BOSTON — It had been a good two hours since A.J. Burnett’s workday ended, meaning there had been plenty of time for him to shower, shave, shampoo, mousse, maybe add another tattoo or three if he knew a good place nearby. But Burnett hadn’t slipped back into his golf shirt and his dungarees, not yet.
And he hadn’t taken his game face off, either.
“I’ve got to be smarter than that,” Burnett said. “I’ve got to be better than that.” Someone broke an awkward silence by mentioning the fact that he was still loitering in his game uniform. Burnett shook his head.
“I’ve been trying to calm down,” he said.
It had been a lousy weekend already, even before Burnett was staked to a 6-0 lead, even before he surrendered every bit of it and then some, even before the Yankees regained the lead later on, even before the Red Sox stormed back to hand the Yanks their weekly Saturday beatdown, 16-11.
There was Friday’s loss, which still lingered in the clubhouse even if nobody wanted to recognize it, because whenever you have Mariano Rivera on the mound and a two-run lead and 26 outs already in the books, you’ve already scrawled the “W” onto your scorebook, and it takes a hell of a lot of energy to erase it, as the Yankees had had to do.
There was yesterday’s medical report, which included the shipment of Cody Ransom to the 60-day disabled list and Brian Bruney to the 15-day DL, where he joined Chien-Ming Wang, Xavier Nady and Alex Rodriguez, and that’s an awful lot of high-priced talent currently spending more time in whirlpools and rehab rooms than bullpens and batting orders.
And then there was . . . well, there was this, this discouraging Wiffle Ball game, this alleged pitcher’s duel between Burnett and Josh Beckett which turned out to be the worst case of mistruth in advertising since the Ginsu sliced the tomato after cutting through the tin can.
The Yankees pounded Beckett for eight runs. The Red Sox pummeled Burnett for eight runs. The Yankees led 2-0, then 4-0, then 6-0. The Sox led 8-6, then 9-8, then 12-10. The Yanks crawled to within 12-11. And then the Sox crushed them with their steel-toed boots. Homers flew. Walks mounted. There were 27 runs and 28 hits between the teams. It all took every millisecond of 4 hours and 21 minutes.
It was wild, and it was wacky, and it was wonderful to watch if you happened to either root for the Red Sox or have no rooting interest at all. It was significantly less enjoyable if you were Joe Girardi, watching his bullpen throw batting practice on the day your most reliable reliever not named Mariano — Bruney — was sent to the shelf.
“Usually,” Girardi said, summoning every ounce of Zen he could muster, “when you get 11 runs, it’s enough to win the game.”
It should’ve been enough to win this one, too, except that for the first time as a Yankee, Burnett presented himself publicly as something less than dominant. It was the version of Burnett that has exposed itself throughout his career, and even at that, he might have gotten away with it against most teams. Just not against the Red Sox. One awful pitch to Jason Varitek turned the game upside down, a fastball that even Varitek’s glacial swing could catch up to.
And from there . . . well, it was beautiful, and it was ugly, and it was exhausting to play and it was exhilarating to watch, and by the end you wondered if they would just keep playing until midnight, the way they always used to in October.
And there’s a good chance you wore a similar look to the one Burnett was wearing, still dressed in his uniform, his face a mixture of sour and bitter and furious and irritated, knowing things have to be better than this, knowing they have to get better than this, and quick, before they run out of April, thus run out of days to offer up “It’s early” as an explanation.
“I’m pretty sure,” Girardi said, “that we’re better than this.”
As a precaution, it might not be a bad thing to pray for rain against the Angels in six days. It seems Saturday, for now, doesn’t much agree with the Yankees. At all.