an offseason in which the Sox and New Yorkers took opposite paths. In the winter of 2008-09, the Sox settled for once-great players at bargain prices while the Yankees finished their luxury-liner stadium and committed almost a half-billion dollars to free agents. This made it fun for Sox Nation to see Mike Lowell succeed where Mark Teixeira struggled (.200) in the three games in Boston (Teixeira rebounded with a pair of homers Monday night).
