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BOSTON -- This time it was Mother Nature that played the biggest role in the biggest rivalry.
The Red Sox and Yankees, known for their epically long games, actually played a game on Saturday afternoon at Fenway Park in two hours, 49 minutes.
What the time of the game doesn't include is a two-hour, 11-minute delay that came as the contest was reaching its most dramatic moment.
The Yankees had runners on first and second with two outs in the top of the eighth, trailing, 4-3, and their most-prolific run producer, Alex Rodriguez, at the plate. Red Sox manager Terry Francona made the call to his bullpen, calling on closer Jonathan Papelbon to relieve Hideki Okajima.
Just then, at 6:22 p.m. ET, the rains that had started earlier in the inning became too heavy for crew chief Jerry Crawford to ignore and the grounds crew was summoned to cover the field. Just after 7 p.m., cheers rained down from the crowd when the tarp was removed. Papelbon got ready a second time in the Red Sox's bullpen.
But both Papelbon and the crowd went through a collective killjoy moment when another band of showers popped up on radar, and the tarp once again covered the field.
It wasn't until 8 p.m. that the tarp was removed for good and the field was prepped so that both teams could begin getting ready to resume play. For most, that simply meant stretching, but for Papelbon, that meant warming up his high-powered motor.
"I just really stayed there the whole entire time," Papelbon said. "I never got out of my element or game intensity. It felt like I was still on the bench and in the game. That was my whole focus. It was more exhausting in a way that was tedious and time-consuming, not exhausting to the body. I felt my body was prepared. I was loose as I could be, but mentally, it was a little tedious."
Francona had the biggest decision to make: whether to leave his best reliever in the game.
"We gave him a pretty good lecture after the second delay about it being a long season -- and meaning that," Francona said. "And we talked to [trainer] Mikey [Reinhold], and he said that if he came out and felt good, it's not putting him at risk pitching."
Finally, at 8:33 p.m., Papelbon threw a split-finger fastball that Rodriguez swung at and missed. Papelbon then threw two more fastballs, one down and in and the other up and away, with the same result from Rodriguez. Threat over.
Rodriguez tried to put a light touch on the heavy drama.
"I was joking around with the guys that I was getting frozen at the free-throw line," Rodriguez said. "It's not an excuse. You take your hacks. Sometimes you get him and sometimes he gets you."
Josh Beckett won his first game of the season thanks to the heroics of Papelbon, who struck out two more in the ninth to preserve the 4-3 Boston win.
"That's what great players do, they lift everybody up around them," Beckett said. "I don't think it was a must-win, but we all felt like we had to win that game. We got some timely hits. I know we made a bunch of great defensive plays, so it was big that he came in and just kind of nailed down things."
"His stuff was phenomenal," Francona added. "I'm not sure what's better, his arm or his heart. It was pretty impressive."
In the end, it was Papelbon who was the happiest of all.
"This is definitely why we play the game, what the fans come to see, and this is what I live for, for sure," Papelbon said.
Mike Petraglia is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.