NEW YORK --
Mark Teixeira swung, then waited at home plate like a man scanning the street for an available cab to hail. Waited, then began to walk. One slow step. Then another. This was a stroll around the bases. Teixeira, who ordinarily heads off to first base like he's sprinting to catch a bus, was going to savor the moment. And if
Vicente Padilla's head exploded on the mound while he did so, all the better.
After this home run, Padilla can repeat all his claims that Teixeira "chose the wrong profession" -- which was among the insults the Red Sox reliever hurled at Teixeira the last time they engaged, 19 days ago -- and nobody will believe him. Teixeira hit a go-ahead, two-run triple that night, and the two quarreled in the media, Teixeira bringing up Padilla's head-hunting past, and Padilla responding with a politically incorrect remark about how Teixeira would benefit from playing a women's sport.
Teixeira applied the silencer Saturday, mashing a game-tying, two-run home run off his former teammate that wiped out the last of what had been a five-run Red Sox lead and seemingly setting up another crushing defeat at the hands of the Bombers.
Instead, Yankees center fielder
Curtis Granderson got all tangled up in the ninth on
Pedro Ciriaco's line drive right at him and fell down as the ball cleared his head for a tie-breaking triple, the Sox adding another run on
Dustin Pedroia's sacrifice fly to win 8-6 before a crowd of 49,573, the Yankees' biggest crowd of the season.
The game was delayed at the start for 2 hours, 4 minutes, which knocked off much of the national TV audience. They missed some show.
The Sox scored six runs off Yankees ace
CC Sabathia, two coming on
Will Middlebrooks' two-run double, three on
Adrian Gonzalez's first-pitch home run. Red Sox left-hander
Jon Lester, meanwhile, coming off the worst start of his career (11 runs, including four home runs in four-plus innings), held the Yankees at bay, giving up a solo home run to backup catcher
Chris Stewart before the Yanks stirred to life with three in the fifth, two on
Jayson Nix's home run.
Teixeira then set up the big finish with his game-tying home run before the Red Sox squeezed out a win with a rally that began with
Jacoby Ellsbury's one-out walk.
