May 24, 2006: Yankees overcome Manny Ramírez’s 2 home runs to beat Red Sox

In May 2006 the New York Yankees lost two of three games at Yankee Stadium in their first series of the season against the archrival Boston Red Sox. Two weeks later, the teams split the first two games of their three-game rematch at Fenway Park. Entering the finale on May 24, the Red Sox were first in the American League East, 1½ games ahead of the Yankees, who had won the division title eight seasons in a row.

Boston sent 31-year-old right-hander Matt Clement to the mound. Clement, a 2005 AL All-Star, entered the game with a 4-3 record and a 5.36 ERA, and his inconsistency had led manager Terry Francona to shift the rotation when the Red Sox played at Yankee Stadium. Gordon Edes of the Boston Globe wrote that Clement entered the game hoping to “prove his manager should have had more faith in him.”1

Clement breezed through the first inning on 14 pitches, retiring the side on a pair of groundouts and a strikeout.

Left-hander Randy Johnson started for the Yankees. The 42-year-old five-time Cy Young Award winner was in his second season with the Yankees. Johnson had also been inconsistent in 2006, entering the game with a 5-4 record and a 5.62 ERA. The Red Sox had knocked him out in the fourth inning of their 14-3 win on May 9. Pitching coach Ron Guidry acknowledged Johnson’s struggles, saying, “He needs to go out to pitch a game to get confidence again in himself. Right now, he has it but it’s just not working.”2

Johnson had a rough beginning against Boston. Kevin Youkilis led off the first with a single. Mark Loretta hit the next pitch to left for another single but was out when he tried to stretch it into a double, as Youkilis reached third.

After David Ortiz struck out, Manny Ramírez—with homers in each of the previous two games—hit Johnson’s fastball over the left-field wall for a 2-0 Red Sox lead. The Boston slugger, “who a night earlier watched his prodigious homer as if he were waiting for the No. 57 bus to pick him up in Kenmore Square, quickly recoiled his bat, tossed it gently to the ground, and, relatively speaking, tore around the base paths.”3

Ramírez had been in a slump, going 4-for-27 with just one RBI in eight games before the series with the Yankees. “Manny is an unbelievable hitter. You can’t hold him down for long. Great hitters are going to come out of slumps and they are going to hit,” said Youkilis later.4

Boston’s lead did not last long. With two outs in the second, Clement walked Robinson Canó, and Bernie Williams lined a single off the pitcher’s ankle. Terrence Long walked to load the bases. Clement then hit Kelly Stinnett to send Canó home.

Melky Cabrera’s single scored Williams and Long, with Stinnett reaching third. Cabrera was in the leadoff spot; manager Joe Torre had given Johnny Damon a night off. The right fielder’s hit gave him a seven-game hitting streak.

Derek Jeter’s 1,999th career hit, a double, brought Stinnett home for the fourth run of the inning.

Clement, who threw 32 pitches in the second, said getting hit by Williams’s single didn’t hurt his pitching. “You can’t use it as a reason why I pitched badly. But it didn’t help the cause,” he said.5

The Yankees were on top, 4-2, but it was the Red Sox’ turn to rally. With two outs in the second, Álex González singled and stole second. Youkilis then hit his fifth homer of the season to tie the game. The Red Sox scored another run in the third, when Ramírez led off with a double and came home on Jason Varitek’s line-drive double to right field. That gave Boston a 5-4 lead.

Clement kept the Yankees from scoring in the fourth despite walking two batters. But things fell apart for him in the fifth. Four consecutive singles scored two runs. A wild pitch put runners on second and third. Clement struck out Stinnett, but Francona had seen enough.

The crowd of 36,375 booed Clement as he walked off the field. “They have a right to do whatever they want to do,” he said afterward. “I’m still going to go out there and bust my butt every time I can and try to get outs. If it means that a rough game like this you get booed, you be a man and live with it.”6

Right-hander Julián Tavárez took over pitching duties. Cabrera hit Tavárez’s second pitch to center field for a single to score both runners and give him four RBIs for the game, the most of his career. Their second four-run outburst of the game put the Yankees up 8-5.

In July 2005, Cabrera, appearing in his sixth big-league game, had misplayed Trot Nixon’s line drive at Fenway Park into an inside-the-park home run, and Cabrera was demoted to the minor leagues for the rest of the season. Now, speaking of this night’s performance, he said, “I felt good it was against Boston. Doing it here is even better.” Torre was pleased with the 21-year-old Cabrera’s work, saying, “We’re going to have to figure out a way to get him to feel a little more comfortable in left field, because that is where he is going to eventually end up.”7

Johnson pitched the fifth. After walking Ramírez, he got the next three batters out on 12 pitches. But he didn’t return in the sixth, leaving the game after giving up five earned runs. (He struck out eight.)

The Yankees entrusted the lead to a veteran corps of relievers, starting with 38-year-old righty Scott Erickson, who pitched a scoreless sixth. Left-hander Mike Myers, 37 (a veteran of Boston’s 2004 World Series champions), struck out Ortiz to start the seventh.

Torre then replaced Myers with right-hander Scott Proctor. Proctor had entered the previous night’s game with a 1.84 ERA in 20 relief appearances but allowed four runs in 1⅓ innings, including Ramírez’s three-run homer.8

This time, Ramírez hit Proctor’s first pitch of the game over the left-field wall for another home run, the 446th of his career. The Yankees’ lead was down to 8-6.

