He pressed pause on the game, bringing the crew out to dry the mound, in hopes he could finish out the batter and the inning. Beckett did both, getting Pena swinging for the second out, and following by inducing a ground out from Jose Molina. The Yankees would not score again, the Sox taking a 7-3 win at Yankee Stadium.
"It was wet," catcher Jason Varitek said. "My shoes were caked constantly. My cleats, excuse me. It looks like he was able to settle back in once they repaired things."
The Sox have five wins in five games against the Yankees, Joba Chamberlain's strikeout count notwithstanding.
Chamberlain, finishing with 12 strikeouts in his last 14 outs, went down. Beckett won, buoyed by a four-run first inning for the Sox, along with tack-on runs in the eighth and ninth. It was heartening for Beckett, especially after his last two outings, in which he allowed eight and seven runs.
He had Jason Bay (three-run homer in the first) to thank, as has become the norm in games between these clubs. So those left of the 46,810 in the crowd mostly went home disappointed, as the Sox swept the first two series of any length with New York for the first time since 1971. The last time those two series included at least five games? The year Fenway Park debuted, 1912.
Bay hardly minded the cold or the wet, while his always-freezing manager hunkered down in the dugout. This season vs. the Yankees, he is 10 for 18 with three homers.
"Maybe Canadians," Sox manager Terry Francona said, when asked if Bay's performance made him like hockey any better. "I like Jason Bay. I don't like hockey. I think Jason Bay is the only guy that thought it was a nice night out there."
"He always busts my chops about that," said Bay, a native of Trail, British Columbia. "I'd much rather take this than the 95 and humidity, as weird as that may sound. This is a nice spring/summer day sometimes where I'm from."
After the first inning, Chamberlain wasn't giving up much. He had channeled Roger Clemens in striking out those career-high 12, with only a fly out from Jacoby Ellsbury in the second and a ground out from Mike Lowell in the third to break up the string of K's.
