BOSTON – Randy Johnson wasn’t brilliant. He wasn’t dominant. He wasn’t the elongated version of Sandy Koufax he’d been across the first decade-and-a-half of his career. He didn’t even earn himself a quality start.

But Johnson delivered for the Yankees yesterday.

He delivered in a big, critical way. The Yankees were a wounded team heading into Fenway Park yesterday, the resonance of a 17-1 thrashing still fresh, the residue of their pitching staff still scattered like detritus inside their clubhouse.

It may not seem possible that $208 million could buy such chaos, or that the acquisition of Al Leiter could be greeted with so many hosannas and offerings of thanks. But that’s the reality of the Yankees’ situation now. That’s where they are. They are a lot of expensive Scotch tape and designer paper clips, and they gladly accept whatever munificence comes their way, for they are in no position to argue.

Johnson turning in a workmanlike effort?

That counts. That helps. The Yankees are back to within a game-and-a-half of the Red Sox thanks to one big inning from their bats and 61/3 acceptable innings from their big-ticket stopper.

Johnson did strike out 10 Red Sox, thanks to a slider that finally had the kind of bite – Jorge Posada, exiled now to the bench on days Johnson starts, calls it “tilt” – that Yankees fans had seen from afar, and from up close in several playoff series, through the years.

But he still needed to grind his way through. Manny Ramirez and Mark Bellhorn touched him for home runs. The Sox scraped eight hits off him. Down 6-0, the Sox pecked away at Johnson and may have gotten much closer if not for the continued generosity of their third-base coach, Dale Sveum, whose pile of puzzling misdeeds continue to horrify Sox fans and humor Yankees fans.

The thing is, none of that matters. It’s all minutiae, dust in the wind on a hot New England afternoon. Understand, the Yankees need to win Johnson’s starts now, in a desperate, maniacal way that belies their usually cool, calm, professional approach to the long season.

After all, including yesterday, this is the way the Yankees’ upcoming rotation looked when everyone reported for work in the morning:

Johnson; TBA; TBA; Mussina; TBA.

Torre took some of the workload off TBA’s shoulders by inserting Leiter for today’s start and Kevin Brown for tomorrow’s in Texas, but it wasn’t as if the manager was announcing Koufax and Drysdale in those spots. A couple of arm-weary forty-somethings won’t ever serve as anyone’s version of pitching penicillin.

But Johnson can.

Yesterday, Johnson did.

The Yankees gave him that early 6-0 lead, but Johnson gave the Yankees something as invaluable: two early innings of no hits, no runs – and no adventures. Mike Mussina allowed four first-inning runs Thursday night to the Sox, forcing the Yankees into a game-long climb back. Tim Redding allowed three on Friday night, the first bricks falling in a 17-1 collapse.

The Yankees didn’t need a similar catastrophe yesterday, and Johnson made sure to spare them. It isn’t always the hallmark of a superb pitcher to keep the other team completely off the board, after all. Given the 6-0 lead, Johnson simply did what good pitchers have done from the beginning of time: He guarded it with his life. He threw strikes. The Sox’s two home runs were both solo, and when it seemed the Sox may really be in position to pounce, he was able to reach back for a little extra.

Sometimes, what’s necessary isn’t perfection, just professionalism. In the Yankees’ hope of hopes, Leiter and Brown, two more pitchers with mileage on them, will perform similar clinics the next two nights, until Torre can hand the ball back to Mussina.

In their heart of hearts, they probably know better. But for one day, at least, Johnson gave them precisely what the Yankees needed him to give them. He bought them some time, bought them a win.

It was the least he could do.