The moment when it became really clear that the Yankees were in trouble last night came in the top of the fourth inning, just after the Red Sox had taken a four-run lead. A solid single by Alex Rodriguez, a flukish infield roller by Gary Sheffield, and a Bernie Williams groundout left runners on second and third with two outs and Jorge Posada at the plate. Curt Schilling, having allowed one hit through the first three innings, was looking as vulnerable as he had all night – and, as it turned, as vulnerable as he would all night.

Posada has been as important to the Yankees’ successes this postseason as anyone, catching every inning of some exceptionally long and brutal games, and, as he usually does, having a smart at-bat nearly every time he comes to the plate. In the fourth inning last night, though, Posada took two quite hittable pitches for strikes, fouled one off, took a ball outside – and then grounded weakly to first.

He did nothing wrong, and you couldn’t call the at-bat a failure, but for a team to win six pennants in eight years, they have to get hits in those kinds of situations. It becomes expected, and when it doesn’t happen, something seems off-kilter.

Posada and his teammates didn’t fail last night, though – Schilling succeeded. His performance deserves everything that can be said about it, and more. To pitch seven innings and allow one run against this Yankee lineup is an achievement; to do it in a game where a loss would mean the pennant is more so; to do it in his condition, with a broken ankle, torn tendons in his leg, and blood leaking from the area where he had anesthetics injected will be legendary. It isn’t a stretch to say that this performance will one day put him in Cooperstown.

In Game 6, Schilling was exactly the pitcher that everyone expected to see in the first game of this series. He threw hard to both sides of the plate, got his split-finger fastball over for strikes early and late in counts, and put the ball where it couldn’t be hit out of the park, which with the wind blowing the way it was last night meant right field.

Schilling induced more flyouts to right than to center and left combined, more in the infield than in the outfield, and nine flyouts to only three groundouts. It was a risky approach to take: The short porch at Yankee Stadium can be reached even in a fierce gale.

But Schilling knew what he was doing. On a night where his velocity came and went and where it was nearly as important for him to stay in the game and keep the bullpen out as it was for him to prevent runs, it would have been foolish for Schilling to strike out Yankee after Yankee. He didn’t even try and ended the night with only three strikeouts.

Schilling’s sense of his limitations and his ability to make them work for him deserve to be lauded more than his physical courage. All it takes is a high pain threshold to go out on the mound and pitch through injury; to compensate for diminished abilities and work to different strengths is the real sign of greatness.

While it will likely be quickly forgotten, Jon Lieber was extraordinary in his own way. He gave up three of his four runs on a Mark Bellhorn home run that was as cheap an opposite-field shot as has ever been hit, and he was otherwise brilliant.

This year, he faced all of five hitters after passing the 105-pitch threshold; last night, with the Yankee bullpen in desperate need of rest, he went all the way to 124 pitches, and kept Boston down while doing it. It was a gutty performance, and Lieber did far more than could have been expected in hanging on so long as he did and keeping the game so close. He didn’t deserve to lose.

Of course, it couldn’t be as easy as Schilling simply shutting down the opposition, or Lieber pitching valiantly and falling just short; this is a Red Sox-Yankees series and so must come with more than its share of controversy and suspense.

For those who had the advantage of the instant replay, it was clear that in the eighth inning Rodriguez, hitting with Derek Jeter on first, had slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo’s hand while running out a squib up the line, a violation of rule 7.08 (b) in the official rules.

The umpires, without such benefit, originally allowed Rodriguez the fruits of his villainy, including a Jeter run that made the score 4-3; thankfully, after conferring they reversed their decision, nearly precipitating a riot.

Shameful as the sight of the riot squad on the field was, it’s difficult to blame the fans on the scene for their anger at what must have been, from their perspective, a horribly botched call on Rodriguez’s bush-league play.

And had the anger been directed at Rodriguez, it might have been nearly justified. If he had simply run out his grounder, it would have left Jeter on second with two outs and Gary Sheffield at the plate against a rattled Arroyo. Perhaps Sheffield would have picked up the clutch hit Posada hadn’t earlier in the game; we’ll never know.

As it stands now, the Red Sox have already done something no team in the history of baseball has ever done, forcing a seventh game after losing the first three games of a series. The Yankees looked like a desperate team. It won’t be a pretty game tonight, but it will be as good as baseball gets.