Yankees 7 – Red Sox 3
David Cone came home as the enemy last night. And now he knows how a real Red Sox player feels at Yankee Stadium – to do your best and still lose.
Life on the other side can be awfully tough wearing red, white and blue.
On this Play Misty ForMe night at the Stadium, Cone made one deadly mistake during his respectable five-inning stint, and it buried him.
With two outs in the third and Derek Jeter on first, Cone left a 2-2 fastball over the middle of the plate, and Bernie Williams belted a towering home run into the old right-field bullpen, wiping out a 1-0 Boston lead and igniting the Yankees’ 7-3 victory.
Jeter notched the first 5-for-5 performance of his career, highlighted by a home run to left off Tim Wakefield in the seventh, and Jorge Posada slammed a two-run blast in the eighth.
Jeter also welcomed Cone with a smile in the first inning, a move that Cone said “disarmed” him.
Then it was all business.
“You have a job to do,” Jeter said. “He’s a great guy, but you want to beat him.”
The Yankees’ job, as manager Joe Torre noted before the game, was to beat Cone, “to beat his brains out.”
There is no time for old friends. The Yanks did their job.
“As much as you like and respect David Cone,” Torre said afterward, “the thing that was bigger than him was the uniform he was wearing. Long before I got here this rivalry was huge. The overriding factor tonight was the uniform.”
In the end, while wearing that uniform, Cone (0-1) sounded like so many opposing pitchers who have turned to dust.
“There’s a couple of pitches I’d like to have back,” Cone noted. “That’s usually the case with a pitcher on the losing end.”
While Cone got all the pre-game attention, it was Yankee starter Andy Pettitte who was spectacular through eight innings before tiring in the ninth as he upped his record to 5-3. With Pedro Martinez on the immediate horizon, the Yankees needed this win to climb to within half a game of the hated, first-place Red Sox.
As expected, Cone left his heart on the mound, pitching five innings, allowing six hits and three runs. Making only his second start of the season, Cone didn’t walk a batter and struck out five in his 85-pitch outing. As he said, “I feel back in the swing.” But it wasn’t nearly enough.
Moving on is one thing, but moving on to the Red Sox is a whole different story. When Torre saw Cone during the winter after the right-hander signed, he told him, “Now I can’t even root for you. As much as I want to.”
No Yankee can ever root for a Red Sox player.
At 6:55 p.m. Cone was announced as the starting pitcher by P.A. announcer Bob Sheppard – “Pitching, No. 36, David Cone, No. 36.” There were scattered boos from the crowd. Ten minutes later Cone walked in from the bullpen and the crowd gave him a warm ovation.
In the bottom of the first, Cone came out of the visitors’ dugout, walked toward the mound and asked the plate umpire for the ball. As he kicked at the rubber for about 30 seconds, the crowd stood and cheered until Cone threw his first warm-up pitch.
At that point it seemed he became just another opposing pitcher. The Yankees had a job to do – to beat his brains out.
They didn’t beat Cone’s brains out, but they beat the Red Sox’ brains out and when Posada’s drive to right put the Yankees up 7-1 in the eighth, it brought on the required “Boston [bleeps] chant from the 44,108 rain-soaked fans.
“That was a big night for us,” Torre said. “Hopefully we can get it going. It’s tough to say that facing Pedro because he can throw a wet blanket on you.”
The Yankees have a monster set of games in front of them. After today’s Pedro meeting, there is a huge three-game series in Cleveland and then two more with the Red Sox next week in Boston.
“I think the fact that we played well in Seattle helps us confidence-wise,” Torre said. “And obviously we’re going to play Boston a lot. It becomes important to beat Boston, but it’s not this do-or-die stuff because you play them so many times.”
When it comes to do-or-die, these Yankees do. Just ask Cone.
