Johnny Damon lifted the first pitch of last night's game between the Yankees and Red Sox to right field for what appeared to be an easy fly out, but Matt Lawton, starting in place of the injured Gary Sheffield, perhaps unaware the game had begun, misplayed the ball so badly, staggering around right field like a man with an inner ear infection, that he didn't even come close to catching it. The ball dropped in front of Lawton for what was inexplicably ruled a single (the old, "if he didn't touch it, he couldn't have made an error" ruling), setting the tone for an evening of sloppy, but enthralling baseball from which the Yankees ultimately emerged with an 8-4 victory.

With Damon on first, Renteria bunted Aaron Small's second pitch foul, took his third for a strike and lost his bat swinging at Small's fourth offering of the game to strike out on three pitches. That brought David Ortiz to the plate. After a first-pitch ball, Small blew a gut-high 90-mile-per-hour fastball past Big Papi, threw three pitches low and away--the first a ball, the second a perfectly placed strike, and the third fouled off by Ortiz--then came back to blow another gut-high 91-mile-per-hour fastball past Ortiz to pick up his second strike out of the night.

After striking out Renteria and Ortiz, Small got ahead of Manny Ramirez 0-1 and 1-2 before getting Manny to bounce a weak grounder to third base. Unfortunately the grounder was so weak that Ramirez was able to reach on an infield single, well ahead of the barehanded scoop and throw of Alex Rodriguez. Small then got ahead of Trot Nixon 1-2 before getting him to foul out to Derek Jeter charging the stands behind third in a faint echo of last year's July 1st epic.

Small retiring Ortiz and Nixon would also be a sign of things to come, as the lefty-hitting, Yankee-killing duo would finish the night 0 for 9 with three strikeouts and six runners left on base, their only RBI coming when Robinson Cano booted a potential double play ball off Nixon's bat with the bases loaded and one out in the seventh.

With Small's defense having forced him to picked up four outs in the top of the first (Ramirez's infield single was indefensible), the Red Sox fielders apparently felt the need to make David Wells do the same in the bottom of the inning.

After Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams started the game with a pair of groundouts, Wells got ahead of Alex Rodriguez 1-2 only to have Rodriguez hit a sharp grounder up the first base line that ricocheted off the tarp and into shallow center as Rodriguez hustled into second for a double. Jason Giambi then worked Wells over for seven pitches before hitting a would-be clean single into shallow right. Of course, with Giambi at the plate, Red Sox's second baseman Tony Graffanino was playing right where the ball was hit. However, perhaps confused by the angle of the throw from the outfield, or by having to wait for Kevin Millar, who had started to his right after the ball, to retreat to the bag, Graffanino fired the ball several feet wide of first, allowing Rodriguez to score and Giambi, who slid in head-first, to get to his feet and scamper to second base.

And so it went. Jason Varitek lead off the second by breaking his bat on a 1-2 count, the top half of his bat sticking in the turf in front of the plate like a lawn dart. The ball, meanwhile, did a mean impression of Ramirez's infield single, though this time Rodriguez had a shot at Varitek, but skipped the ball past a splitting Giambi at first. It was ruled a single. After a Kevin Millar pop out, Bill Mueller and Graffanino, making up for his error, singled to load the bases. Damon followed with a game-tying sac fly to center.

Edgar Renteria then laced Small's next pitch off the base of the right field wall, where Matt Lawton, perhaps unaware the next at-bat had begun, misplayed it so badly one could only imagine he was trying to locate the ball by smell. As the ball ricocheted back past the olfactorily impaired Lawton, both Mueller and Graffanino raced around to score. Sick of this nonsense, Aaron Small then got ahead of Ortiz 1-2 (notice a pattern here?) before getting him to ground out to Jeter, who made a nice backhanded play to end the inning.

With his team now up 3-1, David Wells came right after Jorge Posada in the bottom of the second, getting two quick strikes before Jorge launched the third into Monument Park. Lawton, in his first at-bat grounded to second on a 1-1 count. 3-2 Red Sox.

Small started the third by retiring Manny Ramirez on two pitches thanks to a nice play by Jeter ranging unusually far to his left, then ended an eight-pitch battle with Nixon by getting him to chase a pitch low and away for strike three. Jason Varitek followed with a nine-pitch at-bat during which one of Jorge Posada's throws back to the mound clanked of Varitek's bat and rolled toward the Boston dugout. That confrontation ended with a walk on a pitch just barely inside. Small then got ahead of Millar 0-2, but Millar ripped the third strike down the third base line off the glove of a diving Rodriguez and into the left field corner.

Matsui dug the ball out of the corner and fired in to cut-off man Derek Jeter, but, despite Varitek just reaching third base as Matsui's throw came into Jeter in shallow left, Fenway favorite Dale Sveum waved the Boston catcher home, where he was thrown out by about 30 feet. Hoping to avoid the humiliation of an inning ending out at home, Varitek attempted to jar the ball lose from Posada in a stand-up collision that put the Yankee catcher on his back, but Jorge jeld on for the final out.

With Boston having failed to score in the top of the third, the Yankees tied it up with one out in the bottom of the frame when Alex Rodriguez battled Wells for seven pitches before lifting one of his easy fly ball homers over the wall in right.

