2009 Yankees: The Boston Massacre Revisited

Welcome back to the next chapter of 2009 Yankees: The Last Championship - a week-by-week remembrance of the year in which they gave us their most recent World Series title. After eight consecutive losses to the Red Sox, the Yankees broke through in a major way as they swept a four-game series in the Bronx and extended their lead over Boston in the AL East to 6.5 games.

NEW YORK (Aug. 6-9, 2009) - There are some of us who remember the incredible 1978 season when the Yankees came back from 14 games behind the Red Sox in mid-July to catch them, pass them, blow their own lead, then ultimately win a one-game playoff to clinch the AL East crown.

That year, the Yankees were stumbling around at 47-42, but starting on July 19 and extending through Sept. 6, they went on an epic tear and won 35 of 49 games to get within four games as they flew into Boston for a four-game series.

And then what happened in those four games simultaneously defined the Yankees’ resurgence and the Red Sox collapse as New York swept the series by a cumulative score of 42-9 in what became known as the Boston Massacre.

Thirty-one years later, though not quite as dramatic, history was repeating itself in 2009. After falling behind early division leader Toronto by as many as 6.5 games in mid-May, and then eventually being five games behind the first-place Red Sox as late as June 24 in part because they lost the first eight games they played against Boston, the Yankees had harnessed the ghosts of 1978, shifted into another gear and steamed their way to the top of the AL East.

This time it was a 26-10 run that enabled the Yankees to leapfrog the Red Sox, setting the stage for a four-game series at Yankee Stadium with Joe Girardi’s team now clinging to a 2.5-game lead.

“There’s no explanation for it; they played better than us when we played them,” Derek Jeter said of Boston’s head-to-head mastery to this point. “We need to play well against them this time.”

“You want to get that zero, that goose egg, out of there,” Girardi said of the 0-8 record against Boston, the longest Yankee losing streak to their arch rival in nearly 100 years. “We’re going to be asked about that goose egg for as long as it’s there so we want to get it out of there as soon as possible. We know how good the Red Sox are, but I feel good about the way we’ve been playing.”

Girardi made that comment in the visiting clubhouse in Toronto following the Yankees’ 8-4 victory over the fading Blue Jays which completed a three-game sweep. Twenty-four hours later, back home in his own office, Girardi was feeling even better about how his team was playing in the wake of a 13-6 rout of the Red Sox in front of 49,005 fans, the largest crowd yet in the inaugural season of the new Yankee Stadium.

Gone was the goose egg, and the tone was set for another Boston Massacre of sorts, a four-game sweep by a combined score of 25-8 and effectively ended the division race as the Red Sox were never closer than 5.5 game the rest of the year.

“We have a chance to open up some space this weekend, but we need to go one game at a time so this is a great opportunity for us,” said A.J. Burnett.

And that’s exactly what they did. Game by game for four days and nights, the Yankees opened more and more space and by the time the Yankees put together a crushing four-run rally in the bottom of the eighth to win the Sunday night finale 5-2, the Red Sox spirit was broken. They wouldn’t admit it, but they knew the race was over.

“We’re going to try; we’re going to keep playing. Nothing we can do but play,” David Ortiz said.

The first game was over by the fourth inning. Down 3-1, the Yankees scored eight times, most of that coming against Boston starter John Smoltz who was limping to the finish line of his 21-year Hall of Fame career. The big blow was a go-ahead three-run homer by Melky Cabrera, and after Smoltz was out, a three-run bomb by Jorge Posada off Billy Traber that made it 9-3.

The next day, the Red Sox designated Smoltz for assignment, he hooked on with the Cardinals and pitched in seven games, then retired when the season ended.

“We’re playing like shit right now, that’s obvious,” Boston’s second baseman Dustin Pedroia said. “We’ve got to play better.”

The Red Sox did the next night and the teams battled for 14 ½ scoreless innings before Alex Rodriquez ended the five-hour, 33-minute marathon with a two-out, two-run homer off Junichi Tazawa in the bottom of the 15th, sending what was left of the sellout crowd into a frenzy.

