It began as a slugfest. It ended as a battle of the bullpens,
one the Red Sox lost, and with it, the game.
After rallying from a 5-0 hole in the first inning, the Red
Sox took the lead by mid-game, but squandered when they allowed four
runs in the seventh inning, resulting in a 10-8 win for the
Yankees.
It was the first meeting between the two rivals in nearly three
months and it ended the same way the first two meetings in April did
-- with a loss for the Sox.
The loss dropped the Sox 8 12 games behind the Yankees, their
biggest deficit of the season.
The Sox took their first lead of the night when third baseman
Mauro Gomez recorded his first major league RBI, singling home Adrian
Gonzalez.
But the Yankees got to the Red Sox bullpen in the seventh, capped
by a two-run triple by Mark Teixeira off Vicenta Padilla. That triple
scored two inherited runners, or one more than Padilla had allowed to
score all season.
In the first two innings, the two teams traded runs like heavyweights
trading punches. After the Yankees got to Josh Beckett for five in the
top of the first, the Sox counter-punched with five of their own in the
bottom of the inning off Hiroki Kuroda, led by a three-run homer from
Jarrod Saltalamacchia.
It was more of the same in the second when a run-scoring double
by Robinson Cano was answer, an RBI single from David Ortiz.