Chien-Ming Wang had his first bad start of the year last night, and Clay Buchholz had the first bad start of his major league career. Ross Ohlendorf and Julian Tavarez didn’t help out much in relief. LaTroy Hawkins (wearing number 22), Billy Traber (who got David Ortiz to pop up on one pitch), and Brian Bruney managed to lock things down for the home team starting in the sixth. As for the visitors, after a couple of decent innings from David Aardsma, Mike Timlin opened the spigot again in the eighth. The result was a nine-inning game that lasted four hours and eight minutes and saw 42 men reach base and 341 pitches thrown. After all of that, the Yankees emerged with a 15-9 win that put them two games over .500 for the first time on the season and evened their season series with the Sox.

As Kevin Youkilis popped out to shallow left to end the top of the eighth, I rolled over on my remote, accidentally hitting the pause button on my DVR and freezing a long shot of Hideki Matsui in the large, empty pasture staring up at the darkness, waiting for a ball that wouldn’t come down. That pretty much sums up my feelings on last night’s game. I’ll take the win. I just wish I didn’t have to watch it.