Boston Cashes In On Half-a-Schilling

Now we can spend all day Wednesday figuring out who on earth either team should use as its starting pitcher. And, after those bums get lit up, what sequence of subsequent exhausted relievers will produce the least carnage. What's the over-under on Game 7 -- 15 runs?

Red Sox Manager Terry Francona seemed to be leaning toward either Derek Lowe or knuckleballer Tim Wakefield, who pitched three shutout innings in Game 5, on one day of rest. Granted, soft-tossing knuckleballers don't need much rest. But at least a couple of days would be nice.

Before Game 6, Yankees Manager Joe Torre accidentally showed just how much the prospect of a monumental Red Sox upset was playing with his mind. Normally, no reasonable question is rebuffed brusquely.

When asked who might start on Wednesday, Torre said, so firmly that no one dared bring the subject up again, "We are not talking about Game 7."

Well, they are now. If the Yankees lose Game 7, somebody may have to talk George Steinbrenner down from the top of the facade.

The Yankees' logical Game 7 choice would be Kevin Brown, who started Game 3. Except that he was knocked out in two awful innings. He's the yo-yo who broke his own hand a month ago in a temper tantrum, alienating those few teammates who didn't like his supercilious attitude already. Torre disliked him even before that. Now, Torre has already used up the only two starting pitchers he currently trusts -- Mike Mussina and Jon Lieber -- in Games 5 and 6. That didn't work out too well.

Perhaps this game, despite its enormous importance, was actually decided very quickly. Never have so many people, including every player on both teams, paid so much attention to the reading of a radar gun on the first pitch thrown by a pitcher -- in this case Schilling. In Game 1, using "The Custom-Braced Shoe That Failed," Schilling was only able to throw his fastball in the high 80s, while normally he's frequently over 95 mph and always close to it.

Since then, in hopes of allowing Schilling to drive off the rubber with normal power, the Red Sox have tried pain-killing shots, different styles of shoe and pads to keep the tendon on one side of the bone or the other and, now, stitches. Just so that darned things stopped snapping back and forth. One pitch would tell the tale.

And it did. Yankee captain Derek Jeter swung late at the first pitch and flied out to right. The gun said, "93 mph." The first two pitches to Alex Rodriguez "94." Not Schilling at his very best, but certainly good enough to compete effectively, especially on a 49-degree night with a wind knocking down any ball hit to right field.

Gradually, once Schilling found reasonable command of his fastball, he tried to find a second and third pitch to use as complements. To end the first inning, he popped up Gary Sheffield with a slider. To open the third, he started and finished Ruben Sierra with an excellent knee-high splitter for his first strikeout. In retiring the first eight Yankees, Schilling was not overpowering. Sometimes his fastball caught the center of the plate. However, Schilling is one of the game's great battlers. And he had enough.

Besides, and this may have implications for Game 7, the Yankees are in a clutch-hitting slump. In Games 5 and 6, the Yanks ended 22 of 26 innings with a man stranded and 14 of those innings ended with a man in scoring position. Teams sense such trends in their bellies. In postseason series, it is rare to see a team's clutch-hitting pattern change more than once.

If you start hot and go cold, then you seldom get hot again in such a small number of games. This Game 6 ended on just that note with two more runners stranded as 6-foot-8 Tony Clark struck out against Keith Foulke.

If anybody can reverse its gagging, it's the Yankees, the team that usually has the past on its side.

This time, however, the weight of baseball history may finally be reversed. After all, it is the Yankees, not the "cursed" Red Sox, who have a chance for the worst October collapse in history.