October 13, 2003 ... There was no letup in tension between the Red Sox and Yankees in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series, merely an absence of the histrionics over the weekend that had created an embarrassing hiccup in this storied rivalry. And as Sox knuckleballer Tim Wakefield demonstrated again, there is a way to throw a purpose pitch other than planting it in the back of an opposing hitter.

The Game 4 tone was set by former Sox batterymates Luis Tiant and Carlton Fisk, golden boys from the golden days who collaborated on the ceremonial first pitch. Wearing his No. 23 jersey, Luis went into his corkscrew windup and fired a strike to his Hall of Fame catcher, the pride of the Granite State. In that moment, all was right in Red Sox Nation. It was 1975 again.

With the Sox in desperation mode as they attempted to keep the Yankees from moving within a game of winning their 39th AL pennant and fifth in seven seasons, Wakefield's soft tosses had the Yankees unhinged at the plate, while the Red Sox maintained an emotional equilibrium light-years removed from Saturday's Game 3 hoo-hah.

Sox second baseman Todd Walker got things going in the fourth inning, lofting a 2-and-2 Mussina pitch into the seats in right. It was Walker's fifth homer of the postseason. Trot Nixon (3 for 3) broke a 1-1 tie and put the Sox ahead for good with one of his patented parabolic shots into the center-field bleachers in the fifth.

Alfonso Soriano's failure to make what would have been an inning-ending double-play relay with the same amount of urgency that Jason Varitek ran down the line to beat the second baseman's throw allowed Kevin Millar to score what proved to be the deciding run in the seventh, when the Sox took a 3-1 lead. Varitek didn't start for two reasons: Doug Mirabelli is Wakefield's regular catcher, and because he was 2 for 36 lifetime against Mussina. But after the Sox loaded the bases on a walk to Millar, Nixon's Wall double (his third hit of the game), and an intentional walk to Bill Mueller, Varitek came sprinting in from the bullpen. No one has ever accused Varitek of leading this team in anything measured with a stopwatch. But he always runs hard, and last night was no exception, as he hit a ball into the hole that shortstop Derek Jeter gloved on the short hop and threw to second. Soriano's relay came within a footstep of catching Varitek.

Wakefield, even more dominating than he was in Game 1's 5-2 win in the Bronx, held the Bombers to one run on five hits through seven innings, the run scoring in the fifth on Jeter's double that struck the third base bag. Wakefield struck out the side in the sixth, and set down seven Yankees in a row before being lifted for Mike Timlin after walking Jason Giambi to start the eighth. Wakefield, who dodged a bullet in the first when Giambi's bid for a three-run home run drifted just foul, was working with the narrowest margins until the Sox pushed across the run in the seventh.

Things got dicey for the Sox in the eighth. Wakefield walked Jason Giambi on a 3-and-2 pitch to start the inning and was immediately lifted. It seemed like a quick hook given that Wakefield struck out the side in the sixth and threw four pitches in the seventh, but Mike Timlin retired the next three batters. The suddenly amazing Timlin has retired 22 of 22 batters in the postseason, but he was replaced in the ninth by Scott Williamson.

Williamson gave a sellout crowd of 34,599 palpitations when Yankee pinch hitter Ruben Sierra homered over the visitors' bullpen with one out in the ninth, the first run allowed by the Sox pen in this series. But Williamson, who credits a heart-to-heart talk with Nomar Garciaparra in Oakland for restoring his confidence, struck out David Dellucci and Alfonso Soriano to preserve a 3-2 Sox win that evened this best-of-seven series at two games apiece.