Martinez, BoSox Rally By Yanks

Pedro Martinez pitched his worst game of the season. All he did was strike out 11 batters and put the Boston Red Sox in first place.

And he did it against major league ERA leader David Cone as the Red Sox won 6-3 Tuesday night to spoil Joe Torre's return as Yankees manager and take a half-game lead over New York in the AL East.

"This is probably the toughest game I faced this year," said Martinez (8-1), who had 15 strikeouts in each of his previous two games. "I felt kind of flat and not as strong as I normally am."

"If he felt flat," Boston catcher Jason Varitek said, "that's a pretty good flat performance."

That overshadowed the return of Torre, who managed his first game since undergoing surgery for prostate cancer March 18. Torre received a standing ovation from Boston fans when he took the lineup card to home plate.

"It was moving," he said of the reception. "I was surprisingly calm. I thought I would be jumpy but I was fine."

Martinez was calm even though he put runners on base in every inning and stranded 13 of them, eight in scoring position, during his seven innings.

"Pedro got in trouble, but he stayed loose out there and knew the situations," said Tino Martinez, who had two of the 10 hits Martinez allowed. "He did the things that good pitchers do."

So did Cone for the first four innings. He allowed just two hits and a walk over that span before giving up two runs in the fifth on Mike Stanley's third homer and Reggie Jefferson's RBI single and one in the sixth when Boston took a 3-2 lead.

"I felt good going into the fifth inning," said Cone (4-2). "When I gave up the homer to Stanley, I got a little tentative."

Martinez never did.

"I'm not going to make it easy for them," he said. "This game means more to me than my last because I realized I wasn't at my best and I still managed to keep my team in thgame."

He finished with a flourish, striking out the side in the seventh and leaving runners at first and third.

Boston is 9-2 in its last 11 games, while New York is 1-6 in its last seven.

The Red Sox broke a 2-2 tie in the sixth when Nomar Garciaparra doubled, took third on a groundout and scored on Cone's first wild pitch of the season.

They added three runs in the eighth, two on second baseman Chuck Knoblauch's throwing error and another on Trot Nixon's RBI groundout.

Tino Martinez hit an RBI single in the ninth off Rheal Cormier to make it 6-3. Tom Gordon got three outs for his fifth save. Gordon has converted 48 straight save opportunities.

"He's something special," Gordon said of Martinez.

Cone entered the game with a major league-leading 1.33 ERA but lost for the first time in his career at Fenway Park after five wins.

The Yankees had taken a 1-0 lead in the third when Martinez doubled home Derek Jeter, who stretched his hitting streak to 13 games and has reached base in all 37 games this season. He reached base four times on two singles, a walk and an error.

The Yankees made it 2-0 in the fifth but left the bases loaded when Martinez fanned the last two batters. The run scored on Chili Davis' single after Martinez, who walked just one batter in his previous two games, loaded the bases on three walks.

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