Forget what you’ve heard about games in April not being important. You saw Sunday, when Joe Torre managed against the Red Sox as if it were the seventh game of the ALCS, how important a game in April can be.

Sunday was desperately important for the Yankees. It was a game big enough to Torre to start Javier Vazquez on three days rest, to bring in Mariano Rivera to hold a tie game, to pull every string and use every gambit in the manager’s handbook.

And it would have been great if the Yankees had won. Even if it would have been just two wins in seven games against the Red Sox that would have been enough. A win would have restored some Yankee pride, would have told the Red Sox that the pinstripes aren’t dead yet, in fact, they’re feeling much better, would have kick-started this season.

But the Yankees kick-started nothing except choruses of Bronx cheers from the 55,338 disgusted customers who have seen so much incompetence from the Yankees that they kept checking their tickets to make sure they were really in Yankee Stadium and not slumming at Shea.

They watched the Yankees play a game that was more than the nineteenth of the season. They played it like the playoffs. They played with desperation, and they lost.

It is no longer too early to panic. Because now it's clear that Boston is the team to beat and looks like it will be the one to beat in September and October.

It is so bad in New York that the House that former Sox pitcher Babe Ruth built rattled with boos for Derek Jeter, who hasn’t had a hit for most of a week. Sure, Philly fans could boo Mike Schmidt, and Boston fans could boo Ted Williams, and an earlier generation of Yankees fans could boo Mickey mantle. But Jeter is different. He’s like Don Mattingly once was, the boo-proof Yankee. Ever since Jeter came up in 1996, you’d sooner expect to hear the Pope booed by a visiting congregation of nuns in the Sistine Chapel than you’d expect to hear Jeter booed in the Bronx.

No longer, The Yankees stink. Jeter stinks. Boo Jeter. Boo them all, the worthless pack of overpaid slobs.

This is the best team money can buy? This is what you get when you put eight all stars on the field?

We all knew the Yankees didn’t have the best pitching staff in the world when this started. But we expected Kevin Brown, Mike Mussina and Javier Vazquez to be a pretty good front three. Brown and Vazquez have held up their end of the deal. They both pitched well this weekend, each giving up just two runs.

Didn’t matter. The Yankees lost anyway. And now, with Jose Contreras as big a mess as Ed Whitson ever was and no number five starter and Torre already leaning on Rivera way too often, it could get uglier.

Torre isn’t the perfect manager, because there is no such animal. And his biggest weakness is that he gives in to the temptation to use Rivera more than he should. Rivera’s problem is that he’ll never admit he’s tired, never refuse to take the ball. So Torre will pitch him two innings or bring him into a tie game and otherwise use him more than a slightly built closer should be used.

It’s resulted in Rivera going down with a sore arm and ending the year with a tired arm. Some Yankee analysts still insist that Torre lost the 2001 World Series to Arizona in August and September, when he rode Rivera too hard down the stretch.

Now, Torre doesn’t seem to have a choice. He’s got to beat up his pitching staff, has to overwork Rivera and everybody, because he has to get some wins and get them soon.

Ten days before Sunday, the Yankees were going to Boston and everyone was treating it as either a replay of last year’s ALCS or a continuation of same. That lasted one day and one Red Sox win. Ever since, it’s been obvious this isn’t last year, it’s a whole new ballgame.

If this were a seven-game series, it would have been over Saturday when the Red Sox took four of the first five. Since it’s a 19-game series, they kept playing until Boston had won six and lost one. There are 12 games remaining this year, and the Sox need just four of them to win the season series.

The Red Sox are flying high. The Yankees are clueless in the Bronx. It’s time to panic.

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