Now this is what we came to see.

It only took five games, 53 innings, and nearly 22 hours of baseball, including just under six hours last night, but finally, we have a bonafide Yankees-Red Sox playoff series on our hands.

It’s about time.

After all the heavy breathing, it was not until shortly after midnight Monday morning that the Red Sox even made their presence known in this thing, when they touched up Mariano Rivera for the ninth-inning run that staved off the humiliation of a Yankee sweep. Three innings later, David Ortiz’s home run gave the Sox a 6-4 victory and at least the satisfaction of having won one game against the hated Yankees. They bought themselves a day, but not much real hope.

Last night, they bought the hope.

Ortiz, this time with a broken-bat bloop single that scored Johnny Damon from second, gave the Red Sox a 5-4 win in 14 sweaty-palm innings. Now, the prospect of a repeat of last year’s American League Championship Series, when the Red Sox played the part of Joe Frazier in the Thrilla in Manila only to lose on the cruelest blow of all, an 11th-inning walk off home run by Aaron Boone, may very well develop.

“Sure, the momentum is on their side,” Yankee manager Joe Torre acknowledged. “But I’m not sure it affected us and the way we feel about ourselves. We’re very evenly matched, and each game takes on a life of its own. Obviously, these last two games have proven that. Both teams want it very badly, and they’re going to keep going until they can’t go anymore.”

So now, the Series returns to the Bronx for tonight’s Game 6, and a potentially dramatic moment. Boston ace Curt Schilling, who was chased from the mound after three innings and six runs in Game 1, will take the mound in a specially made shoe to stabilize a torn tendon in his right ankle. If there is any real hope for the Red Sox to reverse 86 years of futility, it rests on the strength of that damaged ribbon of tissue.

“We’ve taken steps to insure we won’t have the same problem we had the first time,” Schilling said. “The medical staff exhausted every solution it could find until we came up with something.”

“He’s a tough guy,” said Red Sox manager Terry Francona. “Schill’s pitch count may be 180 tonight, if we need it.”

He may, since the Red Sox, like the Yankees, burned through seven pitchers last night. “Everybody’s available [tonight],”Torre said. “And I’m sure it’s the same with them.”

Easily said, but if necessary, the Yankees will be asking Rivera to do something he’s never done, which is pitch a third consecutive day after back-to-back two-inning stints. In fact, they’ll be asking Rivera to do another thing he’s never done, which is bounce back to his old self after blowing consecutive saves in the post-season.

After allowing the Red Sox to tie Game 4 on Bill Mueller’s ninth-inning single, Rivera last night was asked to put out a fire started by set-up man Tom Gordon, who had allowed the Sox to pull within one run on a home run by Ortiz leading off the eighth and then left runners at first and third with none out after a walk to Kevin Millar and a single to Trot Nixon.

But Jason Varitek hit Rivera’s third pitch solidly to deep center, easily scoring pinch runner Dave Roberts with the tying run.

“We have to put it behind us, we have to move on,” said Rivera, who bounced back from flying to the Bronx from Panama to attend the funeral of two relatives accidentally electrocuted in his pool to save Game 1. “We can’t do nothing about it but rest and come back strong tomorrow.”

Until last night, this latest incarnation of the continuing Yankee-Red Sox soap opera had been profoundly disappointing, especially after Saturday night’s 19-8 Yankee blowout at Fenway Park. After three games, this looked to be the most overrated, over hyped, under-competitive “rivalry” in the history of sports rivalries. It was as much a rivalry as the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals, only a lot less entertaining.

All that changed last night. Pedro Martinez started for the Red Sox and pitched five strong innings before collapsing in the sixth, ironically on his 100th pitch of the night, his typical collapse point. On that pitch, Derek Jeter, one of the few Yankees not feasting on Red Sox pitching, finally came through, stroking a 1-1 fastball down the right field line with the bases loaded, plating three runs and overturning a 2-1 Yankee deficit to a 4-2 Yankee lead.

With Mike Mussina settling down after a shaky first inning, that looked to be the story, and the series. But there was so much baseball left to play, so much failure on both sides, so much tension in the park, so much joy when Ortiz’s dink shot dropped safely in front of a charging Bernie Williams some three hours later. “This series has been so much more than I imagined it would be,” Schilling said. “And at the same time, it’s been everything I imagined it would be. I’ve never seen anything like this.” Wait until Schilling gets a look at tonight’s Yankees-Red Sox game. Game 6, doldrums over. Series on. It’s about time.

Mr. Matthews is the host of the “Wally and the Keeg” sports talk show heard Monday-Friday from 4-7 p.m. on 1050 ESPN radio.