The Weary Team Has No One to Blame but Itself

If any of them were weary, and the ones who played were, none would say so in front of Jorge Posada, the New York Yankee catcher.

Midnight approached at the corner locker, where Posada sat, almost seven hours after he’d started. He’d called 245 pitches, and caught most of them, one on his chin, another flush on his bare right hand.

“It drains you,” he said, nodding.

Three outs from a sweep of the Boston Red Sox and their 40th World Series appearance the night before, the Yankees had played themselves to Mariano Rivera again on Monday, and lost again, this time 5-4 in 14 innings.

At Fenway Park, they’ll remember it, perhaps, as an epic effort. Everything here comes draped in such velvet, yards of romance and baseball and 36,000 people standing for most of the final few hours Monday.

The Yankees, though, dressed for tonight. Ten hours of baseball here had left them without an inch of progress, and in fact they’d lost their usual game. They’d taken the Red Sox to two late deficits, to the hand of their closer, then watched David Ortiz leap into piles of teammates.

They’d failed to score a runner from third base with one out in the eighth inning. They’d failed to give Rivera even an out’s rest. They’d failed to catch a fly ball in right field and they’d failed to score a run over the final eight innings.

Their at-bats were reckless, their legendary plate consciousness gone in their rush to take out the Red Sox, who’ve become remarkably game after spending three games remarkably overmatched.

While they appear to have come to admire the fight in the Red Sox, the Yankees have themselves to blame for their own dreary late-night flight to New York, for playing themselves into Game 6. Suddenly, the Red Sox don’t need four consecutive victories against the Yankees; they need only two, starting with Curt Schilling’s start tonight.

The Yankees turned a parade into a series. They played eight extra innings over two nights and had five singles in them. Against relievers at least as spent as their own, they had one hit with a runner on base after the sixth inning.

Their setup man, Tom Gordon, did not get an out in the eighth inning.

Their $250-million third baseman, Alex Rodriguez, struck out with Miguel Cairo at third base with one out in the eighth inning, the Yankees holding to a 4-2 lead.

Their MVP candidate, Gary Sheffield, took two steps forward on a ball that landed near the warning track in the 10th inning, sucking more pitches from an exhausted bullpen.

These weren’t the Yankees of the postseason. They were hardly the Yankees of the regular season.

On Monday afternoon, the Red Sox were reaching for the miracle angle. One of the ceremonial first pitches was thrown by Mike Eruzione, the captain of the gold medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team. The scoreboard broadcast highlights of those games, along with the pronouncement, “Ladies and gentlemen, it has happened before.” But it seemed so unlikely.

By early this morning, hordes of fans in bow-brimmed B caps chanting the players’ names as they trudged into the parking lot, the Red Sox had survived the near-empty bullpens, the crowd’s pleading, Tim Wakefield’s chancing the season’s last pitch again.

And the Yankees tried to shrug in a crowded clubhouse, Kevin Brown taking the opportunity to brush roughly against unsuspecting reporters, but could barely raise their shoulders against the fatigue.

Departing from their habit for deliberate at-bats, they’d played for one good swing. Instead, they got a lot of hard swings, and very few baserunners, and the Red Sox were a couple of walks and a broken bat from victory, which finally arrived in the 14th inning.

“There’s a tendency,” Rodriguez said, “and it’s really easy to get caught up in it. We all have the ability to end it with one swing. It’s a small ballpark, and it’s hard in a situation to think little here.”

So, as the Red Sox fumbled through the late innings -- Johnny Damon was caught stealing after a leadoff single in the ninth inning, twice the Red Sox did not execute sacrifice bunts in the 11th inning, three times catcher Jason Varitek whiffed Wakefield’s knuckleballs in the 13th inning -- the Yankees allowed them to continue.

They’ll play Game 6 and it’s the Yankees’ fault. The Red Sox have reached Schilling for a second time, just as they reached Pedro Martinez for a second time, and the Yankees are responsible.

In front of the locker at the corner, where he gathered the enthusiasm to stand and find the bus, Posada raved about Ortiz’s final at-bat, flipped through hundreds of pitches and found one conclusion.

“Everybody’s tired,” Posada said. “Everybody’s tired. They’re tired. We’re tired.”

Only one team is playing like it.