NEW YORK — Mark Teixeira held his bat high, slowly trotting toward first base, unsure whether the ball he’d just sent soaring into the night would stay fair.
The way this series went for Boston and New York, there should have been no doubt.
Teixeira hit the tiebreaking homer two pitches after Johnny Damon went deep in the eighth inning Sunday night, and the Yankees went on to beat the Red Sox 5-2 and complete their first four-game home sweep of their bitter rivals in 24 years.
“I’ve hit a lot of balls like that that continue to hook and go foul, and I go back and pick up my bat and dust it off,” Teixeira said. “So I just held onto my bat, in case it went foul, I’d just walk back to home plate.”
He found himself rounding the bases instead.
The home runs off Daniel Bard (0-1) came one inning after Victor Martinez’s two-run shot off Phil Coke (4-3) had snapped the Red Sox’s 31-inning scoreless stretch.
“To be able to do that back-to-back is not an easy task, and Tex stepped up,” Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. “Big players did big things in the game tonight.”
Alex Rodriguez homered in the seventh inning, and Nick Swisher added a two-run single later in the eighth for the Yankees. They’ve won seven straight and built a 6 1/2-game lead in the AL East — and have never failed to win the division when leading by more than six.
“You need breaks to win sometimes and we didn’t tonight, and we haven’t got any in a while, so, you know, we’re excited to head back home and start fresh,” Boston’s Dustin Pedroia said. “We’re in the lead of the wild card? What’s the deal? Good, so we’ll start over.”
Um, not quite Dustin.
Even that was lost after Texas won earlier in the day to move into a tie with Boston.
