Red Sox Need to Control Stagger

Kevin Millar was in the Yankee Stadium interview room before the American League championship series began, the musings of the free-spirited Boston Red Sox first baseman filling the air with laughter, when he spoke of his team playing with a “controlled swagger.”

Later in the interview, when a reporter asked what controlled swagger was, Millar replied, “I don’t know. It just sounded good to say.”

That’s the difference between the Red Sox and New York Yankees in October: The Red Sox think they have swagger; the Yankees know they have it. The Red Sox talk a good game; the Yankees play it.

Any doubt surrounding the Yankees, who were supposedly more vulnerable this season because of their creaky rotation and leaky middle relief corps, was removed when the Yankees won the first two games of this best-of-seven series, moving halfway toward another World Series berth.

The Red Sox had a pair of aces -- Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez -- aligned for Games 1 and 2, but they were trumped by the Yankees’ two of a kind, right-handers Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber, who combined to limit Boston to one hit in 37 at-bats in the first six innings of each game.

The Red Sox had the high-octane offense, with a lethal combination of power and patience, but the spark plugs are shot -- leadoff batter Johnny Damon and No. 2 hitter Mark Bellhorn have reached base once in 16 plate appearances -- and the engine has sputtered; Boston is hitting .224 with a .235 on-base percentage in two games.

Game 3, weather permitting, will be played tonight in Fenway Park, with Yankee right-hander Kevin Brown opposing Boston right-hander Bronson Arroyo, and unless the Red Sox can slow this pinstriped powerhouse, the Yankees will move on to their seventh World Series in nine years and extend to 86 the number of years Boston has gone without a championship.

“We tend to focus a little more,” Yankee center fielder Bernie Williams said Thursday, when asked how he is able to elevate his game in October. “You know, everything seems to be electrified and magnified. Every pitch counts. Every at-bat counts. Not that I don’t focus during the season, but it seems to bring out something special in me.”

And something extraordinary in closer Mariano Rivera. While Williams, shortstop Derek Jeter, catcher Jorge Posada and Manager Joe Torre have been constants in New York’s decade-long reign, there is one player who has separated himself from the rest; one player for whom that October swagger can be most attributed to: Rivera.

The 34-year-old cut-fastball specialist recorded saves in Games 1 and 2, nailing down the final four outs each night, the first save coming at the end of a day in which he attended the funerals of his wife’s two cousins in his native Panama before traveling five hours by private jet to New York.

Then Wednesday night, Rivera struck out cleanup batter David Ortiz and Millar with his wicked signature pitch -- the fastball that bores in on left-handed hitters, often shattering their bats, and darts down and away to right-handers -- to end the ninth, moving the Sox one step closer to elimination.

“He’s very Jordan-esque,” Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez said, comparing Rivera to Michael Jordan. “He has the ability to dominate a short series. The weapon he has is hard to describe.”

Jeter simply calls Rivera, who has an earned-run average of 0.73 and 32 saves in 97 2/3 playoff innings to go with his 336 career saves, the best closer of all time.

“What he has done this time of year, no one else has done,” Jeter said. “No doubt, he’s the difference between us and other teams. I don’t want to jinx him; he is human. But when he has a lead late in the game, we think it’s over. Everyone know what he’s going to throw, and he comes right at you.”

That’s what makes Rivera so remarkable. This is not a man who mixes up pitches, who changes speeds, who keeps hitters off balance. He truly is a one-pitch wonder.

“It’s perplexing to me, really, how he throws one pitch in one location,” Rodriguez said. “It makes him that much more incredible.”

Rivera gives the Yankees a huge psychological advantage in October, because opponents know if they’re trailing in the eighth or ninth innings, they have virtually no chance of winning.

That has contributed to a feeling of dread in the Red Sox dugout in the first two games; after 18 innings, Boston is still looking for its first lead.

“We’re backed into a corner, and this is going to be a huge, huge game,” said Arroyo, who pitched well in Boston’s clinching Game 3 victory over the Angels in the division series. “If we don’t win, I don’t think it’s ever been done before, a team coming back from 3-0 in the ALCS. It’s going to be a lot more pressure-packed than the Anaheim game, but I just have to go out and pitch the same way I would if we were up 2-0.”

Likewise, the Yankees, who eliminated the Red Sox in the 1999 and 2003 league championship series, have resorted to a little brainwashing themselves to combat any complacency.

“We have to go out and think that it’s still, you know, a tight series,” Williams said. “Now, we’re in a position to put the killing blow on the situation, and that’s not going to be easy. Those guys, they might be joking around all the time, but that team is no joke. They come out to play, and they can play as well as anybody in the league.”

Except the Yankees. In October.