With the damage done by infield singles and Matt Lawton's adventures in right field erased, Aaron Small settled down, retiring the Sox on six pitches in the fourth. The Yankees then came back to take the lead almost as quickly. Jorge Posada singled on the first pitch in the bottom of the fourth. Robinson Cano attempted to reach on a drag bunt on the second pitch, effectively sacrificing Posada to second when David Wells sprung off the mound and made a great spinning throw to nab Cano at first. Matt Lawton then lined a 1-1 pitch into Renteria's glove at short and Derek Jeter, after taking strike one, delivered Posada and the lead with a two-out single.

Small came back to retire Renteria, Ortiz and Ramirez on seven pitches in the fifth then worked around two two-out baserunners in the sixth. It was still 4-3 Yankees heading into the bottom of the sixth, when suddenly the Red Sox imploded.

After Ruben Sierra, who combined with Lawton to go 0 for 8 while Sheffield sat with a strained thigh muscle, lined out to Manny to start the inning, Jorge reached on an infield single of his own, this one a grounder mishandled by Millar at first. Robinson Cano then singled into center on an 0-2 count. In attempting to field Cano's hit, Damon booted the ball into left center where he retrieved it and fired in to Renteria who then proceeded to spike the ball into the turf in an attempt to get Jorge Posada racing home from first (Jorge jokingly stuck out his tongue on his way back to the dugout, clearly sucking wind after his mad dash for home--after the game YES's Kim Jones told Jorge that Jeter said it looked like he needed some oxygen--Jorge didn't seem to appreciate Jeter's ribbing coming from a reporter replying curtly, "that's just Derek talking").

Cano reached third on the pair of Red Sox errors, but Matt Lawton grounded to first for the second out, failing to bring in the extra run. Curiously, though Wells had just barely cracked 100 pitches, Terry Francona chose this moment to remove his starter, brining righty submariner Chad Bradford in to face Derek Jeter. Jeter battled Bradford for eleven pitches, taking a strike, then two balls, then fouling off strike two, taking ball three, and fouling off four more pitches before finally taking ball four just barely inside. Bernie Williams, who had a strike out and a pair of groundouts against Wells, then fell behind Bradford 1-2 before lacing a single into center that plated Cano and moved Jeter to third. Alex Rodriguez followed with another RBI single, driving Bradford from the game in favor of submarining lefty Mike Myers, who was brought in to face Jason Giambi. Giambi sent Myers' 1-1 pitch back up the middle where Myers Myers reflexively deflected the ball past Renteria at short, giving Giambi and RBI single and the Yankees a convincing 8-3 lead.

Ah, but things weren't quite over. No, not quite yet. Johnny Damon led of the seventh inning with a broken bat shot behind first on which Robinson Cano did a good job of retrieving, spinning and firing to Jeter at second to hold Damon to a single. Jeter then returned the favor by making a shortened version of his jump pass in the hole to force Damon at second on a grounder by Renteria. Small then issued an eight pitch walk to David Ortiz, the only time Ortiz or Nixon reached base by their own merit all night, and was pulled from the game at an even 100 pitches (68 strikes) by a slightly overanxious Joe Torre.

Torre brought in Tanyon Sturtze who got ahead of Manny Ramirez 0-2 only to have Ramirez foul off four straight pitches before Sturtze's seventh sailed into Manny's thigh to load the bases with one out. Torre then went to Alan Embree, one of "the twenty-five," to face Trot Nixon. This was a match-up one imagines Embree had been dreaming off ever since being released by the Sox in late July.

Embree got two quick strikes on Nixon on the outside corner, then evened the count by trying to get him to fish low and away. Nixon connected with the next one, hitting a hard grounder to Robinson Cano. Before anyone could wonder if the Yankees could turn two on the grounder, Cano booted it into right field, allowing Renteria to score and leaving the bases loaded with one out for Jason Varitek.

A visibly upset Joe Torre then pulled Embree, who did his job despite finishing the night with a line identical to Sturtze's (no runs, no hits, no walks, no outs), and brought in Tom Gordon. Gordon got ahead of Varitek 1-2, then got 'Tek to hit another sharp grounder to Cano, who this time caught the ball and fed it to Derek Jeter in one instantaneous motion to start and inning-ending double play.

And that, mercifully, was that. Cano singled in the bottom of the seventh to erase whatever lingering bad vibes might have clung to him from his error in the top half of the inning. Gordon pitched a tidy eighth, striking out his final two batters, though he needed a few too many pitches to do so. Bernie picked up another single in the bottom of the eighth, leading to one last Boston error (their fourth of the game) when, with pinch-runner Bubba Crosby stealing second to try to put the game out of reach of a grand slam, Varitek air mailed his throw into center field. Bubba was stranded at third, but Mariano Rivera pitched around a lead-off Renteria single in the ninth to nail down the win without further drama as the game reached the three-hour and forty-minute mark.

The Angels, A's and Indians (the last of whom defeated Johan Santana and the Twins) all won as well last night, so the Yankees remain a half-game out of the Wild Card, though they have moved within three of the Red Sox in the East with five head-to-head games remaining. The first of those is today at 1:20 on FOX. The Red Sox and Yankees have thus far split their two Saturday match-ups this year with Carl Pavano and the discarded trio of Stanton, Quantrill and Groom getting lit up at the Stadium in April, and Matt Clement getting dispatched in the third inning in Fenway in July. Today the combatants are Shawn Chacon and Curt Schilling. Schilling, of course, hasn't faced the Yankees since yielding Alex Rodriguez's game-winning home run into the center field bleachers at Fenway on July 14, while Chacon, like Small last night, is new to this rivalry altogether.