Yankees Shake Off the Fallout

NEW YORK -- The spectacle that is the New York Yankees, that now includes the Boston Red Sox, that lately narrows the game to a leafy, edgy corridor along the Eastern seaboard, returned to plain hardball Sunday night.

Baseball pushed its signature franchises out in front of another regular season and had them pull it from a winter littered with federal subpoenas and other awkward little details.

Five months after the Red Sox tidied their history with their first World Series championship in 86 years, eight days before they’d have the rings to show for it, the Empire looked better standing behind Randy Johnson. The Yankees beat the Red Sox, 9-2, before 54,818 at Yankee Stadium on an opening night they had to themselves.

It is a long way again to late October, where the Yankees and Red Sox have found each other the last two seasons, and yet the old stadium bowed to the enmity held between the two clubs.

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona wryly expressed the notion that so little had changed over so much time, they’d only had time to re-rake the infield between Yankee-Red Sox games.

“The only thing different is,” he said, “they got new carpet because we messed it up with champagne.”

The Red Sox arrived on an eight-game winning streak held over from the last postseason, one that began down three games to the Yankees and concluded in Game 4 of the World Series in St. Louis. They handed the ball to David Wells, the twice-former Yankee and acting ace while Curt Schilling recovers from ankle surgery. While he can idiot with the best of the Red Sox holdovers, it does not play as well when 10 hits fall and four runs score in 4 1/3 innings, and Wells’ only revenge was a couple of balls he bounced off Jason Giambi.

“I come in here last year in a Padres uniform and get cheered,” Wells said, then plucked at his uniform, No. 3, Babe Ruth’s number. “I wear this and get booed. It is what it is.”

Johnson pitched the part of the franchise player, the man George Steinbrenner had to have after his team could not pitch itself into the World Series given four chances to do it. He gave up five hits and a run in six innings. His fastball drifted at times into the mid-90s and he had six strikeouts, and got his 247th career win, the first one Yankee fans ever really cared about.

“To tell you the truth,” Bernie Williams said, “it was a little low key. It wasn’t as intense. I think probably it had something to do with Randy. And David just didn’t have it today.”

Beneath flags half-mast for Pope John Paul II and a low, dark sky, Johnson strode from the dugout on his way to the bullpen, 30 minutes before game time. The crowd rose and cheered him, his stringy legs carrying him yards at a time.

He called it “the one moment that I was looking forward to.”

Johnson struck out Edgar Renteria and Manny Ramirez to end the first inning, and after the Red Sox scored first on a two-out single in the second inning by Jay Payton, the Yankees scored the next nine. Yankee left fielder Hideki Matsui went over the fence to take a home run from Kevin Millar in the second inning, then drove in three runs and had three hits, including a two-run home run in the eighth inning.

Everyone agreed the win came a season late, but that it could only be 2005, all they have to work with now.

“It’s the first game we’ve won since Game 3” of the American League championship series, Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “It was a long winter waiting to get back on the field again. Not necessarily against these guys, but just to get out and win a game again.”

Yankee fans were so jacked they nearly spent themselves during the player introductions of the Red Sox, whom they booed with their usual enthusiasm, and the Yankees, whom they cheered -- Giambi included -- as though last year never happened.

And it was a freshened Yankee team, rebuilt to avoid October losing streaks, that they honored. Johnson pitched. Williams batted eighth, right behind Giambi, who was replaced in the seventh inning by Tino Martinez. Tony Womack played second base. Carl Pavano pitches Tuesday.

Giambi came to bat in the second inning and received a standing ovation. He had spent his winter reading his grand jury testimony in the newspapers, living with that, and then apologizing for, well, he’d leave it for everyone to decide.

“It’s humbling,” Giambi said.

Having run out of things to call Alex Rodriguez, the Red Sox returned to baseball and began to lose touch with the Yankees after three innings, and eventually went through seven pitchers. When Francona got to the interview room, he stood behind a table loaded with microphones, and gestured helplessly.

“We really must have played bad,” he said. “No chair.”

In the clubhouse with the new carpet, Boston’s Johnny Damon admitted the winter had changed something, if only for a moment.

“It seems every time we focus on the Yankees we struggle,” he said. “We usually play better when we focus on ourselves.”