IT WAS another loss, this time 3-2, and losses to the Red Sox are never an agreeable part of the Yankee experience. Manny Ramirez got them this time, doubling to lead off the 12th, scoring on a sacrifice fly, gaining a measure of revenge for an October he’d surely care to forget forever.

Finally, though, after six games worth of Red Sox-Yankees, we got a game that really felt like Red Sox-Yankees.

Most of the first five games between these teams looked like the sleepy hangover games you get in the losers’ bracket of a beer league tournament. The Yankees were sluggish, thick with expectation, unable to get anyone out when they needed to, unable to get a base hit when they really needed to.

And even in victory, the Red Sox had been less dominant than efficient, able to seize on Yankee misfortune and proceed from there. The shorthanded Sox did what was necessary to win four of those first five, but none of them was exactly proud testaments to championship baseball.

This one was different.

And maybe you could tell it would be different as everyone walked into the stadium, as the autograph hounds who line the players entrance greeted the players, as the players themselves arrived at the office for work. It was as if they’d decided, enough with the ordinary baseball. Enough with the un-inspired, dull, protracted meetings.

Let’s remember what we had in October.

Let’s see if we can’t replicate that.

Even it’s for only a day.

So you could tell there was something different about things right from the start, as Kevin Brown ground his way through the first two innings, when it seemed he would struggle to make it out of the second, when he was a one-man exhibition on the 1962 Mets, kicking the ball around, dropping it, laying it in there fat for the Red Sox’ bats.

But Brown, whatever other personality quirks he may have, is a damned hard-nosed pitcher, the kind of guy you want on the mound when you go up against the Red Sox. Brown didn’t get a decision, making it three wins against the Devil Rays and two no-decisions against the Red Sox for his 2004 season so far, but the point was well taken.

From the moment he survived his personal misadventures in the second, he was masterful, and he was unhittable, and he provided a splendid example for the other star-crossed members of the Yankees rotation to follow.

Bronson Arroyo matched him pitch-for-pitch, though, which is what you need if you want to rip a slice of the 2003 ALCS out of the day. If not for this unknown upstart kid, Alex Rodriguez, Arroyo may have thrown a shutout at the Yankees, maybe given them another layer of fright for the future. As it was, he kept most of their bats quiet and quivering.

Naturally, there had to be late-inning intrigue, so naturally there had to be Yankees left in scoring position in both the ninth and 10th innings, and there had to be bases full of Red Sox with one out in the 11th inning, and there had to be epic shifts from both bullpen crews. The Red Sox again showed themselves to be plenty capable of maintaining a presence in this rivalry, the way he worked out of the 10th.

And, of course, there was Mariano Rivera, old faithful, who teased the Red Sox in the 11th, who allowed them to load the bases with Bill Mueller and David Ortiz ready to take their hacks at him, and then there was Rivera, inducing Mueller, the defending A.L. batting champ, to pop up, then blowing strike three right past Ortiz.

For a moment, if you really wanted to, you could see the sun extinguish in the deep blue sky, you could see night fall quickly on The Bronx, you could rewind the tape in front of you and it would be Oct. 16 all over again, one night at the Stadium for all the marbles.

For one day, at least, that’s how it felt.

It wasn’t a terrible feeling.