Ramírez went 8-for-12 in the series with 4 home runs and 10 RBIs.9 “Hitting can get real streaky,” said Francona of Ramírez’s breaking out of his slump. “Sometimes hitters take a swing or get in a groove and then they are getting pitches to hit. It’s nice to see him get in one of those streaks because [his hits] are not going to be singles.” Torre was equally complimentary, saying, “He’s as hot as I’ve seen him and he’s certainly capable. It’s no fluke.”10

After Proctor got the final two outs in the seventh, Torre called on righty Kyle Farnsworth for the eighth. Farnsworth had struggled the previous night, walking three of the six batters he faced and eventually being pulled for Mariano Rivera, who recorded a five-out save.

Farnsworth got himself in trouble again. Wily Mo Peña led off with a single. One out later, González singled with Peña moving to third. Willie Harris, running for González, stole second, putting the tying run in scoring position.

Farnsworth struck out Youkilis. Then he walked Loretta. This brought up Ortiz, who had struck out three times. Farnsworth’s first pitch was a called strike. His second pitch was a ball. Ortiz then fouled three pitches before Farnsworth “threw a nasty slider that froze the powerful lefty.”11

“I just tried to make good quality pitches against him. He looks forward to those situations,” said Farnsworth. “I just tried to stay aggressive like I did the whole inning. For him to sit a slider against a power pitcher, that’s not what hitters are trained to do. It’s sit fastball and then adjust. I just outguessed him out there.”12 It was just the fourth time in his career and the first time with Boston that Ortiz had struck out four times in a game.

“Farnsworth kept it together and made a helluva pitch,” said Torre of his decision to let Farnsworth face Ortiz. “As long as I was comfortable with what I was seeing from Farnsworth, that’s his job. Lefty or righty, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“Joe’s got to leave me out there sooner or later. If I get myself in a situation, I’ve got to be able to get myself out. We can’t keep bringing [Rivera] in,” said Farnsworth.13

The bottom of the ninth was less dramatic. Rivera retired the Red Sox on 13 pitches for his 10th save of the season and the 423rd of his career. Randy Johnson was credited with his 269th career win.14

Ramírez finished 2006 with 35 home runs, his ninth season in a row with 33 or more. He hit 555 home runs before playing his final big-league game in 2011; as of 2023, his career total ranked 15th all-time.

The Yankees left Boston a half-game behind the Red Sox. Boston held the division lead until August 3, when the Yankees overtook them. New York remained in the lead for the final two months of the season, making it nine straight division titles, while Boston finished third.

Acknowledgments

This article was fact-checked by Kevin Larkin and copy-edited by Len Levin.

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author used the Baseball-Reference.com and Retrosheet.org websites for the box score, player, team, and season pages, pitching and batting logs, and other material.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/BOS/BOS200605240.shtml

https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/2006/B05240BOS2006.htm

Notes

1 Gordon Edes, “On Baseball,” Boston Globe, May 25, 2006: C1.

2 Ken Davidoff, “Unit Win Doesn’t Erase Doubts,” New York Newsday, May 25, 2006: A83.

3 Chris Snow, “Mound of Problems,” Boston Globe, May 25, 2006: C1.

4 Roger Rubin, “Monster Mashes Are Manny-esque,” New York Daily News, May 26, 2006: 72.

5 Anthony McCarron, “Cabrera Can Forget Boston Blues,” New York Daily News, May 26, 2006: 73.

6 Edes. Clement, who took the loss in this game, continued to struggle and finished 2006 with a 5-5 record and a 6.61 ERA. He missed the entire 2007 season with an injury, then finished his career by appearing in three games with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008. He had a lifetime 87-86 record in 238 major-league games, all but two of which were starts.

7 “Cabrera Can Forget Boston Blues.” Torre started Cabrera in left field in the Yankees’ next game, on May 26, and he ended up playing in 116 games at that position in 2006.

8 Proctor had struggled in his five previous appearances, allowing six earned runs, four walks, and three home runs in 6⅓ innings before this game. He pitched in 61 more games after May 24 and finished 5-5 with a 3.65 ERA for 2006. Proctor struggled again in 2007 and was traded to the Los Angeles Dodgers in August 2007. He played for several more teams over the next five years although he was injured during most of that stretch. Proctor finally retired in April 2013.

9 Ramírez hit two more homers with eight RBIs in the season’s remaining six Red Sox-Yankees games.

10 “Monster Mashes Are Manny-esque.”

11 Kevin Devaney, “Farnsworth Earns Trust,” White Plains (New York) Journal News, May 25, 2006: 6C.

12 Christopher Gasper, “Striking Failure as Yankees Stop Ortiz,” Boston Globe, May 25, 2006: C5.

13 “Farnsworth Earns Trust.”

14 Johnson finished 2006 with a 17-11 record although his ERA was 5.00. He pitched one game in the postseason, going 5⅓ innings and giving up five earned runs in a 6-0 loss to Detroit. Johnson was traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks in January 2007. He spent two years in Arizona and another with the San Francisco Giants before retiring with a 303-166 record. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2015.