Yankee Bullpen Hands Victory to the Red Sox

Wednesday night’s game turned into a walk in the park for the Boston Red Sox. Five walks, actually.

That’s how many the best bullpen in baseball issued in the seventh inning before Trot Nixon’s two-run double capped a five-run rally that gave the Red Sox a 9-7 win over the New York Yankees.

“We gave them a gift,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said. “You have to make teams beat you, and we didn’t.”

New York’s relievers began the game with the best earned-run average in the majors, 3.25. But Jason Grimsley walked three batters in the seventh and Mike Stanton walked two, forcing in two runs that gave Boston a 7-5 lead.

Nixon, who had tripled in the first, followed with a bases-loaded double off Stanton that landed over right fielder Paul O’Neill.

“I was sitting on the fastball,” Nixon said. “He was having a little control trouble, but he’s such a good pitcher, he could drop a curve or slider on you.”

Instead, Stanton threw a fastball up and over the plate and Nixon pounced on it. It turned out to be significant because of Bernie Williams’ two-run homer in the ninth off Derek Lowe, who has given up only three homers in 41 innings.

The Red Sox came back from a 5-4 deficit after showing little offense in losing the first two games of the series. But only three of their runs came in on hits. They scored two on walks, two on grounders, one on a wild pitch and one on a sacrifice fly.

“The way we’ve been scoring runs lately, we’ll take them any way we can get them,” said Jeff Frye, who walked with the bases loaded before Nixon’s double.