Everything was looking great for Mike Mussina in game one of the ALCS last night as the Yankees took on the Red Sox. His offense took care of Curt Shilling, knocking him and his bum ankle out of the game by the 4th inning. Mussina was perfect through six innings until things unravelled ever so slightly...to the tune of four runs. Coming into the 7th, the Yankees managed a 8-0 lead, only to see it shrink to an 8-5 lead by the 7th inning stretch. In the 8th, the Red Sox added two more runs to pull within one run and had the tying run on 3rd base, but they could not capitalize. The Yankees added two runs of their own in the bottom half to bring it to 10-7, which was the final score (box score).
The aforementioned offense was led by Hideki Matsui, who went 3-5 with 5 RBI (tying an ALCS record) and 2 runs scored. Gary Sheffield went 3-4 with 4 runs scored. The 2-3-4 hitters for the Yankees (Alex Rodriguez, Sheffield, and Matsui) were 8-14 with 5 RBI and 8 runs scored. Those hitters along with the hitting of Bernie Williams - 2-5 and 3 RBI - were enough to do in the Red Sox.
Early on, it seemed like Mariano Rivera would not need to make an appearance after returning from Panama, but the Red Sox were able to get to Mussina and the Yankee bullpen. Rivera, who was attending the funeral of two family members, arrived at the stadium in the 3rd inning and made his way to the bullpen in the 5th inning to the hugs of his teammates and cheers from the crowd.
The series continues tonight on Fox as Jon Lieber faces Pedro Martinez. There were chants of "Who's your daddy?" last night, but those figure to be even louder tonight with Martinez on the mound. The "Daddy's" look to extend the lead to 2-0.
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