A total of 494 pitches were thrown by 14 pitchers including outstanding starts by Burnett and Boston’s Josh Beckett. But the batters could do nothing as they went a combined 13-for-97 and were 0-for-19 with runners in scoring position which left a total of 22 men on base.

“It was an unbelievable win,” Girardi said. “There were opportunities to score, but there weren’t a whole lot of hits. This would have been a very hard game to lose tonight.”

Saturday afternoon, the Yankees’ pitching continued to be awe inspiring as CC Sabathia threw 7.2 shutout innings with nine strikeouts while Phil Hughes and David Robertson completed the 5-0 shutout which gave the Yankees’ staff 24 consecutive scoreless innings since Boston had scored two meaningless runs in the ninth inning of the first game. That was the longest scoring drought by a Boston team since 1993.

“The last two nights, we’ve done nothing,” Boston manager Terry Francona said. “We’ve faced two really good pitchers and we’ve done nothing.”

Having scrapped their way to a 3-0 lead, the Yankees put it away when Jeter ripped a two-run homer off Enrique Gonzalez in the eighth.

Ignoring his own feat, Jeter pinned the success on the pitchers, saying, “That’s why we’re winning. It’s all because of our pitching staff. Our starters have been good, our bullpen has been good and Mo has been Mo.”

For Sabathia, it was the first time he had pitched against Boston in Yankee Stadium and he was awed by the energy of the crowd. “It’s intense,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun to pitch here. I’ve never played anywhere like this, where the fans are so into everything. I had goose bumps walking off. It was unbelievable to get that type of ovation. A.J. definitely set the tone (the previous night). I was just trying to do the same thing and be the 1-2 punch that we came here to be.”

In the finale, Boston’s scoring drought reached an incredible 31 innings, their longest since 1974, as Andy Pettitte blanked them for seven and the Yankees had a 1-0 lead against Jon Lester. It ended in the eighth when Phil Coke gave up a single to Pedroia followed by a go-ahead two-run homer by Victor Martinez.

Now the Red Sox had a chance to leave town only 4.5 games out with 52 games remaining. Instead, the proverbial final nail was hammered into the coffin.

With two outs and nothing happening against reliever Daniel Bard in the bottom of the eighth, ex-Boston hero Johnny Damon homered to right-center to tie the game, and two pitches later, Mark Teixeira homered to right to put the Yankees ahead and the stadium nearly crumbled from the noise.

Bard then walked A-Rod so Hideki Okajima came on and he promptly gave up a double to Posada and then a two-run single to Nick Swisher which finished the 5-2 victory and the sweep. It was Boston’s sixth loss in a row and 14th in its last 21, a true meltdown, similar in many ways to what happened way back in 1978.

“So much for 8-0, huh,” said Coke, a rather odd muscle flex given how he blew Pettitte’s sterling performance. “I think we made somewhat of a statement. I don’t think we took our foot off the throttle the whole weekend.”

Girardi took stock of the sweep, and while not ready to proclaim the race as over, he said, “Our approach is not going to change, we are going to keep pushing and trying to extend the lead. I don’t think we can relax for a minute in this division. But four huge games and we were able to come out on top in all of them and this place was alive. It’s a good feeling after we were on the other side of this for a while and had some tough losses to them.”

Here’s how the rest of Week 17 went for the Yankees:

• Aug. 4: When the Yankees flew to Toronto after losing three of four to the White Sox, their lead over Boston was down to a half-game. By the time the week ended, they were up by 6.5 because they went 6-0 during the week, and the Red Sox went 0-6. In the first game of a quick two-game set in Toronto, Andy Pettitte outdueled Roy Halladay with the help of Phil Hughes and Mariano Rivera as the Yankees won 5-3. Damon, Teixeira and A-Rod each had two hits and an RBI.

• Aug. 5: The Yankees made it two straight with an 8-4 victory as Damon banged out three hits and three RBI and Swisher homered.

NEXT SATURDAY: One of the unsung heroes on the 2009 team was Phil Hughes, a first-round draft pick from 2004 who had been unable to find his footing as a starter, but once he was transferred to the bullpen in June became a key component in the team’s success.